[SPEAKER_01]: Hey friends, welcome back to the Christian parenting podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host, Steph Thirling, and today we're diving into a topic that touches every single stage of parenting, but especially those of us who are raising kids who are growing up way faster than we'd like.
[SPEAKER_01]: As our kids move towards adulthood, things start to shift.
[SPEAKER_01]: We go from being really hands on and every decision to slowly releasing control, trusting God with their story, and wondering what it looks like to continue discipling them when they're no longer under our roof.
[SPEAKER_01]: So today I'm joined by Doug McKelvie, author of the Every Moment Holy Series, including his newest book writes a passage, which was written specifically for young adults who are navigating that transition into independence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, Doug shares how ancient rhythms of prayer can ground our kids in a world that feels noisy and uncertain, and how these liturgy can get words to what they're experiencing when they don't know how to say it themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that this conversation is going to encourage you to think about discipleship not just for today, but for the long-term faith of your kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, Douglas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Christian Parenting Podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Steph.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for the invitation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very happy to have you here today.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to start just getting to know you a little bit more so that my audience can know who they're talking with.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you just tell us like a little bit about yourself, about your family, about what you do, all the important things to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I moved to the Nashville area in the early 90s at the invitation of artists and producer Charlie Peacock.
[SPEAKER_00]: He and his wife Andy were just launching the Art House Foundation, which is a nonprofit that kind of exists that intersection of art and faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: work with them and led to getting a foot in the door in the songwriting world as a lyricist so I did that for
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, 10 or 12 years where that was my primary gig shortly after moving to Nashville, my wife Lisa moved here from Austin as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we got married.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had been dating for a while before that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I so in those early years of songwriting we had three daughters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I ended up taking kind of a meandering path.
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of continued to dabble in songwriting, but I moved into some screenwriting video production, had some books published here and there along the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess the short version is that ultimately,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, some decades later that all led to the writing of the first every moment holy book, which is subtitled new liturgies for daily life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the idea was that these were prayers, many of them in a liturgical format, not all of them, for every day moments.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for the liturgie for the changing of a diaper, or for the first hearthfire of the season, or before home
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, for a moment of frustration at a child or for a husband and wife at close of day, just, you know, lots of different parts of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the,
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of the the surprising organic spread of that book pretty quickly led to doing subsequent volumes of that so for the last 10 years that that has been my primary vocational pursuit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've always got two or three other things brewing at the same time on the side, but yeah, that's been the main thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: life of a creative, always multiple things brewing on this side.
[SPEAKER_01]: How old are your girls now?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, they are 26, 28 and 30.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lovely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we're going to talk all about kind of young adults now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is what this new every moment holy book is about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm really excited to talk about this because I think I've talked to a lot of parents recently that kind of have this fear of transitioning into that next stage of parenting because there's a little
[SPEAKER_01]: your kids as much and just feels a little new and uncertain.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I love that we get to talk about this so much in that you have a whole book written just for a young adult.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and this is not the first book obviously said you've been doing this for a decade.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've sold hundreds of thousands of copies and now you're moving into a younger generation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what do you think it is about these prayers and liturgies that is resonating so deeply like across generations?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that there is a hunger that a lot of people sense for an expression of their faith that is more rooted, right, that's not about just, I mean, there's this recognition that we are not just part of the body of Christ spread across geography around the world, but also across time and history, right, that we are one body.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there are traditions that are so rooted in the ancient history of the church that have a lot to offer.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a lot to offer theologically in terms of this hundreds of years long distillation of scriptural truth into expressions that are packed with meaning and with truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: that in a culture where things are moving so fast, where technology is changing so quick, where there's so much anxiety and uncertainty about our world and where things are heading, that there is this place of peace and reorientation to the larger story that God is telling across history.
[SPEAKER_00]: in some of these more ancient and rooted sorts of expressions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with the every moment holy prayers, what I was basically doing was going back to the early Celtic Christians who had this practice of writing prayers for everyday moments.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would have a prayer before milking the cows.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would have a prayer before covering the coals in the hearth fire at night.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they would move through their days with this kind of rhythm of constant orientation or reorientation away from the microcosm of their own little story and whatever their worries and struggles might be and placing that over and over again in the context of this great story of redemption that God is telling through history and that our small stories sit within that larger story that God is telling.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think it's, don't think it's any different for us today in that we still need the same thing, and one could argue that we need it more palpably because of the noise and the amount of information that's surrounding us, that there's so much that just throws us and distracts us,
[SPEAKER_00]: from the fact that God is present in every moment that His Spirit is here and eager to use every circumstance to draw our hearts toward God, to remind us of where all of this is heading toward the, you know, the new creation, the redemption of all things, the marriage, supper of the Lamb.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the hope is that these prayers as people can incorporate some of them into the existing rhythm of their lives would help to provide those kind of moments of reorientation and, you know, I think a lot of people have thought this is a new kind of thing, but it's not at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: and of shepherding tool, discipleship tool, going on going conformity to the image of Christ, kind of tool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious what you think.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is an ancient tradition.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's really interesting that you're going off of like these old Celtic prayers.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's I didn't know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think has pulled us away from that practice over time?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it is, I feel like coming back as something that people are practicing more regularly, but there's kind of also this conception that it's like not as good to pray like a written prayer or
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, something that people have said over and over again, because it's not as personal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where do you think that came from and how do you think we've moved so far away?
[SPEAKER_00]: I am not enough of a church historian to feel like I could accurately analyze that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I could make some general guesses in relation to just the independent spirit that seems to have been fostered as a part of our culture in the United States in particular.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, I grew up in churches where I had no sense of being a part of the body of Christ across history.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was really just about us right now in this place.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't even, it wasn't even a global sense of the body of Christ that I was a part of.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that kind of fierce independence probably, you know, it's bound to have had some shaping effect on some of our theologies.
[SPEAKER_00]: here and the way we see ourselves in relation to community in general.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that that's probably part of it and was there a second part to your question?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I was just kind of curious of what you were thoughts are after spending so much time in so much of your career writing these.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a really accurate assessment too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also not a church historian, but I think that makes
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I guess you had also asked about the way that a prayer that someone else has written that's maybe been used for hundreds of years in the church might be viewed as somehow lesser than just a spontaneous prayer from the heart in the moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I have trouble trying to weigh those things against each other because I think it's a I think it's very much above the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: There of course there are those prayers that we are praying in the moment to our creator conversing with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there are also the most consistent comment that I've had as feedback over the last 10 from people who have prayed prayers from the every moment Holy Books is this gave us words that articulated what was on our heart when we didn't have words.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even like volume two is all prayers, the subtitle is death grief and hope, so a lot of prayers for people who are in the process of dying who have been given that six month diagnosis and have to navigate what it means to follow Jesus into the valley of the shadow of death, and then a lot of prayers for people who are grieving the loss of someone they love.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: in that volume in particular, there has just been such consistent ongoing feedback from people saying, in the moment, we had no words in this gave us the words.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if, and I grew up in a tradition, or kind of a Lucy Goosey lack of church tradition, but the churches I grew up in, we would have looked at scans at liturgical prayers.
[SPEAKER_00]: as something that couldn't really be inspired, but the songs that we sang as praise and worship songs had all been pre-written by someone who prayerfully and carefully did the work of crafting those words, and we never thought for a moment that there was a problem with making those words our own as we sang them as expressions of praise.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when Jesus disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, he gave them the Lord's prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we just didn't even know how to categorize that in the traditions that I grew up in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's very much a both end, I mean, why would we cut ourselves off from the richness of ongoing spontaneous conversation with our creator and prayer, and why would we cut ourselves off from the richness of the resources of those prayers that have been carefully thoughtfully and prayerfully wrestled through and written.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't see any kind of conflict there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do understand that there are a lot of people who have grown up in situations like the one I did where they just have not experienced the use of that sort of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think the praise and worship songs analogy is a good one for helping to say, okay, yeah, I can see how there could there could be something meaningful here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or at the same with sermons, you know, I mean, do we want our pastors to not do the work of study and preparation for a sermon?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it need to just be spontaneous?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or do we trust that the, do we trust that the spirit of God can be at work in that wrestling time?
[SPEAKER_00]: that our pastors are going through as they try to discern and craft and create an articulation of scriptural truth that's going to be meaningful and impacting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so I think it doesn't for most people take a lot to get over that hurdle if they've come from from those kind of traditions that would be suspicious of something that was liturgical.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, get out of the, I'll go to the comfort zone a little bit and then they discover that it's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, have you seen these prayers, these written prayers, these liturgies affecting young adults as they've gone through this book.
[SPEAKER_01]: You kind of touched on a little bit on how all the previous volumes have people have said, like, this is giving me words.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is giving me words for what I didn't know how to express.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I can imagine that for young adults who are in just this formative time in life where they're going to figure out who am I.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do I want to be with this person, you know, what am I to do for career, you know, what where am I going to live like I'm trying to figure out so much in life like how are these things helpful for them and processing all of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the book is newly released enough that there hasn't been that window of time for there to be a lot of feedback from people who have purchased the book or have been gifted the book, but I guess there are two things I could say one is that at the
[SPEAKER_00]: the publisher, Rabbit Room Press, who publishes the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are quite a few young women who are employed there who are in their 20s.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were actually a really valuable part of the process of the it was like two and a quarter years that I spent writing this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were some of the people who were suggesting topics that were important to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also there's
[SPEAKER_00]: there's been feedback from them along the way and a really high excitement level among them once the book was completed, just about how it would fit into their lives and the lives of their friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in general, the idea with the every moment holy books, you know, as we were talking about a few minutes ago, has been to give people tools that can become a part of the rhythm of their days.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there have been with the other three every moment holy books that had previously been published, there were a lot of families using those.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there were kids who are now going to college.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just met a family a couple of weeks ago at a event who came up to me and had several kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the girls was maybe was a year into college and another one was about to start college.
[SPEAKER_00]: those young women recounted to me how they had grown up with the first every moment holy book and how meaningful it had become to them and how excited they were for this new book you know coming out at this point in their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: So even with the first book
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I was most excited about was the possibility of their being young kids who would grow up with some of these prayers, being a formative shepherding thing that their family would engage in on a repeated basis over the years.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it was, well, this fourth book is a collection of prayers that, that, that,
[SPEAKER_00]: are aimed to be a companion for young people in that maybe 17, 17 years old decade of transitioning to adulthood and independence and so prayers that are meaningful and contextually make a lot of sense for that part of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't view this as okay now there are prayers for that age group.
[SPEAKER_00]: because I think from the beginning, all along, I saw the prayers in the books, even if, to some degree, it was something, you know, an eight-year-old kid might not understand or a five-year-old kid might not understand certain parts of it, but they're gonna grow into that understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: over the years as their family uses it and has conversations about, well, what does that line mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it has been a great encouragement to see that that actually has happened over the last decade, that there are kids entering college now whose family for the last 10 years have been using some of these prayers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: and that some of those young adults are already recognizing that they were shaped by that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they're taking the books with them when they go to college.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there are certain things that we did both topically and even the format of this book to make it.
[SPEAKER_00]: very even more helpful to young adults.
[SPEAKER_00]: We made this book has more text than any of the other three, so it's the longest book, but it's also the smallest, so it can go in a backpack.
[SPEAKER_00]: We changed the format some of the other books have single column of text we went to double column, so it would require half the number of pages to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, yeah, it just feels like the next natural step on this journey of the way the books have evolved topically from book to book and this one at this point just seemed like the most important one to write that there were so many people who for years had been telling me we need this book, we need this book for young adults for that transition from being a teenager to an adult.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I love that long-term view of discipleship and kind of like the idea that you can start with these things with your kids when they're really, really little and it just becomes so much party or family that they can start doing what the same prayers on their own as they grow and then move into this next stage and really take ownership of it, which I think is what we all want for our kids is for them to take ownership of their faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that like once their kids launch their influence fades and maybe just they're like done recycling like make his out of the house and now I don't get to disciple them anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like from your experience parenting and you know going through this process and talking to those women at work like as you wrote the book like what would you say to that fear?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well I think I mean there is that natural process that seems to happen where
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't think you want your kid to be 40 and still be in a position of parenting them in the same way.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there is that.
[SPEAKER_00]: that difficult balance that is rapidly changing through that time of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jay, I don't posit myself as any sort of parenting expert.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think in writing this book, probably I'm drawing a lot more from my own experience during those years of my life growing up than I am from my experience as a parent.
[SPEAKER_00]: whatever I'm writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I get very emotionally, you know, inside, if it's fiction, inside the characters and the world or, but even with prayers, it's like I'm finding that emotional center and connection that I have with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: particular topic, but think in terms of parenting and going through that that those stages where you are releasing more and more of that control, I think more than anything it ultimately comes down to trusting God, to trusting that God is going to be as faithful to your child, as he has
[SPEAKER_00]: as he has been of you that when they make choices that bring you sorrow as their parent to recognize that did in that regard they're probably no different than you were or are in terms of some of the choices you've made in your life and you know some of us
[SPEAKER_00]: do seem to only really learn by putting our hand on the stove.
[SPEAKER_00]: so that as a parent to sometimes see your children making those choices that you just, you know, that is the last thing you want for them, the rest, the peace in the midst of that comes from the degree to which you can trust that that God is still involved in their story, that He is pursuing them and that
[SPEAKER_00]: that even if they make a choice that is in some way harmful to themselves or to others, that that is not the end of the story, right, that that God's grace encompasses that, even as it encompasses all of all of the things in our own lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: So...
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, I think in some people find that being a parent to adult children is actually more difficult in the parenting than it was when they were teenagers or, you know, in their terrible twos, whatever, you know, there's no, there's no one singular experience that, that, I mean, even for those of us who have multiple kids, I mean, you know, you learn pretty quickly that each of your kids are going to have a different story and they're
[SPEAKER_00]: go down a different path in some ways and the things that are difficult for some of them are going to be non-issues for others.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that as followers of Jesus who long for our children to have that ongoing intimate relationship with their creator as well, that we don't control the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we love, we serve, we give the wisdom that we can in the ways that we're able, but ultimately we have to learn to trust that it's in God's hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, not everything is going to be fixed and solved on the time table that we wish it would be.
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't that the truth?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it applies to so much parenting as the process of just trusting God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every stage of parenting comes down to trusting God and letting go of the control.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do think that having a
[SPEAKER_01]: A solid prayer life and being able to lean on different types of prayer and different types of communicating and just like resting in the Lord is so important in that because we can do it in our own strength like there's just no way, at least I can't I'm not relaxed enough of a human.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't think any of us can do it in our own string.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, absolutely not, but I'm grateful for you and for all the things that you're doing to write and to give us some of these amazing resources.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for sharing with us today, I think it will just be like a big encouragement to parents in every season of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you just tell us where we can connect with you and where we can get a copy of write to passage and all that stuff?
[SPEAKER_00]: sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: The book should be available pretty much anywhere that you buy books on Amazon or you can get them directly from rabbit room press.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you go to, I think it's store.rabbitroom.com or you can just go to everymomolay.com and that will take you to the product on the rabbit room website.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do have a new thing this year, artist and producer, John Lowry, and I worked for about a year on getting every moment holy prayer songs launched as a project, and we just did that in January of this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've taken the text of a lot of the prayers in the books, set them to music, to create these prayerful, meditative kind of songs that people can even put on repeat,
[SPEAKER_00]: remain as long as they want to in the articulation of a particular prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's an ongoing project that every quarter will release another 10 songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's an every moment holy live touring event in the fall of this year that that will be doing in a number of different cities around the US.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's just another new venture but a way for people to interact and engage with the content.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, lovely.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll get all that stuff linked and show notes that people can find it really easily and check out more.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, thank you so much for joining me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate your time today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, Steph.
[SPEAKER_00]: I enjoyed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for being here today.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am really grateful for Doug and the work that he's done creating all of these resources.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just love how this conversation reminds us that discipleship is a long game, and that even as our kids grow and step into independence, God is still faithfully pursuing them.
[SPEAKER_01]: If this episode encourages you, I'd love for you to share with a friend who's walking through a similar season, and be sure to go check out Doug's book writes a passage, I'll have everything linked in show notes that is really easy for you to find.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you again for being here as you go today, may you rest in the truth that your child's story is ultimately in God's hands.
[SPEAKER_01]: May you have the courage to release control, the wisdom to keep showing up in love, and the peace that comes from trusting that God is at work in every moment, even the ones that you can't see.