The five key tools
Your on-the-go toolkit for helping children and teens build a 1:1 relationship with God
PARENTS, CARERS AND YOUTH WORKERS dedicate huge amounts of time helping children and teenagers learn and grow. They teach them to cross roads safely, navigate friendships and cope with disappointment. They learn to spot when they need encouragement, guidance or reassurance and how to offer it to them. Yet when it comes to helping children and teenagers build their own relationship with God, many adults feel unsure.
They worry that they don’t know enough, that their lives aren’t a good enough example or that they don’t have the right words to say. That can feel tough! You want the children or young people in your care to grow in their relationship with God, but you’re not always sure how to help.
The good news is that you don’t need to have all the answers or be some kind of spiritual expert. In fact, helping children develop their own relationship with God is not so different from helping them grow in any other area of life. It often happens naturally in everyday moments. Simply being someone who helps them notice, know and connect with God makes all the difference.
So how do we do that?
The creators of Parenting for Faith have developed Five Key Tools to help. These simple, flexible tools equip parents, carers, grandparents, youth leaders, children’s workers and anyone who connects with young people at work or at church to help them grow a confident, two-way relationship with God.
These tools aren’t extra jobs to squeeze into an already busy day. They don’t require complicated lesson plans, special resources, lots of reading or perfect group devotions. Instead, they help us recognise the opportunities we already have and show us how to use them more intentionally.
They’re there for you to dip into on the school run, at bedtime, over dinner or in a tea break, while on the way to an event or during a Sunday session. They work whether you’ve been following Jesus for decades or, like most of us, you still have lots of questions on your faith journey.
So what are the five key tools, and what do they look like in everyday life?
Creating windows
Being authentic
Whether intentionally or not, we’re all sharing our life-lessons with the children and young people around us. Your toddler copies you as they chop plastic vegetables. A child notices how you welcome people as they arrive at your group. A teenager listens as you talk honestly about a challenge you’ve been facing. A young person watches the way you treat others with respect. That’s how young people learn. They watch, explore, and they have a go for themselves.
It’s much the same with faith.
A lot of our relationship with God happens where children and teens can’t see it – in our heads, behind a closed door or while they’re asleep or at nursery, school or college. But when we give them little glimpses into our everyday lives with God, we are showing them what a relationship with God can look like and how they can build their own.
That might mean letting them see you pray when life gets difficult. It could be a kind word to someone on the bus. It can also be sharing something that encouraged you at church this week, or sharing a story about a time God made a difference in your life. Over time, those small windows into our faith help children and teenagers understand not just what we believe, but how we live with God.
Try it out
Think about something you already do to connect with God – praying, worshipping, reading the Bible or chatting with a friend about faith. How could you make it more visible to a child or teenager in your life?
Could you:
- Pray out loud instead of silently?
- Leave your Bible open on the table?
- Mention something God has been teaching you recently?
- Share how you approached a difficult decision with God?
- Let them overhear you encouraging someone or asking for prayer?
None of this is about putting on a performance. It is simply about letting young people see what life with God looks like in the everyday and why this is valuable to us. Step-by-step, they will begin to understand what their life with God could be too.
Framing
Making sense of life with God in it
A big part of caring for children and teenagers is helping them make sense of the world around them. From learning what toes are, to handling disappointment, to understanding what they’re seeing on social media, young people are constantly working out how life fits together.
Children and teenagers also need help understanding who God is, what he’s doing, and how he connects to what they see and hear around them. Why? Because when we gather information about who God is without seeing how this impacts our lives, we can start to feel disconnected and confused.
That’s where framing comes in. Framing helps children and teenagers recognise where God is at work in everyday life – at school, in times of loss or uncertainty, when they’re lonely, and in all the ordinary moments in between.
As we explore the Bible together, answer questions and talk about life, we’re helping children and teenagers develop a worldview where God isn’t separate from life, but right at the heart of it.
Try it out
- Share a challenge you’ve faced recently and talk about where God was in it. Did you recognise his presence immediately or gradually?
- Ask children and teenagers what questions they have about life, faith or the Bible, and explore them together.
- Wonder out loud together about Bible stories: I wonder how the people were feeling? What God was doing? Why they responded the way they did?
- Provide context to help explain parts of church life, prayer or worship instead of assuming children and teenagers automatically understand why we do the things we do.
Sometimes it is our questions rather than our answers that enable us to connect well with children and teenagers. We make a big difference in their faith journey when we listen and make space to explore life’s challenges and try new things together.
Unwinding
A balanced and healthy view of God
Misunderstandings are a normal part of life, whether you’re five or fifty. In the life of a young person, maybe something happened at school and they’ve only got half the story. Or they’ve decided Aunty Sarah is the worst because of an awkward encounter. Part of our role is helping children and teenagers untangle those misunderstandings and make sense of what’s really going on.
It’s not that different when it comes to God.
Every child and teenager forms their own view of God. They piece together an understanding from what they hear, what they see, and what they experience, and it’s easy for those experiences to get projected onto God. Sometimes that can leave them thinking he is unkind, distant, or not really interested in them.
A child who is being bullied might wonder if God sees them at all. A teenager who feels left out or constantly overlooked in friendship groups might start to assume God is not interested in them either. A young person struggling with anxiety might feel God is distant when he hasn’t stepped in to calm what feels overwhelming.
As we walk alongside children and teenagers, we can be present and help them explore those ideas, unwind any tangled misconceptions and discover a fuller picture of who God is.
Try it out
Ask a child or teenager to describe God in just three words, or invite them to draw a picture or analogy of what they think he is like.
Listen or look out for the ways their understanding might be limited or still forming.
You can gently introduce Bible stories, verses or real-life examples that help broaden their picture of God.
And if something comes up that feels a bit incomplete — for example, if a child sees God as distant or uninterested — you might share verses about God being with us, or tell a story about a time you talked to God about something important to you, even if it felt small or ordinary.
When we are present, caring and interested in these little conversations, we reflect a big part of God’s love for children and teenagers, which helps them develop a deeper, more balanced understanding of God’s character.
Chat and Catch
Talking with God and recognising his voice
We want our children and teenagers to build good and healthy relationships – from helping them resolve friendship issues to giving them the confidence to interact with adults at church. We can also give children and teenagers the confidence and ability to connect with God in prayer: growing a relationship where they can chat to him about everything and catch what he is communicating to them.
- ‘Chatting’ encourages children and teenagers to use informal language to communicate with God, including sharing and showing God things without using words.
- ‘Catching’ is simply training them to recognise and respond to God’s voice – however he chooses to speak. That could be through dreams, visions, words, pictures, feelings, the Bible or any of the many other ways we see God communicate with people in the Bible.
- ‘Chat and catch’ is a way to encourage an informal yet deep prayer life that works for all ages. And since we all have our own individual relationship with God, chat and catch will look different for each of us.
Try it out
- Throughout the day, suggest things young people could chat to God about — happy, sad, funny, exciting or difficult.
- Ask simple questions together such as, ‘God, what do you want me to know today?’
- Explore different ways people may catch God’s voice, including thoughts, pictures, feelings, Bible verses, songs or wise words from others.
- Give them the space and time to respond without rushing to fill the silence.
The more children and teenagers practise chatting and catching, the more naturally they learn to include God in everyday life.
Surfing the Waves
Journeying with children and teens as they grow and change
Whether you’re a parent, carer, family member or youth leader, this is long-haul work. It’s not about overnight transformations. We journey with children and young people as they grow, through the ups and downs of life, as they figure out who God has called them to be.
Childhood and adolescence are seasons of discovery. Children and teenagers try different things before working out what fits them best.
That might look like buying their first football boots, letting them stay up late to watch a documentary they’re fascinated by, or helping them think through a college course or next step. In different settings and relationships, we’re there — supporting, encouraging and walking alongside them as they grow and change.
That connection doesn’t usually move in a straight line. It comes and goes in waves. One week they love youth group, the next they don’t want to go. They sing along to worship songs one moment, then won’t open their mouths in church the next. They say they don’t believe in God, and then seem curious again not long after.
Our role is to stay with them through those waves, helping them make sense of what they’re experiencing and keeping the conversation with God open as they grow.
Some of these waves last a lifetime, others only a season, but we can stay alongside them for as long as they last.
Try it out
Think about a child or teenager in your life.
- What are they interested in right now?
- What questions are they asking?
- What excites, frustrates or motivates them?
- Where do they seem most alive or curious?
Then consider how you could support them in that.
For a teenager passionate about injustice, you might help them get involved in a local project or explore relevant Bible passages together. For a child who loves creativity, you could encourage drawing, music or storytelling as ways of connecting with God.
Surfing the waves helps children and teenagers discover not only how they connect with God individually, but also the unique role they play in his kingdom.
Next Steps
Every adult connected to a child can help them notice and know God. These Five Key Tools offer a simple, flexible starting point. They are easy to share with parents and carers, and also provide a great source of ideas for youth groups, children’s activities, and intergenerational services or socials
Remember, they are not techniques for producing perfect children or guaranteed outcomes. They are practical ways of helping children and teenagers build a real, growing relationship with God in the middle of ordinary life.
And often, it’s the ordinary moments that become the most significant ones of all.
You can find out more about the Five Key Tools through the Parenting for Faith courses. This September, you can join with others exploring them by signing up to the Five Key Tools course as an individual, small group or church. Watch or listen each week on BRF online for practical ideas on how to use the tools and to hear how real people are using them in their day-to-day lives.
