How to Give Your Child a Vocabulary of Faith

“If you just teach them words, it’s just going to be words, but that’s true of any human learning a language. First you learn the word, and then you learn the meaning behind it. So you might teach a child ‘hot,’ and not until they touch the stove do they truly discover its meaning. But that doesn’t mean we don’t give them vocabulary. We must give them language to understand their experiences.” — Lucy Olson

Date: June 15, 2018

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Event: The Gospel Coalition 2018 Women’s Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana

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Betsy Childs Howard is an editor for The Gospel Coalition. She is the author of Seasons of Waiting and the children’s books Arlo and the Great Big Cover-Up, Polly and the Screen Time Overload, and Arlo and the Keep-Out Club. Betsy and her husband, Bernard, live with their two little boys in Birmingham, Alabama.

Melanie Lacy is the executive director of Growing Young Disciples and the director of theology for children’s and youth ministry training at Oak Hill College, London. She was the chief writer for The New City Catechism Curriculum.

Lucy Olson is a clinical psychologist Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she lives with her husband and four children. She is the co-author of Oh, the Treasures You’ll Know! You can follow her in her gray mini van — the one with duct tape on the door.

Irene Sun (MAR, Yale University; ThM, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) was born in Malaysia and is the author of the picture books Taste and See: All About God’s Goodness and God Counts: Numbers in His Word and His World. She teaches her four boys at home with her preacher husband, Hans. They belong to Pittsburgh Chinese Church.