Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

You are here: Home / Leadership / Discipling Stay-at-Home Moms

Discipling Stay-at-Home Moms

By

Are you discipling the stay-at-home moms in your church?

We often assume that a women’s ministry or a vibrant small group culture is sufficient, but is that enough? Are we missing an opportunity and a need? Is there something unique about the stay-at-home mom experience that requires or necessitates some careful thought? And ministry planning?

Having your first child (or second, third, fourth, etc.), is not only a gift from God and one of the most exciting privileges on this side of eternity, but it is also an occasion for change.

Nothing stays the same.

Date nights, sleeping in (or getting any sleep at all), car choices, impromptu road-trips, seeing family, holidays, meals, friends, and work are just some of the things that change when you have children.

Here’s the thing, when you have children, everything changes…but for stay-at-home moms, the change is greater than most of us might realize.

Here are a few ideas to help you disciple stay-at-home moms:

1. Before the baby comes

For expecting moms and dads, consider hosting or putting on a prep class or workshop at your church entitled something like, “What To Do When You’re Expecting,” “How Everything Will Change,” or “How Nothing Stays the Same.”

Don’t just focus on your church members; instead, use this as an opportunity to engage and minister broadly to your community. After all, every expecting parent is trying to prep as much as they can, so the unchurched and dechurched will likely be open to visiting your church and hanging out with Christians over a timely and helpful topic like this—especially if they are coming on the arm of a friend.

At the workshop, have a seasoned married couple from your church share out of their wisdom and experience. They don’t need to cover breathing exercises, since there are classes designed for that. Instead, use this as an opportunity to talk about keeping the romance alive, what to expect in the coming months, and anything else that would be helpful for new parents. Be sure to invite them to your Sunday service, into a group, or back for parenting classes to get them plugged into the life of the church.

2. After the baby comes

While parenting classes might help, most moms and dads don’t have time for this, since life with a newborn is just.plain.hazy. Parenting classes might be helpful for parents of older children, but when the newborn comes, it’s survival mode.

So after the baby comes, make sure that you have systems of support to care for new parents:

  • Are your small group leaders prepared to organize meals for new parents?
  • If the new parents aren’t in a small group, what systems do you have setup to care for them?
  • Do you have volunteers and leaders looking out for uber-pregnant women? (So that you can help them when the baby comes?)

What better way to show the love of Christ than to practically support and provide for parents in this way?

Do you have volunteers and leaders looking out for uber-pregnant women?

Click To Tweet

3. When the dust settles

In a recent research study, I read that stay-at-home moms and dads are heavily biased against when they try to re-enter the workforce:

  • “15.3% of the employed mothers, 9.7% of the unemployed mothers, and 4.9% of the stay-at-home mothers received a callback.”
  • “The results were similar for fathers. While 14.6% of the employed fathers and 8.8% of unemployed fathers received a callback, only 5.4% of stay-at-home fathers did.”

The research puts it like this, “stay-at-home parents were about half as likely to get a callback as unemployed parents and only one-third as likely as employed parents.”

Stay-at-home parents were about half as likely to get a callback as unemployed parents.

Click To Tweet

So if you’re a stay-at-home parent (dads, I didn’t forget you) getting ready to re-enter the workforce, what if you started by reconsidering your calling instead of going straight to LinkedIn? (Check out the article I wrote on What Is My Calling as a Christian?)

Who knows? Maybe you’ll go back to what you went to school for? Or maybe you’ll do something completely different?

But whatever you do, don’t make the decision alone:

  • Ask your spouse to pray with you
  • Be discipled or mentored by spiritually mature individuals
  • Ask your small group to pray with you

And in the mean time? In the months and years leading up to re-entering the workforce, what if you volunteered more actively at your church? At your children’s school? Drove Uber? Picked up a job on TaskRabbit? Crafted and sold something on Etsy? Audited a class? Went back to school?

In light of the research, doing one or more of these things will increase your likelihood of re-entering the workforce.

Here’s my last piece of advice:

While you’re waiting, do what you love doing (even if you don’t get paid for it), and do it with excellence. Who knows, God might open up a door!

If you’re looking for more reflections along these lines, be sure to check out the podcast that my wife and I started to encourage couples and parents! It’s called the IMbetween Podcast. Here are links to our first six episodes:

You can also subscribe by clicking here. I hope you can tune in!

While you’re waiting, do what you love doing, and do it with excellence.

Click To Tweet