Helping you build a discipleship habit at home
Parents and grandparents, sign up for available 555 series
Sign up your family to take on the 555 Challenge and start building a home discipleship habit today.
“When our family took up the 555 Challenge alongside our church family, we found it a simple and sustainable guide for Bible-time with our kids. It led us into the gospel story, to prayer and singing! We have been blessed to continue in its pattern long after the original 5 weeks.”
About the 555 Challenge
Home discipleship is an integral part of ensuring that we and our children are growing in our faith. But it can be daunting.
The 555 Challenge helps families engage with God and each other in an achievable way: five minutes a day, five days a week, for five weeks.
Let Youthworks help you start a family habit of exploring God’s Word together in a way that connects with everyone, no matter their age.
Sign up to the 555 Challenge and you’ll receive a weekly email with five short Bible passages, a few simple questions, prayer suggestions, and a Spotify playlist.
Series 1, God to the Rescue, explores how God is faithful to his promise to rescue us from sin. From creation to new creation, we see God working out his rescue plan through our Saviour and King Jesus Christ.
Parents, you need this
Many parents feel home discipleship is something they need help with.
Research by The Barna Group in 2003 revealed “parents are not so much unwilling to provide more substantive training to their children as they are ill-equipped to do such work.”
Perhaps the clearest instruction to parents in the New Testament is found in Ephesians 6:4. Parents, especially fathers, are instructed with both the negative and the positive.
“Do not provoke your children to anger.”
“Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
When it comes to the spiritual development of our kids, many of us take a ‘do no harm’ approach: take your kids to church; try and do the right thing—especially when they’re watching; and, hope for the best.
This misses the opportunity and blessing of the second part of this verse. We have the opportunity to impact our kids with the truth of the gospel!
The 555 Challenge is a simple way to give you confidence you can bring your children up in the “training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).
Ministers, your church needs this
“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve ... But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
At the end of his life, Joshua challenges the Israelites to obey God’s commandments.
The patterns he had established with his own family meant he was certain his family would continue to serve God after his passing.
But just one generation on we see the cycle of sin and brokenness in Israel start again as they abandon the Lord and wend after other gods (Judges 2:11-12)
What a tragedy!
How did the people forget so quickly?
One simple answer is they were not reminded regularly about who God is and what he had done for his covenant people.
“So little family worship regularly exists in Christian homes, that even in most of our best churches, most of our best men do not lead their wives – and their children if they have them – in family worship.”
The 555 Challenge is a way for you to help change that in your family, in your church, right now.
Commit to supporting families in your church establish a habit of hearing from God’s Word together that will give them confidence to continue in the ways of the Lord.
Grandparents, your grandchildren need this
In Psalm 78, all of God’s people are given a generation to generation responsibility to pass on the testimony and law that God established with his people.
The vision even extends to generations “yet unborn” to ensure they hope in God, don’t forget his works, and keep his commandments.
That is what family discipleship is all about: regularly gathering as a family to remember what God has done and what he asks of us.
We do this to raise our own children to know God, but we also do it for the generations to come.
The 555 Challenge will give you the confidence to connect with your grandchildren around God’s Word and lead them in the ways of the Lord.
The 555 Challenge was first developed by Peter Morris for his church in the US and later translated into Spanish.
It has been used by churches and families around the world to establish a family discipleship habit.
The 555 Chalenge is adapted for Australian families by the Youthworks Ministry Support team, in collaboration with Peter Morris.