The Sticky Faith Guide for your Family by Kara Powell | Book Review

The Sticky Faith Guide for Your Family: Over 100 Practical and Tested Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Kids by Kara E. Powell
Published by Zondervan on August 5th 2014
Pages: 239
Add to: Goodreads
Purchase: Amazon, Barnes&Noble

The Sticky Faith Guide for Your Family addresses one of the top current concerns about youth and the church: the reality that nearly half of all young people raised in Christian families walk away from their faith when they graduate from high school. That’s the bad news. But here’s the good news: research also shows that parents are one of the primary influences on their child’s faith.
This book arises from the innovative, research-based, and extensively field-tested project known as “Sticky Faith,” designed to equip parents with insights and ideas for nurturing long-term faith in children and young people. Because of the Fuller Youth Institute’s six years of research with more than 500 young people, 100 churches, and 50 families, four of this guidebook’s unique qualities make it a “must have” for families eager to point their young people toward long-term faith
First, it’s grounded in sophisticated, academically verified data. While Dr. Powell is a parent of three children who authentically weaves her own experiences throughout the book, the chapter topics correlate with parenting principles proven in national research.
Second, it is positive. Amid gloomy and theoretical resources, this book leaves parents empowered and hopeful that even little tweaks to their family rhythms can make a big difference.
Third, it is practical. Readers get what they want most: more than 100 ideas from other parents they can try today, this week, or this month.
Fourth, its “guidebook” format is accessible. For busy parents who don’t have time and inclination to read, this format is a welcome resource that they can return to time and time again for fresh ideas and inspiration.  

The Sticky Faith Guide for your Family by Kara Powell is a great guide for parents with children ages birth-eighteen. Kara Powell provides lots of great ideas to help parents practice intentional parenting to help children keep their faith forever.

The book gives very practical ways to build faith together as a family. Powell’s book consists of ways to model faith, handling mistakes, and showing forgiveness. It also helps you build healthy relationships, build connections with older children and teenagers, and build community with other adults. It has great ways for grandparents and senior adults to interact with children to build a strong and sticky faith.

To add to the previously listed things this book addresses, it also provides easy ways to build and strengthen faith during vacation and through healthy communication.

To be completely honest, I struggled to pickup this book and read it. While I believed in creating a sticky faith and walking the line with my children, I didn’t think there was enough that I wasn’t already doing to fill a book. I admit, I was wrong.

The book is completely full of easy ways to help children build their faith to last, many of which I hadn’t thought of. That is why I’d strongly recommend picking up a copy of this book.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term “intentional parenting”, it means parenting with a clear purpose. It means being aware of what you’re doing. It means having an end goal that you help your children achieve through your words and actions. To those parents who are new to intentional parenting, take a deep breath and tell yourself… it’s okay, it’s not too late, and I can do this. While to some this may seem like a daunting task, it’s really not that hard to pickup. Just be present, aware, and make purposeful choices.