10 Family Discipleship Activities Your Kids Will Love

Family discipleship is important, but we also want it to be fun! Try these 10 ideas with toddlers or teens.

What is family discipleship?

I’m a mom of 4 little ones, and my husband is a pastor focusing on kids, parents, and youth at our church. We spend a lot of time thinking about, learning about, and trying out ideas for family discipleship!

But that’s a term that can sound bulky or old-fashioned. Family discipleship is a key responsibility for Christian parents – but what does it really mean?

At its core, family discipleship is the process of Christian parents living out Ephesians 6:1 – “Bring up your children in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

Of course, that will look different depending on your kids’ ages and if they’ve already made a profession or faith or not. And we all know, kids don’t always enjoy “training” or “instruction.”

So we want to make it fun! We want to engage our kids in the Christian faith.

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3 core pieces of family discipleship for every Christian family

You can try a hundred different activities for family discipleship, to teach and instruct your kids about the gospel, the Bible, and the Christian faith.

But those activities will be a lot more meaningful, powerful, and fun when they are done from a foundation of mom and dad living out their faith every day.

In my experience, there are 3 key pieces of family discipleship that should lead and guide our Chrisitan homes. We must:

be intentional in how we TEACH the Christian faith
engage in our own relationship with Jesus, so we can MODEL what this looks like in real life
LIVE the Christian walk together as a family, not just as individuals living together

None of these efforts will be perfect all of the time… or probably ever!

These are all things that we should be praying about and trying to grow in. We grow individually with the Lord, through our marriage relationship, and through our own discipleship at church and fellowship with Christian friends.

Whether your kids are little or big, or even if they’re already out of the house, you can teach, model, and live out the Christian faith together.

But… how do we make it fun?

10 fun ideas for family discipleship activities

I’ve created this fun family challenge to support my own family – and yours! – in trying different things to teach, instruct, and engage together in the Christian faith.

The beauty of these 10 ideas is that they work well for every age. Do you have toddlers? Perfect. Teenagers? Yes, they can enjoy family time! What about adult kids and you’re getting together for a family vacation? Yep!

These ideas work. Every kid is different in what they enjoy, their personality, their learning style. So it’s helpful to try different things and see what works.

I’d encourage you to grab this cute Family Faith Challenge printable to make the whole thing a fun family activity! Or, you can read through the ideas below and pick a few favorites to try.

Activity 1: Memorize Scripture together.

This can feel impossible with our short attention spans these days. But it definitely isn’t! On my Family Faith Challenge, I suggest 10 verses. This is perfect for summer vacation or to kick off a new school year as a family.

Wondering how to go about memorizing verses… and making it fun for your kids?

Find the shortest verses you can, to make it silly but get things started.
Let each kid find their favorite verse and memorize it.
Have them draw an artistic version of the verse, or a picture that it makes them think of, or put lyrics to it to make it a song..Offer small rewards for memorizing parts of the verse, maybe a chocolate chip for each word or Mom does your chore once you learn the whole thing.

Activity 2: Read all 4 gospels out loud together.

As parents, we often think our kids understand Jesus’ life story better than they really do. When we’ve heard something a hundred times, we can start to skim over it. But Jesus’ life is anything but boring, and is worth re-reading over and over again!

It is healthy for our kids to not only hear the gospel regularly, but also to listen to their parents or others read out loud to them. If you don’t do that yet, it could feel weird at first. That’s okay. Here are a few ideas to make this a fun time for your whole family:

Connect the reading time to something you already do as a family: during a meal, during the bedtime routine, or listening to an audio Bible while you’re in the car.
After the reading, share your own question, observation, or thought about the reading. Show them you are engaging!
Let them do something quiet with their hands while they are listening, such as build with Lego’s, use play-doh, or doodle on some paper.
Enjoy a special family treat during the reading time: hot chocolate, a dessert, or maybe snuggling on the couch.

Activity 3: Practice sharing your testimony with each other.

Eek. This can feel scary for so many Christians! But a testimony is only a story of something you’ve seen and experienced. Think about the court system… a witness gives testimony to what they saw or experienced. That’s all!

If Jesus has worked in your life at all, that’s a testimony. It doesn’t just mean your story of coming to Jesus for the first time. It can also be what He’s teaching you this week! Practicing is helpful to make this more normal. Here are a few ideas for your family:

Let everyone write down their testimony, then read each other’s out loud and see if you can guess who’s story is whose.
Record it as a video and watch it as a family… if your kids are posting on social, they know how to record a video!
Pick different topics and see how has a story (testimony) for each. Who can think of a time Jesus healed them? Who was scared and found help in Jesus?
Find You Tube videos of other people’s testimonies and watch them for inspiration. (You may want to watch ahead of time to make sure they are appropriate.)

Grab an easy printable with these 10 Family Faith Challenge activities!

Activity 4: Write your own psalms.

The psalms is a popular book of the Bible because they are each short and they are filled with real-life emotions. The psalms are prayers or songs that many people throughout history used as their hymnal, leading them into worship as a community.

Even today, everyone loves music. Think of writing a psalm like you are writing a poem, a prayer, or some song lyrics. It could be a psalm of sadness and grief (called a lament psalm), or asking God for help with something, or praising God for who He is or what He has done.

Pick a psalm from the Bible to read and then write your own version of it, or use it as a jumping-off point.
Choose an emotion, a word, or a theme and let everyone write their own psalm about that.
Write a psalm as a family, either brainstorming out loud together or perhaps let each person add the next line and go around the circle.
Do a voice recording of your family prayer time, and then go back to re-write it as a psalm.
Make a family list of all of God’s awesome qualities, and then turn that into a simple psalm.

Activity 5: Artistically show one of Jesus’ miracles.

Art can be such a powerful way to experience God, and can also be very engaging for your kids. This is a great way to express our emotions, questions, and thoughts without needing to put words to it in a way that makes sense to everyone else.

You can express a lot through art! But it’s not just drawings and paintings. There are a lot of ways your kids can enjoy the gospel through art:

With a song: each person can write a song about a miracle or a reaction to a miracle. Or, write a song as a family. It could even be the words of Scripture itself!
Make an art collage: Imagine yourselves as the person receiving or experiencing Jesus’ miracle. What would that be like! Make a collage of these emotions and experiences.
Write a story: Maybe it’s a poem or a short story, but this is a great way to tell the story in your own words, or imagine yourself as a person in the story itself.
Draw a picture: whether it’s stick figures or a classic piece of art, drawing can be a way to connect with Jesus’ life more personally.

Activity 6: Find all of the proverbs about wisdom.

This is the challenge on my Family Faith Challenge – but really, you could fill in these blanks however you want: Fall all of the (name a topic) in the Bible’s book of (name a book of the Bible). How many verses in the gospel of John talk about love? How many miracles of Jesus are in the gospel of Mark?

Kids usually love a competition or a scavenger hunt. And that’s a great way to approach this activity, so your kids have fun with it! You’ll be reading the Bible from a new angle. Here are a few fun ideas:

Who can find the most verses that fit the challenge… in 10 minutes?
Fill out a Bingo card together – first, create it together, then you can play the game.
Who can be first to find a verse that fits the challenge?
Win a chocolate chip for each Bible verse you find that fits the challenge.
Of course… you can repeat with new topics or books of the Bible and keep it going!

Activity 7: Re-write one of Paul’s letters for your own church or modern culture.

This one is fun. It might be easiest for an older child who can already read, write, and critically analyze something they’ve read. But even for toddlers, you can write their version of the story or letter. How would they write this letter if it were to Grandma.

Connecting Scripture with our modern world can really help our kids (and us!) understand the gospel better and live it out more faithfully. It’s not an old, boring, dry book. Here are some ideas for connecting these letters to your own life today:

Challenge your older kids to re-write a letter of Paul or section of Scripture as a social media caption. What would they say?
Focus on emojis and find emojis can that express the story or the emotions of the letter.
Ask your kids about what’s going on in their life – at school, with friends, on the sports’ field – and help them write a Paul-like letter to encourage people and address problem areas with love and truth.
Let your little ones draw cards or pictures that tell a story or connect a moral point like from the letters.

Activity 8: Read through Genesis.

Sure, you can pick any book of the Bible here, and it will be great to read through. After all, all of Scripture is God-breathed and is useful! But when it comes to engaging your kids in your family discipleship time… Genesis is a great place to start.

Why might I suggest Genesis, and how can you make it more fun for your kids? Well, here are a few ideas:

Pick a fun location where you read. Sit outside for a picnic, read it while you have a special dessert, or listen to an audio Bible with a fun accent.
Get into the stories with your kids. Genesis has a lot of famous stories! Act them out, start a story and let them finish it
Do a Genesis trivia game time. If your kids have been to Sunday school, they’re familiar with these stories. So quiz them and enjoy some prizes and treats!
Get their fingers and bodies moving… kids can wiggle and build Legos and all the things, and older kids can knit, draw, doodle, or whatever they enjoy. (But… avoid the phone.)

Activity 9: Pray Scripture over your kids (out loud!).

Prayer can be a very private thing, but it’s not meant to only be a private experience. If praying out loud is new for you or if it feels awkward, that won’t last long. And how will your kids learn to pray if they never hear you pray?

There are some great Scriptures that you can (and should!) be praying for your kids. Maybe it’s just at the breakfast table, or maybe you find a special time to be 1:1 with them. But here are some great places to start:

Ephesians 1:17-23
Philippians 1:9-11
Colossians 1:9-14
Ephesians 3:16-21
The psalms and proverbs are also great starting places!

Activity 10: Make a video sharing the gospel.

Are there any kids out there who don’t enjoy making videos? Yes, pre-teens and older may feel awkward about this. But if that’s the case, let them hold the phone (camera) and record you sharing the gospel.

Obviously, the bonus here is that you can post that video on social media! If your kids are on social, or even if it’s on your own page, this can be fun for a lot of kids.

How can you make this fun? Oh, there are so many ideas!

Let your kids add background music after you’ve filmed the gospel.
Pick a secret word that whoever is on camera has to sneak into what they’re saying 5 times.
Try on funny costumes and accents, or let your little kids do your makeup before you start filming. (You don’t have to share this one…)
Challenge yourselves to make different videos for different situations, like sharing the gospel with a friend verses with a stranger on the street.

You'll enjoy family discipleship the most if it's a regular thing!

I’m sure there is an idea or two here that has caught your interest. So go for it!

It always feels weird to start something new. Especially when your kids are older, or if you’ve tried some family devotional time in the past and it fell flat. It can feel hard to start again.

But parenting isn’t easy. It never has been! And the number one most important thing any Christian parent can do is share the gospel with their kids and help teach them the Christian faith.

If it feels weird, do it anyway. If your kids aren’t excited about it, do it anyway. If you stumble over your words, try again tomorrow.

The Lord will bless EVERY effort! And don’t forget, you can grab a quick and easy printable Family Faith Challenge with these same 10 activities right here to get you started!

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