Show Notes
In this special episode of Peaceable and Kind, host Derek Vreeland steps away from his ongoing Nicene Creed series for a heartfelt conversation about parenting and discipleship with author and pastor David Sunde.
David shares insights from his new book Homegrown Disciples: Parenting Rhythms for Drawing Your Kids into Life with God. Together, they reflect on what it means to raise children who don’t just attend church—but truly encounter Jesus through the ordinary, everyday rhythms of family life.
From the challenges of raising kids in a pastor’s home to the joys of grandparenting, Derek and David explore how parenting is both a spiritual practice and a sacred apprenticeship. They unpack how rhythms like compassion, generosity, gratitude, and hospitality help form children’s faith, not through perfection, but through vulnerability, honesty, and presence.
If you’re a parent, grandparent, or caregiver longing to disciple the next generation with authenticity and grace, this episode will leave you encouraged, inspired, and equipped.
Key Takeaways
Parenting is a sacred apprenticeship—a hands-on way of showing kids how to follow Jesus in everyday life.
Spiritual leadership in the home isn’t about being perfect—it’s about being honest and present.
Rhythms like compassion and generosity make abstract beliefs tangible for kids.
Ordinary moments—mealtime, bedtime, drive time—are powerful opportunities for spiritual formation.
Kids learn best by watching us live the faith, not just hearing us talk about it.
Discipleship starts at home, in the real, messy, beautiful rhythms of family life.
Whether you’re in the trenches of toddlerhood or navigating the teen years, this episode reminds us that God is with us—forming us as we form our children.
🎧 Listen now and discover the joy of parenting with eternal purpose.
Books mentioned in this podcast:
Homegrown Disciples: Parenting Rhythms for Drawing Your Kids into Life with God by David Sunde
Preorder Derek’s new book, Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us here: https://amzn.to/42jSZAs
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome back to Another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your host, Derek Vreeland. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. And if you have just recently discovered Peaceable and Kind, let me encourage you to subscribe. wherever you’re listening to this podcast and leave a rating and a review that helps a lot. We’re taking a break from our discussion of the Nicene Creed to have a conversation today about parenting. I’ve raised and am raising three boys. My youngest is still here in high school. So we’re at the end of this season of parenting, having my last one in high school He’ll be a sophomore next year. And my older two boys are grown and my oldest, who just turned twenty-six years old. is married with two kids of his own. So now I get to watch my oldest uh parent his children and now I’m more in an advisory role as a grandfather. And I’m really embracing this stage of life. It’s a weird stage for me because I still have a teenager, so I’m still dad, but then I’m granddad. By the way, Jenny and I are uh J-Maw and D-Paw. Jenny, the J for J-Maw, Derek, D-Paw. It sounds like a 90s Christian hip hop group, but that’s our names, D-Paw, J-Maw. And I’m loving this stage because I I I get to be the Obi-Wan Kenobi and my son is Luke Skywalker and it’s such a joy for me to watch my My oldest son and and his wife grow as parents themselves because I see them learning just like Jenny and I had to learn how to be parents. And I have asked for forgiveness. I’ve asked my oldest son for forgiveness more than once because I was 25 when he was born and I was still. learning. My youngest son, who’s ten years younger than his oldest brother, fortunately got a much more mature, much more patient parent, my oldest, he had to put up with all of my mistakes. And again, shifting to the grandparent world, I I love it so much. I love having grandkids. though I recognize here in my fifties, I don’t have the same energy level I did in my twenties chasing them around, but it’s so much fun. And I’ve told people that that raising kids as a parent is like 90% work, 10% fun. But the grandparent life is just the opposite. It’s like 90% fun. It’s mostly fun. They come over to the house. You want chocolate? You want candy? That’s fine, because I’m sending you back home. to mom and dad. So I love this stage that I am in. And God has used parenting in my own life as I’ve grown as a parent. I’ve grown in my faith as well, and I’ve learned that God’s grace is present all the way. And so today we’re going to have a conversation. About parenting and specifically raising kids to be followers of Jesus. I know you’re going to enjoy this conversation. My guest today is David Sunday. David has been involved in local church and nonprofit leadership for over 20 years, from megachurches to a church startup. He holds a doctorate in Semiotics, Culture, and Church from George Fox University, and is the author of Small Batch Disciple Making. And a new book, the one we’re going to talk about today, Homegrown Disciples, Parenting Rhythms for Drawing Your Kids into Life with God. David and his wife Laurel make their home in Austin, Texas, with their two kids, Bjorn and Annika. David, welcome to Peaceable and Kind.
Derek Vreeland: Thanks, Derek. It is good to be with you.
Narrator: Well, it’s been way too long. We know too many people in common. We have so many similar relationships, but really this is the first time we’re connecting. I know.
Derek Vreeland: It’s nice to not actually just talk about you, but to get to talk to you. So I thought that was nice.
Narrator: Yeah, it’s so good to connect and congratulations on the new book, Homegrown Disciples. I want to talk about the book, but first would you tell us a little bit about, I’m curious about your your spiritual journey, your your faith journey, and and how that led into the origins of this book.
Derek Vreeland: Well, I grew up in San Francisco, California, and I’m the son of an immigrant mom who came over from Norway and we had this enclave Of not just Scandinavians, but we were a part of a church in the heart of the city that was made up of mostly first and second generation immigrants and all kind of blue collar. And um There was a sense of just godliness and learning to be set apart. My parents were never in vocational ministry. But I saw Christianity lived out from a minority position without hypocrisy. My dad was a journeyman carpenter who became a dentist And he got tired of being a a businessman in San Francisco and he started going on mercy ships doing basically as an evangelist dentist. And uh I remember feeling like I wanted to do what he did because I loved who he was. And the Lord got a hold of me when I was in college and said, you know, you You’ve got the mission right, uh, but you got the method wrong. It’s going to look different for you. And so I grew up in a in a great Christian home and then started wrestling with what does it mean? to to feel like I’m sent. I’m a part of God’s mission in the world. And so I answered that call and and over 25 years later, uh I’m still answering it, but in in different ways now
Narrator: And so how did that journey towards understanding what God has called you to do, how does that fit into the the origins of homegrown disciples.
Derek Vreeland: Well, I gotta tell you, and maybe you wrestled with this, I did not want to raise pastors’ kids. I was more in love with them than I was my day job. And I was so worried that they were gonna grow up with an institutional faith. I mean when I say worried, it was contentious with Me wrestling and bringing it before God. So we made a decision that our our family was going to be our number one parishioners, but I wanted to have them experience a sort of embodied or a living faith. Not just a Sunday go to church faith. Even though that was my job and I was going to be there, we wanted to incarnate these kind of rhythms, if you will, uh of how faith was gonna take root. And so the book was part of our story in raising kids to not just be programmatic Christians, but to have a sense of ownership because they somewhere along the line answered the why faith made a difference for mom and dad.
Narrator: I love that I too wrestled with the fear of kids who are pastors’ kids growing up in the faith, in the church. seeing the ugliness of church and not latching on to Jesus and we had such fear about that. Our Our encouragement, when I was a youth pastor, the pastor I was serving, what he encouraged me was in this regard: cultivate in your kids a love for Jesus and a love for the church. Like he said, do family devotions, don’t do family devotions, pray with their kids, don’t pray with your kids. If they can love Jesus and the church they’re gonna be okay. And so far so good. But I understand pastors have a little bit of of fear in and how their kids are being raised. But my wife and I too, we definitely prioritized our children. That was important for us. Yeah. So in the introduction, you write, God uses our children to teach us about his sacrificial love. I thought that was significant, and I appreciate that it was in the early part of the book. How has that realization changed your own parenting style as you and your wife were raising kids?
Derek Vreeland: Well, I don’t know if you caught the quote. I I get some real um resonance from that from the feedback, but that there’s a quote that I start out with saying, you know, sometimes our kids, they make us feel like we’re way better parents than we really are. And sometimes our kids make us feel like we’re way worse parents than we really are. And and and somewhere in the middle of both those things is the truth. And so this book was supposed to be that fertile middle ground. And I remember when my daughter was about to be born, A, I I just she’s she was the second. I couldn’t imagine having more capacity to love. And then when she showed up, it was the most natural thing in the world. And I realized how expansive the quality of our heart is by God’s design. But I began writing a journal to her I knew that I would connect with my son in a way that dads and sons can through sports and other things. But I also knew that eventually I was not gonna be the funniest, smartest, strongest uh, you know, person around. And words were gonna fail me. And I wanted to keep a record of our love relationship before her earliest memory And God met me in that, because I was also concerned about uh being Christ to her. And I felt like the Lord was saying I do want you to be Christ her, but I want to reveal myself to you. So take notes. And so for 13 years I kept this. journal about and it was written in the form of what God was teaching me about his character and his nature. through this strong willed, curious, brilliant, creative young girl.
Narrator: I love that. I think Understanding God’s love, and that God is love, it is I think the highest pinnacle of Christian theology. Like this is what is most fundamental, that God is love. And once we recognize that we are not just conduits of God’s love, but recipients of God’s love. That changes every aspect of our life, including how we raise our kids. And uh so I love that wanting to be Christ. for your daughter in a way that she can understand. I think that’s great.
Derek Vreeland: Well, and don’t you think that like faith i is not a theory, it needs a laboratory. I always say every good lecture needs a laboratory. Yes. We need to experiment with God’s unconditional love. And so I think marriage becomes that place. I think family and home becomes that place. In fact I’m kind of fond of saying, you know, marriage and particularly parenting might be our last best chance to grow up. Because where else can we get to experience the sacrificial love of the father? You know I mean where else do we learn to discretionary spending goes out the window or our weekends are not our own or I don’t have a golf game anymore or I don’t get to spend good time like college friends All of a sudden, and God is using this laboratory of parenting, not because I’m getting it right, but because he’s helping me not orbit me anymore. And I’m like, oh my gosh. So I I love to tell young parents when they’re in the throes of sleep deprivation or, you know You know, carpooling. I was like, just so you know, these are the problems you prayed for. Don’t forget that. Right. And and God’s got a middle name It’s with. He’s with you in the hard and the good.
Narrator: I love it. I love it. And that’s the essence of the Christian faith. It is a lived experience. And I’m fine with the lectures, preaching, teaching, sermons, books. I’m good with all of that. And the learning and the theology, essential. But it’s only essential if it is transforming how we live. And my wife and I, in raising three boys, we have recognized the hand of God on us. Our middle son Taylor was diagnosed with autism when he was age two, and so we raised a special needs kids. And often people would see us, you know, at church or out in public. And they would say, oh, you’re such great parents. God knew you were the perfect parents to receive a special needs kid And we always responded, it’s just the opposite. That God knew we needed to grow up And so we received this gift as a child with autism so that we could grow in patience and to recognize God’s unconditional love. So I really I think that was very a helpful way to frame how you’re going to go into these to these different rhythms. And I love that it e in each chapter You have an activity, a DIY discipling activity for parents. Because again, I think this is the Christian faith, it’s how we live it out. I’m wondering what’s one of your favorite DIY activities uh in the book?
Derek Vreeland: Well, gosh. I had so much fun just having these experiences with our kids, and my wife always gave me so much latitude to be very intentional with it. This is gonna date me a little bit, but when our kids were young, the the movie Up, you know, Pixar’s Up came out and it’s this epic story of second chances and you know, finishing the story and but there was the Ellie, the Ellie Award, and we just kind of made it a point and we were actually with a community of families. And I went around and collected a bunch of bottle caps from different restaurants where they still serve bottle and you could pop open. And we just had a craft project and I said, here’s what we do. We’re gonna watch the movie up as a family. And we created badges and Ellie badges. And what I love at the end of that, you know, because he’s he’s getting all of his badges from being a Boy Scout and but this was what was so beautiful is I think leadership in any capacity, whether it be parenting or or otherwise, is being able to speak to potential. This is who I see in you and who I see you becoming. The church has such a great opportunity to speak to Christ in them, but we gave out awards. To to just I mean it was a literally a glue gun, a ribbon, and a bottle cap, just like in the movie And we bestowed on them a kind of nobility and say, you know who I see you becoming? This is the character I see in you. This is how I think that God is setting you apart. And And just using that, so it was kind of a fun family movie night, but then we turned it into a craft project and an award ceremony. Just something simple like that.
Narrator: Outstanding. I want to do that with my adult children now because we love the movie up. You absolutely should. I think we should do it with our adults. Give each one, we make our Ellie Awards and then we give them away. Fantastic. Fantastic. I have to pause this episode for just a moment to tell you that I have written a new book. Incarnation: 8 Lessons on How God Meets Us. This eight-week Bible study uses the uniqueness of the message translation. To explore God’s presence with us. Link to pre-order is in the show notes. Well, in the book, you have these rhythms that uh in different areas that empower parents. to become disciple makers. And I know that some parents feel very unqualified to be spiritual leaders, particularly if they have young kids and they think, well, I’m going to bring them to church because there will be Sunday school or there will be kids’ activities. I’m going to let them let the professionals handle this. So how do the rhythms in your book help parents rethink that insecurity and how does it for them turn insecurity into a real opportunity?
Derek Vreeland: Well, Derek, you nailed it right on the head. The idea that parents have a just annoying sense of insecurity is real. They lack confidence for different reasons, but not the least of which is How do I live out my faith in front of my kids when they see me all the time in my worst moments? I’m encouraging parents to find their strength. in actually their vulnerability. God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness, and to the extent that we can own it and tell on ourselves, I think that demonstrates the love of the Father and the humility of Jesus. Now the rhythms do a couple of things. I think number one, they give us a way to explain with our lifestyle the why of what we believe. So I talk about rhythms like generosity. Well, we don’t give to save anyone necessarily. We give to save ourselves from believing that somehow we deserve God’s provision or abundance or grace. Compassion is learning to just see others’ needs as just different than my own. It’s not giving from a place of privilege and power to someone who’s without We’re all have nots on some level. And, you know, our rhythm of hospitality was, hey, sometimes hospitality is making room for people, other times It’s learning to receive from people. But in either case, we’re just trying to figure out who God might be preparing in advance for us. So the rhythms were a way that we could demonstrate what we believe is true about the heart of the Father What they also do is they give language, fresh ordinary language, that doesn’t make it sound like Sunday school So I use the language of hospitality to talk about evangelism. I use the language of generosity to talk about stewardship. I use the language of gratitude. to really instill what it means to declare worth or worship. So this was a way to explain the why, just by how we live, but also give families some language around it and have some conversation.
Narrator: That’s so encouraging. I see a lot of young parents at church falling into this trap of comparison because they see families on Instagram or TikTok and it’s all perfect. Everything looks perfect. And so parents think, I can never live up to that standard. Well that’s all just worldly thinking. Right. So for Christians and followers of Jesus, we recognize that our strength is in our vulnerability and weakness. And I I tried to practice that as a parent when I made mistakes. I tried to confess my sins to my kids and say, I blew it. I was wrong. I may and I think that kind of vulnerability, it bonds you with your children. And I think that’s the greatest witness of the love of the father. That’s so helpful.
Derek Vreeland: Well and I think when you talk about another part of that insecurity piece is if we base discipleship as primarily cognition, there’s this gnawing fear that I don’t know enough. So now you’re asking me to be a spiritual leader and I have to be a content creator and lead family devotions. And I’m like, can I just let you off the hook? I think Deuteronomy outlines four windows. So I have seven rhythms, but I just said here’s four primary windows that are relationally driven, not content driven. So it’s morning time, drive time, meal time, and bedtime. These are the soft skills, if you will, of discipleship that the church can’t do for us. Church can illustrate and teach us the hard skills of Bible study and prayer and service and outreach, all those great needed things. But parents in the relational way can kind of invite the present availability of the kingdom of God here and now in these ordinary windows.
Narrator: Yeah, that’s empowering, I think, for parents to recognize that you don’t have to be the content creator. Like you don’t have to be the primary teacher teaching them Christian doctrine. as much as just demonstrating what it looks like to love God and to love neighbor in in those sort of ordinary moments of life around the table in the car at bedtime. And I think that will empower parents and encourage them, like, hey, you can do this. And in the book, you also use the language of apprenticing. rather than traditional teaching. Um, draw that out a little bit, this idea of apprenticing your children
Derek Vreeland: Well, I told you earlier, you know, my dad was a carpenter, uh, turned dentist, and the only bits of advice he ever gave me when I went away to college was Be a business major, it’ll never hurt ya. And number two, when you come home for the summer, you should learn the trade. And so I got to be a a serviceable rough carpenter. But apprenticing it’s tradesman’s language. And what we’ve done maybe overdone in the church is we are sitting at the feet of rather than following in the shadow of spiritual leaders Apprenticing is that on-the-job training that really only parents can do by nature of relational influence and proximity. And so it’s this shadowing concept that I want parents to capture. And one of the phrases I use is. a mere works even if our eyes are closed. Like they can see our priorities without us stating what we think matters. They know what our cynicism is or our fears are, as well as our hopes and dreams. They know it Words don’t need to be used. Well, this is an apprentice. And apprenticing, and this is where it gets really interesting, if we understand the word, it’s not a zero-sum game like, oh, our kids get the best of us, and it’s one-sided Apprenticing is always looking to find someone further along, maybe in marriage or in faith, maybe in in career pursuits. or in parenting, but it’s also learning to bring others along. So when we were working in ministries, we were always seemed to be just a little bit ahead of where so when we’re in youth ministry or college, Our kids were sort of the young ones, but then as we got into family ministry and being a senior pastor, they were some of the older ones. And I said, look at youth group is a life stage ministry. It is not church I want you to understand that there’s valuable relationships with people that you can have that are young families and parents older than you. But I really want you to steward your influence with these kids that might be eight and ten years younger than you. And so they just started adopting this kind of, I don’t have to be the cool older kid, I can play with littles.
Narrator: When I was a youth pastor, that was one of the things I incorporated my youth ministry, is as I would have Kids grow up in the youth ministry and they get into high school, you know, they’re 16, 17, they’re driving, but they’re still coming to youth group. I would encourage them to reach out to the sixth and seventh graders. who are coming in and and just to to welcome them and to make them feel apart and that it’s okay. You have your friends and your friend group, but you now have an opportunity. You’ve been in this youth ministry four or five years. You have an opportunity to to reach down and raise them up. I I did the same thing in church life. And of course with with parenting to see your children as an apprentice. Let’s do this Christian life thing together. Yeah. powerful. So powerful. Let’s talk a little bit about the rhythm of compassion. Here at Peaceable and Kind, I Really am interested in producing Christian content that sows seeds of peaceableness and kindness in the world and if so the chapter on compassion is one I went to quickly because I was interested in that. Again, compassion I think shows the heart of the Father revealed in Jesus. And you talk about in that chapter helping kids see God at work out in the wild and not just within the safe confines of the church. You write in the chapter on the rhythm of compassion, You’re right. A rhythm of compassion moves faith from a familiar environment of consuming knowledge about God. to a moving encounter with God’s righteousness, redemption, and restoration. And I love that, but I’m thinking of parents that that might come across as intimidating. So, what encouragement can you give to parents who want their kids to be children and then young people who are moved with compassion in the world? But those parents are a little nervous about having their kids protected from the evils. So how do parents sort of ride that balance?
Derek Vreeland: Well, you’re asking uh the right questions, because this is the tension, right? We we love our kids so much we almost want to protect them, which is also a way that maybe we restrict God’s working in and through them. And so I would say that when Jesus said love your neighbor, it was not necessarily a proximity statement to who’s on your block. and who goes to your same schools and your church because those are often ethnically and economically homogeneous places, relatively speaking But when we see that he loved your neighbor who was unlike yourself, now we start to get God’s vision for the city based on Jeremiah 29, where the People of God are in captivity, and he’s not going to bring deliverance for another generation. And he said, seek the peace and the prosperity of the city in which you live, because if it prospers, you prosper. I would say this, when we hear teaching, and this is this is the limitation of being taught compassion, it starts to feel like could’ve and should have and need to and ought to. And that’s not inherently transformational. And let me just say, compassion is not something that we can sustain on our own I can be charming in a moment, I can be inconvenienced at times, but over time I want to do what I want to do, or I’ve got something to be at, and you know. But a rhythm of compassion is building into our lives. relationships where we are learning to be formed by the needs of others. So for us in Austin, this would have been um when our kids were emerging as teenagers in high school and There was a huge you know, we’re in Austin, Texas. We have a border crisis, but there was this large influx of refugees from all over, but we became friends with many of them Some from the Middle East who had been translators for the military and were relocated for safety reasons, but then there was a community of Burmese from Myanmar. And they were Christians in Christ alone. No net worth. Coming to America was Plan B, but they came here with this vibrant faith. And they lived like the book of Acts, where sharing and giving, as and they’re all on food stamps, and they’re all making maybe up to $15 an hour with three and four kids And what I realized, there was something about their faith that I needed in my life. There was something in their family that I wanted my kids to have exposure to. And so we started doing these We would do it breakfast with the Burmese or we’d have baby showers for them in their apartments and I wanted my kids to be in what would feel like an unfamiliar setting, but to get more comfortable with how people’s needs and differences or needs are simply different than their own.
Narrator: What a great challenge for parents. I know for us in raising kids, we had to trust God in in writing that balance. So for us as parents, one of the decisions we made was to put our kids in the public school system. And I know that educational choices for your children is a very individual choice. And I don’t judge anyone. I always say you do what’s best. But for us, it was important for our kids to be in the public school system so they could meet people who were not like them. And so our older two boys spent almost all of elementary school in southwest Georgia in a county in a city that was fifty five percent African American and all my kids are white. And so my boys, my older two, when they were in elementary school They went to school not only with black kids, but there were Indian kids, there were Filipino kids Uh there were some Spanish speaking kids and a couple white kids, and I love the multicultural experience that they had. Because I think one step of discipleship for all of us is learning to love people who aren’t like you, learning to love people who don’t look like you. And I think the sooner kids can have that experience. The better because it’s such a step of discipleship. Well, that looks like all the time that we have for today. David, where can people find you online?
Derek Vreeland: Yeah, I would love to interact with people. I have a website, davidsundy. com, and then I’m on Instagram posting about some of my conversations and my travels and places that I get to be. Again, David Sunday. And it’s always fun to interact with people and hear what strikes a chord with you, what scratches the itch.
Narrator: Well, go follow David on Instagram, go to his website, interact with him, and if you are a parent who wants to raise children, in the Christian faith go get a copy of Homegrown Disciples. You won’t regret it. David, thank you for your time today. I enjoyed our conversation.
Derek Vreeland: Oh it was a treat. I’m honored. Uh thank you so much Derek. It’s great to be with you.
Narrator: I enjoyed it so much. Well, that’s all we have for today. Thank you for joining us for this episode. Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.