Resource Review: Woven by Meredith Miller
I’ve been a fan of Meredith Ann Miller for a while now, mostly of her Ask Away podcast, where she models how to tell stories and encourage questions about the Bible with kids, and from her Instagram devoted to reframing how we talk about faith with our children.
Miller is a parent, a pastor, and a faith-curriculum creator and involved with the Fuller Youth Institute, which I find extremely helpful in making sure what we do to pass on our faith is actually working (with stats to prove it).
Her book came out in August, but its taken me to just this spring to finally read it, one because I usually read fiction to relax and imagine, and two because reading books on faith formation or how a family should be teaching their children can feel exhausting.
Thankfully, I found the audiobook version (I could walk and weed as I listened), and I can say, this book is the opposite of telling a family what exactly to do.
The book’s central metaphor is one that I love: a spider’s web. Miller argues that instead of thinking of forming our children through a carefully constructed wall of faith, the better option is through a web with anchor points and the ability to repair, flex, and hold tension.
On our walks to and from school, the kids and I have been watching the repairing of the stone wall by our crosswalk. Digging machines had broken the wall last year, and two men have been painstakingly rebuilding it. It is a testament to patience, beautiful craftsmanship, and quality construction (but that’s another metaphor for another day).
It also has taken since before Christmas with almost daily work, and the wall is still being repaired.
Miller says this about constructed faith:
By contrast, a web allows for more complexity, change and curiosity:
Besides the central image, Miller splits the book into two sections. The first is a collection of thoughts on the how of faith formation for kids. Chapter one compares and contrasts an obedience-based-paradigm, lays out the definition and popularity of therapeutic-deistic-moralism that the church has been tempted to perpetuate in our kids Biblical education, and invites us to consider a trust-based paradigm.
Chapter two looks at unhelpful and helpful ways to create a family faith culture, particularly in the areas of biblical exploration, experiences, rituals and relationships. Chapter three introduces the idea of spiral learning (starting with something true and then adding onto it later and repeatedly over time), and chapter four outlines Miller’s views on how to introduce the Bible to children as they age.
Chapter four’s “God-centered-storytelling” is Miller’s material I was most familiar with, some of her most important wisdom, and that most challenging for me to change in my own patterns of talking to kids about the Bible. Miller asks us to reconsider how we make human beings the heroes or villains of Bible stories, and to instead point even at the best examples as evidence that God partners with people. God is the main character. She gives several examples that help flesh the idea out like instead of “Joseph forgave his brothers. Forgive those who wrong you,” “God can turn terrible things into good, just like God did with Joseph’s life. Joseph was ABLE to forgive BECAUSE he knew that God was working all things out for him.”
It can seem like just semantics, but this is the part of the book I think is most important for us as teachers, parents, and leaders of children. God-centered story-telling helps us respect the context and purposes of Scripture (as opposed to using it to encourage moral behavior and obedience), helps kids deal with confusing and conflicting stories, and introduces kids to the character of the one we’re asking them to follow.
Miller would argue that there’s also a timeline to God-centered storytelling. From birth to age 5 (or with older kids reforming faith), she says to only focus on “God is good.” From 6-9 she suggests expanding the story. From ages 10-12 (and beyond), she says we’re to follow our kids lead and here to begin guiding kids toward application since they’re more developmentally able to have these kinds of conversations. It’s when we help kids answer “In light of God being ____ and in light of ______ in my world or life, what would I like to do or say now?”
Part two of Woven slows down and chooses six characteristics of God that we could introduce our children to and how Miller would do so.
The characteristics are “God is good. God is powerful. God is just. God is joyful. God is with us” and “Jesus is Lord.”
These characteristics are what Miller calls “anchor points,” to use the web analogy, and can provide stability and strength upon which other ideas about God can be attached, held in tension, challenged and repaired.
For each of these chapters, Miller models how she would introduce the concept to kids, shares some key Bible stories she’d explore, asks questions to help us process which parts of this key belief are most important for us, and gives examples of how we could help kids build this anchor in real life.
For example, in the chapter “God is Powerful,” Miller talks about how she teaches about prayer and miracles, introducing kids to the anchor lines of power, wisdom, and love. She challenges us to help move kids from amazement to understanding why God does what God does (what it reveals). She relays the way she would tell the story of the feeding of the 5,000 and the questions she’d ask kids to provoke wonder about God’s character. For practices, she suggests category prayers, breath prayers, and various prayer postures that remind us of God’s power as an invitation to know God’s presence.
Each of the six attributes are outlined in this way, which I found very helpful in taking her beliefs about why we should weave a web of faith and moving into how it could be done in simple and fresh ways. Many of the practices are not revolutionary but the reflection questions, different way of retelling familiar stories, and focus on formation vs formulaic responses were like breaths of fresh air and hope for me.
Chapter eleven is where Miller brings all of her ideas together and helps us walk through the process for our own specific family or faith community. She lays out her plan for spinning webs which is
Name
Plan
Try
Tinker
Naming involves looking honestly at our season and capacities. It also involves outlining options (attributes of God, possible Bible stories that highlight that, which experiences or rituals would strengthen understanding, and which practices could fit a family’s culture and daily rhythms). It includes naming our values and which practices accompany them.
Planning means that we move from the long list of options to just two or three things we can start with, two or three things that would fit our actual family. For example, understanding that our family is generally grumpy and overdone in the evenings means I won’t be planning on introducing tricky Biblical concepts at bedtime prayers. Understanding my wiggly middle child means I might plan on trying movement in worship instead of silent stillness.
Trying necessitates deciding on frequency, time of day, and duration and then attempting a practice in a sustainable way. Miller suggests that pace, personality, preparation, protecting time, connection to the person of Jesus (clarity on why we’re doing things), and perfectionism need to all be considered as well. She then walks through an example from her own family about their Sabbath rhythm, again modeling what she encourages us to do.
Tinkering allows all of these steps to be held loosely and creatively, suggesting we can try, make mistakes, involve our kids in making changes, and try again. There’s time, Miller argues, to circle back and adjust to current or new realities.
In conclusion, Miller brings us the concept of moratorium. She argues that if we do faith formation right, our children or the children we lead will in fact enter seasons that involve questioning, relearning, unlearning, and rearranging the strands of the web we’ve helped them to weave. It’s healthy, in fact, to not stay in foreclosure, a state of rigidity, but instead to revisit, reexamine and reimagine our faith. Woven challenges us to move beyond scare tactics, shame, and strict behaviors and beliefs to trust that the Holy Spirit will equip us and our kids as we get to know God’s character.
I listened the Miller’s narration of her book and in most ways, think it was a great way to engage this resource because hearing her tell the stories helped me understand how story-telling and question-asking would be done in normal language. I found her to be easy to listen to, clear, and approachable. I do wish I had also purchased the print copy because there were many discussion questions throughout I’d like to have written about before getting to the end of the book, and I would like to reread parts that apply more to current questions my kids or youth class kids have. Her views on the historical accuracy of the Bible and substitutionary atonement are clear enough to notice but because her main premise is building webs not walls, there is room for many different doctrinal positions in the process she outlines.
Overall, I’d recommend Woven to anyone I know who has children of his/her own, to anyone who works with children, and to grandparents or other “faith-cheerleaders” of children. There are currently audio and hardbacked versions with paperback coming this summer.
I appreciated the challenge to rethink how we’ve approached faith formation, the practical and implementable ideas, the less prescriptive approach that could apply to folks from a wide spectrum of theological beliefs, and the deep respect for kids, Scripture, and Jesus that Miller exudes on every page. I’d love to know what you think if you’ve read or read this book!
