The following post is by Sandy Stillman-Alvin. Sandy is the Minister of Children and Contemplative Worship at Woodhaven Baptist Church in Apex, N.C. She is a mother of three children, a full-time employee of WakeMed Health & Hospitals, and a graduating senior at Campbell University Divinity School. For more information, visit www.sandystillmanalvin.com.

By Sandy Stillman-Alvin

Early on Friday morning, June 28, ministers gathered for the Children’s Ministry Network Breakfast and fellowship to begin their final day of the 2013 CBF General Assembly in Greensboro, N.C.

Rev. Lee Hull Moses, pastor of First Christian Church in Greensboro and co-author of Hopes and Fears: Everyday Theology for New Parents and Other Tired, Anxious People, was the keynote speaker. From her experience as a mother of two children—ages five and one—Moses lamented, “Sometimes, there isn’t enough of me to go around.”

The sense of not having enough resources can be pervasive.

In our homes, we often feel we don’t have enough time or enough money to do all the things we could or would do otherwise. In our churches, we hear that there aren’t enough teachers or enough volunteers. We are asked if there will be enough first graders or enough supplies.

In order to accommodate the changing landscape of Christian education in our churches, children’s ministers and ministry teams encourage parents that they can take the lead in the spiritual formation of their children at home. And parents often react with the objection, “I don’t know enough about the Bible to teach it to my children.”

In Hopes and Fears, Moses and co-author Bromleigh McCleneghan seek to encourage parents that 1) they do “know enough” to participate in the spiritual formation of their children at home, and 2) that they are not alone in this effort.

While we may not always think that parenting and theology go hand-in-hand, Moses and McCleneghan suggest that they do—and there are things that those of us in ministry can do to help nurture that connection. In Christian community, we find the resources we need to ensure that there is enough training and support for all our families and children.

As the ministers in attendance finished their bagels, fruit and coffee, Moses closed the session with a quote from MaryAnn McKibben Dana’s Sabbath in the Suburbs: “There is not enough time. But there is enough grace.”

Indeed, grace abounds where time is short. And love is the miracle that drives that abundance.

(For more information on her book, visit http://leehullmoses.com/; a free, downloadable study guide is available at http://www.alban.org/hopesandfears.aspx.)