I invited Lucy Rycroft (Pastor’s wife, author, mom of 4) to share her family’s journey of engaging in Bible study with children. Lucy Rycroft is an author and founder of The Hope Filled Family. She lives in York, England, with her church leader husband and four kids.
Whether you’re a seasoned expert or a parent looking for fresh ideas, this episode offers authentic insights into bringing scripture alive in daily family life.
Lucy shares heartfelt stories and practical advice on how to embrace the ebbs and flows of spiritual growth during different seasons of parenting. Discover the importance of flexibility, creativity, and just starting with one small scripture habit.
✨ In this episode:
- Discover how to integrate Bible study amidst busy family life
- Why your efforts are never in vain, even if irregular
- Resources and creative approaches for engaging kids of all ages
- The impact of simply reading a small part of the Bible each day
📚 FOLLOW-UP RESOURCES:
- Lucy’s book, Busy Family Devotional: 52 Short Devotions from Genesis to Revelation
- Free 40-day Bible reading plan through the book of Mark
- Family Bible study on Mark
- Get my Book: Little Habits, Big Faith
Join us monthly for practical tips, real parent interviews, and encouragement as we become faith gardeners together!
TRANSCRIPT:
Christie Thomas [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Little Shoots Deep Roots, where we become faith gardeners, cultivating deep faith in our families one little habit at a time. I’m your fellow gardener, Christie Thomas. And today, I get to introduce you to another fellow gardener, Lucy Rycroft, who’s a mom and an author and the founder of the Hope Field family. Thanks for joining me, Lucy.
Lucy Rycroft [00:00:21]:
Thank you for inviting me.
Christie Thomas [00:00:23]:
Thanks for being my very first podcast interviewee, my guinea pig per se. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Lucy. Where are you from? Tell us a little bit about your family.
Lucy Rycroft [00:00:33]:
Yeah. So hi, Christie. Hi, everyone. I’m saying, my name is Lucy. I live in York, which is in the northeast of England. It’s a very beautiful, very historic cultural little city. We call it a city here because it has a cathedral, so that’s the designation in the UK of whether a town is a city or a town, but it’s actually really small by North American standards. So that’s where I am.
Lucy Rycroft [00:00:55]:
I am married to Al who leads a church here, or a couple of churches here in York, and, we have 4 children aged 10 to 15.
Christie Thomas [00:01:04]:
10 to 15. That’s great. And I know that just yesterday, something exciting happened with your oldest ones. Do you wanna tell us about that?
Lucy Rycroft [00:01:10]:
My oldest two got baptized, which was such a lovely moment, really. I mean, it is you know, when all is said and done, a baptism is just one moment in a journey of faith. We know that, but it feels a very special one, a very significant one, and they had some special people around them to help them celebrate and kind of mark the occasion. And they gave amazing testimonies, which were revelation to me because who knows? God is actually working when we pray for our children. Yeah. So it was just a really encouraging evening. We had a lovely time at church last night celebrating them and the others who got baptized.
Christie Thomas [00:01:48]:
That’s really exciting. Really exciting. Wow. And you’re right. It is. It’s just one moment in a whole faith journey because I know kids that have gotten baptized and then later walked away. But it is a significant moment. You’re right.
Christie Thomas [00:02:01]:
So but today, we’re here to talk about some of those little things that lead up to these big moments, but that continue on after these big moments. And the one that we’re gonna talk about today is just reading the Bible with kids. Tell us a little bit about your family’s journey with it. How did you start reading the Bible with your kids?
Lucy Rycroft [00:02:20]:
Yeah. Okay. So first off, massive disclaimer. I am I’m not somebody who finds this easy. I’m not an expert in, reading the Bible with your kids. I’m somebody who is trying hard, who honors God’s word and loves God’s word and really kind of wants to make it central to our family’s life. But my husband and I don’t find it easy at all to fit into busy family life at all. I guess we probably started off when the kids were really tiny.
Lucy Rycroft [00:02:46]:
It was more kind of bible story books. You know, board books, fabric books, bath books, all that kind of thing. So just making sure, and we we have a great Christian family and and Christian friends around us who would gift our kids these lovely books. So we never had a shortage of good Christian books to read with our kids. And then I guess probably kind of preschool age, early school age, we started kind of on on longer bibles like children’s bibles, so like the Jesus story book bible. There’s a great one called the big picture. Big Picture story book. This is where I’m gonna go with James from.
Christie Thomas [00:03:19]:
Yep. I’ve heard of that one.
Lucy Rycroft [00:03:22]:
You know, there were various ones. The Message has a version for little ones, with beautiful illustration. There’s a great Phil Vischer one actually that’s come up more recently, which is kind of a bit too late for our older 2, but our younger 2 really enjoyed that when they were about 7 ish. And so lots of color children’s bubbles, which is great. We would do Bible devotionals when we had good resources to do that. That’s been a bit of a challenge to find good, good devotionals for our kids. And to be honest, it’s been a little bit hotchpotch. I mean, we have had seasons where one thing has worked.
Lucy Rycroft [00:03:56]:
We have had seasons, of doing great family devotions. But but probably only weekly, not not monthly. We have had seasons where we would read the Bible for 5 minutes each morning as a family before everyone left for school. And that lasted, you know, a couple of months. But then kind of we got out of the habit and that and our schedules change and that wasn’t possible anymore. We’ve had seasons where we’ve done great bedtime devotions with individual kids. I mean, it’s I think having 4 kids as well, and you’ll know Christie also is having 3, you know, that they’re so different from each other, aren’t they? And actually, you know, the question is, do we do something together? Do we do something individually? Can I get Randall for my kids and do something something individually with each of them every night? The answer is no. I’m not super mum.
Lucy Rycroft [00:04:39]:
So we’ve just, we’ve just tried to do what we can when we can. The oldest are now developing their own, independent bible reading habits, which is really lovely to see. And we’re trying to kind of support them in that without kind of cramping their style, without getting too involved and letting them kind of take that journey themselves. But yeah, quite honestly, it’s been a variety of different things. And obviously I mentioned children’s Bibles, the natural progression from then was an unabridged Bible. And I guess we probably introduced that. It’s hard to tell really because I don’t think there’s there’s one time when you sort of say, right, we’re putting away the kids’ Bibles. Now we’re on to the unabridged, you know, in our experience, it was very much more fluid than that.
Lucy Rycroft [00:05:18]:
And so I would say probably from the age of 7, 8, 9, 10, you know, that was a kind of that’s been a kind of fluid age in our home where there’s been a mixture of bible storybooks and children’s bibles, but also the the real and abridged full length bible as well. So that that gives you a little snapshot maybe of how it’s been in our family. We have not found that one routine has worked for every season of our family’s journey, but I think our super strength in a way has been to like mix it up at different times and kind of be flexible and be ready to like jump on board with what our kids are interested in and how they’re responding and how they’re engaging at any one time.
Christie Thomas [00:05:54]:
I really like that. I like that you said that it’s not the same every all the time and that you’ve had seasons where there wasn’t very much happening and seasons where there was more happening. And yet, look, your 2 older kids just got baptized. What that tells me is that it’s okay to be not linear about it all the time. Different families is going to look differently. And what you said was really important as well that there are different seasons in our lives too. Like, you know, you could be going along. It’s all great.
Christie Thomas [00:06:23]:
You know, you’re having a Bible study every morning and then suddenly something changes and one of your kids isn’t there all the time or, you know, just the schedule changes and you’re driving around more. And this is the season that I’m in right now where we used to have this, like, great, you know, morning time together in homeschool, but my kids are older now. There’s lots more programs happening. There’s lots more driving happening, and that’s not happening very regularly anymore. It’s just a couple of days a week. So what are some of the things you mentioned already a couple of the struggles that you had with it, just that your schedule changes. Did you have any other struggles with reading Bible with your kids?
Lucy Rycroft [00:06:58]:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m sure there’ve been loads along the way that I’ve sort of gone through and then forgotten because that’s parenting, isn’t it? It’s a roller coaster and you’re you’re, you know, no sooner out of one season, then you went to the next. I think that the biggest one that comes to mind other than the schedule changing for our kids at different times and different seasons is actually finding the resources that help you get into the bible with your kids. Now you would be the first to say I would be the first to say you don’t need a resource to get the bible with your kids. You can just open the bible. That’s fine. And absolutely. But there is something about a resource that’s being written with that age group in mind because when we’re tired, when we’re busy, when we’ve been working all day, whatever our lives have kind of been like during the day and we get to reading the Bible with our children.
Lucy Rycroft [00:07:45]:
We’re tired. They’re tired. Actually, it’s easier said than done to just open the Bible with our kids. You know, some of us feel confident doing that. Some of us don’t feel so confident doing that. Some of us would just like the reassurance of knowing that somebody has thought this through in advance and they’ve planned something out because it’s actually that it’s the planning. It’s the decision making that it takes so much mental energy when you’ve got so much going on in your brain as a parent. So I have really appreciated resources over the years, and I’m very fortunate because I get to review a lot of resources, in my role as a as a blogger.
Lucy Rycroft [00:08:18]:
So, I’ve been kind of privy to lots of different things coming out, being released for children. And some of them are great. Some of them are less great, but it has been a struggle at times to find things that really worked for my family, either when we were trying to do something as a family, as a family of 6, both different individuals, but also as sort of my children as individuals as well, you know, something that they could read maybe at night, maybe first thing in the morning that would help them to get into God’s word and start to unpack it for themselves. And I think I found that often send it. We have, we we get along and off North American resources over in the UK, but we also obviously have our own publishers as well in our own resources. What I find with a lot of devotion resources for kids is that they go one of 2 extremes. You either have a very lengthy bible devotion with loads of questions, and it feels like school. Mhmm.
Lucy Rycroft [00:09:10]:
School day. You’ve done a full working day, and you’ve got 12 questions to answer. Yeah. Like, I’m just I just can’t. I’m just not not in the zone. I can’t do that, and I don’t have the brain space to work out which questions we should focus. So that’s not gonna work for my particular family and other families, I know. On the other side, you’ve got the sort of sound bite type devotional.
Lucy Rycroft [00:09:32]:
Every day, a different verse. We’re in Proverbs. We’re in Mark. We’re in Ruth. We’re in Haggai. We’re in Genesis. You know? You know? And you just yeah. That would be a cool family devotional, Haggai.
Lucy Rycroft [00:09:43]:
You know? And and and it doesn’t really make sense. It might be a sort of encouraging, positive, affirmative statement for our children to take into their school day, but, really, we know the Bible is much more than that. The Bible isn’t just there to make us feel good. In fact, you know, I don’t know. It’s not really there to make us feel good at all. You know, there’s so much riches, so many treasures that we can find in the Bible to help us in every season and little by little as we not only read it and get told what it means, but also get to engage with ourselves and grapple with it and ask questions and really kind of drill down. That is when our faith grows. That’s when our relationship with Jesus develops.
Lucy Rycroft [00:10:24]:
And I feel this so passionately. And, and so that I guess has been a struggle for our family, finding the resources, which help my kids develop that lifelong skill of being able to go to the Bible, go to any passage and ask that question. What is God saying to me? How do I need to live my life based on on what I’ve just read?
Christie Thomas [00:10:44]:
Yeah. It is really tricky finding the right resources because it’s a little bit subjective too. And our families are all at different places and our kids are all at different places. So to find things that work for everyone. That’s why I usually just say, well, let’s just start by reading a small part of the Bible every day. We at least know that guy can work through that even if it’s but but you’re right that I have used a lot of resources over the years as well. And so is there something in particular that has helped you move forward? And, like, did you create your own resources? I mean, that’s that’s if you did, that’s great. But not everybody can do that.
Christie Thomas [00:11:18]:
So are there some other things that have helped you move forward aside from just making it yourself?
Lucy Rycroft [00:11:23]:
We’ve had seasons of using resources, not using resources. When we were in our season of reading the Bible every morning, it was actually my husband’s idea, which is kind of unusual because although he’s a church leader, he’s so focused on the discipleship of his people at church, that actually it’s it’s me. He’s more taking the lead at home. And I know you you’ve written written and spoken a lot about that as well, which is really encouraging to me. But but, yeah, there was just a point where he said, look, I just think we should read to Mark’s gospel together as a family. I just feel that, you know, I was like, fine. If you can get that to work and to be fair to him, he did, you know, until our schedule changed and my daughter changed school, which meant she had to leave at a different time in the morning that actually worked, which was wonderful. And and literally, we would just gather together in the living room for 5 minutes every morning.
Lucy Rycroft [00:12:06]:
And he would read a few verses for Mark’s gospel. We just started at the beginning. Mark’s gospel is a great place to start. It’s very to the point. It’s very easy to understand. It’s not too philosophical like John. You know, it’s very kind of you know, calls a spade, a spade. And, and we just opened it.
Lucy Rycroft [00:12:20]:
We read a few verses and I think maybe the challenge sometimes for us is like, well, okay, just open the Bible, but where do I start? What am I going to be interested in? Well, start with Jesus. Like, I just think that should be the mantra for everything. If in doubt, go to Jesus and leave the gospels, open up the gospel. It doesn’t have to be Mark, but that was just the one we chose. We just read a few verses. We literally would just read for a couple of minutes. We didn’t ask questions. We didn’t have a discussion.
Lucy Rycroft [00:12:48]:
We just left our kids with that scripture. They’ve met Jesus. They didn’t need our commentary on it. They didn’t need to be like challenge at that stage in the day when they were thinking about, you know, do I need my PE kit for school? Do I wear my shoes? Have I got a clean shirt? You know, they didn’t need to be thinking too deeply, but we trust that those few verses went in, that they went into the subconscious even though they might not be consciously remembered. That that happens. We do remember things in our subconscious, and we just trust God that the little seed that we have sown, he will do great things with that. He will plant that. He he will make that grow into, you know, a beautiful tree just as your analogy goes, Christie.
Lucy Rycroft [00:13:31]:
So, yeah, I think I think that was something that worked for us. But as you say, every family’s different and every season’s different. I think it’s worth asking yourself the question, you know, where are my kids in this? Because we can cope with a lot as adults, but, like, you know, what what are their ages and stages, but also what are their interest levels at the moment? You know, it’s counterproductive to kind of force, for want of a better word, our kids into doing something they don’t want to do. So fortunately at that stage, we all we have 4 kids who were all kind of amenable to that option. But who really wants to do this? Who’s who’s interested? And for the ones who aren’t interested, is there something that would catch their interest? And using the little that we might feel we know of the bible, picking something that we think, yeah, they’d they’d be into that. You know, they’re into poetry. Okay. Well, let’s let’s read some of the Psalms together.
Lucy Rycroft [00:14:20]:
You know? Some of the proverbs can be very poetic. Maybe not Song of Solomon. Maybe. If you wanna Maybe. Teenager. Yeah. I’d leave that to you. Brave parent.
Lucy Rycroft [00:14:29]:
But, yeah, my kid was like recently, he was reading Job, And I don’t know where that came from except that I did tell him that I used to really enjoy I I read Job last year, but I also was fascinated by the story of Job as a child. I think because it’s so different, isn’t it, from anywhere else in the bible? It’s just like one long picture of suffering and where God is in that suffering and ranting at God. And I was really interested that he just picked it up. He’s my youngest as well. You know, I kind of I was struggling with Job, you know, as a fully fully fledged adult human being. So I don’t know how he was finding it, but, yeah, go go with your kids’ interests and and keep it really simple. You know, we’re really good at complicating things and adding, you know, 3 points that begin with c or 6 questions here or, you know, a strategy that bullet points. We don’t need to do that.
Lucy Rycroft [00:15:21]:
Like, they’re fun if they work, but we don’t need that. We can just read the bible and keep it so simple. Mhmm.
Christie Thomas [00:15:26]:
I love that. And so, I was gonna ask you if there were some little things that you did that you saw fruit or growth from, and I think you were talking about that with just reading a little bit of the book of Mark. Is there anything else that you would add to that? Some little scripture habits that you had even just for a little while that you saw growth from?
Lucy Rycroft [00:15:43]:
Yeah. I think, again, we’ve done different things over the years. So, one thing we’ve tried to do in the summer is go through a a book or passage of scripture together or kind of theme. In the last 3 years, I’ve created a summer family devotional pack on that so that other families can do it too. And it’s a really lovely way. So here in the UK, we have 6 weeks on holidays, so sort of end of July to start of September. And so the results I’ve produced kind of fits into those 6 weeks. It’s a way of getting into the Bible without it being long, complicated, inaccessible.
Lucy Rycroft [00:16:14]:
I actually have just put together 4 devotions per week because I thought that’s realistic. You know, we’re all off everywhere in the holidays. We’re going on road trips. We’re going for days out. We’re going on holiday. We’re seeing grandparents, all the rest of it. So let’s just keep this really manageable. And, honestly, some summers, we do most of it in the car, you know, going to and from places.
Lucy Rycroft [00:16:33]:
That’s fine. So so that’s worked for us. And I think the nice thing about that is that it’s been small amounts of scripture, sometimes with memory verses which we’ve put up around the house. So even if we’re not making a conscious effort to learn the memory verse because our family has a very, like, up and down relationship with memory verses, at least around the house. So we see them when we go to the toilet or when we open the snack cupboards or whatever, common places around the house. And I think I think that focusing on one little bit of the Bible helps us to absorb the truths of that, because I don’t know about you. I need a lot of repetition. I think my kids need a lot of repetition.
Lucy Rycroft [00:17:07]:
I think we all benefit from a lot of repetition. So if you’re if you’re in the same bit of scripture, if you’re looking at the same memory verses or the same truth, the same kind of, concepts that really helps things to sink in. Rather than thinking, right, we’ve done that. We need to move on to this, move on to that. Actually just slowing down, taking some time to look at one book that it could be a short book of the Bible. We did James 1 summer. We did Philippians another summer, or it could be just a passage of scripture. Yeah, that I think that’s been really helpful for our family.
Christie Thomas [00:17:38]:
Oh, that’s very cool. And, you know, summer is traditionally a time when all of my habits go out the door. So this sounds great to just pick something. Okay. This is what we’re gonna do this summer, and we’re gonna do it when we can. And we’re not gonna stress about it happening every day. I like that. I think that’s really freeing.
Christie Thomas [00:17:53]:
Now I we’d I did allude to this earlier, but you did you do have resources for families. And one of the ones oh, I have this book. And it is called Busy Family Devotional 52 Short Devotions from Genesis to Revelation. And, oh, look at that. It has your name on it.
Lucy Rycroft [00:18:10]:
It is so exciting to see a book with my name on it. It never gets old, does it?
Christie Thomas [00:18:14]:
So and it’s a really slim book.
Lucy Rycroft [00:18:15]:
Yes.
Christie Thomas [00:18:16]:
That feels very much less daunting than a lot of other things that I’ve read. You know, sometimes we pick up these things that are 365 days and you go, great. I’m solid for a whole year. But really what you have is content for 5 years.
Lucy Rycroft [00:18:28]:
Absolutely. Yes. Plus
Christie Thomas [00:18:30]:
And then you get bored or your kids change before you can finish it. And then you feel durable because you’re like, well, I can’t buy something new because I didn’t finish the old one. So this one is 52. So designed to be done like once a week ish.
Lucy Rycroft [00:18:42]:
That’s the idea. Yeah. So as I say in the introduction, honestly, you do what works for your family. And, yes, I’ve designed it to be once a week because we found in our family, in our most productive times, survival devotions as a family, once a week was great. What we did in between those times with individuals, absolutely great. But but once a week we used to do it over brunch on a Saturday morning. We’d have pancakes and waffles and and and we’d some Bible together and we use different resources, different resources, resources, lots of different resources to do that. And sometimes we just read a Christian biography in that time as well.
Lucy Rycroft [00:19:15]:
So it wasn’t always a Bible devotional, but something kind of faith filled. So that’s what I was thinking when I wrote this. It was originally based on a children’s Bible that is now about 40 years old, which is an amazing children’s Bible, but the link was lost at some point during the publishing process. So I so it’s kind of irrelevant now except that all the the chapter headings line up. And that’s where if anyone’s wondering where I took the slightly random stories from, it was from there because I was also writing it for church kids, really. Kids who’ve grown up in Christians Christian Heights who knew the main bible stories. I didn’t wanna just go through we’ve got creation, now we’ve got the full, now we’ve got Noah, now we’ve got Moses. Jonah,
Christie Thomas [00:19:54]:
David, Daniel.
Lucy Rycroft [00:19:56]:
Oh my goodness. You know? And I just yes. Some of that. Absolutely. But I also wanted to look at things that would excite children because they hadn’t heard them before because there’s so much in the bible in there. So every week, or every day, depending on how often you do the divisional, you literally just get a double page spread like that. And as you said, it’s a slim book. It’s a small book.
Lucy Rycroft [00:20:17]:
These are not big pages. I wanted to keep it super simple, super accessible for families. I wanted it to be really clear so you could pick this up if you were a new Christian parent or not yet Christian parent and have a look at this with your child. Actually, somebody in our church, who’s a grandma who came to faith last year, She bought a copy for me saying, this is for me, actually, I’m gonna read this. And I thought, you know, great. Yeah. Why not? So and the other thing I wanted to do with it was really offered kids a chance to learn how to get into the bible for themselves. I didn’t wanna offer so much commentary that they were deprived of voice, but I needed to offer enough commentary so that they understood what they were reading.
Lucy Rycroft [00:20:56]:
This was my aim. So you get a and I spoke a question, which is just something really silly. So this random page that I have just turned to says, can you think of a time when you were really ill or injured and what was it like? So you can share stories around your family. You know, maybe it’s a chance for the parents to share something from their childhood that maybe their kids have never heard before. Our kids love hearing stories from from our our youth, don’t they? And they don’t know everything that happened to us before they were born. So that’s quite a nice kinda little icebreaker. There’s a bible passage to read. There’s a little bit of context, and what the context always does is lead you from the previous week’s reading into what you you’re doing this week.
Lucy Rycroft [00:21:34]:
So it kinda takes you through the bible, and it is true what it says on the the front. It does go from Genesis to Revelation. And then there are literally 3 questions, and there are a mixture of closed and open questions. So it’s really manageable. And even if you just did 2 of them, you could pick, like, a closed question and an open question. So the the point of the closed question is to check understanding that’s super important. The point of the open questions is to encourage our children to think about what they’ve read, not just go to the power answers. And so they’re both really important side by side and and some resources I had found before focused on one or the other.
Lucy Rycroft [00:22:09]:
There’s a little kind of symbol for each, which you can color if you like or decorate if you are so inclined. There’s a prayer prompt because, again, I didn’t want to write out a prayer because I feel like any kid can read a prayer. There’s an idea or something to tell God. So for example, this this says, is there a way you’d like Jesus to heal you today or someone you know? Ask him now. So it’s encouraging the kids to think about something and then put it in their own language to god. And then there’s a memory verse, and you don’t need to do a memory verse every week. You know, nothing like that at all, but you can if you want. It’s there.
Lucy Rycroft [00:22:42]:
Or you could just maybe write it on the fridge or the blackboard or what you know, whatever you’ve got in your room. You can you can add that to your your devotional if you like, but it’s that that bit is kind of optional. You know, you can color if you want. You can learn the memory verse if you like. But it’s this bit getting into the bible, I think, which is the the crucial bit. So and that’s it. And you can do that in 5, 10 minutes. If you’ve got a talkative family like mine, then just a warning, it might take 20 or 30.
Lucy Rycroft [00:23:06]:
With mine, it might take 3 minutes. And I just wanted to make something that was really easy that you could just you could give to a family that you know and love and say, look, you know, I know you’re I know how crazy busy you are. You’re running out for me to be absolutely like 21st century families are busy like they never, you know, like families have never been before. The digital age, I think, has has a lot to blame for that as well. You know, I don’t think it’s just the 21st Century families are bad at saying no. I think it’s there are genuine reasons why why our lives are very full. But here, you know, this is the most important thing you’d be doing with your kids, introducing them to Jesus. And here’s a resource that might help you to do that.
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