Discipleship 3.0: Can Asian American Parents Care About More than Grades?
By Jen Blue, Associate U.S. National Field Director with Servant Partners.
Parenting, for many, is seen as a journey of shaping and nurturing young lives. For me, however, parenting is much more—it is a profound expression of Christian discipleship. As a Chinese American woman who grew up in the Deep South and now lives in a multicultural neighborhood in South Los Angeles, my perspective on parenting has been shaped by a lifetime of navigating cross-cultural dynamics, racial tensions, and economic disparities. These experiences have taught me that parenting is not just about raising children but about embodying the gospel in every aspect of family life.
I call this journey "Discipleship 3.0.” If learning how to take some initial steps to follow Jesus in real and tangible ways is Discipleship 1.0, and if learning how to live in a Christian community, whether through marriage or an intentional Christian community, is Discipleship 2.0 - then I feel like parenting is a whole other phase of challenge and difficulty! It is a discipleship path full of unique challenges, crises, and moments of deep surrender. But it is also an opportunity to model and teach what it means to live a life rooted in Christ’s love, justice, and peace.
Parenting as Embodied Discipleship
Discipleship, as I see it, is how our faith becomes real and tangible in our daily lives. It is the embodiment of our beliefs—what we do with our bodies, time, and resources. Parenting, therefore, is a critical dimension of this embodiment. It is not just about teaching our children Bible stories or bringing them to church; it is about living out the gospel with them, in front of them and alongside them.
In Matthew 22:37-39, Jesus teaches that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This dual commandment has shaped how my husband and I approach parenting. We have tried to love God by living with integrity in our faith, and we have tried to love our neighbors by rooting ourselves in the community where God has placed us.
When it came time to choose schools for our children, we made a countercultural decision to keep them in local schools in our South Los Angeles neighborhood, even though these schools were underfunded and faced significant challenges. This decision was guided by our commitment to incarnational ministry—modeled on Jesus, who lived among those he served (John 1:14). We believed that for our children to learn to love their neighbors, they needed to live and learn alongside them, sharing in their struggles and celebrating their joys.
When the Challenges and Costs Come
One of the most challenging aspects of parenting as discipleship is balancing our children's needs with our commitment to the community. When choosing local schools, we knew we were not selecting the "best" academic environment according to world standards. Yet we trusted that God would use these experiences to shape our children's hearts in ways that went beyond grades or test scores.
Consider Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). In this story, Jesus challenges the lawyer and all who hear the story to reconsider who their neighbor is and how they are called to love them. For our family, choosing local schools was a way to live out this call to neighborly love, to embody the reality that our neighbors' children were just as important to God as our own.
However, this choice came with its challenges. Our eldest son, Joshua, faced a tumultuous journey in his education. At one point, we had to move him from one school to another due to chaotic classroom environments, inadequate administration, and a lack of resources. His experience was challenging—he struggled academically and socially, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he went through depression and disengaged from his studies. It was a dark time for our family. He stopped engaging with his schoolwork, disconnected socially, and showed signs of anxiety and despair.
Amid this, my husband and I were grappling with our limitations and asking God for wisdom. How much should we push him to keep up with his studies? How do we balance screen time and his need for connection during lockdown? Through prayer and reflection, we sensed that God was inviting us to take a step back and allow Joshua to make his own choices, even if those choices were difficult to watch. And when we did press him, it was to offer him support for his mental and emotional health, not his studies.
We saw our role not as enforcing our will but as guiding him gently back to God. This process reminds me of the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), where the father allows his son the freedom to leave but waits with open arms for his return. Similarly, we had to trust that God's grace was at work in Joshua's life, even when we couldn't see the outcome.
Choosing this path has not been without cost. We have had to surrender many of our hopes and expectations, especially concerning our children's education and future. We are constantly reminded of Jesus' words in Matthew 16:24: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." Our decision to live and serve in a marginalized community means we have chosen a life of downward mobility—not just for ourselves but for our children.
It’s one thing to make that choice for ourselves. It’s another to believe in God’s promises enough to make that choice for our children. When Joshua lamented his lower GPA and his limited college options, we reminded him of the lessons learned beyond academics. I explained to him how, in the pandemic, teen suicide rates skyrocketed and how we had made the intentional decision to focus on his mental and emotional health. We affirmed the ways we had seen him grow in perseverance and how proud we were that he learned how to get back up again after failure. We talked about the value of relationships, empathy, resilience, and faith - that in the Lord’s economy, these are the things that endure, more valuable than worldly success or recognition.
A Holistic Approach to Parenting
Parenting as discipleship involves nurturing our children's holistic development. In our family, this has meant fostering growth in several interconnected areas:
Intellectual Development: We encourage our children to love learning and to be curious about the world around them. For our middle son, Samuel, this meant watching Nova documentaries with his dad to spark wonder about the universe and its Creator. This was not just about knowledge acquisition but about cultivating a spirit of awe and curiosity, reflecting the biblical call to "praise the Lord from the heavens" (Psalm 148:1-4).
Social Growth: We intentionally place our children in diverse environments where they learn to relate to people from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. For example, our daughter Deborah recently attended a predominantly African American school that integrates local community culture into its curriculum, teaching her about Black American heroes and heroines. This helps her own self-awareness as a biracial Chinese-Black American and aligns with the biblical vision of the church as a multicultural body of believers, where every people, tribe, and language is invited to worship our God (Revelation 7:9).
Emotional Growth: Emotional development is crucial for healthy relationships and effective discipleship. Teaching our children to understand and process their emotions equips them with tools for empathy and self-awareness. Recently, I found a version of the “emotions wheel” that is simplified for kids and accessible to teens. There are all kinds of resources available these days to help us as parents with our kids’ (and our own) socio-emotional growth. This practice echoes the psalmist's prayer, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts" (Psalm 139:23).
Physical Development: We emphasize the importance of physical activity for overall health and well-being. Our children participate in sports like basketball, growing important character traits like discipline, teamwork, and resilience. Regular exercise not only contributes to their physical health but also teaches them to "run with perseverance the race marked out for us" (Hebrews 12:1) in all aspects of their lives.
Spiritual Growth: Spiritual formation is at the heart of our parenting. We involve our children in spiritual practices such as breath prayer to calm anxiety, listening prayer for discernment, and engaging in service to others. When our daughter Deborah started having nightmares, we taught her to use breath prayers—simple, repetitive prayers that combine breathing techniques to center oneself in God's presence. This was inspired by the practice of contemplative prayer and the biblical invitation to "be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10).
We also bring our children along in acts of service, like delivering meals to a neighbor or befriending someone at the local park. We want them to see that discipleship is not just about personal piety but about actively loving and serving others. Jesus teaches in Matthew 25:40 that "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me," and we try to instill this truth in our children by modeling it in our everyday lives.
A Call to Reflect
As I reflect on our journey, I realize that parenting as discipleship is ultimately about trust and surrender. It is about trusting that God is at work in our children's lives, even when we cannot see the fruit. It is about surrendering our own fears, desires, and expectations and allowing God to shape our children in His way, in His time.
I invite you to consider your own journey. How are you nurturing your child's holistic development? Are there areas where you feel called to grow or make changes? What does it look like to embody the gospel in your family life?
As you reflect, you may realize that the parenting you received was perhaps quite different than this holistic framework I am talking about. As Asian Americans, many of us were parented with an almost exclusive focus on academic achievement. If that was your experience, why was that the case? For some of our parents, the drive for education and success may have been a survival response. Previous generations may have experienced war or displacement, abuse or abandonment, poverty, or addiction. As trauma affected them, they carried these unprocessed emotions into their parenting. For me, growing in my capacity to parent has involved many years of therapy and spiritual direction to pursue my own wholeness from generational trauma.
Remember, the road may not be easy, but it is full of God's presence and promises—not just for our children but for ourselves as well. As we walk this path together, may we find comfort in knowing that God's grace is sufficient, His love is unfailing, and His presence is always with us—guiding, comforting, and strengthening us and our children every step of the way.
Jen Blue serves as the Associate U.S. National Field Director with Servant Partners in South Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and three children. As a Chinese American woman who grew up in the deep South and who now lives in a mostly Latin American and African American community, she has spent most of her life in a cross-cultural setting. Jennifer is grateful to be part of the multi-racial and multi-cultural family of God. She started her work as a minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, serving on staff for twelve years at various campuses in California and with the Los Angeles Urban Project. She and her husband helped to plant Church of the Redeemer in South Los Angeles in 2003 and transitioned out of their pastoral roles in 2021. She has been on staff with Servant Partners since 2010.