6,579 Days
By Ellis White, Senior Pastor
I have a math degree. I like precision, and I like things that can be measured.
Parenting has cured me of both.
You can read every article, ask every friend with older kids, plan the perfect response to a bad morning—and somehow still get it wrong by 8:15 am. There’s no formula. Every child is different, every family is different, and just when you think you’ve worked out a stage, your kid moves on to the next one and takes the rulebook with them.
But here’s a number that stopped me cold: from the day a child is born to the day they turn 18, you get 6,579 days with them under your roof. That’s the whole thing. Sounds like a lot until you start subtracting school and sports and screens and sleep. What’s left is not much time to do one of the most important things any of us will ever do.
Moses knew this. Long before Israel crossed into the promised land, he gave parents their job description:
“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7, NIV).
Notice what God doesn’t say. He doesn’t say get it right. He says talk about it—at home, on the road, lying down, getting up. Not a seminar. A life, narrated out loud, in the ordinary minutes.
That conviction is behind something new we’re starting at Chapel Hill.
Beginning this Wednesday, October 7, we’re running a five-week Parenting Course for parents of kids of any age—toddlers through teenagers. Each week we’ll take on one thing that matters most: Foundations, Love, Boundaries, Emotions, and the Long Game.
You’ll start the evening with a meal, and we’ll feed your kids, too. You’ll spend the whole evening sitting at a table with other parents at the same stage of parenting, moving back and forth between teaching and table discussion, so the conversation fits what you’re actually facing this week, not what someone else faced a decade ago.
I’ll say the same thing to you that I’d want said to me at the door: none of us has parenting worked out. Anyone who tells you they have is either lying or has very young children. We don’t come to a course like this because we’re failing. We come because we love our kids and we want to keep growing—together, not alone.
Whichever stage of parenting you’re in, I hope you’ll join us. Five Wednesday nights, October 7 through November 4, 6:00 to 8:00 pm, with childcare provided.
And don’t just come yourself—think of another parent you know outside these walls, someone from school pickup or the soccer sideline, who might want a place to figure this out alongside you. Bring them along.
Pastor Ellis