Transcript
Episode 1- What is a Newborn Promise?
AUDRA HANEY: Thanks for tuning into the Newborn Promise Podcast, a production of Graham Blanchard Inc. You are listening to, “What is a Newborn Promise?” with guest host Rusty Shelton. For today's transcript, guest bios, and more information about Your Newborn Promise Project please visit Graham Blanchard.com.
RUSTY: Welcome to the Newborn Promise Podcast our inaugural episode to explore how the Newborn Promise Project can prepare couples for their best parenting experience possible in the challenging and miraculous days ahead.
My name is Rusty Shelton and I am glad to be here today with Charissa Kolar, Audra Haney, and Callie Grant, co-authors of Your Newborn Promise Project: A Pre-Parenting Primer for Christian Husband and Wife and the Newborn Promise Group Study published by Graham Blanchard. We’re in three different time zones, so it’s great to have you all together at once!
CALLIE: Hi Rusty!
AUDRA: Hey Rusty! Thanks so much for having us.
CHARISSA: Hi Rusty!
RUSTY: So the Newborn Promise Project isn’t just one book, but really several resources that all work together for the benefit of couples in the early years of family life. In your book you say that when couples get married, most will admit it was a big transition to go from single life to married life. But, when couples go from married life alone to becoming parents, it was a much greater life change. I have 2 children myself and I can agree with that.
CALLIE: Yes Rusty, that was our situation exactly. I can still remember vividly when my husband and I brought Anna home for the first time and just getting from the hospital to her bedroom was, like two miles away, was a major ordeal. And, we were nervous as cats and we went into her room and we cozied her in her crib. She was all quiet after crying all the way there and we both looked at each other like, “Now what do we do?” so we prayed over her and said, “Please God don't let us harm her.” So, that was really the starting point for our book and I think a lot of parents feel that way when they first get home. They look at each other and they say “Now what?”
RUSTY: So you wrote the Newborn Promise Project really to encourage new parents to see how parenthood can really benefit from a relationship with God?
CALLIE: Yes, that relationship is a lifeline because one of the first things that new parents discover is how little control they have and God is literally the best hope we have for survival as new parents. You know, after new parents weather the first few months of an infant’s life they just say out loud, “Wow! We could have never prepared ourselves for that and the truth is there are actually a lot of ways you can prepare yourself for it, but it's never been available.
You know, most churches offer and even require pre-marital counseling and there is a reason because it really helps. It gives you solid guidance when you need it in the trenches. “Ah, they told me it would be like this, and this is what we need to do.” Well, once we recognized a similar need for expecting and new parents we saw that there was nothing like the Newborn Promise Project to meet it because so much is already written and taught about the physical and rearing a child but really nothing on preparing spiritually for this time. So, pastors, parents, and everyone agreed that there was a need. For the past two years, we have worked on a study for expecting and new parents to permit God to use this time in the most beneficial and healing way for mom, dad, and baby. All three have the promise of a Spirit-led new life. It is really the opportunity of a lifetime.
RUSTY: Callie, For all the listeners who are getting ready for that stage of parenting how can they expect to benefit from the Newborn Promise Project? Take us a little bit about the book.
CALLIE: The last thing that we wanted to do was to create a burdensome process or layer of complexity or mystery about all of this because it is a really busy time in life. You know, Jesus' teaching was so sublimely simple and so we followed his lead closely and looked at what he had to say and we found over and over again certain urgings and injunctions in the Bible that we use our basic spiritual abilities to love, remember, seek, question, and persevere. And so, these Bible basics are really lifelines for new parents and their children and they are the foundation for the resources in the Newborn Promise Project. For example, in our first chapter we talked about love and how marriages and families are primarily a spiritual bond of love and not primarily a physical bond of love.
So, we read in the Bible what the Bible says about love and what God says about how to use it and nurture it and grow it. And so, we learned a lot about how to love best in the context of marriage and parenting. It was actually really powerful to review even well known passages of scripture, you know, as you consider applying them to the new circumstance as a husband and wife.
RUSTY: Charissa, let’s turn to you. Now that we have this introduction to what is in the Newborn Promise Project Primer it sounds like a great resource for a couple to buy and read together. What about a small group setting, can you tell us about that?
CHARISSA: So, in the Newborn Promise Project, we have a class and study to help foster the formation of small group community. Our class is basically for the same audience as the primer book, couples who are anticipating being parents one day, couples who are already expecting, or couples who are in the adoption process or even those who already have small children. The class starts out with a video. It is called True Stories and then we would break into small groups and follow along with our Study Guide. Our Study Guide has some questions that are designed for group discussion and help you go a little deeper with the material. This has been an important piece of my Christian journey as well.
When my husband and I had been married a couple of years, we joined a small group at our church and our small group grew with more and more young couples. And in the first two or three years, everyone started having children or adopting for the first time and we started going through this similar journey in life and our small group became the place where we could talk about our marriages, and our children and our struggles. It was just sort of different than talking about it with your family or friends at work. It was a safe place and we were doing that in the context of going to church and reading the Bible and it was an experience that was so valuable, I would want that for every new parent starting out. In the class, you and your spouse get to kind of throw open the future and see how your investment to grow steadily in Christian faith is really the best thing you can do for your future. And, in the course of it we will make connections as to how growing with Jesus is healing for yourself, serve your marriage relationship, and really prepare you to talk to your child about God one day and live that life in your home that really speaks truth to your child about who Jesus is and how we can be as a family because of Him.
RUSTY: So we have talked with Callie and Charissa about how the Newborn Promise Project primer, the Study Guide and class can really prepare parents like nothing else out there. So Audra, after a couple buys the book or takes the class, what is the next resource that keeps parents going?
AUDRA: Yes, so one of my favorite things about the Newborn Promise Project is that is just such a well-rounded resource. You have the primer to dig in with your spouse and do some deep reflecting, the study guide and group guide which helps build community as Charissa covered so well, but we’ve also got our Newborn Promise Project App which links to our blog and some great articles and the podcast which we are so excited about. You know, the heart behind expanding on the primer is that we see the need to get all the reminders and resources into the hands of new parents as possible because we know we just need different types of things on different days.
And I’m just so grateful for this and I can really see its value first hand. I’m currently, I’m a mom of a three year old and a 5 month old. You know, in the middle of working on this project my husband and I moved to a different city, we sold and bought houses, and he started a new job. It’s been so crazy. But I think the beautiful thing is that God has just given me a fresh immense compassion for moms and dads in the thick of it.
And with that being said, I think people should know, the heart and the people behind this. We are totally everyday people, every day moms and dads and we aren’t trying to dispense parenting wisdom from some high mountain. So much of this has been developed in the trenches, a lot of emails and ideas passed back in forth in the car pick up line, or at the bouncy play place, or typed one handed while we were feeding babies, or really just pregnant and tired ourselves. So frankly, we really know what it means to be dry and stressed and need encouragement, and we just want to keep moms and dads plugged in and really able to find those refreshing moments with Jesus. We want the parenting journey to be full of peace and joy for our listeners. So, I really want to urge you to check out the app and continue listening to the podcast because our heart is to cheer you on. It does take so much intentionality to be a spiritually-minded parent, but we are here to help you and to help you continue on in that choice and help meet your need on days where you need other people to come around you and speak life.
RUSTY: So in addition to being a young mom and wife, you also bring a special background to the Graham Blanchard team with broadcast journalism. Tell us how that is being incorporated here to keep that ongoing connection with your audience.
AUDRA: Yes! So I have over 10 years of syndicated television broadcast experience, so I’m just so grateful how God has really poured into me a love for writing and interviewing and sharing people’s stories. When Callie started sharing the heart and her idea behind The Newborn Promise Project, I was immediately all in. We joke that I’m the Newborn Promise cheerleader because Callie and Charissa are two of the most polished, thoughtful, thorough writers I’ve ever worked with, and I just laugh that I’m the third member whose contribution is to just be cheering with all might, because I really do know first hand how much parents need this.
One reason the podcast was birthed was because as we got into fleshing out the book and outlining and started talking about so many of these deep parenting topics, we had a little bit of a hard time limiting that first chapter because we saw that the discussions could be endless and we didn’t really want to limit that conversation. So, we saw an opportunity to keep the conversation going, to tackle some really hard topics, get some expert advice, and hear personal testimonies. And honestly, there’s just something beautiful about audio in this crazy season for new parents. It’s so doable, and I love that you can just listen riding in the car, or cooking dinner or during nap time. It’s just an easy way to digest some good truth when it's not always easy to sit down and read.
RUSTY: Can you give us a sneak peek as to some of the guests you have lined up?
AUDRA: We have had some incredible favor with our line up. People are getting excited about the idea like I did and because of that, we've had some really recognizable names jump on board like Grammy nominee and Dove Award winner Kari Jobe who is a brand new mom; Dove award winner Ellie Holcomb who is a mom and still manages to tour and write albums; Proverbs 31 Speaker Micca Campbell who shares her amazing testimony on overcoming fear and anxiety. But also, in my opinion, some real spiritual giants whose names may not be as recognizable but have some messages to share that won’t leave you unchanged. The heart, the passion, and the Christ-like interviews I’ve had the privilege of conducting lately—they've just blown me away.
Our first series is called “Building Your Family” and we have decided to tackle some of those topics that are rarely talked about as people begin to start their families like infertility, adoption, and miscarriage. We'll have an episode on infant loss, and some others. And, they aren’t all necessarily light topics to start our podcast with, but I believe they are so needed. There are so many families wrestling with these topics with very little resources. And then later this summer, we’ll shift gears a bit and have some fun first-time parent testimonials and some really practical episodes you can apply to everyday life through our “Parenting Transformation” series. It’s been so fun to watch God weave this together. I’ve learned so much myself hosting this series, and I’m really thanskful for everyone who has shared with us, and I’m beyond honored to bring this to new parents.
RUSTY: You are listening to the Newborn Promise Podcast, a production of Graham Blanchard Inc. and this is guest host Rusty Shelton here with the developers and authors of the Newborn Promise Project. Callie, your company Graham Blanchard has come a long way. The Newborn Promise Project is a big announcement and big expansion of resources for Christian parents. For the listeners who are with us for the first time, can you tie up for us how you started and how it all fits together today?
CALLIE: Sure Rusty! Well, you know, my background is in publishing and I worked for publishers like Scholastic and Dorling Kindersly and I always knew that I wanted to write books for people about God. When I had a daughter of my own it really struck me for the first time how important reading is to child from birth for cognitive, social, emotional, and spiritual development and at the time, this was about 13 years go, I really couldn't find the kind of books that connected her with the heart of Jesus. There were a lot of books about Jonah, Noah, and baby Bible versions but I wanted to whisper the words of Jesus in Anna's ear and so that started a journey of about 10 years of developing a framework for ages 0-7 and getting top notch art, really working through the text through a whole network of pastors, parents, teachers and coming up with books that parents would enjoy sharing with their children but also created a picture of life with God for them. And so, what has been really beautiful about the Newborn Promise Project is how all the concepts in the board book framework--Learn, Absorb, and Praise--work so wonderfully with the Newborn Promise Project. We have 10 board books right now and there are 5 chapters in the Newborn Promise Project Primer and Study Guide and two board books beautifully dovetail with that book. So, what that has led to is a whole new way of thinking about our children's line and we are really expanding it so that the parent line and the children's line are merging in a way and it is beautiful because it is a picture of how spiritual life with God is remarkably simple, even a child can understand it and it is also remarkably consistent, steadfast, and true.