By Desiree Williams
After attending the Hearts for Home women’s conference last year, Zionsville Presbyterian Church member Lynn Strueh was inspired to bring one of the speakers to Zionsville. Jim Burns is the president of HomeWord, an organization he founded in 1985 that educates and provides tools for families to become God-honoring units.
“I felt the Zionsville community would benefit greatly from his life experience and real-life advice,” Strueh said. “He is a speaker that is approachable and wants to help parents.”
HomeWord speakers travel the U.S. conducting weekly parenting and marriage seminars, sharing its four core values: strong marriages, confident parents, empowered kids and healthy leaders. Burns will visit ZPC at 2 p.m. March 24 to discuss confident parenting.
The seminar will focus on energizing one’s spiritual life, talking to children about healthy sexuality, creating a media-safe home and honoring one’s children.
“The bottom line of Confident Parenting is that we’re not just raising obedient children, but actually we’re raising them to become responsible adults,” Burns said.
At the end of the seminar, Burns will focus on parents rather than their children. Burns said parents have to be ruthlessly honest about their own health, brokenness and baggage to become confident parents. One of his favorite discussions is about parents overcoming negative family habits so those patterns don’t repeat from generation to generation, he said.
“What we are trying to do in Confident Parenting is give parents the tools and the skills to develop more of a plan and a strategy for their parenting,” Burns said.
The seminar will include videos, activities and humor. Burns said the curriculum is geared toward the conversations between couples and families that will happen after the seminar.
The event is from 2 to 5:30 p.m. with dinner following. Tickets are $20 per person or $40 per couple until March 4 when the prices increase. Those interested can register at zpc.org.
