"Woven" by Meredith Miller is a captivating exploration of resilience and connection. The story follows a young woman grappling with her past as she navigates a world rich in myth and magic. Miller’s prose is evocative, bringing the setting to life and drawing readers into the intricate relationships that shape her characters. The themes of family, loss, and self-discovery are woven seamlessly throughout the narrative, making it both emotionally resonant and engaging. With its blend of fantasy and heartfelt storytelling, "Woven" is a compelling read that leaves a lasting impact. Highly recommended for fans of character-driven tales!

As a parent and a church worker, I found this book super helpful. I recommend this to all parents, I loved her approach and the parenting truths so communicated.

Woven has been an incredibly eye opening book about how we pass our faith on to our children. How do we lead with love in topics that feel too big for even myself? Topics that can overwhelm or lead to moralism instead of faith. Miller does a wonderful job of presenting age appropriate ways to engage scripture with children. I had never heard of this author before being offered an ARC through NetGalley and I’m so thankful I have had the chance to engage with Miller’s ideas and work. She presents that a faith needs to be woven so like a web it doesnt fall apart if one string breaks. How do we weave? That looks different for each family. What do we weave? That could look different too. But the practical ways in which we can weave age appropriately can be so helpful.

I started following Meredith on Instagram after she teamed up with the folks at Faith Adjacent. She provided a different perspective than what I'm used to and I appreciated many of her thoughts on raising kids of faith and working in a church setting. Her book, Woven, provided much of the same for me. I don't agree with her on everything but the nuanced differences helps me think more critically about faith and parenting.

Woven by Meredith Miller is a book for the Christian parents who are trying to figure out how to raise their children in faith without just having a list of rigid rules. For the Christian parents, there for sure are many questions related to what would be the right way to raise our children and how to teach about God in the right way. Meredith Miller thinks about these things "out loud" in the book, with suggestions on how to decide or what to do. I didn't agree with all of them, but then again I don't need to agree with everything to think that this book can still be a good read.

I believe this book can be especially good for those parents who grew up in a Christian home where things were just done, without explanations. For myself, as someone who came to Christ in her teenage years, there were things that I didn't relate to so much. However, there are still plenty of good ideas and things to think about in Woven.

The subtitle of Woven got me. Who doesn't want to nurture a faith in our kids that they don't have to heal from?

The audience for this book is parents who are somewhere on the deconstruction spectrum themselves and trying to figure out how to talk to their kids about religion without the religious trauma many of us have. We want a better, more nuanced way to share faith with our kids. But like Meredith says, being reactive—just doing the opposite of what we were taught—or not saying anything aren’t effective. So, what is the alternative?

Part I on how to nurture a healthy faith was very helpful. I really like Meredith’s analogy of weaving a faith web that stands up to stress rather than laying a strong foundation of walls. I loved the emphasis on a trust-based paradigm rather than obedience-based. Her lesson on spiral learning and how to approach Bible stories was illuminating. Although these concepts were new to me, they are in line with what I know about child development and how kids learn. I liked her questions to consider and the exercises she guides you through to apply these concepts.

Part II was on six attributes of God and how to share those with your kids. This part was more influenced by the author’s progressive theology, so the Bible concepts as well as the applications to illustrate those concepts, will resonate most with Christians who identify as progressive. For example, the author does not believe sin separates us from Jesus. The chapter on God’s justice focuses on how God wants to fix the injustice in the world through us—our actions to make the world more equitable for the marginalized. These efforts certainly honor God and love our neighbor, but will seem incomplete to Christian readers who put more emphasis on Jesus’ reconciling work in the atonement.

The last chapter helps you solidify the concepts and put them all together in a personalized plan for what works for your family. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, the author guides you to consider your family’s season, personality, and values as you derive a plan for integrating faith into your conversations.
I recommend this book to open-minded Christians looking for alternative ways to frame faith for their kids, inspire critical thinking, and make space for questions.

I was only able to read about 60% of this book because I ran out of time, but I will probably purchase it and finish it. As someone who has been on a deconstruction journey, what I teach my kids about faith is so very important to me, but I am also left with the feeling of "where do I begin" and "how do I even do this now?"
Meredith's take on faith formation is refreshing. She focuses on how we can help our kids to truly know God, not what to do to make God happy or to be a "good" Christian. She also focuses on how families can each find their own routines and connect with God in ways that fit their family. From what I have read so far, I feel like this book will be helpful to so many families who aren't quite sure where to go, but to whom faith is still important.

This is the book I’ve been longing to read. Like many Christians, the past few years have led to a rethinking of my faith which naturally led to a rethinking of how to share my faith when it comes to my children. This book uses the analogy of a spider’s web as an approach to teaching children about God, faith, and faith practices. A spider builds its web with a few large strands that anchor the smaller threads in a unique pattern. Miller proposes that we think of faith in the same way and consider how we can anchor our children’s faith to a few truths while allowing for a unique individual expression.

Miller argues that we view childhood as an opportunity to get to know God. As kids learn who God is and how He cares for them, they can begin to understand that God is trustworthy. Once a child trusts God, their relationship with him can stretch as their beliefs are tested and grow when they encounter hard times.

She encourages families to experiment with different ways to act out their faith whether that’s through admiring his beautiful creation on a nature hike, listening to music, serving at your local food bank or simply by supporting businesses in your neighborhood. She ditches the one-size-fits-all approach and honors the uniqueness of families and their personal expression of God’s love.

She also advocates for tossing out that daily devotional book we were all told we should be dutifully reading at dinner. She suggests a different framework for reading Scripture, a theologically-robust, yet very simple, way of examining Bible stories. Instead of immediately looking for personal application, we can observe how God is showing himself and his character in the text. Again, we want to help our kids learn who God is and she gives lots of great examples to guide you.

Miller offers freedom to families as they walk in their faith together. She is wise, funny and humble. She knows her stuff and I found this book accessible and full of fantastic information. I regularly teach a Sunday school class and I look forward to implementing her ideas. I highly recommend this to any Christian parent!

Parenting is hard, especially when you are trying to deal with your own past and trauma. But trying to teach your children about who God is when your past also includes church wounds feels impossible. That is why I’m so thankful for Meredith Ann Miller’s new book, Woven.

Miller first addresses that most children (including myself!) have been taught a moralistic view of faith, where the focus first is on obedience and that God only cares about you being a good, moral person. However, she breaks down the flaw in this thinking and reminds us that over and over again in Scripture, God wants children to come to him and know him. And when children know Him, they trust Him. Obedience is a response to trust.

Miller shares that “[t]rust changes us. It shapes our identity, our way of being in the world. If healthy obedience ever happens, it’s because it’s animated by trust” (pg. 19).

I’ve struggled to implement faith practices into our family’s life because it feels overwhelming. How do I teach my kids about God and the Bible when I don’t fully understand everything? If my faith journey has ups and downs, will my kids see me as a hypocrite? How do I teach them as I navigate my church wounds? How do I teach them everything in a way that is developmentally appropriate?

Miller uses a spider web metaphor to illustrate how we can help our kids anchor themselves to God without experiencing all of the hurt, shame, and guilt that is sadly often connected to our faith. This web allows children to create and break stands as they continue to develop their faith “...as our understandings of God, the Bible, and the world grow over time” (pg. 24).

Reading this book, I experienced so much freedom and healing, as I realized that our faith practices in our family do not have to be cookie-cutter or look like anybody else’s. It also freed me from my desire to control every outcome for my kids. God has my kids. He is taking care of them. I get the privilege of helping them in their faith journey by reading and discussing God's character.

I love how practical Miller is and how many examples, stories, and resources she shares. Woven is a book I will come back to often!

Thank you, NetGalley and Worthy Publishing, for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Thanks to Worthy Publishing for the eARC.
This is a book I will keep coming back to because it was so rich in information and helpful ways to help develop a family's faith pattern and their own web. I loved this analogy of building a web over a wall. It was so helpful for me to use this to help me consider my own family's potential web and what is important. As someone who came to faith as an adult and not a child, I found this to be so helpful as a starting point for teaching my child about my faith. I am wanting to keep things open and spiral the learning and Miller so expertly lends her expertise on how to start this so it is doable for everyone in the family. I know I will read this again, and I can't wait to implement some of these ideas now going forward.

Meredith has felt like the friend in my corner, cheering me on as I navigate raising my kids to know and love Jesus, but in a different way than my husband and I were raised.
Her kindness and compassion echo throughout this book, and her mantra of 'do less on purpose' is just what this tired millennial needed to hear. Thank you for this book!

As a child, Sunday mornings were filled with scrambling to memorize my verses, practice any readings I would have to give, and find my Sunday’s best.

In a day and age where "deconstruction" comes with all sorts of baggage, Meredith Miller names this in her new book "Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn't Have to Heal from." Many millennial parents find themselves disenfranchised by the church, dealing with trauma and abuse, or over the lack of advocacy for the marginalized, and "we find ourselves standing amid the rubble of our former faith, wondering how we will ever rebuild."
Meredith Miller encourages parents that there is a way, a better way, to introduce their kids to God even when our understanding of God now isn't a perfect match to the God we believed in our childhood.

Pick up this book whether you have walked many years with Jesus or are unsure about your journey. My faith has been refreshed and strengthened through it.
As a mom, I've wondered, how can I do this? How can I invest in my kids spiritually when I'm not sure of everything and I'm on my own journey of wrestling with things? Yet Miller encourages me and any others that pick up this book, "we have the ability to be a companion to our children as they get to know God too. That's true even if we are learning alongside them."
For those leading children's ministries, parents, deconstructors, and those still sitting faithfully in church pews, this book is for all of us.

The book includes two main parts. The first delves into how to nurture a healthy faith by providing a different framework beyond moralism. The second part works to equip us in how to anchor our children in the character of God, like the practice of mining Scripture to help our kids learn how to see God as the center of it. Unlike some curriculum that may have taught us to have faith like David, Miller redirects us to the true hero, God. There are reflection prompts, practical helps and tools, and a way to put everything together in a way that works for your family. I also appreciated questions and thoughts that considered everyday struggles or questions like, What if I cannot offer the biblical truth they need? The book provides a different take on biblical applications than I've seen in other children's curriculums. For example, when focusing on the goodness of God, Miller uses Genesis 1 to talk about creation care and how God brought order to chaos.

Miller unpacks the common parenting method that promotes moralism and points us back to Scripture, "Jesus wanted children to be able to come to him. Not to follow his rules, but to know him." She reminds us that we just need to offer time and space for our children to experience and know God, and the weight we may put on ourselves can lift. Their relationship with God is really and always will be their own. My job as a parent is to come alongside them with strategies that support them in their faith journey. There is freedom in how we do this, and we just need to slow down to our children's pace, welcome their questions, and guide them along the way.

In "Woven," Meredith Miller guides readers to consider our faith journey as part of a web. This idea makes a difference because instead of a wall, you don't have to tear it all down and build up. Instead, strands break or may need replacing, but we can always be reweaving. For someone who needs certainty and thrives on completion, this is hard but also freeing. It reminds me that my "deconstruction" journey is more about reweaving as I go on rather than tossing out everything I ever knew.

Miller writes that "anchor threads affix to who God is, including the attributes that live in mysterious, dynamic tension with one another. Internal threads- habits; less essential, but still important beliefs; faith practices; life rhythms - give our faith unique shape".

She goes on, "if faith is a web, its strongest anchor strands, the ones that give it structure, are connected to who God is. As parents, then, we help our kids discover who God is, what God's like, so they can establish those anchor strands for themselves over time." This releases me from the pressure of making sure I have built a strong foundation and just walk alongside my daughters - trusting the rest to the Lord.

So how do we do this? In the book, Miller encourages us that this is an ongoing process where we're answering, how will we follow Jesus together?

Our job is to "Be with our kids as they get to know God and discover if God can be trusted."

For a recovering Perfectionist and Control Freak, I felt the pressure as a Christian mom getting dismantled as Miller repeatedly points us to God and the call to nurture our children's faith–not try to take on the conversion work which only the Spirit can do. This book is a must-read. It challenged my perspective on parenting and guiding my kids spiritually for the better, and it also nurtured my own faith. I feel more equipped and free to come alongside my children, meet them where they are, and trust God to do his work in our family web of faith.

Like so many of us, I have been struggling with how my faith looks now, compared to how it looked 15 years ago. It's been a long journey and I'm far from having it all figured out. What complicates it for me is that I have little kids at home. Little kids that I want to pass along some sort of faith to. I don't want to serve them up what I was given, but I don't want to give them empty plates either. This book is exactly what I've been looking for!

I don't think I was the right audience for this book. I'm a Christian parent who regularly attend church with my husband and children in tow, and I have a healthy relationship with my faith and my children who are still learning. This book seemed better suited for people who were somehow hurt by the church. I still rated it well, because for the right audience, it's an excellent message.

"Healing from faith" takes a long time. In fact, I'd say my entire adult life thus far (getting ever closer to 40) has been UNlearning things I'd ingested in my growing-up years. Slowly letting go of shame and self-loathing about who I am and fear that God is punitive and angry. Grieving all the joy and freedom that I missed out on while stuck in cycles of pride, shame, and perfectionism.

Needless to say, I desperately want to somehow circumvent learning at least SOME of these things the hard way.

I came across Meredith Miller on Instagram a while back and began devouring all her content. The way she talks about the Gospel is so much more attractive (and no less true!) than paradigms that start with fear. I gobbled up all her examples of how to present the Bible in age-appropriate ways AND respect the Bible for the complex book that it is, with genres and original audiences that must be explored.

If you have kids in your life that you hope will know and love the real Jesus of the Bible (and not felt-board-Jesus, genie-Jesus, or machine-gun-Jesus (helloooo, USA)), please add this book to your wheelhouse! She lays out a helpful trust-based framework that you can build upon as kids get older. She offers lots of practical ideas and samples of how she might present stories and questions she'd ask to encourage conversation.

And now can I share a quote to show you how beautiful this book is?

"Resilience in faith circles is often misrepresented as something firm and immovable, built brick by brick, each doctrine defined, each principle provided, each application prescribed. Resilience, according to the spider, is drawn out of the ability to flex in order to withstand stress, to bend in significant ways without breaking. It is also the ability to reweave the broken strands, so as not to lose your home, and to do so without becoming too exhausted to go on.

Woven faith is resilient faith.

Woven faith, anchored to who God is, and yet uniquely shaped, has the strength to withstand real life. When the internal strands are pliable, change and challenges don't destroy. To be sure, the process of revisiting, questioning, and at times reimagining how those strands connect is stressful. But it's the stress of strength. And yes, inevitably, some strands will break, beliefs we used to hold and don't anymore. The breaking of the strand is a loss, to be sure. We grieve it, but it doesn't need to be the end."

Thank you, Meredith, for naming what so many of us have been weaving and re-weaving as adults, and for helping us imagine helping our kids build a woven faith from the start.

I’d heard Meredith Miller speak about kids and faith on a few podcasts, so when I learned she was releasing a book, I knew I really wanted to read it! I was also totally hooked by the subtitle of WOVEN, “Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn’t Have to Heal From.” I mean… isn’t that the thing?! 😅

Parents who value faith… we know it’s complicated and recent religious culture wars haven’t made things any easier. Meredith's book is a useful, encouraging, and practical guide on the journey. I would recommend it to any parent of the faith and to anyone who touches kids' ministry at their local church.

The biggest takeaway for me was to always make sure that God is the main character in the Bible stories you're sharing with your kids (and let's be honest, for yourself, too!). It can be easy to say that David was courageous or Abraham was obedient or the little boy with the loaves and fish was generous... but if we center those stories on how to behave more than we're centering who God IS, we're losing the point... and then also setting our kids up for the rug to be pulled out from underneath them when they find out about the truly terrible things some of these heroes also did in their lives.

If we center God in our Bible stories, then the ‘heroes’ we read about get to just be people on the journey used and loved by God for God's purposes. In the book, Meredith shares many practical examples of how to do this with particular Bible stories. You won't be left hanging with a good idea without knowing how to apply it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Worthy Publishing for a free review copy of this book.

In Woven, Meredith Miller primarily writes to an audience who are people who the church has hurt, are in the process of deconstructing their religious experience, but don't want to abandon their faith or alienate it from their children altogether. Denouncing moralism, obedience training, and avoiding religion altogether, she teaches parents how to present God as trustworthy and approachable to their children, even when they may not be so sure themselves.

Here's what I identified as the thesis of her book, "This [what she calls "weaving"] is a way of living your ordinary life joyfully and sustainably, aligned with God's character but in your own creative way, while at the same time not seeking to control your child's faith experience or force a specific outcome... Your family needs a faith culture all its own..." "Weaving" refers to creating a stable web of faith by primarily considering your family's needs rather than abiding by an "exact regimen every family should follow" prescribed by the church.

While this initially came across as an encouragement to distance oneself from orthodox faith practices from Scripture and historic confessions/traditions, I don't think that's her full-intention. She advocates for Biblical exploration that "[stays] within developmental capabilities," does not reduce Bible stories to a simple moral, keeps God and His character in focus, and invites children to interpret, question, and make connections. She encourages prayer (that can take different forms like drawing), service (like composting), and all other rituals (dare I say, "liturgies") that collectively anchor the family in who God is and make the children aware of our connection with Him.

Recently, I visited a church where the pastor said (nearly verbatim), "If you don't spend two hours in prayer, you need to consider what else you're prioritizing." And later, "Your giving to the church should increase over time as your commitment to Jesus grows. Maybe you give $100 a week now, but you should consider giving more later." Church leaders creating manipulative rules for attendance, serving, etc., that go beyond what is prescribed in the Bible is a flagrant abuse of God's people. God has outlined for His people what is required (baseline) for practicing our faith and His ministers, our spiritual guides, ought to abide by them. Unfortunately, that does not always happen, and many suffer the consequences.

God has standards. The danger here is creating what we think is good for ourselves. God lovingly outlining what is good (keeping the Sabbath by attending church, teaching children sound theology, etc.) and being wisely advised in keeping these commandments by a healthy church is life's greatest blessing. Even though we may have been burdened by leaders who required things of us that God did not require, it's not a reason not to do the things God is telling us to do.

Let's not find ourselves in either category: the ones who manipulate the standards to abuse others or those who think themselves above God's standards and create our own.

As someone who’s felt a bit adrift at knowing how to raise kids amid my own shifting faith, I knew what I DIDN’T want to do. Meredith’s book actually gave me a vision of what I could and would want to do (without feeling like I have to). I often find nonfiction books repetitive, but this book was helpful all the way through, with the right amount of big picture thinking and practical tips. I finished the book feeling excited and hopeful about the conversations this book will ignite, both with my kids and with fellow parents!

This is my favorite book that I've read all year - maybe even longer than that. I'm not involved in children's ministry, and I don't have kids (although I have spent the past two years teaching in the public schools), but the principles espoused herein go well beyond connecting with children. They are useful in my role as a spiritual guide with all ages.

We're in an age where the narrative is highlighting the number of folks turning away from the church, for reasons ranging from boredom to woundedness to doubt. These folks say that in one way or another, the church has failed them...and they are right. The way we've been teaching the love of God (and belovedness of God) simply doesn't work. It doesn't build the kind of faith that gets out of a boat and walks on water or casts its net one more time into the sea.

What's great about this book is that it's written very accessibly, but at the same time, a little deviously. Because while she's telling you about faith as a web, she's weaving one out of her own concept. The threads tie together in such a way that if you had any questions about whether a web was a viable structure, you can't help but notice that...of course it is. This book, with this simple concept, is proof of concept.

Some of the specific theology cited as example is a little sticky for me. That is, we don't quite agree on the meaning of all things. But that's okay. The way the story is woven together allows me to leave that and put in a thread of my own and keep moving on without getting hung up on it.

I really enjoyed the actual real-life questions popping in as insets and wish there were a few more of them. Not to overdo it, but just a few more.

A great book that I will be wildly recommending.