How do we learn to cook? Becoming a great cook doesn’t happen when we walk into the kitchen for the first time. We pick up a cookbook, glance through the recipes and decide what to cook. Then we look for ingredients that we have on hand or need to shop for. Do we sit and read the whole book in one sitting and instantly become gourmets? Good cooking is science, art and personality. We try new things and grow in our skills. Learning isn’t simple; we experiment, we fail, we add to the recipes, family and friends share their favorites, which become ours. We omit the things we don’t have a taste for, but we have a guide, a cookbook to help us.

We learn to raise our children with similar methods. It takes decades to raise Orthodox Christian children. How do we approach this daunting task? Can reading a book provide the answers? When a child is born are we instantly expert parents or does it entail some time and experience? Orthodox Christian Parenting – Recipes for Raising Children, is not to be read in a day or applied unilaterally to all families. It is to be consulted, read, reread, and referred to often as we journey through their formative stages, just as we do with our favorite cookbook. This cookbook contains recipes from the Church fathers (old and new), saints, monastics, priests, priest families, and our many experienced friends. With this book, your faith and love for Christ, your parish, your spiritual father, friends and family, you will create the perfect recipe for growing children into loving, faithful, Orthodox Christian adults.