Whole Heart Beats - February 2023

Life has become very international for us. Since the last update, we’ve been back and forth between the US and the UK several times, and moved (reluctantly) to a new flat in Oxford. Sally’s five-year visa was approved and she is now a Lay Mentor to women postgraduate students and other women and moms at Pusey House, a historic Anglican study and worship center in the heart of Oxford. She leads two Bible studies, and meets regularly with women for personal encouragement. She is there during the three Oxford terms, and back in CO between them.

Clay, as publisher of Whole Heart Press, continues to develop our “ministry in print.” We’ve recently added all our WH Press books to IngramSpark, which will enable our books for the first time to be purchased wholesale by bookstores and resellers through Ingram Book Distribution, the largest book distributor in the US. New books for our Storyformed Books imprint are in process. We’ve been championing and recommending illustrated storybooks for children for 20+ years, and hope to add our own to that storied history of imaginative literature. Of course, we are proud to have released new and refreshed versions of Sally’s classic books for mothers, Seasons of a Mother’s Heart and Your Mom Walk with God. More refreshed books are in the publishing queue.

We also continue to work with Christian royalty publishers. Sally’s third and last book for Bethany House Publishers, co-written for her by Clay during her her fall 2021 hip surgery and recovery, released in October. Giving Your Words is an exploration from our own experience of the lifegiving power of a verbal home for family faith formation. It is full of biblical encouragement and example for how to use your own words to shape your child’s life for Christ. But now Sally is working with Harvest House Publishers, and her first of three books with them is Teatime Discipleship — Sharing Faith One Cup at a Time. It is a lovely gift book filled with beautiful full-color photos from Sally’s life and home, and with her personal stories, Scriptures, prayers, recipes, and traditions encouraging women to pursue the beauty of a life of lifegiving hospitality over a shared cup. Teatime Discipleship releases on April 18.

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Whole Heart Beats - May 2022

Time flies when you’re navigating pandemics, social change, elections, and moves forth and back between Colorado and Oxford in the UK. But, since last we posted in 2020, life goes on. We’ll try to do better posting updates going forward.

Since Sept of 2020, we’ve worked about half the year in Oxford with an evangelical Anglican church. If all goes as planned with a new visa, Sally will be starting a new ministry with a different Oxford church beginning fall of 2022. It is a classic church in the heart of Oxford with a rich history and a beautiful older building and worship facility. Although we had become friends with several of their staff, we didn’t ask them; they came to Sally completely unexpectedly to ask her to help them develop a ministry to reach out to women and moms in Oxford. God has given us a rare opportunity to use our messages and experience to start something new and needed in our ancestral homeland. We’ll keep you posted.

Clay, as publisher of Whole Heart Press, is giving our book publishing ministry a fresh start. We started Whole Heart as a publishing ministry, so he’s going back to our roots as a “ministry in print.” We’re excited to finally have Seasons of a Mother’s Heart back in print, as well as a refreshed version of Your Mom Walk with God. We’ve also updated and released Own Your Life Experience, a companion study guide by Sally and Joy for Sally’s book Own Your Life. More refresh-ments of our best books are on the way but, even more exciting, new original books will be coming soon. We’re especially chuffed (Britspeak) about new books for our Storyformed Books imprint. We’ve been championing and recommending illustrated storybooks for children for 20+ years and now we’ll finally begin putting our imprimatur on that imprint. Stay tuned. Much more to come.

Our Mission (1 of 4): Encouraging Christian Parents

Our heart is to encourage the hearts of Christian parents to raise wholehearted children who will live for Christ.

Our children were eight, six, and three when we first began to realize that we wanted to encourage Christian parents. We had been parents just long enough at that point to know that we needed courage instilled in us to be the kind of parents we heard God calling us to be in his Word. And that is what we wanted to give other parents—we want to help them become wholehearted Christian parents.

Encouragement is both the foundational and the formational motivation for this ministry. Foundational because God gave us hearts to encourage other Christian parents to “bring [their children] up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Formational because everything we would eventually do to give help and hope to Christian parents would emerge from that motivation and conviction.

We wanted our children to be “whole” in Christ, like David prayed for his son, Solomon—“know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind” (1 Chronicles 28:9). We also wanted to “consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds … encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25). We still want to encourage parents to take up the call of God to raise their children with whole hearts and willing minds for the Lord. That is where our ministry begins and will end.

Materials and Ministries:

• Mom Heart Conferences and events

• At Home with Sally podcasts

• At Home with Sally blog

• Whole Heart blog

• Seasons of a Mother’s Heart

• Mission of Motherhood

• Ministry of Motherhood

Our Mission (2 of 4): Equipping Christian Parents

Whole Heart is at its heart a discipleship ministry—we equip parents and children to follow Jesus wholeheartedly.

Before we became parents we were disciples, but we were also disciple makers. As single adults, we both had served on staff with a ministry that focused on evangelism and discipleship—winning others to Christ, building them up in the Word, and sending them into the world to do the same for others. As disciple makers trained by that ministry, we were equipping others for ministry for Christ.

When we became parents, we found that the ministry principles that had been instilled so deeply in us as young adults would find a new expression—our children would become our most important disciples. We realized that Christ’s Great Commission—to “make disciples of all the nations”—must begin with the nation of our home, and our children. We were grateful to have been trained by our earlier ministry to be able to make that pivot into our family.

The second priority of Whole Heart Ministries is to equip Christian parents to be disciple makers in their homes. We hear the words of Paul to his disciple, Timothy, that the Word of God works in every area of his life “so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every God work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Our desire is to find all that the Word of God has to say to us as Christian parents, and to equip other parents with that truth. We want to equip them to become disciple makers at home.

Materials and Ministries:

• Educating the WholeHearted Child

• Read for the Heart

• Caught Up in a Story

• Taking Motherhood to Hearts

• Leader Intensive Training weekends

• Podcast courses and series
  
  

Our Mission (3 of 4): Enabling Christian Parents

We work to create and place into hands of Christian parents resources, tools, and ideas to shape their children’s hearts.

If you want to build a house, you need good tools. If you want to build a family, the same principle is at work. The better the tools you have to work with, the stronger your family will be and the longer your home will stand. From the very start of this ministry, we have been committed to creating good tools for Christian parents—to build their children, their home, their testimony, and their heritage.

Enabling is the “hands-on” extension of encouragement and equipping. Our tools are parental empowerment for building a Christian home. They are primarily words—written, spoken, printed, posted—that come from God’s Word. They are tools to build the kind of “house” that Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount that, even though pummeled by rains, floods, and wind, would not fall because “it had been founded on the rock” (Matthew 7:25).

Peter starts his second letter with a powerful picture of enabling. He exhorts his readers to diligently build faith, moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love into their lives. These qualities, he says, will ensure that the believer is useful and fruitful “in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:2-11). We design our enabling tools and ministries to give parents confidence in Peter’s promise. It’s what we want for our own children.

Materials and Ministries:

• Our 24 Family Ways

• Mom Heart groups

• Book study guides

• 10 Gifts of Heart

• Leader Intensive Training

Our Mission (4 of 4): Engaging Christian Parents

We create ways to connect Christian parents in virtual community, in small groups, in events, and other ways.

Our fourth and final mission priority is about shifting from hearts (encouragement), heads (equipping), and hands (enabling), into help (engaging). When gears are engaged, things start to move. When we find ways to engage with Christian parents we do that to move them—to new family and life habits, better parenting choices, Christian home building plans, and lifegiving actions for their children.

Whole Heart does not have a worldwide staff that can engage personally with parents around the globe, but we’re thankful for the world wide web which allows us to engage virtually through streaming and on-demand online training and helps. We still try to meet personally with parents and moms in local events because we consider that kind of engagement important, and we want to have eye-to-eye connections with the parents we want to serve.

Engaging is the next logical step after we have given parents training, materials, and ministries. We find ways to engage with parents so we can help them move from being not only a “hearer” of the Word, but to being “an effectual doer” of the Word (James 1:22-25). When all the parental gears are engaging with the gears of God’s Word, then our children will be moved to follow Christ in their own generations, and to “put their confidence in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments” (Psalm 78:7).

Materials and Ministries:

• Whole Heart events

• Sally Clarkson events and studies

• Life with Sally online community

• Life with Sally Forum

• Mom Heart Groups Facebook group

• Mom Heart Groups

• At Home with Sally Podcast
  

Whole Heart Journal - September 2019

As we prepare to turn the seasonal corner from summer into fall, Whole Heart is navigating its own autumnal changes. We shared a few of them last month that are still in process, but this month we’ll just take a deep breath and make a short Journal entry about what’s on the seasonal radar just in front of us. Fall can be a refreshing and restful time, yet also preparatory for what’s ahead. That’s where we are. We hope that whatever God has ahead for you that you’ll find your fall season a time of encouragement and refreshing. Pray for us as we make some needed changes to our ministry website, upgrade and expand some of our online ministries, refocus Whole Heart Press for some new books, and prepare for a new ministry this winter (to be announced). May the changes of fall, even if challenging, be a time of preparation, and may we all breathe the cool air of grace in the days ahead.

EDUCATING THE WHOLEHEARTED CHILD
Twenty-Five Years in Print!

Twenty-five years ago in September, we launched the first version of our classic Christian home education handbook. That release marked not just a publication date for our first book, but also the official birth-date of Whole Heart Ministries. Last December, we were excited to have Educating the WholeHearted Child and three other books come back home to Whole Heart after a decade at Apologia Press. We are happy to let you know that now, after a nine-month absence, the new fourth edition of EWHC is available on Amazon.com in time for the new school year. Later this fall, the new third edition of Sally’s first book, Seasons of a Mother’s Heart, also will be available in time for Christmas.

NEW BOOKS IN THE QUEUE
Two New Books Coming in October

Sally has two new books releasing during October (her first twofer for one month). We’ll tell you more in the October WH Journal, but we want to let you know about them now so you can pre-order them. Mom Heart Moments: Daily Devotions for Lifegiving Motherhood releases on October 8. This is Sally’s first devotional, with a scripture, a short devotional thought, and an action point for every day of the year. Only You Can Be You: What Makes You Different Makes You Great, with Nathan Clarkson, releases October 22. It is a fun and colorful children’s illustrated storybook that poetically celebrates the uniqueness of each child. It is based on Sally and Nathan’s book, Different.

BEHIND THE SCENES
A Shout-Out to Our Great Staff

Just in case you don’t know them, we have a wonderful team of part-time Whole Heart and Mom Heart staff who help us (Clay and Sally) look better than we really are. Amy Bettis, our multitasking ministry Admin Assistant, is the voice you’ll hear first when you call our offices. Josh West, admin before Amy, is our freelance but still intrepid online and tech assistant. Misty Krasawski (TN) is Sally’s constant content assistant for SallyClarkson.com. Jennie Nelson (ID) is our faithful Mom Heart Ministry admin, and LifewithSally.com co-leader. Gretchen Roberts (NC) is our other LifewithSally.com co-leader and creativator. Jacqui Wakelam (UK) is our Mum Heart UK leader and pro-photo taker, and daughter Zoe Wakelam (UK) is our social media whiz kid. That’s the team. And we thank God for them all. (Individual profiles coming in future WH Journals.)

NEWS, NOTES & NEEDS
Keeping Up and Lifting Up

Sally on the Road: Sally will be speaking in VA, TN, and the UK in October. Please pray for her safe travel and good health.

• Winter Conference: Stay tuned for news about a new winter conference. If we can, we will, if we get the divine go-ahead.

• There’s an App for That: We’re exploring the world of apps for parts of our online ministry. Pray for wisdom and referrals.

• Become a Patreon: Joel has started a Patreon to help fund his doctoral studies at St Andrews in Scotland. It’s all about his music!

• Become a Partner: We try not to ask often, but God knows we can use financial partners right now. So much new to do.

• Clarkson Family: Keep up with our whole family tribe on ClarksonFamily.com. Pray for us as we scatter all over this fall.

Sarah Clarkson, Storyformed founder

Elizabeth Goudge once wrote that humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people by the kinds of comfort they seek; one was those who "take comfort in literature." She's got me pegged since books have helped me to make sense of the world and my own emerging story since I was a tiny child. Three decades of varied exploration haven't changed the fact that it is to a good book I turn when I need to make fresh sense of the world. Words make worlds, they say, and I love the swift and creative way in which a good story can tell us who we are, how we can love or create, and what it looks like to live a good story in our own epic of life in the world. 

Words are most definitely my world, the realm from which I work as a freelance writer, blogger, and current student. My themes of interest always centrer on language, beauty, and imagination, all of which are topics I hope to write about in future. I study theology at Oxford University where I focus on the Incarnation and the role of beauty to reveal truth. I blog at sarahclarkson.com, and am at slow work on a children’s story set in my grand old church here in Oxford. I'm the author of four books and am at delighted work on a fifth called Book Girl, an invitation and guide to the reading life for women, to be released with Tyndale Momentum in 2018. 

I'm the wife of a marvelous Dutchman named Thomas, and very happy resident of the golden-walled and cobble-streeted Oxford. I hope that someone will say of me when I die what William McGreel said of his wife Elizabeth Yates (a writer, of course): "She has plenty of courage, a strong faith, and a native expectancy of good. Living with her is a high adventure." I'm always up for a long, windy walk, a foray into a new corner of England or a country I've never seen, or a cup of tea with a friend (a good flat white always works well too). I'm ever on the hunt for a new novel and I justify my buying of second-hand books by my dream to open a someday community library. I come from a highly opinionated family that values discussion, good books, strong hot drinks, and the thinking up of impossible ventures. I live in a red-doored cottage with church bells for an alarm clock. One of these days it will all go into my novel.

Holly Packiam, Storyformed.com Director

Because my family valued education, people would often say to me growing up, “Holly, of course you’ll be a teacher.” As a young girl, I imagined myself as Anne of Green Gables teaching a room full of keen children eager to learn. I didn’t realize how prophetic that would be.

Glenn and I met at a Christian college, married, and settled down in Colorado Springs in 2001. Glenn was a worship leader, and I worked in various positions at church. I completed a Masters in counseling, but soon settled into my new role as a mom when Sophia arrived in 2005, followed by Norah in 2006, Jonas in 2009, and Jane in 2012. Motherhood has been stretching, but joyous. I find myself leaning on the Lord every day as I educate our children at home—reading great books, talking about everything, and learning together. As a dreamer, like Anne Shirley, I love the flexibility I have at home to put aside the schedule and stop to smell the roses with my children.

I also love coffee, dark chocolate, reading and writing in the quiet early hours, and long walks in my forested neighborhood full of wildlife. My children have given all our animal friends names, so it’s like a walk through our own magical land of Narnia. I appreciate a wide variety of music and art when I have time to enjoy it, but especially books. I welcome deep discussions, especially with Glenn, who is now pastor of New Life Downtown, a non-denominational church with ancient liturgical elements. We’re both avid readers and book collectors. As my daughter, Norah, says, "Mom you’re addicted to the library!" Our overflowing bookshelves prove her point.

At the heart of me, I’m driven to read and think deeply, learn new things, teach, and write. Every day I ask, “Lord, what do you want me to learn, see, and do today?” I never tire of invigorating conversations with Glenn, my children, and all my thoughtful and engaging friends. That’s why I love what’s happening here at Storyformed. I’m so delighted to be able to extend those kinds of conversations to so many new friends on the internet. We’ll have a feast of discussion about all the books we love in the Packiam home, and that you all love in your homes. I hope you will join me on this journey of discovering the soul-forming power of story for seeing the goodness, truth, and beauty of God.

Jaime Showmaker, Storyformed.com Contributor

I'm almost certain that I am a reader because of my grandmother. She was an avid lover of books and stories, and some of my earliest memories are of being enveloped in her lap between her iced coffee and the latest mystery novel she was reading. Her house was full of books and I would run my fingers along the spines of every one, longing for the day when I could take them down off of the shelf and read them all for myself. When I was finally old enough to read, I couldn't get enough. My parents would often find their shy, quiet, little dreamer girl curled up on her bed, lost in the latest book series or popular novel. Unfortunately, somehow, I missed reading most of the beloved classics in children's literature, but I am grateful that the books I did read captivated me and created a love of story that has endured. I delighted in the way that books transported me to new and exciting worlds and I longed to live in each one of them.

Not much has changed since then. I can still almost always be found curled up somewhere with a book, but these days I am usually negotiating which one of my three boys gets the prime space in the center of my lap. Will (7), Eli (5), and Zach (3) are the focus of much of my reading life these days, as we explore together all of the beautiful books that I loved (and missed) as a child. Inspired by Alcott's Plumfield, my husband Eric and I educate our pack of "little men" at home in the beautiful foothills of North Carolina.  Although I am not technically using the education and religion degrees that I earned, my days are still focused on teaching and discipling, even if it is just for our little class of three. In addition to reading, the boys and I can often be found roughhousing underneath the dozens of oak trees on our property, taking nature walks, and looking for “Glory”, our resident Cardinal friend.

I am still a dreamer at heart. I love contemplating ideas and discussing them with other people, preferably over good food with lots of laughter. Since I am a night owl, you can usually catch me up late--thinking, reading, writing, and eating chocolate. And since I do love chocolate, I also enjoy working out.  I love being challenged and learning new things. Over the past several years, I have become passionate about children's literature and the way that it forms children in the most profound ways.  I have enjoyed discussing the True, Good, and Beautiful that can be found in books with my online book club and blogging at the book club's supporting blog, and now I am thrilled to be able to continue those discussions with the Storyformed community.

Mum Heart Training #1: Multiplication, not Addition

Join Jacqui Wakelam as she teaches us about Mum Heart / Mom Heart leadership in this engaging audio, the first in a series.[audio m4a="http://momheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mum-Heart-Training-1-Multiplication-not-Addition-05_11_2018-15.35.m4a"][/audio]Chart of evangelism vs. discipleship 

Girls Club Getaway 2019

The original Clarkson Girls Club of Sally, Sarah, and Joy will be together to celebrate their new book, Girls’ Club, and talk about how women can be friends and mentors to call each other to our best selves. If you can make it, don’t miss this special getaway and get-together.

To learn more and register now, go to:

GirlsClubGetaway.com.