language learners. That’s perfectly fine, so long as pastors remember that they are operating in the role of parents, fluent adult speakers of the language who are tasked with bringing their kids to similar fluency. Mothers speak motherese, but they do so only for a limited period of time (infancy through early stages of childhood) and for a specific purpose (to teach a child how to talk). Speaking motherese, however, is not the same thing as being a mother, and being a mother will eventually involve