Drawing on an agricultural picture from his West Texas background, Richard Ross described the landscape of church life as a cluster of silos—one for preschoolers, one for school-age children, one for students, one for adult ministries, and so on. 

“What we don’t need is one more silo that is the “family-ministry silo,” he said in sharing his vision for family-focused church ministry.

 

Speaking to hundreds of ministers and future church leaders at a conference co-hosted by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Ross emphasized that ministry to families is not another program or age-group "silo" to manage. Rather, it is a way to view existing ministries while always keeping in mind the Deuteronomy 6:4-9 mandate for parents to be the primary spiritual instructors of their children.

 

“Figure out laterally how to put a family focus on it. Use a ‘home lens’ for everything versus creating a new silo,” he said.

 

Further explaining the problem, Ross said, “Our primary model has been ‘church-centered and family-supported.’ We have created programs at church and we have tried to motivate families to support those programs.” Ross contends that for the last 50 years churches have inadvertently taught parents their whole duty in training their children spiritually is to drop them off at church for the professionals to instruct them.

 

The biblical model is very different: “And you tell in the hearing of your son and your son’s son, the mighty things I have done … that you may know that I Am the Lord,” Ross said, quoting Exodus 10:2. “That’s how this thing was supposed to work.”

 

Off track and under attack

Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson delivered the opening address in the two-day gathering called “Connected: Families and Churches, Partners in Ministry,” reminding participants how far from a biblical foundation the family and church have strayed.

 

“What is the hallowed position that is under attack? God in his infinite wisdom and benevolence has prescribed the family as the basic unit of social order providing a rather specific and functional and relational model which, if embraced, pays significant dividends not only for the individual and the family, but also for all other aspects of the social order,” he asserted.

 

Other key directives of Scripture for family that Patterson believes are devalued or omitted because they are not popular include the mandates that a husband and wife be devoted to each other for life, that children honor and obey their parents, that the man is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church, and that God’s created order is perfect and absolute.

 

Patterson’s solution is to return to our commitment to the whole counsel of God from our pulpits. “‘The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul’—turning the soul back to God,” he said referencing Psalm 19:7. “If this is the Word of God, you have to do it his way. That is where we find happiness, fulfillment, joy and meaningfulness for life.” 

 

Ross noted another ministry dynamic that he believes has served to remove the primary role of spiritual instruction from parents. To better serve congregations, churches have, over recent decades, hired more and more specialized age-group ministers.

 

“In a sincere desire to earn their keep, many [age-group ministers] have created new programs designed to spiritually transform children and youth. And in a sincere desire to see those programs prosper, they have intentionally or unintentionally communicated to parents that those programs offer the best hope for spiritually strong children.”

 

Ross does not advocate eliminating staff positions as a solution. Instead, he believes a change in their roles is warranted. “An age-group minister who sets himself or herself up as an alternative to the parents, or implies consciously or unconsciously, ‘I’m doing most of this, and parents, you help me out’—that person needs a change of heart."

 

"But I do think those who are ready to come alongside parents and champion families have a valuable place in the church to come,” Ross added.

 

Lance Crowell, an SBTC church ministries associate, shares Ross’s conviction that at least a generation has grown up largely seeing the church ministers as the experts. Crowell said, “One thing has to happen. We have to answer the questions, ‘Are people really growing in the Word, and is that happening in the home? Are students growing up in the Word? Or are parents lost as to what to do to help that?”

 

Three resulting ‘disconnects’

More and more vocational staffers and ministry specialists have in many churches led to one type of disconnect—extensive segregation, according to Waylan Owens, dean of the Terry School of Church and Family Ministries at Southwestern Seminary. While Owens agrees that some segregation is useful, he also cautions that dividing all ministries according to age or life situation or preference serves to dishonor parents, dishonor the senior citizens, and dishonor the children and what they can add to the faith experience of adults. 

 

Speaking to the conference, Owens said, “Many times I go to churches and it seems there is always someone who wants to take my children from me. They take them to Sunday School, then to children’s church. The youth have their own Sunday School, their own worship, and their own Sunday night thing. I have gotten in trouble for wanting to keep my children with me.”

 

In a breakout session on home-based student ministry, Ken Lasater, Crowell’s colleague at the SBTC whose job title includes student ministry, noted a second disconnect: “Our students are not developing lifelong connections to the church.”

 

In recent years, research has indicated that between 70-90 percent of churched students leave the church after high school. While LifeWay Research numbers from 2007 indicated a minority of young adults who leave the church eventually return to their faith roots, Lasater said that the most recent statistics indicate that about 90 percent are leaving, not to return.

 

According to Lasater, their reasons for leaving vary and they seldom go away in anger. Without responsibilities to fulfill at their church or someone expecting them to be there, they stay away, and eventually fade away lacking any deep connection. Lasater said it’s important to note that most of these students are good kids from all socio-economic levels, achieving great things academically, and that their absence is not due to some great rebellion.

 

“Some have suggested that churches fail to do little more than entertain them, until they are tired of the entertainment. Others suggest that the current church model is entirely wrong, due to not having parents as the singular leadership role for students, and that this has been the sole cause of the falling away of the student population,” Lasater explained.

 

Another disconnect comes as parents of each successive generation generally become less and less grounded in their beliefs, thus lacking in passion and devotion as well.

 

Crowell encourages churches to think about how their families would answer these questions: "How equipped do you feel? Do you feel that you can go home and have spiritual conversations? Would your children ask questions that you don’t feel comfortable answering? Parents, are you growing in maturity at home and becoming more like Christ?"

 

“Muscles that are not used quickly atrophy,” Ross told the TEXAN.

 

He added, “Parents who depend on the church for the spiritual development of their children tend to atrophy as well. Our churches are packed with parents who are just ‘good ol’ Baptists,’ but are not deeply in love with Christ, do not adore him at the beginning of the day, and who think little about his kingdom purposes as they move through life. That never was God’s plan. When one generation always is focused on spiritually leading the next, both stay more spiritually alive.”

 

God’s prescribed ways

Quoting Jonathan Edwards, Ross stated, “‘Every Christian family ought to be a little church consecrated to Christ and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. Family education and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual.’ Do you think this applies in 2010? Do you think church programs are going to be enough to make up the difference?”

 

Acknowledging that we are in new territory, Ross suggested two emerging resources available to churches: research being done in the seminaries and the positive and negative experiences of some churches currently addressing the problem.

 

“Leading-edge churches are quickly moving to ‘family-centered and church-supported,’ meaning the church sees its role as equipping and supporting parents and families for their primary role in spiritual transformation,” he explained.

 

He presented this as a working definition of family ministry: “Family ministry is mobilizing and equipping families of one or many in the power of the Spirit to pursue the biblical mission of the church—including healing and strengthening relationships to further accelerate that pursuit for the eventual goal of accelerating families pursuing the mission of the church.”

 

But, he cautioned, “We have to be so careful and so specific and clear because we have parents who haven’t done this before.”

 

Owens enumerated some approaches to making the shift:

—A “new lens” approach in which all church ministries are viewed through a family lens;

—A “parenting expert” approach in which the church becomes the trainer for parents;

—A “conference/camp” approach where special speakers teach parents about nurturing their children;

—An “increased parental presence” approach to involve more parents in programs for children;

—A “whole family” approach, where all church activities are centered on ‘family’;

Conference presenter Brian Haynes presented his church’s family ministry model, which they call “The Path of Legacy Milestones.” Haynes serves as pastor of Kingsland Baptist Church in Katy.

 

By way of introduction, he said, “I can’t separate family ministry from spiritual formation.  Church and home—that should be a partnership. A part of how we make disciples is how we equip the family. We have to see parents as the primary faith trainers. The problem is, we don’t trust our parents to do that.”

 

Legacy Milestones is the strategy Haynes and his church developed to help parents do the best job they can reaching each developmental milestone in the lives of their children. Parents at Kingsland are asked to do three things: 

—Have once-per-week “faith talks” (family devotions) with their children;

—Talk about God ‘as we lie down, as we get up, as we walk along the road’; and

—Attend parent summits at the church twice yearly to learn how to lead children to the next milestone event.

 

Haynes said finding the right plan for a given church will take time. “The church has to re-visit its values, mission, and vision, and strategy can pour out of that,” he said.

 

Destination: Great Commission families

When asked to describe his practices with and goals for his own family, Crowell explained, “First and foremost we are flawed people who need the grace of God to display the glory of God to our children, and some days we do that much better than other days.”

 

The Crowells strive to conduct three family worship times per week and pray with their children several times each day, including meal times and following instances of discipline.

 

“We also work hard—it’s a work in progress—to teach the totality of the gospel to our children throughout the day. Kids ask all kinds of questions and are learning all kinds of things. I want both of my kids to see the gospel pervading all aspects of their lives and their parents’ lives—part of the Great Commission as on display in our home. It’s not just about praying a prayer down at the church for salvation and that is it, but it’s about seeing the redemptive work of God in all things.”

 

Ross expressed his goals for his own son, “that it would be the great desire of his life, at the beginning of the day to just walk into the throne room of the Son of God and take delight in worshiping him. I think that is what I have most desired to see. I wanted my son not to embrace a doctrine, I wanted my son not to embrace a concept, I have wanted my son to embrace the living, glorious, majestic Son of God with a mixture of both awe and intimacy."

Ross said he hopes Christian parents will become kingdom oriented—turning their hearts toward their own children, using their homes to win other children to Christ, filling the emotional emptiness of children who don’t experience God’s unconditional love and acceptance in their own homes, and desiring that their own children “live or die for the glory of Christ.”