Month: April 2010

DR work in Haiti continues

Beginning this month, the SBTC will be assisting Baptist Global Response, the International and North American mission boards, and Florida Baptists in rebuilding areas around partner churches in Haiti with concrete block homes.

SBTC DR Director Jim Richardson said the projects are good mission opportunities for Adult Sunday School classes, churches, and associations. The projects are scheduled to be ongoing through July.

SBTC volunteers are also partnering with disaster relief teams from Oklahoma to provide hand-driven pumps for existing water wells on church-owned property and pastors homes in Haiti. These teams will also be serving with Haitians to drill or hand-dig wells that have been closed by the recent earthquake.

For more information on how to volunteer, contact Richardson by e-mail at jrichardson@sbtexas.com or by phone at 940-704-9346.

SBTC communicators win awards

CHICAGO ? Members of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s communications team received awards from the Baptist Communicators Association during the group’s annual workshop, held April 6-9 in Chicago.

Russell Lightner, the convention’s graphic artist, won second-place honors in the design division, news and information category, for his design of “Cm Elements,” a booklet promoting the services of the SBTC’s Church Ministries department.

Jerry Pierce, communications associate and managing editor of the Southern Baptist TEXAN, won second place in the feature writing division, single article (newspaper or newsletter), for the story “Given slim hope, burn victim beating odds” (Dec. 28, 2009 TEXAN).

Also, Lightner and Pierce accepted the first-place award in the design division, state Baptist newspapers, for the Southern Baptist TEXAN.

The judging panel included 19 communications professionals from news organizations such as Reuters and Crosswalk.com, from churches, design firms, and from university faculties. Awards were given in public relations and development, interactive communications, audio-visual communications, photography, news and feature writing, and design.

IMB unlikely to appoint missionaries in North America, Rankin says

NASHVILLE ? The proposal of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force to remove geographical barriers preventing the International Mission Board from working with unreached people groups “on American soil” will not likely result in missionaries being assigned stateside, nor will it result in churches planted by IMB personnel, said IMB President Jerry Rankin.

For the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, the proposal is nothing new. The Texas Missions Initiative (TxMI) launched by the SBTC last year includes the priority of reaching the rising number of unreached people groups (UPGs) and immigrant groups to the state by assigning people group missionaries to work with specific ethno-linguistic people groups.

In an interview with the Florida Baptist Witness, Rankin said he supports Component 3 of the GCRTF progress report made to the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, Feb. 22, which asks “Southern Baptists to entrust to the International Mission Board the ministry to reach the unreached and under-served people groups without regard to any geographic limitations.”

Rankin said, however, there should not be an expectation that the IMB will place missionaries throughout the United States because “it’s a matter of proportion” and indigenous strategies. Instead, the soon-to-be-retiring president said he envisions the IMB’s primary role will be to mobilize, train, equip and mentor local churches, associations, state conventions and the North American Mission Board.

“It will be a partnership,” Rankin said. “It’s not an exclusive role that the IMB is going to do for Southern Baptists in this assignment. Our role is to facilitate, enable all Southern Baptists to fulfill the Great Commission, and so that’s how I would anticipate our approaching this aspect of the Great Commission task in America.”

Although the progress report indicates the GCRTF is “unleashing the International Mission Board upon American soil,” Rankin said NAMB and others have already encouraged IMB to help them reach ethnic and other peoples in the states.

“I don’t see this really as very radical. I don’t see it as conflicting and overlapping of turf with North American Mission Board, a potential conflict as some had conjectured,” Rankin said. He noted IMB and NAMB administrators and boards already meet twice a year to collaborate on some efforts.

UNENGAGED AND UNREACHED PEOPLE GROUPS

Rankin said the top priority for the IMB is the Unengaged Unreached People Groups (UUPG), of which there are 41 with a population of more than a million and 469 with a population of more than 100,000. These groups have no access to churches, other Christians, Scripture or Christian resources in their heart language ? and no mission agency.

The GCRTF believes a new synergy can be created in international missions as the SBC makes use of IMB expertise. “Most of the 586 people groups that do not speak English in the United States have strategy coordinators working overseas with the same groups,” stated GCRTF chairman Ronnie Floyd in making his report.

Among UPGs, Rankin said, less than 2 percent of the population is born again, and there is no active church planting movement or gospel witness for the remaining 98 percent. Of 11,000 people groups throughout the world, over 4,000 are considered unreached.

Considering the hundreds of UUPGs around the world who have no access to the gospel, and over 4,000 UPGs who have limited exposure to the gospel, Rankin said he is positive about the proposed new strategy.

Citing prolific work among immigrant groups in the U.S., such as Vietnamese, Hispanics, Slavs and Haitians, Rankin said the state conventions “don’t have the capacity, the focus” to reach other people groups that are less populous. “They really don’t have the training or the expertise in those cultural worldviews that we would have,” he said.

As an example of the type of training the IMB could provide for North American missions, Rankin noted the “Great Commission

GCR Task Force: Move CP promotion from Nashville to the state conventions

NASHVILLE?There’s no denying that Southern Baptists individually, corporately and as a denomination are lagging in their stewardship of God’s resources. While the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force recommends shifting primary responsibility for Cooperative Program and stewardship promotion to state conventions, task force chairman Ronnie Floyd is counting on local pastors to teach their members to honor God through tithing.

“Remember, the only people who ever get offended with the declaration of biblical stewardship are the ones who give little to nothing at all to your church,” Floyd said in the news conference that followed the release of the task force interim report.

“Christians need to repent of the sin of not honoring God with at least the first-tenth of their income,” Floyd reminded. “Can you imagine the spiritual revival that would consume our churches if God’s people would obey God in giving? Can you imagine the opportunities of advancing the gospel regionally, nationally, and globally if God’s people would obey God in giving?”

Seeking to discover “how Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission,” the task force analyzed the means of funding that effort and reaffirmed the Cooperative Program as the preferred means of giving.

Early proponents of a Great Commission Resurgence called on Southern Baptists to cut a larger piece of the Cooperative Program pie for the International Mission Board in order to see more dollars sent overseas and appealed to state conventions to keep fewer dollars for in-state use. While recommending the IMB’s share increase by 1 percent, a move Floyd called “symbolic,” the task force chose to trust state conventions with more responsibility for stewardship and CP promotion.

Component 4 of the task force progress report states:

“We believe in order for us to work together more faithfully and effectively towards the fulfillment of the Great Commission, we will ask Southern Baptists to move the ministry assignments of Cooperative Program promotion and stewardship education from the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention and return them to being the work of each state convention since they are located closer to our churches. Our call is for the state conventions to reassume their primary role in the promotion of the Cooperative Program and stewardship education, while asking the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention to support these efforts with enthusiasm and a convention-wide perspective.”

The SBC’s Executive Committee did not welcome the recommendation. In a March 11 historical review of CP promotion, stewardship education and the SBC, EC Convention Relations Vice President Roger S. Oldham offered a 10-page rebuttal of verbiage he called “potentially misleading.” (Visit baptist2baptist.net/issues/gcr/rso-03-19-10.asp for the complete text of the white paper.)


Concerned that Southern Baptists could infer from the words “return” and “reassume” that CP promotion and stewardship education “were once ministry assignments entrusted to the states,” Oldham said CP promotion has been a joint venture of the SBC and state conventions since its inception in 1925 “with the responsibility for strategy development uniformly assigned to the SBC, and the ‘field’ responsibilities consistently shared with our state convention ministry partners.”

Based on his defense of the SBC’s “right and responsibility” to promote CP and engage in stewardship education (including the decade when LifeWay Christian Resources had the stewardship assignment), Oldham argued the adoption of Component 4 would be the first time in SBC history “that the Convention will have assigned away its rights, role, and responsibility to promote funding and support for its ministries of international missions, North American missions, theological education, and moral advocacy, each of which is rightly under its purview.”

In making the case for giving state conventions primary responsibility for both assignments, Floyd said in his Feb. 22 presentation, “History shows that we have struggled with where to place both of these assignments in order to serve our churches more effectively.” He expressed appreciation for the work of the Executive Committee, calling state conventions “Great Commission partners” of the SBC that could participate in a consortium involving the EC president.

“Together they can plan and execute an annual strategy that will promote the Cooperative Program to our churches as well as challenge our churches in biblical stewardship,” Floyd said. Calling it a return to the strategy offered in 1929 that gave state conventions responsibility for promoting CP “in the field and gathering funds from the churches,” Floyd said historic precedence permits such a move.

The EC’s Old

View church ministry through ‘family lens,’ conference speakers urge

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.

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Texas-produced film links eugenics, abortion, and targeting of blacks

DENTON?The window dressing may be benign, but behind the curtain remains the dark elitism of the eugenics movement, which continues to flourish in the 21st century with a disproportionate focus on black Americans.

That’s the message of a relatively new video documentary, “Maafa21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America,” from Denton-based Life Dynamics Inc. The group’s president, Mark Crutcher, wrote and produced it and is featured numerous times in the film.

Maafa (pronounced Mah-off-ah) is a Swahili word for tragedy, in this case the continued repercussions of Western slavery that Crutcher argues led to the eugenics movement and specifically to the government’s role in funding family planning, birth control and abortion aimed at minority groups and especially blacks.

The end result: a disproportionate percentage of “family planning” clinics in black neighborhoods and an African-American abortion rate that has skyrocketed in the last 40 years.

The film begins with a scene in a slave cemetery in Denton County, then unwinds for viewers a chronological chain of events, from American slavery, the emergence of Charles Darwin’s survival of the fittest and the eugenics movement that was fueled by Darwin’s cousin, the father of eugenics, Francis Galton, and concurrent social developments.

The documentary proceeds through the years of Civil War Reconstruction, a period when some American industrialists turned to eugenics as a method of controlling wealth and maintaining civil order for fear that 4 million freed slaves would overwhelm the ruling American upper class.

The founder of the American Birth Control League (later known as Planned Parenthood), Margaret Sanger, became a tool of some wealthy industrialists, as one observer in the film states: “[T]hey needed a front man and she needed money.”

Sanger is quoted in the film, from 1922.

“We are paying for and ever submitting to the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all,” said Sanger, lamenting that the resources of individuals and states were being diverted to care for them.

Hitler’s Nazi philosophy was largely influenced, the film states, by American eugenicist Madison Grant, whose book “The Passing of the Great Race” Hitler referred to as his Bible.

Throughout the film, narrated by an African American man and woman, several black pro-life activists are featured, including Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King.

The film shows the rise of the American government’s funding of family planning, most notably through abortion but also through sterilization and emerging birth control methods such as Norplant, and the correlation of rising abortion rates among black women since the early 1970s?an abrupt change from earlier periods when white women were getting most of the abortions.

The film’s criticism cuts across political lines, with elitist tendencies aimed at curbing the black population dating back to President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, and proliferating under Republican President Richard Nixon.

The film also includes several quotes from a much younger Jesse Jackson, who at one time was unabashedly pro-life, according to his comments.

“What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a conscience?” Jackson is quoted as saying in the 1970s. “What kind of a person, and what kind of a society will we have 20 years hence if life can be taken so casually?”

Among the more interesting stori

SBTC Foundation’s ‘Treasure Hunt Experience’ offers inspiration, education on stewardship

GRAPEVINE?What do artwork depicting the widow’s mite and a Rolex print ad have in common? The answer lies within the one-of-a-kind Biblical Stewardship History Collection now available to Texas Southern Baptists through the SBTC Foundation.

Thanks to a partnership between the foundation and the collection’s curator, historic stewardship artifacts, art, and the largest known stewardship research library are on display in Grapevine.

Scott Preissler occupies the Bobby and Janis L. Eklund chair of stewardship at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, is director of the seminary’s Center for Biblical Stewardship, and is the curator and owner of the collection.

“The collection is now available to help SBTC churches educate about stewardship,” Johnathan Gray, executive director of the SBTC Foundation, said. “Stewardship has been a part of the church for years; it’s not something to be ashamed of, it’s a vital part of how we worship our Lord and do his ministry.”

The new, 3,900 square-foot facility at Faith Christian School that now houses the collection was built by volunteers and funded through donations.

“It’s a great privilege to see how groups come together to make things happen,” Gray said.

Volunteers and special guests gathered March 14 to celebrate completion of the facility and be the first group to tour the collection.

“Every person who comes through, something appeals to them,” said Sylvia Crecelius, president of The Stewardship Alliance.

Darin Brown volunteered his carpentry skills on this project, and gained a new insight into the value of the collection.

“You see all these pieces and you think, who used this, when, and why?” Brown said. “You can bring lay people and church staff in and stir their thoughts for how to teach stewardship.”

From the wooden baskets of the old West to the centuries-old large brass alms collection plates, every stewardship artifact tells the tale of the importance of stewardship in the life of the church.

“It’s the [visual] history of biblical stewardship through the local church,” Bobby L. Eklund, stewardship consultant for the SBTC, said.

Preissler has collected stewardship artifacts for 20 years?items date from the 1500s to today. In addition to offering plates, the collection includes missionary boxes, games, artwork and an extensive stewardship library.

“We encourage groups to come and have a day-long stewardship experience,” Gray said.

After visiting the Stewardship Collection, groups are invited to the SBTC building where they will learn about how the Lord is using gifts through the Cooperative Program, Southern Baptists’ unified missions funding channel.

Groups will learn “how resources come in from our churches and how they go out to reach Texas and touch the world,” Gray noted.

All ages can benefit from a tour of the stewardship artifacts, Preissler said, noting he recently hosted a second grade class. While one generation will enjoy reminiscing about missionary boxes they used as children, another will benefit from seeing the priority stewardship had in the livelihoods of generations before them.

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The essential component of family ministry

I heard an ad campaign some years ago that prompted us to ask ourselves one simple question before doing most things: “Is it good for the children?” The campaign’s motives were noble and its point was fine, as far as it went. The problem was that it addresses most problems related to the welfare of children too far downstream from the source. Unless we really do consider the “village” (government at some level) the primary caregiver and discipler of our offspring, the marriage between a father and a mother is the wellspring of most blessing and cursing sprinkled over children.

It seems missing or broken marriages are louder in their cursing than whole marriages are in their blessing. The most often cited statistics show that children are 3-4 times more likely to live in poverty if they live in a single-parent home?without regard to race or the employment status of the mother. We don’t need statisticians to tell us that. Anyone who’s worked with the complex and fragmented families of divorce or fatherless homes has seen problems even more significant than poverty. Even though beloved friends and brothers known to me find themselves in those same complex situations, the traditional and unblended family is the strong core of our congregations. And that is where churches should start in family ministry.

Yes, we do have conferences and curricula and some fine books on the subject. Go to those conferences, offer studies using a good biblical curriculum designed to build strong marriages, read those fine books. Maybe some churches out there even have ministers to marriages on their staffs. As laudable and potentially useful as good resources can be, those things are not what I mean. If ministry to children and parents can be integrated into the cellular structure of our churches, and this is an exciting thought, then we can and must do something similar to our strengthening of marriages. Here are a few that make sense to me.

Exalt the marriage covenant from the beginning?Too many people get married in church. I’ve performed those ceremonies where I’d come to understand that the happy couple understood little or nothing about God. Why were they being married in church and what was I doing in the middle of it? They wanted a traditional service in a photogenic setting and that’s it. Shame on me and shame on us. I will no longer perform a wedding for those who are not known to me to be maturing Christians committed to God’s will. If people in or outside our congregation want a religiously oriented civil ceremony, let’s not settle for that.

In service of that, young pastors should do what I didn’t?develop a theology of marriage. What do you believe Matthew 5:32 means? How does that passage and others that explain marriage and divorce impact your practice when an idealistic couple makes that initial appointment with you? Build some policies into your own ministry and into the practice of your church that don’t discourage marriage but which do make it a more sober covenant, not lightly entered into. And yes, I’ve led people to Christ during pre-marital counseling. That’s a fine reason to agree to pre-marital counseling. If that’s the plan, do at least a couple of sessions before deciding if you’ll do the ceremony. Take that decision seriously?meaning you sometimes must decline.

Exalt marriages that persevere?And let’s do more than let Walter and Nellie stand up to congregational applause on their 50th anniversary. How did they make it to 50? Some younger couple with budding relationship problems would be interested. Rather than let wise husbands and wives serve out their years of influence in the Adult XXVII Sunday School class, let them spend some time with newlyweds and 30-somethings. Isn’t that a value of multi-generational churches? They are more like families. I learned things never overtly taught from my grandparents and even some from my great-grandparents. I’ve learned things from some of my grandparents in the Lord over the years also. This can be arranged intentionally by wise church leaders without creating a new program.

Exalt the significance of covenant vows?One of the discouraging things all pastors face is hearing solemn vows made insincerely. Sometimes that breaking of vows will manifest itself as adultery, abandonment, passivity, or even abuse. Churches will often officially ignore the behavior or the problem but that’s not the same as saying no one notices. If Walter and Nellie are role models on their 50th, so are men who send their wives and kids to church each week alone. So are spouses who abandon their mates for some silly understanding of freedom or success. So are adulterers. The wandering spouses are examples and so are we who merely fidget and watch. Our children watch to see how important this is to us. Couples with problems watch to see what we do when the problems go somewhat public. Couples who don’t currently have problems watch to see how high their own views of marriage should be.

Yes, I’m referring to accountability, edification, and even discipline if need be. We’ll have weaker marriages, poorer children, and anemic family ministry so long as the things we say about marriage and during ceremonies are only theoretical. And we’ll wonder why our efforts aren’t bearing more fruit.

Exalt the significance of marriage at the end?Divorce is not an unpardonable sin. It’s not the worst of sins in its consequences. It is something the Lord hates, though. It is a sin, not just something that happens. It also has devastating consequences that go far beyond the couple in question. It is no more a part of love or mercy to be neutrally encouraging to a

Pushing discipleship at home challenging

Understanding the need for family ministry isn’t hard. Finding a way to do it, with so many ministry plates already spinning, may seem impossible. How do church leaders stop being the primary faith trainers of children and youth, and transition that role back into the homes? Have any churches done it? Can it happen without overhauling ministries?

For some churches, the solution might be as simple as finding a way to regularly remind parents to teach faith at home, and provide ideas and resources that make it easy to carry out. Other churches might take a more comprehensive approach.

Richard Ross, a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said that two years ago leaders from 18 churches venturing into family ministry assembled to talk about all the things they were learning. Ross noted some principals these church leaders felt could benefit those who might follow in their path:

>Empower a visionary champion?someone to take the lead.

>Establish new success measures. What gets measured gets done.

>Build on the existing church vision.

>Build into the existing church calendar.

>Use a home lens for everything (rather than making a new ‘silo’).

>Regularly invite families to commit to teaching faith at home.

>Develop a culture of family intentionality.

>Customize to fit the different kinds of families in the church.

>Invest in tools for families. Start where you are and build.

“None of this will go anywhere if the ministers in the church with children at home are not setting the pace,” Ross counseled. “You can fool the people for a while, but not forever. Leaders who nurture warm heart connections with their children, transparently share their faith and pray deeply with those children, and who genuinely live out the Way in front of those children?offer our best hope to see the people in the pew do the same thing.

In recent years, several Texas churches have pioneered their own effective strategies to lead their families back toward practicing the Deuteronomy 6:4-9 mandate. Some of those strategies are:

FAMILY-EQUIPPING APPROACH

Philosophy: The family equipping model maintains a traditional age-graded program structure while calling parents to the task of spiritually training their children at home, and providing resources to assist them.

Example: LakePointe Church in Rockwall uses the family equipping approach. Under the leadership of Kurt Bruner, pastor of spiritual formation, the church launched HomePointe in 2008. At a HomePointe kiosk prominently located in the church’s lobby, families can find a number of helpful guides and instructional items to help them take incremental steps to teach faith at home.

Bruner noted that the primary fruit they are seeing from HomePointe is “a proactive culture of family intentionality, increasing the likelihood our people will: (1) create a life-long, thriving marriage; (2) introduce their young children to Christ in the context of the home; and (3) launch their teens as devoted followers of Christ.”

FAMILY-BASED APPROACH

Philosophy: A family-based approach maintains an age level- and interest-driven program while providing training events for parents and activities to help bring families together.

Example: Bannockburn Baptist in Austin sets each of their programs in a family context. Each age-group minister is charged with equipping parents to equip their children and teens. The pastor to singles emphasizes faith and home in ministry to singles, preparing them to succeed. A legacy conference held each year for senior adults charges them to pour into the lives of future generations.

Philosophy: The family-integrated model rejects age-segregation, to conduct ministries using intergenerational discipleship.

Examples: Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring is a flagship church for the family integrated strategy, led by pastor Voddie Baucham. In his book “Family-Driven Faith: doing What it Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters who Walk With God,” Baucham outlines four distinctives of the family-integrated church: 1) Families worship together, 2) no systematic segregation of ages, 3) evangelism and discipleship take place in and through homes, and 4) an emphasis on education as a key component of discipleship, often through homeschooling. A similar approach at Ridgewood Church in Port Arthur is described by Pastor Dustin Guidry in his book “Turning the Ship: Exploring the Age-Integrated Church.”

START SIMPLE
The aforementioned strategies are just a few examples of the more thorough approaches church leaders could consider in leading families to do faith at home. For church leaders looking for some quick and easy ideas to begin directing the hearts of parents to children, Ross offered these suggestions at a family ministry conference at Southwestern Seminary:

Daily: Remind parents to pray daily with and for their children. Encourage them to daily live their lives demonstrating truth for their children—to speak truth every day as they walk in the way.

Weekly: Encourage parents to sit down in their homes at least once per week and talk about Jesus. Ross cautioned, “We have to instruct them how to do that,” recommending a role-playing demonstration. Ross said if they see it demonstrated, people realize, ‘That isn’t that hard. I could do that!’”

Monthly: Invite parents and families to do service and missions once per month as a family.

Yearly: Provide families opportunities for missions and service away from home. Encourage them to spend one day of their family vacation doing a service project.

WHEN PARENTS WON’T
In a perfect world, all children and youth in church ministries would have parents who faithfully attend church and desire to instruct their children spiritually. In reality, many kids come to church without their parents, and many parents are happy to let the church take on the role of primary faith trainer. What is the church’s role in these situations?

SBTC church ministry associates Lance Crowell and Ken Lasater agree that churches must continue reaching out to non-believing parents.

“Even if they [the parents] are lost, equip them and challenge them to provide training to their child,” Lasater said. “Tell them and help them understand that God’s instruction is that they bear that responsibility. Even lost parents can become a part of their child’s spiritual development, even if they don’t fully understand the process.”

“Turning up the volume” through sermons or other teachings is what Lasater recommends for helping parents within the walls of the church begin to reclaim their responsibilities for nurturing their own children spiritually.

Crowell added: “There are many contexts where really there are no parents or they are repeatedly uninterested. In my opinion, I do not think at that point you stop trying to reach them, but you do need to move forward with developing the students. I believe that a changed student can be one of the greatest catalysts for reaching the adults.”

Crowell noted that the family-integrated model encourages other families in the church to pour into the lives of those children who do not have a good influence at home.

But Crowell said the most natural help for students without spiritual nurturers at home is the student minister.

He said, “If the parents in the church are doing what they are called to do in their own homes, then the student minister is freed up to reach new students and to love on those without parents more and help in their development.”

How do we get there?

As the family ministry wave builds momentum, more and more church leaders are beginning to deliberate over how to lead their families to become Deuteronomy 6 families where discipleship takes place daily, “along the way?as you lie down, and as you rise up.”

In those efforts of deliberation, Lance Crowell, church ministries associate for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, said, “We just want to be there to help churches in any way that we can.”

Crowell invites church leaders as well as families to take advantage of the SBTC’s first Family Ministry Conference, May 7-8 at First Baptist Church of Keller. Breakout sessions are planned for couples, for single parents, for church leaders, for parents of both young children and of teens.

“We are also so very excited to provide a complete track designed explicitly for children and teens. The desire is to provide a family-friendly event to encourage and challenge every member of the family,” Crowell said.

The theme of the 2010 conference is “Great Commission Families: Transforming the Church One Family at a Time.”

Citing Matthew 28:19-20 as the theme passage, Crowell stated the conference objectives: “We want to help leaders and churches think through what it means for discipleship to take place in the home so families can then be on mission. We want them to think about this question for their families: ‘Are they being who they are called to be in the home and in the world, so they can be who they are supposed to be in the church?'”

Conference headliners include successful and experienced family ministry guides such as John Trent, Kurt Bruner and Ryan Rush. Presenters will impart the strategies they have implemented in order to flesh out the concept of family ministry and help attendees begin to plot their own courses. Well-known worship leader Dennis Jernigan will lead in family praise and worship.

Trent, who will bring the keynote address, is a prominent psychologist and popular conference speaker. With over 25 years of work devoted to the family, he is founder of the Center for Strong Families and strongfamilies.com, and the author of several best-selling books including “The Blessing,” and “The Language of Love.”

Formerly with Focus on the Family, Kurt Bruner is the pastor of spiritual formation at LakePointe Church in Rockwall and oversees Homepointe, a ministry that provides resources and ongoing accountability to teach and encourage discipleship in the home. He also works with Heritage Builders Association and the Center for Strong Families, and is the author of two resources for families: “Your Heritage” and “The Family Night Tool Chest.”

Pastor of Bannockburn Baptist Church in Austin, Ryan Rush presents “Home on Time” conferences based on his book with the same name, teaching families how to have control over their schedules and manage their priorities?in particular their walk with God. His church’s strategy called Faith Breakthroughs provides families with tools they need to “take ownership of God’s promises where they live,” according to Rush in his blog at ryanrush.com.

The cost of the Family Ministry Conference is $35 per person, or $40 per family. “An event like this is a great starting point,” Crowell said, “both for churches and for families.” For more information or to register, go to sbtexas.com/family or call Emily Gentiles in the SBTC office at 877-953-SBTC. For further help and resource suggestions, contact Lance Crowell at 877-953-SBTC.

Other valuable guides to help churches explore family ministry as recommended by speakers at the Connection Conference are:

? “Home-based Student Ministry: Leading a Student Ministry Focused on the Family” (Southern Baptists of Texas Convention 2009), by Ken Lasater. Lasater recounts his extensive research with parents whose children maintained a strong commitment to faith after leaving home. He then describes a discipleship strategy developed using his research in which the primary burden of discipling students is shifted from the student minister to the home. Student ministers would then encourage and equip parents to disciple their own teens, and focus primarily on providing meaningful ministry and leadership development opportunities for teens.

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