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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.”
