Family ministry

As a youth minister the last 4.5 years it has become increasingly obvious to me that in order for the youth ministry to be successful, in order for the church to he healthy there must be a focus on the health of the family.

Here are a couple of quotes from a family ministry class I am taking at LCU:

“The Postmodern church is facing a looming crisis of inconceivable magnitude. This crisis is the result of the subtle yet sweeping decision to shift the church’s primary task from building a strong, vibrant faith community that is called, empowered, and equipped to serve a lost, broken world to developing programmatic structure that separates and segments the church into small, generationally homogeneous, unconnected factions in order to keep pace with the Jones’ church down the street. Fragmentation is the most apt description of the postmodern church… The church has become a programmatic shell around which the various other ministries of the church loosely orbit.”

Pam Erwin quoting Chap Clark

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“It is a sad fact of life that often the stronger the youth program in the church, and the more deeply the young people of the church identify with it, the weaker the chances are that those same young people will remain in the church when they grow too old for the youth program. Why? Because the youth program has become a substitute for participation in the church… When the kids outgrow the youth program, they also outgrow what they have come to know of the church.”Ben Patterson

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I recently spoke with a friend who has been ministering to families and youth for more than twenty years and who has an obvious passion for families in the church. I was seeking his wisdom and counsel as I sorted through my own research and thoughts for this book. We discussed ways that churches might minister to families more effectively and what the needs of today’s families are. I also asked him what he felt was the biggest issue facing churches in their ministries to families. He said, “In most churches in America today, the ministries are detrimental to families. I call it ‘fragmentation of the family by design.’” As I processed my friend’s comments, I realized he was accurate in his assessment. Most of what we do in our churches, even when we call it family ministry, serves to disrupt, disconnect, and divide families. Through this book, I hope those of us in ministry will begin to think differently–to not only change the way we do ministry, but to change the way we think about ministry - Pam Erwin

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“Therefore, when I advocate that youth ministers take a hard look at the family, I am not suggesting that they take family ministry and add it as number sixty-three on the “when I have time” priority list. What I am advocating is an entirely different paradigm for youth ministry–a paradigm based not on how many kids we can get to meetings but on how effective we can be in leading young people to mature Christian adulthood. After all, is this not the reason we all immersed ourselves in youth ministry in the first place? It is time to return to a vision for this purpose. The day has arrived when leadership must courageously, and sometimes radically, take steps toward embracing the nurturing roles of the students’ nuclear biological family and spiritual extended family. The time has come for “parenting” rather than “orphaning” structures” - Mark Devries
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A couple of thoughts on the family:

I agree that the way we practice ministry in churches promotes the problem of fragmentation by generational groups. What would happen to our churches if we realigned our ministries to incorporate a sense of togetherness. For instance what if on Sunday morning Bible class we sent families to class together? And instead of keeping our kids out of the worship assembly we included them, what if service projects and mission trips were advertised and promoted as opportunities to serve in ministry together. A shift is needed in our churches, one that will capture the needs of families, one that paint a portrait of a real, vibrant faith community, and promote and an ongoing faith dialogue between parents and kids. I suspect that a lot of the families that our ministries currently service are not in constant faith dialogue with each other. What I mean by this is this, that moms and dads aren’t talking about the Word of God, that they aren’t looking for the work of God in the world, or can’t see it because of the busyness of their family calendar. Families are to busy, stressed, and tired, and relate to one another with en empty tank.

Any of y’all out there asking the same things? Or even thinking similar thoughts? How is your congregation ministering to the whole families?

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