We have grown accustomed to ministering to children and youth in ways that are just not as effective as they are supposed to be; as a result, there is now a genuine movement of pastors and youth ministers asking themselves: Is what we are doing really effective in a lasting, biblical sense? This question applies not only to youth ministries in particular, but also to entire discipleship processes for children and youth.
There seems to be broad agreement that we have a problem. The way we structure our churches to impact children and youth needs to be re-tooled. “Family ministry” is a hot topic. Pastors in churches of all sizes are experimenting with new ideas. In many ways, we are at the early stages of what could be a gargantuan movement. What I want to explore here are some undergirding theological foundations for family ministry and the implications of these foundations for the church’s day-to-day ministries.
THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR FAMILY MINISTRY
The church is supposed to act like a family. The family provides a paradigm for how the church is to operate. Family language is frequently used in the Bible. God is our father. One of the evidences that we are in God’s family is that He disciplines us (Heb. 12:7). Relationships within the household of faith are to be family-like. We’re to deal with older men as fathers, with older women as mothers (I Tim. 5:1), and with others as “brothers” and “sisters.” Why? Because we are family.
Three of my six children are adopted. However, all six are my true children. All their last names are “Stinson.” In God’s family, there are husbands whose wives have rejected the gospel and vice-versa. Christ said, “Unless you love me more than sister or mother, you cannot be my disciple.” Some have to endure painful rejection from their biological families because of their allegiance to Christ. Yet they—like all God’s children—find their true family in God’s family. They have been adopted into God’s family and they are no less God’s children than anyone else. Every time someone is adopted into God’s family, it is our job to love them. They may not look like us or talk like us. Yet the Gospel calls us to live as one family from every tribe and nation and kindred.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE CHURCH AS OUR TRUE FAMILY
We must promote this vision in our churches. The problem is, many churches have developed a “silo mentality” in which the ministries are not related to each other, so inadvertently (and no doubt unintentionally) families are pulled apart. You’ve got women doing several mid-week studies, the men have their own activities, and the kids have their programs. We’re telling families to eat together, but if we participated in all the church activities we’d never actually betogether. We must move toward seeing parents as the primary disciple-makers of their children. This should not be that radical. Yet it is, because we have segmented the church and professionalized discipleship so much that we view age-focused ministers as the persons responsible for discipling our children!
If the men are going to serve the widows in the church, why can’t they do that with their sons? If the men’s ministry is more aware of the youth ministry, then they’ll also be aware of the young men who don’t have dads. And there are lots of them. We must cultivate an ethos in our churches that embraces the fatherless boys and says “It’s okay. We’ve got you covered.” Similarly, single moms need to be intentionally included in the church as their true family. Mission trips, meals, week-by-week interactions—at every level, churches must model healthy nuclear families while at the same time providing a true family for those whose families are shattered. More than a programmatic shift, this is a shift in ethos. If you are taking your 11-year old boy to a baseball game, there probably is another 11-year old who has never been to a game in his whole life. Bring him along; show him what a Christ-centered relationship between a father and son looks like.
CONCLUSION
We cannot support an atmosphere that fragments the family in the church – an atmosphere that turns the hearts of children away from their fathers and vice versa. At the same time, we must not isolate the persons who have been pushed aside by their earthly “father and mother” and have been adopted into God’s family. Family-equipping ministry is about turning the hearts of parents toward their children while, at the same time, turning the hearts of all believers toward their truest family members, those who have been adopted into God’s family.
