Family Ministry is currently comprised of three workable models. The Family-Integrated Ministry model is characterized by its removal of age segmented activities with all families, infants to parents, worshipping together. The Family-Based Ministry model maintains the age segmented programs and activities of most churches, yet intentionally provides curriculum, activities, and events designed to draw the generations together. The Family-Equipping Ministry model may retain youth ministry and the Sunday School hour, but every activity and function of the church is focused on championing the parents as the primary disciple-makers in the children’s lives, while at the same time the parents recognize and embrace the church as an active partner in the process. At The Journal of Family Ministry, and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, we are training ministers in the Family-Equipping Model, but we believe we can learn from other models which have similar goals.
Read more about the three models in “Perspectives on Family Ministry”.
Contributed by Brandon Shields
Dr. Brandon Shields is the teaching pastor at First Baptist Church, West Palm Beach, Florida. Dr. Shields has established himself as the spokesperson for the Family-Based model of church ministry. Read more about the Family-Based model as well as other helpful insights in “Perspectives on Family Ministry”.
Continued from previous post.
The Family-Equipping model is a biblical, strategic, and helpful philosophy in many respects. Men like Jay Strother, Steve Wright, and Patrick McCrory, who are some of the leaders of this emerging movement, are godly husbands and fathers who love families and are deeply committed to the local churches they have served for decades. Thus, I think it would be naïve, short-sighted, and tragic for those in a Family-Based ministry context to fail to take advantage of the collective wisdom offered in this new paradigm of ministry.
There are at least three concepts that the Family-Based model can learn from those in the Family-Equipping camp: their pioneering spirit, their rigorous insistence on discipleship through partnership, and their commitment to organizational alignment.
A Pioneering Spirit
There is a certain love for pioneers that is built into the American ethos. I remember as a young child being enraptured by the stories of brave men and women such as Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, and Davy Crockett, whose fearlessness and courage inspired generations of young people to “go West” in the early years of our country’s history.
Similarly, those in the Family-Equipping movement are modern-day trailblazers in local church youth ministry. Refusing to simply ride the ebbing tides of culture or get shackled by tradition, these churches are asking tough questions and making tough calls in an effort to remain biblically faithful AND culturally fruitful in a culture that has changed remarkably in the last fifty years. Family-Equipping churches acknowledge major “cracks” in the predominate models of youth ministry, and I think it is admirable that they are willing to take such radical measures to give legs to their convictions.
Discipleship Through Partnership
After surveying both his own experience and youth ministry literature, Strother summarized the heart of the issue: “We have developed ministry models failing to call parents to embrace their role as primary disciple-makers in their children’s lives . . . The home has the greatest impact on young lives; with few exceptions, if we fail to impact the home, we will never make a lasting impact on students.”[1]
Rather than promoting competition between the church and home, the goal of Family-Equipping churches is “discipleship through partnership.” They utilize every environment in the church (adult small groups, worship services, expectant mothers fellowships, etc) as an opportunity to “co-champion” church and home as vital partners in the discipleship of children. These churches also resource parents through training, materials, and practical biblical instruction as they attempt to lead their children to Christ, bring them to maturity, and model the gospel through everyday living. Neither institution is sufficient in and of themselves for this task - both need each other to accomplish the task biblically and successfully.
Organizational Alignment
One of the most attractive aspects of the Family-Equipping model, at least in my estimation, is the intentionality with which they seek to align every piece of the church’s organizational structure with this “discipleship through partnership” concept.
If there is one major weakness in a Family-Based ministry context, it is an inability to strategically align resources in an effort to maximize parent-child discipleship. Strother rightly criticizes this flaw in his response to my article on Family-Based ministry: “Family-based churches are good at adding programs and events to their plates, but few are adept at moving things off those plates. It is typically only a matter of time until the plate becomes so full that something gets dropped, and what gets dropped is often the primacy of the ministry to parents.”[2]
Family-Equipping churches, at least in theory, do an incredible job of aligning and streamlining staff, budgetary resources, ministry strategies, and programmatic offerings toward the purpose of partnering with parents to disciple their own children. Starting with the senior pastors, these churches have developed a common vision, a coherent philosophy, and a consistent vocabulary that is shared by the entire church congregation. Rather than viewing family ministry as an appendage, the Family-Equipping model has built an organizational culture where discipleship through partnership is integrated into every venue of the church’s enterprise.
Post 3 of 4. Read Post 01, 02, 04
Dr. Brandon Shields is the teaching pastor at First Baptist Church, West Palm Beach, Florida. Dr. Shields has established himself as the spokesperson for the Family-Based model of church ministry. Read more about the Family-Based model as well as other helpful insights in “Perspectives on Family Ministry”.
[1]Renfro, Paul, Brandon Shields, Jay Strother. Perspectives on Family Ministry(Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2009), 142-143.
[2] Ibid., 130.
