Dear Youth Pastor,
I have been impressed with your ability to keep my child busy while I do “adult” church. Thank you for teaching my child how play messy games and to pull random things out of his pockets for a prize. I appreciate all you do.
Yours Truly,
Mrs. Church Parent
Obviously this is a “make-believe” letter. However, the church has somehow found itself in a strange place. This generation of youth parents has been programmed to rely on programs. The issue of who disciples my child is at the forefront of youth ministry today.
So this post is for youth pastors, who are seeking to change the culture of their perspective faith community.
Let’s look at some ways to get the “Family Discipleship” ball rolling in your church community.
Prayer
Pray for your church leadership
This includes but not limited to: Pastor, Worship Leader and Children’s Director
Pray that the leadership of the church catch the vision of family ministry
Pray for the families represented in your faith community
Pray for parents to receive the direction you are trying to lead them in
Pray for the students to be bold when asking parents to lead
Pray for wisdom
Wisdom is much more than having knowledge about family ministry.
Wisdom is putting that knowledge into practice through picking the right leaders, presenting the right material and equipping families.
Get the Pastor on Board
The first person to have on your support team is the Pastor.
Youth Pastor it is time to leave your preconceived notions at the door, your pastor must be the first person on your team. Without the pastors support there is no balance for your ministry.
Model it
If your family is not involved in a family discipleship plan(FDP), forget about getting others on board.
FDP involves the following:
Prioritize it
Schedule it
Apply it
Encouragement
Involve other families
Seize it
Plan for it
When recruiting your team of youth volunteers, recruit the parents!
Parents need to see the value of being present
Plan your yearly activities with the family in mind
Keep your ministry Family friendly
Small Group
Start a small group of parents/families
Teach the principles of family discipleship from Scripture
Once you begin to change the mindset of parent, and they have ownership in family discipleship, the will begin to tell other parents about the vision of family ministry.
This post has been a collaboration of Ryan Marcum and Brian Smith. We are Youth Pastors exploring Family Discipleship in the local church. This is an on-going list and would love to hear from you! Leave a comment.
Please keep the conversation going. I’m in year 9 of such ministry and am reaping its fruits.
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for putting together some thoughts for pastors and parents wanting to change the spiritual direction of families.
This past year, in recongnition of this same need, The Shelby Kennedy Foundation has sought to provide the parents with Family Discipleship materials as a part of the National Bible Bee, currently in its second year and with a completely different focus. Sure we host an optional contest for our youth participants at the end of the Summer, but we are far more interested in coming along side of families and providing them the resources they need to disciple their own children. We do this by balancing the emphasis across Bible knowledge, Bible memory and prayer. The Bible knowledge component provides an inductive Bible study written at the appropriate age levels for the child (7-10 yo; 11-14; 15-18) as well as an adult level study, that all track at the same pace through one book of the Bible over the course of the Summer (12 weeks). We also provide some discussion questions to the parent to use during the weekly Family Bonfire Time (a consistent discussion time led by the parent(s) including the whole family).
We have received volumes of positive feedback from not only parents but from churches desiring to have their families all studying the same book at the same pace in age appropriate material.
I hope this may be of some help to a family or church that doesn’t have a plan yet but is desiring to go down this road.
Thanks Brenda! I believe Family Ministry will be at the forefront of seminaries and publishers. I only wish churches as a whole would embrace family ministry.