God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

Tim Jones offered this seminar for Children Desiring God this morning. It is based on his forthcoming book Perspectives on Family Ministry.

*               *               *

Doing Family Ministry: Real-Life Ministry Models for Real-Life Churches

God commands us in the Scriptures to make the family the fundamental context of discipleship (Deuteronomy 6:4-8; Malachi 4:6; Ephesians 6:4).

Problems in the Church with Family Ministry

1) Parents, especially fathers, have become disengaged from the task of discipling children.

2) Most churches have not consistently expected or prepared parents to disciple their own children.

3) Adolescence is perceived as a developmental ideal instead of as a period of preparation for mature adulthood. It's a recent social construction in which responsibility is minimized and indulgence is maximized, and a lot of our church models have been built around it.

What Do These Problems Look Like?

• The youth group is barely connected to the congregation.
  
  
• The separate aspects of the church's family ministries operate in relative isolation from one another.

What Needs to Change?

Every church is called to some form of family ministry. This doesn't mean just adding one more program.

Rather, family ministry is the process of intentionally and persistently realigning a congregation's proclamation and practices so that parents—and especially fathers—are acknowledged, trained, and held accountable as the persons primarily responsible for the discipling of their children.

3 Models of Family Ministry

Family-Integrated Model - says that the way to make the family the primary context for discipleship is to get rid of all the separate ministries. Some churches are called to this model, but not all churches.

Family-Based Model - says to keep all the same ministries that are already going on but to make them do some additional, intergenerational things together.

Family-Equipping Model (Jones' favorite) - the entire congregation embraces shared responsibility to move children toward spiritual maturity. Church and family work together to set spiritual milestones to move the children toward mature Christian adulthood.

4 Assumptions Behind the Family-Equipping Model

1) God has called parents to serve as primary disciplers of their children.

2) The church is responsible to look after "spiritual orphans" while passionately seeking to disciple their parents. If a church has nothing for the single mom, then it's model is deficient. There must be a conscious process for taking care of children whose parents are not present or not involved.

3) Where God's kingdom makes itself present, generations are drawn together, not driven apart. Do the youth in your congregation know the older members? Do they care when the 90-year-old member dies?

4) What you do for God beyond your home will typically never be greater than what you practice with God within your home.

How Does It Work?

1) You must acknowledge that the family has the primarily responsibility of discipleship. Most parents are just ignorant of this, not openly rebellious against it. So we need to preach this responsibility and mention it in our new member classes, etc.

2) Hold the parents, especially the fathers, accountable.

3) Provide opportunities for the family to do ministry together (i.e. taking a mission trip together where the fathers end up leading their own families).