7 Family Ministry Essentials

A Strategy for Culture Change in Children's and Student Ministries

Michelle Anthony, Megan Marshman

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781434709332
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christlicher Dienst

With decades of ministry experience, Michelle Anthony and Megan Marshman capture the guiding essentials of life-changing family ministry. These seven essentials for children and student leaders emphasize: 1. Empowering families to take spiritual leadership in the home
2. Forming lifetime faith that transcends childhood beliefs
3. Teaching Scripture as the ultimate authority of truth
4. Understanding the role of the Holy Spirit to teach and transform
5. Engaging every generation in the gospel of God's redemptive story
6. Making God central in every biblical narrative and daily living
7. Participating in community with like-minded ministry leaders 7 Family Ministry Essentials will energize and equip you with the practical steps, inspirational stories, and biblical foundation you need as you lead those in your ministry.

1

WHAT IF WE WERE INVITED INTO SOMETHING BIG?

A Look at the Family Ministry Movement

You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream.11

Les Brown

Every day, countless young people leave the church, and worse, they abandon their faith for something “more.” Why does this happen, and what can we do as leaders to help young people stay on God’s path? Create more programs? Use better curriculum? Provide stricter accountability to godly behavior? Perhaps, but first it is our responsibility to assess the ways we portray Christ’s call to faith.

If we want to form spiritually minded children and students who own a vibrant, lifetime faith, we must begin by looking closely in the mirror.

Leaders must recognize that we may have been led to believe faith is simply knowing the right information about Christ and acting with good behavior—and we may unintentionally lead others to hold that same wrong belief.

Intellectually we understand that faith is more than knowledge and good morals. We certainly desire for those we lead to possess a robust faith that impacts every aspect of life, and we hunger to see faith that transcends childhood belief into lifelong faith.

In order to accomplish these things in a new generation, let’s pick up that mirror and take a critical look for a moment. What do we actually do with our time, energy, and resources? Because if faith is simply about good teaching and proper behavior, then the church is a sufficient place for children and students to learn that. But if faith is that plus more—if it is understanding how to live out what we believe by the power of God’s Spirit, then the family (with spiritually minded parents) is the best place for that!

Fostering Faith That Lasts

If we are honest, what we say we believe and what we do often are not congruent. The physical building of the church and its abundant programs are often not adequate for fostering faith that lasts. And we were not the ones who came to this conclusion, either. Our youth did. They have been telling us with their absence and apathy for decades now.

Genuine faith is established when someone has a firm conviction (not just “good information”) and chooses to personally surrender all rights and privileges of his or her life in submission to God (not just “behaves well”). Both the conviction and the surrender in our lives involve a supernatural transformation God does within us as we choose to obey Him one step at a time. And often along the way, we misstep, which is why grace is such an important part of faith.

NEW WINESKINS

In many ways, making an intentional paradigm shift from “achieving proper behavior” to “a lifetime of faith formation from a surrendered heart” in the ministries for our children and students could be compared to Jesus’s words about embracing a new wineskin:

Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. (Matt. 9:17)

His original audience would have understood that a wineskin expanded during the fermentation process of new wine. This expansion occurred only when the bladder was fresh and pliable. Once expanded, it dried out. Putting new wine into an old wineskin caused the old skin to crack or burst open.

Jesus used this image to compare the prevalent religious system in His culture with the “new wine” He was about to pour out on the cross. The new wine was an opportunity for people to no longer have to “earn” a right relationship with God through observance of the law but rather to “experience” God in a relationship through the power of His Spirit, who was poured out after Christ’s death satisfied sin’s debt.

This paradigm shift in thinking (and acting) required a new understanding. The old ways of doing things were no longer useful for what was to come. In fact, those not interested in the new wineskin would lose out on drinking the new wine, which would usher in freedom and acceptance in a relationship with God.

BAG OF TRICKS

You may read that passage of Scripture and say, “Who would be foolish enough to pass up a new thing God is doing?” Well, in fact, I am. Perhaps you are too.

Perhaps you went into ministry with unbridled passion, or maybe you signed up reluctantly and then quickly found that nothing else would satisfy what you were created to do. Whether you were mentored or you stumbled upon your niche through trial and error, eventually all of us involved in ministry arrived at “what works.” I call it our “ministry bag of tricks.” The longer you have been in ministry, the bigger your bag! In our hearts, we want to see lives changed. We are passionate about it. We want to make sure we’re using the things in our bag that work. We get nostalgic. We remember the ways God used the things in our bag—they were the things we prayed for, and He answered. We get very comfortable with our old wineskin. After all, it has seen a lot of miles with us.

Then one day God’s Spirit begins to do a new thing; He wants to pour out a new wine. But we are skeptical. Why should we change? It’s always worked pretty well in the past, right?

The moment we are seduced by the things of old, new wine is not ours to taste.

THE COST OF LAYING IT DOWN

There are practical matters too.

“How will my church respond to this new wineskin?”

“What if my supervisor or pastor doesn’t agree with it?”

“What if I lose my job?”

Along with fear, insecurity can creep in.

For me (Michelle), I invested in the children and students in my church for many years. I was intent on faith formation as the goal. I was happy, content. But God was asking me to lay down my old wineskin completely.

God moved me to a new position at a different church. As I arrived, I was convinced that God wanted to pour out His new wine on this ministry, but I still warred against my raging insecurities.

As I took over the leadership of our children, youth, and families, I was tempted to show up on the first day with my big bag of tricks. Oh, was it ever big! There was hardly room in my office for me or anyone else when this trunk of treasures arrived.

History? I’ve got history—in fact, here’s a binder with event notes from over a decade ago, just in case.

Experience? I’ve got experience—here are my degrees, books, and events that I have planned in the past.

Ideas? Plenty of those—let me just find them here in this bag, somewhere. And don’t forget how many people have loved my ideas in the past. Just saying.

For some reason, my new staff didn’t care about my bag. Even worse was that in my heart, I knew none of it would work if God was going to pour out that new wine. Thirsty for what was to come, I put the bag aside. At first I kept it close, for security, but over time, it was all but eliminated from view. With the old wineskin finally gone, we were ready for what God had in store.

Together we watched as the new wineskin took shape, and we waited in anticipation and humility for God to fill us with what we needed. And He did! After more than twenty years of ministry to youth and their families, everything I was doing was new.

What an adventure! We prayed, and God responded—children, students, leaders, and parents were transformed.

The staff knew we needed a standard of measurement—not necessarily a review at the end of a lesson, weekend, or even quarter, but rather growth markers over the lifetime of a child’s faith. How might we perceive faith formation if our view extended further than next weekend?

In part, what we needed for this type of evaluation required the very thing we wanted to instill in our children in the first place: faith. We needed deep-rooted, robust faith that God was at work in our ministries in order to succeed.

A MOVEMENT, NOT MERELY A PROGRAM

God is at...