Tuesday/Thursday Book Club:
Perspectives on Family Ministry
Foundations for Family Ministry, chapters 4

Beginning with chapter 4, Jones begins to provide a foundation for family ministry.  The chapter serves as a lead-in for the four perspectives on family ministry presented in the chapter that follows.  Many churches think of family ministry in terms of “family counseling”–merely as a means to strengthen and salvage hurting families.  Others use “family ministry” to talk about church ministry as a whole.  After all, the church is the family of faith.  The family ministry perspectives presented in this book seek to provide practical models by which churches can equip the nuclear family to be the primary training ground for youth and children.   Jones defines family ministry as follows:

The process of intentionally and persistently realigning a congregation’s proclamation and practices so that parents are acknowledged, trained, and held accountable as the persons primarily responsible for the discipleship of their children.

He then gives a brief outline of the major perspectives reviewed in the remainder of the book.  One of the best things about this book is that the men who write the “perspectives” chapters are local church practitioners who have developed their philosophies within the trenches of ministry.  So, here is a brief overview of what is to come in the next few posts:

The Family-Integrated Ministry Model: Family-integrated ministry is by far the most radical.  In a family-integrated church, all age-graded classes and events are eliminated. There is no youth group, no children’s ministry, no age-graded Sunday school program.  The generations learn and worship together, and parents bear primary responsibility for the
evangelism and discipleship of their children.  Voddie Baucham, Jr., author of Family Driven Faith, has been the most vocal advocate of this perspective.

The Family-Based Ministry Model: In the family-based model, no radical changes occur in the church’s internal structure. The congregation still maintains youth ministry, children’s ministry, singles ministry, etc. What makes this model different is that the focus of each ministry shifts.  Students may still experience worship and small groups in peer groups, separated from other generations. However, each ministry sponsors events and learning experiences (with inter generational curriculum) that are intentionally designed to draw generations together. Mark DeVries pioneered this approach in his book Family-Based Youth Ministry.

The Family-Equipping Ministry Model: In the family-equipping model, many semblances of age-organized ministry remain intact. But the church leaders plan organize their ministries so that they champion the place of parents as primary disciple-makers in their children’s lives.   The church intentionally co-champions the role of both the church and the home in equipping students and families.  Two strong advocates of this perspective are Steve Wright, author of ApParent Privelege, and Bryan Haynes, author of the forthcoming book, Shift: What it takes to finally reach families today.

The three perspectives are not mutually exclusive.  There is overlap, but each perspective is nevertheless a distinctive approach?  Where does your church fit?  Have you adopted one of these models?  Are you somewhere in between?

Tuesday/Thursday Book Club:
Perspectives on Family Ministry
Family Ministry Assumptions, chapters 2-3

In his remaining introductory chapters, Jones give an overview of some assumptions that are common to leaders within the family ministry movement.  While there are varying views of how a family ministry should be organized (reviewed in the second half of the book), there are at least two common assumptions.  Here they are:

1. The task of training children in faith is too significant to be surrendered to professionals. Ministers, elders, and deacons should equip parents, but the task of training children (like the task of dating one’s wife) is too significant to be surrendered wholly to professionals.  From a biblical standpoint (Deuteronomy 6:6-7; Psalm 78:1-7; 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12; Ephesians 6:4; Colossians 3:21), parents are the primary faith trainers of their children.  According to the Barna research group, Christian parents commonly agree with this assumption, but the majority  generally rely upon their church to do all of the religious training.  According to the research, the majority of parents do not spend any time during a typical week discussing religious matters or studying religious materials with their children.  They do not feel equipped to do so.  Sadly, very few student  ministires are talking about how to partner with parents to disciple children.

2.  The “teenager” is a cultural invention. Believe it or not, the term “teenager” was never used until 1941.  Of course, the fact of adolescence is ancient.  After all, the book of Proverbs is written to address the young adolescent man.  But, according to Jones, the social function of the adolescent years changed during the latter half of the twentieth century.  “What emerged for the first time during these decades was a distinct adolescent culture that differed radically from the culture of parents and other adults.”  The teenage years were no longer viewed as an intermediary life-stage with adulthood as the goal but a distinctive “youth culture” or “orientation” that resisted movement toward adulthood.  The 20th century church responded (some would say accommodated) to this phenomenon with a preponderance of age-focused ministries.    They began as para-church ministries (the YMCA, Young Life, Youth for Christ) then church youth groups began to imitate the para-church ministry models.  Youth groups developed “their own distinct expressions of Christian community, disconnected from the faith of their mothers and fathers.”  The Family Ministry movement in its various forms seeks to address and deconstruct in various ways the departmentalizing and compartmentalizing of the church’s people.

So, what do you think?  Do you agree with these two assumptions?  How is your church addressing them.  More to come soon as I continue to work through Dr. Jones’ book.

More Tips and Encouragement from SojournKids:

• Tuesday Book Club: Perspectives on Family Ministry
• Thursday Book Club: Total Church Kids
• Tuesday Book Club: Chester and Timmis on “Youth Work”
  

Tuesday/Thursday Book Club:
Perspectives on Family Ministry
Confessions of a Well-Meaning Youth Minister

I’ve recently had the chance to meet Dr. Timothy Paul Jones.  We live in the same city, St. Matthew’s, KY (one of Louisville’s neighborhoods and the home of Sojourn’s newest campus), and we had a chance to sit down for coffee while we were in another city, Minneapolis, for the Children Desiring God conference.  Dr. Jones currently serves with the children’s and family ministry at Highview Baptist Church’s campus in  southern Inidana–which sort of makes Tim into Dr. “Indiana” Jones.  He also serves as Associate Professor of Leadership and Church Ministry at Southern Seminary.  Dr. Jones has recently edited a book entitled Perspectives on Family Ministry. It is slated to be published by B & H Academic this October, but Tim was kind enough to send me a preview copy.  I’ll be blogging through it for the “book club” over the next few weeks.  This first section, “Why Every Church Needs a Family Ministry,” chapters 1-4, gives Dr. Jones’ reflections on family ministry.  The second section, outlines and contrasts three contemporary views of family ministry from the perspectives of their advocates.

Confessions of a Well-Meaning Youth Minister, chapter 1

In his first chapter, Dr. Jones writes from his own experience as a youth minister, and he speaks to several major questions facing church’s today  Here are some of the key questions that he asks:

(1) Should “fun” be a priority in youth and children’s ministry? Jones quotes the mantra, “It’s a sin to bore a kid with the Gospel.”   Then he asks, “Is this statement true? How has this statement been applied in youth and children’s ministries? How have these attitudes affected ministries to children and youth?”  Mark DeVries has responded, “It might be more of a sin to suggest to young people that the Christian life is always fun and never boring.   Keeping teenagers from ever being bored in their faith can actually deprive them of opportunities to develop the discipline and perseverance needed to live the Christian life. It is precisely in those experiences that teenagers might describe as ‘boring’ that Christian character is often formed” (DeVries, Family Based Youth Ministry)

(2)  What causes so many youth ministers to quit? Jones observes, “For many years, youth ministers tended to remain only a year or two in the same congregation. In the twenty-first century, youth ministers are staying longer.”  A 2002 Journal of Youth Ministry survey revealed an average tenure for full-time youth ministers in each congregation of four years, seven months. The most frequent reasons given for leaving a church included inadequate salaries and conflicts with a senior pastor.  Why do you think so many youth ministers burn out and leave their posts?

(3) Is your youth or children’s ministry a one-eared Mickey Mouse? Like Mickey’s ear, is it only barely connected to the rest of the body?  Does it operate on its own–pursuing its own vision and philosophy apart from the vision and values of the church as a whole?  If so, what assumptions led your church to this point.  Jones suggests that one result of this ministry model is that “parents are not perceived as having primary responsibility for the spiritual growth of their offspring.“  How can we work together to correct this false assumption in our churches?  Jones asks, “Do your church’s programs and structures contribute more to coordination or to separation within each family in your church? How could your church do a better job of bringing families together?”

Before exploring Jones’ conclusions, how would you answer these questions?