3 Family Ministry Models

During Christmas Break, my mind has been swirling on Family Ministry models.

Why?  Well, first, I’m preparing to teach a class in Children’s Ministry in a couple weeks.  Secondly, I am consulting with my home church in the children’s ministry area and have been thinking a lot about the suggestions I should make.  And third, Jennifer and I have been discussing our own personal views on family ministry models in light that we have two preschoolers living in our house.  How are we being equipped to disciple them? Are we thinking carefully about their spiritual standing before God?

There are really three major Family Ministry models floating around.

1.  The Family Integrated Model – which removes all age-graded ministry to preschoolers, children and teenagers.  This model encourages families to worship together, fathers to lead and disciple their families, and children to be involved in all aspects of the church alongside their family (e.g., missions, discipleship, worship, giving, prayer, etc).

2.  The Family Based Model – which keeps preschool, children and youth ministry segments in the church led by paid ministers and caring adult volunteers (which might be parents), but offers many intergenerational opportunities for families to engage together.  This model is probably the most prevalent in America being that most churches have youth ministries and more and more are forming established children’s ministries.

3.  The Family Equipping Model – keeps preschool, children and youth ministry segments in the church but encourages parents to lead the vast majority of these areas.  The paid staff and adult, non-parenting volunteers are there to minister to the “spiritual orphans” and to equip, coach, encourage, and guide the parents as they disciple their children.

We have really come to love the Family Equipping Model.

As a former youth minister, I recognize the mistakes I made in the Family Based model.  No matter how much I wanted my parents to be spiritually involved with their students, they saw me as the primary discipler of their children.  For them, I was seminary-trained, younger, and more qualified to discuss spiritual matters.  Many of my believing parents did not see themselves qualified to teach or disciple themselves, much less their children.

I love the Family Equipping Model for two primary reasons.  First, it puts parents in their proper place as the primary spiritual leaders of their children.  Second, it allows the church and its ministries to build stronger families among Christian households and embrace spiritual orphans, as I was, when no believing prents are around.

Church ministries have no more than 100 hrs per year to disciple children. Parents have 3000+. Which is more effective?

Teaching Preschoolers the Meaning of Christmas

One of my goals this holiday season was to invent, find, and create numerous ways to teach my boys (ages 4 & 2) the real Christmas story.  Here are some of the ideas we came up with.

1. We watched the Nativity Story movie together as a family and discuss the events.  I did not show the scenes of Herod and the infanticide after Jesus’ birth.
2. We read the Christmas story in their kids’ Bibles nearly every night of December.  So much so, our 4 year old began asking for David and Jonah stories.
3. We attended Christmas eve worship together as a family and talked about the songs, the candles, and the story.
4. We made “Happy Birthday Jesus” cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus.
5. We watched all our videos with a Christian Christmas message – Veggie Tales, Charlie Brown Christmas, Really Woolly, and Hermie & Friends.
6. We made chocolate chip cookies to give to our neighbors.  We taught the boys that giving gifts to others show we love them.
7. We played with our toy nativity scene and retold the story over and over.
8. Each night during our bed routine, we sang Away in the Manager and Silent Night.  (We sang it so much the boys knew the words at the Christmas eve service).
9. We listened exclusively to Christ-centered Christmas CD’s.  We like 2 particular CD’s: WOW Christmas and church Christmas carols.

These are just a few ideas we have began to set up as traditions in our home.

What about Santa?

We really don’t talk about Santa in our house.  Not that we are afraid of the tradition, but we are cautious of deceiving our children.  They both know about Santa from preschool and friends, but we do not emphasize him in our house. We do have a book telling the story of St. Nicholas, Bishop in Turkey, who gave presents to others in remembrance of the gift God gave in Jesus.

We firmly believe in our post-Christian, postmodern culture we have to be proactive in establishing Christian traditions and thinking in our children.  We can’t leave it to our church (which is a great one) or to anyone else.  It is our task and our responsibility to train up our children in the instruction and admonition of the Lord.

Merry Christmas!