Family at the heart

When we study the Bible, we see that the family was at the very heart of the covenant God made with Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3). God would bless Abraham so that, in turn, all the families of the earth would be blessed.

Deuteronomy 6:1–9 reminds us that we are to love the Lord with all of our being, and to teach His commands to our children while we eat breakfast, while travelling in the van to soccer, and when we tuck them in at night – in other words, in the reality of day-to-day life.

The average children’s pastor/worker has approximately 40 hours a year to impact a child in their faith journey. A parent has over 2000 hours a year (not counting sleep time, school time, and so on) to impact that same child in their spiritual formation.

Now more than ever, the church has to re-think its approach to ministry to families.

Making a shift

In the past few years we at Forest Grove Community Church, Saskatoon, have been trying to do just that. At the very core of this philosophical shift has been the conviction that our role as a church is to help parents become the spiritual leaders of their kids – not the children’s pastor, not the youth pastor, but parents!

We have made some intentional and significant shifts in order to work toward this goal. These include:

• Merging children’s ministries with Jr. high and Sr. high under the umbrella of Family Ministries, with a spiritual formation plan that extends from the youngest child to Grade 12.
• Encouraging parents, and providing opportunities for them to become more involved in church programs with their kids – from youth socials, to intergenerational short-term mission trips, to Sunday morning programs.
• Providing an interactive and innovative program for the whole family called Kidstuf: “where children take their parents to learn.” Kidstuf is a 45-minute program that uses drama, music, humour and a Bible story. (We use some of the curriculum developed by Reggie Joiner at Northpoint Church in Atlanta, and have developed some of our own.)
• Teaching, through biblical values, one virtue (such as patience, courage, wisdom) per month. This provides consistency throughout Family Ministries and a context for the Bible stories and memory verses of that month.
• Providing easy-to-use resources for parents to help them talk about the virtue of the month and apply it in their lives.

The Sunday component of our focus on ministry to families and equipping parents to be the spiritual leaders of their children looks like this: Children ages two to grade 6 attend the worship part of the morning services and are then dismissed to their small group times (Sunday school) where they learn the Bible story in a creative way and learn to apply it through various activities. They (and their parents) then participate in Kidstuf.

Families are given “virtue paks” which have GodTime cards (family devotionals), questions for dinner time conversation, family application tools and activities, and information on how to apply the virtue.

Transformation

One word that stands out as we reflect on this last 12 months has been “transformation.” Families have had the incredible opportunity to have shared experiences learning the truths of God. Children wake their parents up to go to church on Sunday mornings. Some gather the whole family in for devotions. Families are coming into the church from our community.

Most kids have a deep desire to connect spiritually with their parents. And most parents have a deep desire to connect spiritually with their kids. Many simply don’t know how. Plus, our busy lives and the structures within our schools and broader culture continually separate parents and children.

We have so much yet to discover on this journey, but we are learning that the church’s potential to affect the heart of a child or youth is directly linked to its strategy to involve the parent. We want to continue to find the most effective ways to help families in their spiritual formation.