The first family ministry book I ever read was Family-Based Youth Ministry by Mark DeVries. My first response was to reject family ministry as a preposterous idea in my particular context. It took two years for the struggles of ministry and the work of the Holy Spirit to change my mind.
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Family Ministry: A New Definition for Family Ministry (Part 3)
I delivered this paper on an expanded definition for family ministry in May 2017 at the HOUSE Conference in Australia, a conference sponsored by YouthWorks and themed around the intersection between family ministry and ecclesiology. This post is the third part of a three-part series. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 _____ A RENEWAL OF […]
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Family Ministry: A New Definition for Family Ministry (Part 2)
I delivered this paper proposing a revised definition for family ministry in May 2017 at the HOUSE Conference in Australia, a gathering sponsored by YouthWorks and themed around the intersection between family ministry and ecclesiology. This post is the second part of a three-part series articulating the need for a revised definition for family ministry. Part […]
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Family Ministry: A New Definition for Family Ministry (Part 1)
I delivered this paper proposing a revised definition for family ministry in May 2017 at the HOUSE Conference in Australia, a gathering sponsored by YouthWorks College and themed around the intersection between family ministry and ecclesiology. This post on a revised definition for family ministry is the first part of a three-part series. Part 1 Part […]
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Family Ministry: Remembering Who Your Children Really Are
Childhood identity theft. It’s a real thing. Thieves steal children’s Social Security numbers and then appropriate their financial identities for personal profit. “Children represent an emerging market for identity thieves who steal their Social Security numbers because they offer clean slates that can be used to commit fraud for years without detection,” one CPA has […]
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Family Ministry: Museum of the Bible, the One Trip to Plan for Your Family This Year
On November 17, 2017, the much-anticipated Museum of the Bible will be opening in Washington, D.C. with more than 40,000 objects on display in a 430,000-square-foot structure, three blocks from the Capitol Building. The collection includes artifacts from the time of Abraham, fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as biblical papyri and manuscripts, […]
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Blog: Most-Read Posts of 2016 and Plans for 2017
Around twenty-seven thousand people racked up nearly one hundred thousand views of this blog in 2016. If you were one of them, thank you! Since there are no advertisements on my site, I don’t profit from any of the content. And so, if you’ve profited from what I’ve written, please consider purchasing a book (or two […]
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Family Ministry: How Adoption Taught Me to Trust My Heavenly Father More
Thirteen years ago this week, we finalized the adoption of our first child. In the spring of 2003, a seven-year-old girl had struggled up the front steps of our home in Oklahoma, tattered vinyl suitcase clutched to her chest. In the room where we had wept so often for the baby that never came, I […]
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Culture: C.S. Lewis and the False Promise of Pornography
“We are fast becoming a pornographic society. Over the course of the last decade, explicitly sexual images have crept into…virtually every niche of American life,” R. Albert Mohler writes. “By some estimations, the production and sale of explicit pornography now represents the seventh-largest industry in America.” Pornography has become—as William Struthers has pointed out in his […]
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Family Ministry: Discipleship and Family in African-American History
A few months ago, I sat down with my colleagues Kevin Smith and Kevin Jones to discuss the dynamics of discipleship and family ministry in African-American communities. Rev. Smith is the executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland and Delaware. Dr. Jones is a scholar of the history of education and coauthor of the […]
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Family Ministry: The Radical Book for Kids
Do you want to cultivate your older children’s curiosity and shape their souls at the same time? Here’s a new book that will help you to fulfill both of those goals. As I flipped through page after colorful page in The Radical Book for Kids: Exploring the Roots and Shoots of Faith, one thought kept recurring […]
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Family Ministry: Caring for Your Pastor’s Children
Pastors’ children see the best and the worst of the church. My father served as a pastor throughout much of my childhood, and my oldest daughter spent her first several years in our household as a pastor’s child. Although I no longer serve as a paid pastoral staff member, I teach and preach frequently in […]
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Family Ministry: Teaching Your Children How We Got the Bible
This week, 480 years ago, William Tyndale was strangled to death and then burned. One of his offenses was the translation of the Bible into English from Hebrew and Greek—a capital crime at that time. Not even death, however, could stop the impact of Tyndale’s translations. The words that Tyndale left behind would reshape not […]
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Family Ministry: How a Parent’s Role Changes through the Stages of a Child’s Life
If you’re a parent, what’s your goal for parenting? My parenting purpose statement is simply this: Our purpose is to leverage our children’s lives so that people in every nation will receive multiplied opportunities to respond in faith to the rightful King of kings.
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D6 Conference: Planning Your Time in Louisville
Beginning tomorrow, hundreds of church leaders will arrive in the city of Louisville to attend this year’s D6 Conference. If you’re not familiar with D6, it’s far more than a conference; it’s a place where ministry teams can gather each year to learn, worship, pray, and strategize about how to embed God’s truth in the lives of the next […]
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Family Ministry: A Better Story for Your Parenting
Data and arguments aren’t the strategies that do the best job of convincing people to change their lives. What convinces people best is the promise of a better story than the one they’re presently living. That’s why every leader should be—in the words of R. Albert Mohler—a steward-in-chief of [the organization’s] story. … Leadership comes down […]
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Family Ministry: How to Minister to Families in Crisis
While I was participating in the D6 Connect Tour earlier this year, my friend Ron Hunter asked me to share some ideas about how to minister to children and youth whose parents don’t attend church. Bundled with an interview with Leneita Fix about serving families in crisis, D6 turned this conversation into a free resource […]
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Culture: Remembering Emmett Till
In September 1955, the bloated and broken corpse of Emmett Till arrived in Chicago. His mother identified his body and made the decision to leave his casket open for the funeral. “Let the people see what I’ve seen,” she told the owner of the funeral home, and the people did. What they saw changed the world.
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Family Ministry: The Best Tool to Filter Films for Your Family
My family and I enjoy movies—a lot. The problem is, there are many movies that, for us at least, are too riddled with unnecessary profanity and sexual innuendo to enjoy together. And, honestly, I know that I myself am unable to deal well with any sexual nudity in a film. Other Christians have different convictions […]
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Family Ministry: The Difference Between God’s Adoption and Ours
Thirteen years ago, my wife and I sat at a table in a cramped office that reeked of scorched coffee and mildewed carpet. By that point in our lives, we had journeyed for nearly two years on a long and difficult road toward adoption. While social workers shuffled around us, we pored over page after […]
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