When asked to provide a step-by-step process for implementing family ministry, Mark DeVries jokingly provided this progression: “Try something. Fail. Try something else. Fail again. Try something else. Stumble on one thing that works. Repeat what works. Try something else … you get the idea.” I appreciate Mark’s honesty and good humor, and there’s certainly […]
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Family Ministry: PROOF Pirates Book and Vacation Bible School Material
Chore charts. Report cards. Standardized tests. Athletic banquets. Kids are inundated with messages about their performance. Because performance—work and reward—is one of the basic structures of our lives, kids often grow up thinking, “I am what I am because of what I do . . . or because of what I’ve failed to do.” How […]
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Family Ministry: What If Your Child Is Far More Than Your Child?
An excerpt from my recent book, co-edited with Dr. John David Trentham, Practical Family Ministry
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Practical Family Ministry: A Book I’m Not Embarrassed to Beg You to Buy
You may have noticed that I have a new book out that I co-edited with my colleague Dr. John David Trentham. In Practical Family Ministry, we’ve brought together several practitioners to provide you with a plethora of practical ideas to strengthen your church’s family ministry. Sometimes, I’m hesitant to ask you to purchase a book that I’ve written […]
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Family Ministry: Three Truths and Three Tips for Engaging with Families in Your Church
The animated feature The Incredibles is a favorite movie in our household—and one of our favorite scenes is the family meal early in the film. Dinner at the Parr household has deteriorated into pandemonium. The infant squeals in delight at the chaos as two siblings engage in super-powered combat. A frazzled mom strains unsuccessfully to […]
[Read More...]Family Ministry: The D6 Conference Celebrates Six Years
D6 launched its first family ministry conference in 2009. Six years later, the D6 Conference has developed into a global community of leaders who are forming the future of family ministry. I’ve been privileged to partner with D6 since 2010, championing an environment where the church and home work together to shape the next generation. […]
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Family Ministry: Join Me for Free Dinner and Family Ministry Forum at D6 Conference in Louisville
Are you planning to attend the D6 Conference in Louisville? While you’re enjoying D6 Louisville, the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism, and Ministry at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary wants: * to take you to dinner, * to provide you with transportation to and from dinner, * to give you an opportunity to receive […]
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Family Ministry: The First Step Toward Launching Your Church’s Family Ministry
Strangely enough, the hardest first step toward family-equipping ministry for most churches is not an organizational step. The hardest step and the first step, when a church catches the vision for family ministry, is to draw the staff together to make sure that the staff is doing, in their homes, what they’re going to ask […]
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Family Ministry: How a Biblical Worldview Shapes the Way We Teach Our Children
To have a biblical worldview is to interpret every aspect of our lives—including our relationships with children—within the framework of God’s story. At the center of God’s story stands this singular act: In Jesus Christ, God personally intersected human history and redeemed humanity at a particular time in a particular place. Yet this central act […]
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Leadership: Three Crucial Priorities for Shepherd Leaders
This post adapted and abridged from The God Who Goes Before You, by Michael S. Wilder and Timothy Paul Jones (Nashville: B&H, forthcoming). ________ A couple of years ago, an individual who thought he might be called to pastoral ministry informed me, “I love to teach, and I want to preach—but I can’t stand people.” […]
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Family Ministry: Learning to Do Less So That Parents Can Do More
Parents in your ministry don’t have time to disciple their children—or, at least, that’s the way many of them feel when they look at their weekly to-do lists. According to recent research in the field of family ministry, half of all church-involved parents have simply resigned themselves to the notion that their families are too […]
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Family Ministry: In Praise of Inefficiency
I saw something beautiful the other day while walking down Breckenridge Lane. In a front yard not far from my home, a young mother was removing a layer of leftover leaves from the fall in preparation for planting spring flowers—an ordinary activity in the middle of an ordinary day. What was extraordinary about this scene […]
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Family Ministry: Three Motivations to Avoid
Jason K. Allen, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has written recently on various facets of parenting. He encourages parents to avoid three specific motivations: ambition, fear and pride. He concludes: Parenting is the most enjoyable and exhilarating responsibility I know. I feel as though I am getting to create, invest, sculpt, build, and nurture […]
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Family Ministry: Training to Launch Your Church’s Family Ministry
Have you ever wondered how to promote a family ministry model in your church? Perhaps you’re just curious about what family ministry is all about. Whether you’re ready to dive in or just testing the waters, RightNow Media and I have partnered together to provide a practical online course to help those who might […]
[Read More...]Family Ministry: How Paul’s Teachings About the Family Apply Today
Not long ago, I shared with Christianity.com some thoughts about how Christians can apply Paul’s teaching in their homes. Paul established a priority-changing paradigm for marriages and families in Ephesians 5 and 6. He invited parents to view their task not simply as behavioral management but as gospel proclamation, viewing their children not only as […]
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Family Ministry: How Pastors Can Care for Their Children
Chap Bettis, executive director of The Apollos Project, previously wrote on ways in which church members can participate in the task of helping pastors shepherd their children. In a recent post, he directly engages pastors and offers practical ways to help them guard their children from church burnout and instill in them a love for the gospel […]
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Family Ministry: Caring for Your Pastor’s Kids
Chap Betts, executive director of The Apollos Project, provides a grace-saturated way to encourage your pastor and minister to his children. He states: “Too many children of pastors are casualties in the spiritual battle. After seeing the inner workings of the church, many do not want anything to do with the Lord or his people. […]
[Read More...]Family Ministry: Growth, Retention, and Gospel-Motivated Ministry
Sometimes, when a ministry makes much of Jesus and the gospel, the results do include numeric gains or stellar retention rates. Seven weeks after Jesus erupted alive from a garden tomb, three thousand women and men confessed Jesus as the risen Lord, and the congregation still kept growing (Acts 2:41–47). Before long, well over five […]
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Family Ministry: Family Discipleship in the Middle Ages and Reformation
With the dawning of imperial favor in the early fourth century and the crumbling of the Roman Empire in the fifth, the primary locus of Christian practice drifted from homes to dedicated institutional structures. Especially in the early Middle Ages, there appears to have been a loss of the ancient model for discipleship in families. […]
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Family Ministry: An Ancient Christian Perspective on Family Ministry
This model for family ministry not only began before Paul’s generation but also persisted far beyond the lifetimes of the first followers of Jesus. Didache and Letter of Barnabas provide summaries of Christian practices that date to the first and second centuries A.D. Both of these writings include an identical command for parents—a command […]
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