Why is the concept of family ministry approaching it’s tipping point?
2008 February 18
Here’s a question for you all: Why does the concept of family ministry finally seem to be reaching it’s tipping point?
What is it about our American culture that makes it the right time for the Orange Conference and so many Christian leaders and publisher to begin rethinking how we do ministry? Can this be explained by Strauss and Howe’s generations theory? What is it?
I’m trying to wrap my mind around this issue, and I’m just not there. Thought?
It has been pushed for so many years from the outside or from the lowest rung in churches. The outside was the realm of parachurch and individual speaking ministries that frankly didn’t impose a “model” of ministry on the church but simply provided a seminar or small group study option. Family Life is one that exists currently but we can all recall “Growing Kids God’s Way” and others that sought to impose from without another model.
The groundswell within churches fell in odd ways as a SEPARATE division within the church rather than part of the design of Youth and Children’s Ministry proper. So the Family Pastor was simply another word for an Adult Pastor who oversaw the adults who happend to be families. Or it was another name tagged on to the Minister of Education or Christian Education Pastor who, in the new age of specialization (late 80s early 90s) had nothing to do and didn’t want to or couldn’t become the executive pastor they really were.
NOW, our Children’s Minister and Youth Minister are waking up to their logical role as minister to children “AND THEIR FAMILIES” or minister to youth AND THEIR FAMILIES and meeting the need. BUT, and here is where the new pardigms of family ministry in the local church will run into a problem, families are way too different to select a model of ministry to group everyone into. Even Orange and Reggie and 252 Basic is not for everyone (as their PRACTICE certainly has pointed out) and will have an unintended side effect of discouraging every family from participating simply because all families are different.
I don’t see a tipping point, but simply a marketing move from within that cannot be sustainted. I really see Family Ministry leading back to the overriding ministry model of an Executive Pastor concept rather than the push to adopt one method of “family” over another.
Currently churches provide practical help for families in so many ways: Counseling, education, socialization through activities, monuments. I still like the model Ben Freudenberg and Rick Lawrence wrote about 10 years ago in “The Family Friendly Church” where our churches should be HOME BASED, CHURCH SUPPORTED rather than CHURCH BASED, HOME SUPPORTED.
Orange appeals to churches that have not had this conversation (new churches, recently planted churches, etc.) or pastors who are revamping a need to come along side parents. But the PRACTICE is more of a weekend PRODUCTION where parents are in the audience for what the Church has spent the week rehearsing for, complete with a substantial take-home piece. But there is frankly not a better EFFECT for this activity that is any different from our predominant model of specialization in ministry.
This is a gripping concept, and for proof of what is REALLY occuring with family ministry, visit one of these churches and see if what they are DOING (not writing, but DOING) is truly different.
Dr. Michelle Anthony at Rock Harbor Church in Costa Mesa and the Director of Family Ministries will be presenting what I think will be a helpful rundown of Paradigms of Family Ministry at our North American Professors of Christian Education conference in Atlanta on Oct. 16 – 18. It’ll be interesting to hear what these are.
In my church the conversation is centering more around how we can support parents and families in the normal daily routines of life, rather than how can we simply change to a weekend family-focused production which is strictly located on campus. We really aren’t sure where we ultimately fall within the possible mutations of the family-focused models (and we certainly don’t want to forget those, like myself, who are not in families), as we (a 50+ year-old declining church) are completely rethinking how we do church so that we become effective again in reaching the lost, plus retool our effectiveness in discipleship. We have even been approved by the membership to temporarily suspend part of our by-laws in order to give us permission to have these kinds of conversations. It is going to be an interesting ride.
Here is an article by Tom Erwin of Grace Church in Edina, Minnesota. He gives his take on family ministry models.
http://www.familybuilders.net/Leadership_Network_Resources/models_for_family_ministry.htm
John Erwin is now at Yorba Linda Friends Church and he shared this view back in the mid 90s because he felt that this was the future and the trend. Unfortunately, churches don’t staff the way he’d prefer and he is now the Executive Pastor and still a great guy! The disconnect (even Reggie Joiner is no longer at NorthPoint) between what we THINK and how church boards and senior staff ACT are often counter whatever viewpoint we come to believe passionately in.