The Church and Home: Partners and Parallels (Part II)
In last Monday’s post, we investigated what family ministry looks like in the home. We considered what the Bible says about the nuclear family, and how that theological truth affects our homes. However, family ministry does not stop there. While we may experience the most wonderful family worship in between the four walls of our homes, we’re missing an important component if our families and we are not integrated into the life of the church. For that reason, we now turn our attention to the church and how it operates as another family for us.
Church as Family
Though we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of understanding the family, there’s another side to the family ministry paradigm: the church—the family of God. As Mark DeVries writes, “Only the church and the family can provide Christian nurture from birth to old age—even death. Almost all other groups students are involved in are essentially orphaning structures, including parachurch youth ministries, schools, scouts and youth groups.”[1] This is not to denigrate youth groups, but instead to show that they’re ultimately not as powerful or as eternal as the family or the church. Notably, the family and the church are two divinely ordained institutions, communities through which God intends for us to become disciples. Therefore, as we seek to formulate our understanding of family ministry, these two institutions must remain primary.
The Family of God
The apostle Paul writes in Galatians 4:4-7,
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
For Christians, our primary identity is as sons and daughters of God. To put it another way, the church is the Christian’s “extended family of God.” As one author notes, “The church has greater potential than any other institution for serving as an extended family for isolated nuclear families and singles. And yet very few churches have effectively stepped into that role.”[2] To benefit fully from the connection between church and home, we must have a better understanding of the church-as-family.
Timothy Paul Jones writes,
The goal of church-as-family is to help God’s people relate to one another like a family. What this means is that the church nurtures members within a rich matrix of multi-generational relationships. Children and teenagers whose parents aren’t believers find their lives intertwined with mature men and women who become spiritual parents and grandparents. Married couples mentor singles. New parents learn child rearing form empty nesters. . . . Church-as-family ministry clearly recognizes that, inasmuch as I am a follower of Jesus, my family includes anyone who does the will of my heavenly father (Mark 3:35).[3]
What Jones notes clearly is that the church-as-family involves more than a parent discipling his or her child. Whereas family-as-church is generational discipleship, church-as-family encourages intergenerational discipleship. The church is the glorious family of God, and thus discipleship occurs across all age groups, stages of life, and family makeups.
Intergenerational Discipleship
One of the biggest concerns that I have about many current family ministry models is the blind spot that they can often create. If we’re not careful, focusing on family ministry can cause us to fail to see those students/children that come from non-Christian homes. This brings up a glaring question: how do we, in family ministry, disciple those who don’t come from Christian homes? The answer is simple, though its implementation can be difficult. For those students who don’t have a Christian family, the family of God becomes a family. In a manner, the church family “adopts” them in a way that encourages intergenerational discipleship. When this approach is embraced, the faith of even those who have been blessed with a Christian family will grow yet more robust, as they, too, are surrounded by mature Christian mentors and friends.
However, this method calls for a paradigm shift in the way we think of youth ministry.[4] In this kind of ministry, the youth would no longer be separated from the adults and educated by a rogue youth pastor and his band of merry men (or volunteers). Instead, as Mark DeVries notes, rather than being a “dangling appendage,” the youth would instead be “at the center of a web, a convergent community connected not only to him or her but also to each other.”[5]
Chap Clark has extrapolated much of what the church-as-family looks like, practically speaking, in his “adoptive” youth ministry paradigm.[6] While Clark, DeVries, and others have dealt with this paradigm more exhaustively, the average youth pastor should note several succinct important distinctions. For liability and discernment reasons, the local church must be careful in determining how intergenerational discipleship should look in their own context. A local church can never be too careful in protecting their children and their people from harm. Nevertheless, here are a few suggestions for how one might apply this model of discipleship:
- Shepherding Group: Within the context of your youth group, you may start what some have called a “shepherding group.” This is a smaller group of students that are mentored and cared for by an adult other than the youth pastor, perhaps a volunteer or parent. Encourage this leader to spend time with these students outside of church, meeting with them and mentoring them.
- Parent-child Activities: Take the opportunity to have father/son, mother/daughter activities. At one church in which I ministered, we had a father/son baseball game and a mother/daughter pottery night. Unexpectedly, the most wonderful thing happened. Those mothers of only had sons asked if they could “adopt” a girl in the youth group who didn’t have parents involved in church for the pottery night, and vice versa for the fathers. Mature Christian parents “adopted” our students to spend quality time with them.
- Intergenerational Activities: Lastly, you may start annual intergenerational activities. A favorite is to put on a Thanksgiving dinner for our elderly church members. Each student is encouraged to bring a side dish, with the church providing the turkey. While the food is good, the most poignant element is that students split up and sit with the older church members. Few activities, in my experience, have been more meaningful to both groups than this meal. The young students and older saints get to know each other on a deeper and more personal level.
Conclusion
Noting the struggle that many youth pastors face, one author wrote, “We haven’t found that silver bullet. While small groups, mentoring, justice work, and a host of other youth ministry programs are important, the reality is that the challenges of kids, ministry programs, and spiritual development are far too complicated to be met with a single solution. There’s no cure-all.”[7]
It’s true. Not any one ministry solution will fix all of your problems. But, as the church and family work together, we’ll start to see our students mature in their faith when the gospel is placed in the center and Christ is glorified.
DeVries writes, “There is no such thing as successful youth ministry that isolates teenagers from the community of faith.”[8] The healthy ingredients of any child’s spiritual formation are a godly family and the family of God. It’s not either/or, but instead a both/and. The family needs the church, and the church needs the family. When all is said and done, the youth pastor is at the center of that relationship—able either to encourage and exhort or to distract and deter. The youth pastor is providentially placed in a position that ought to bridge the gap between the home and the church. For effective and biblical youth ministry, the youth pastor must make the most of this relationship, helping the church and home partner as they walk in tandem.
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[1] Mark DeVries, Family-based Youth Ministry, rev. and exp. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004), 87.
[2] Scottie May, et al., Children Matter: Celebrating Their Place in the Church, Family and Community (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 170.
[3] Timothy Paul Jones, “Introduction,” in Practical Family Ministry: A Collection of Ideas for Your Church, Timothy Paul Jones and John David Trentham, eds. (Nashville: Randall House, 2015), 12.
[4] For those interested in the struggles of intergenerational discipleship, youth culture, and authority, see my article, “Let No One Despise You for Your Elders: The Resolution of Youthful rebellion and Elder Authority as Found in 1 Timothy,” D6 Family Ministry Journal, vol. 1 (2016): 149-61.
[5] Mark DeVries, Sustainable Youth Ministry: Why Most Youth Ministry Doesn’t Last and What Your Church Can Do About It (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2008), 144.
[6] See Adoptive Youth Ministry: Integrating Emerging Generations into the Family of Faith, ed. Chap Clark (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016).
[7] Kara E. Powell, Brad M. Griffin, and Cheryl A. Crawford, Sticky Faith: Youth Worker Edition: Practical Ideas to Nuture Long-term Faith in Teenagers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 75.
[8] DeVries, Family-based Youth Ministry, 103.
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