Perspectives on Family Ministry - Chapter 10

I was looking forward to this chapter. In this chapter, the other two contributors and spokesmen of the other two family ministry models that were presented in this book, as in other chapters for the other models, had the opportunity to raise questions and hesitations about this model. As I was reading through some of these questions, I couldn't help but think, "I feel like these guys are making excuses." I'll give you an example. In the response from Paul Renfro, Paul brings up the question of how would this model deal with negligent parents. Now first of all, I could find myself asking Paul the same question about his model (family-integration), and his answer could probably answer his own question. If you look past all of the surface questions/concerns, no matter how important or valid they might seem, you can find a common problem. The problem is that most people today have the tendency to fall to the temptation to become lazy in their relationship with Jesus. I'm guilty too, believe me! There may be some who read what I just wrote and begin vehemently defending themselves, saying, "I am NOT lazy in my faith!!!" That's all fine and dandy, I'm not writing all of this to start an argument (or maybe I am because I need this wake-up call as badly as anyone), but I've heard time and time again from parents, students, children, and even ministers that their relationship with Jesus is the most important thing to them. Yet they cannot even take the time to read His words which we have conveniently collected in our Bibles. They cannot take the time nor the energy to practice the spiritual discipline of fasting, let alone any other ones (Jesus never said "if you fast..." but "when you fast..."). The point I'm trying to make, is that a lot of the questions these men are having in this discussion of what the ideal family-life ministry model is, does not matter unless we are asking God to change the hearts of the very people who we have in our congregations (both young AND old). One might come back and argue, "Well Pat, we can't get the youth changed until we know the best way to reach them! And that's where this model talk comes into play!" I can here it know and you know what? Maybe they're right. My only concern is that if we are not careful and we get caught up in arguments and discussions about what models work the best and what ones don't (which isn't necessarily all a bad thing), we lose focus of the main reason of why we are discussing it. Our own pride over defending our model against theirs begins to creep into the picture, and distract us from our mission. We are all on the same team. Doug Fields said it best in Purpose Driven Youth Ministry, there is no such thing as the perfect model! I've said all this to try to express something that I've been learning a lot recently. If we communicate to the parents, youth, and the entire congregation what is expected of them by God in life, the stage is set. We cannot make other people's decisions for them. We cannot change the person's heart to make them more passionate about their responsibilities and to stop being negligent. What we can do is lay out what God wants, challenge anyone and everyone to follow suit, and help those who 'fall victim' to a 'party' or 'individual' who doesn't care. If a person refuses to do the things that God instructs them to do, it is now an issue between that person and God. I feel like the prophet Haggai is a perfect illustration of this. He couldn't change the hearts of the men to start rebuilding the temple, instead he just relayed the message that God gave him to relay. And what happened? The ones that returned from captivity eventually did what God asked and were rewarded for it.