Well this is the last chapter of Family-Based Youth Ministry and my final post for this class. It's been a lot of fun and very helpful to learn, write, and figure out more about family life ministry through these texts and posts. The last chapter in this book is titled "Making it Work: Implementing a Family-Based Youth Ministry." This chapter was the chapter that ever person reading this book and every person in ministry wanted and wants to read in this kind of book. This chapter deals with how to actually administer and implement the family-based ministry within their churches. I liked what DeVries had to say in this chapter.
"...I am talking less about establishing specific programs and more about creating an ongoing ethos (what might be called a "new normal") in the ministry." (Pg 176)
"Family-based youth ministry is not, strictly speaking, a "model" but rather a foundation that every youth ministry needs to ensure its long-term impact." (Pg 176)
I think this is one of the beauties of the family-based ministry philosophy. The fact that it isn't a model in itself but a philosophy, allows the idea of allowing the entire family to be ministered to together. I love that since it isn't a model in and of itself, you can still use a specific model if you want to, and implement a family-based philosophy within it. I personally still think that the family-based might be the easiest and the most effective philosophy of the three presented within the Perspectives book that I mentioned and discussed earlier. However, I think that if you are wanting to reach the most Biblical and the most effective philosophy of the three, I believe that the family-based one is only the beginning. The family-equipping goes beyond what family-based begins and helps create opportunities for parents to catch the vision of, understand, accept, and fulfill their Biblical mandate to be the primary disciplers of their children.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Family-Based Youth Ministry Chapter 11
So we’re back in the book Family-Based Youth Ministry by Mark DeVries. The title of this chapter is “God Calling: Thinking Theologically About Youth Ministry”. I found myself really beginning to think through what I believe regarding families and the church as the extended family and the priority that each should have in a person’s life. The two quotes from DeVries that really stuck out to me were:
“As disciples of Christ, our ultimate goal (our “chief end”) is not limited to our own personal growth. That goal is much too small. The glory of God and our enjoyment of God come first for the Christian. Our own spiritual growth is a natural outgrowth of learning to glorify God” (Pg 163)
“…the nature of the life of discipleship involves a practical commitment to a specific community of faith.” (Pg 164)
As I was sitting here thinking about these two quotes from DeVries, I started to really think about if the priorities that I have been hearing all around me while growing up are truly biblical. How serious are we about the only thing that matters most in this life being a person’s relationship with Jesus? What if that began to interfere with a person’s relationship with his or her family? The point that I find myself wrestling with a lot right now, is just how important ministry is. I have been around the argument about where the church should be in relation to the family in the order of personal priorities, but what if you are hanging out with your family and a person calls you and needs to talk with you about something that is a major emergency? Granted there are usually varying circumstances that occur with situations like this, yet if this exact situation arose and that person needed to talk with you and needed your help to help disciple them and what not, how should we respond? If what we say that the most important thing in this life is what is going to be carried on to the next, then would the decision that we need to make not be to go help the person? I know a lot of people who would say that you need to take into consideration your family, and I would agree. However I believe that if you are raising your family so that they understand that you have been called by God to do this and that this is something that is affecting a person’s eternity, your family should join in with you in this. That might look something like having your family gather together and pray for you as you are gone meeting with the individual. I certainly do not know all the answers to life and questions like this, but I am trying to wrestle with these and figure out areas in my life that need to be reevaluated and turned over to God. What about you? Do you have any thoughts on the subject?
“As disciples of Christ, our ultimate goal (our “chief end”) is not limited to our own personal growth. That goal is much too small. The glory of God and our enjoyment of God come first for the Christian. Our own spiritual growth is a natural outgrowth of learning to glorify God” (Pg 163)
“…the nature of the life of discipleship involves a practical commitment to a specific community of faith.” (Pg 164)
As I was sitting here thinking about these two quotes from DeVries, I started to really think about if the priorities that I have been hearing all around me while growing up are truly biblical. How serious are we about the only thing that matters most in this life being a person’s relationship with Jesus? What if that began to interfere with a person’s relationship with his or her family? The point that I find myself wrestling with a lot right now, is just how important ministry is. I have been around the argument about where the church should be in relation to the family in the order of personal priorities, but what if you are hanging out with your family and a person calls you and needs to talk with you about something that is a major emergency? Granted there are usually varying circumstances that occur with situations like this, yet if this exact situation arose and that person needed to talk with you and needed your help to help disciple them and what not, how should we respond? If what we say that the most important thing in this life is what is going to be carried on to the next, then would the decision that we need to make not be to go help the person? I know a lot of people who would say that you need to take into consideration your family, and I would agree. However I believe that if you are raising your family so that they understand that you have been called by God to do this and that this is something that is affecting a person’s eternity, your family should join in with you in this. That might look something like having your family gather together and pray for you as you are gone meeting with the individual. I certainly do not know all the answers to life and questions like this, but I am trying to wrestle with these and figure out areas in my life that need to be reevaluated and turned over to God. What about you? Do you have any thoughts on the subject?
Saturday, April 16, 2011
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.
Perspectives on Family Ministry - Chapter 9
This chapter is titled "Family-Equipping Ministry: Church and home as Cochampions." To get a littler personal here at the forefront, this was the model that my group was assigned to research and look into for a project in this class. After researching it and looking at the other models, I would have to say that the family-equipping model is one of my top, if not the top, choices for family ministry models. One of the eye-opening statements that stuck out to me in this chapter was,
"The home has the greatest impact on young lives; with few exceptions, if we fail to impact the home, we will never make a lasting impact on students." (Pg 143)
This is exactly what I felt was lacking in the other two ministry models. The family-equipping model takes serious the fact that the home is a vital asset in raising children as disciples of Jesus. Better than that, according to God's Word, parents are to be the primary educators of their children. Anyone who approaches the issues within family ministry today logically, can see this in the current state of our families today. Think about it. Where do children/youth spend the majority of their time? Home. If you think that it's the church's responsibility to be the primary disciplers of your children, then your children should be living at the church and only visit the home 1-3 times during the week. I also like this model in the sense that adults are serious about their faith and are serious about wanting to take their God-given responsibility of raising their children seriously, they wouldn't make excuses about teaching their children. Some advocates for other models have argued that for busy families, this model puts too much pressure on the parents. In actuality, I would strongly disagree. Even if a parent is busy, if he/she is a good parent, he/she is going to spend time with his/her children. A parent could use this time, beginning at a young age, to teach his/her children what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, making it quality time, and instilling a sense of anticipation and excitement in the child as he/she looks forward to the next time that he/she gets to spend time with his/her parent(s). Another important observation that I would like to point out as well, is that this model is not "doing-away" with the church's youth ministry. In fact, in the title Jay Strother says that the church and the home are cochampions. The parents are not going to be 'left out to pasture' so to speak. The church is going to be there to help. The church in this model, similar to that of the family-based and family-integrated models, serves as an extended-family. The youth minister, youth leaders, and other families within the church will be able to provide for and assist parents if they ever were to run into an issue or a roadblock. It is this type of collaboration and working together in raising children that I feel exemplifies and really shines forth the unified body of Christ.
"The home has the greatest impact on young lives; with few exceptions, if we fail to impact the home, we will never make a lasting impact on students." (Pg 143)
This is exactly what I felt was lacking in the other two ministry models. The family-equipping model takes serious the fact that the home is a vital asset in raising children as disciples of Jesus. Better than that, according to God's Word, parents are to be the primary educators of their children. Anyone who approaches the issues within family ministry today logically, can see this in the current state of our families today. Think about it. Where do children/youth spend the majority of their time? Home. If you think that it's the church's responsibility to be the primary disciplers of your children, then your children should be living at the church and only visit the home 1-3 times during the week. I also like this model in the sense that adults are serious about their faith and are serious about wanting to take their God-given responsibility of raising their children seriously, they wouldn't make excuses about teaching their children. Some advocates for other models have argued that for busy families, this model puts too much pressure on the parents. In actuality, I would strongly disagree. Even if a parent is busy, if he/she is a good parent, he/she is going to spend time with his/her children. A parent could use this time, beginning at a young age, to teach his/her children what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, making it quality time, and instilling a sense of anticipation and excitement in the child as he/she looks forward to the next time that he/she gets to spend time with his/her parent(s). Another important observation that I would like to point out as well, is that this model is not "doing-away" with the church's youth ministry. In fact, in the title Jay Strother says that the church and the home are cochampions. The parents are not going to be 'left out to pasture' so to speak. The church is going to be there to help. The church in this model, similar to that of the family-based and family-integrated models, serves as an extended-family. The youth minister, youth leaders, and other families within the church will be able to provide for and assist parents if they ever were to run into an issue or a roadblock. It is this type of collaboration and working together in raising children that I feel exemplifies and really shines forth the unified body of Christ.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Perspectives on Family Ministry - Chapter 7
This chapter is titled "Family-Based Ministry: Separated Contexts, Shared Focus". This chapter was written by Brandon Shields about his model of family ministry that he uses at his church, family-based ministry. This model was originally pioneered by a guy named Mark DeVries (should sound familiar from the earlier blogs). The family-based ministry model looks a little like this.
"Family-based churches retain separate, age-segmented ministry structures. The difference between family-based models and typical programmatic models is that family-based churches intentionally include intergenerational and family-focused events in each ministry." (pg 100)
This is one of the three models that are presented in this book that I would claim being a fan of. I have seen this model used more and more in the many different churches that I have visited. The cool thing about this ministry model for churches today, is that it does not take as much work to implement this getting from the traditional programmatic model. By creating opportunities for families to be together at church opens the door for even more possibilities. You would still give the youth the chance to have their own place where they could come to and be with people their age and talk about things without their parents being there. Now though, you would have the chance to add to that with creating opportunities for families to be together at church, reenforcing the idea that being a family and growing in your faith are important and go hand in hand.
"Family-based churches retain separate, age-segmented ministry structures. The difference between family-based models and typical programmatic models is that family-based churches intentionally include intergenerational and family-focused events in each ministry." (pg 100)
This is one of the three models that are presented in this book that I would claim being a fan of. I have seen this model used more and more in the many different churches that I have visited. The cool thing about this ministry model for churches today, is that it does not take as much work to implement this getting from the traditional programmatic model. By creating opportunities for families to be together at church opens the door for even more possibilities. You would still give the youth the chance to have their own place where they could come to and be with people their age and talk about things without their parents being there. Now though, you would have the chance to add to that with creating opportunities for families to be together at church, reenforcing the idea that being a family and growing in your faith are important and go hand in hand.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Perspectives on Family Ministry - Chapter 6
The title of this chapter is 'Responses to Paul Renfro'. This is one thing that I really like about this book. Each supporter of a family ministry model has the opportunity to respond and voice their opinions and concerns about the other's proposed model of family ministry. This chapter posed a VERY interesting conversation between the three, in which I became immensely engaged in. I must say that of the two responses, I felt that Jay Strother's response was much more 'respectful' in the sense that he encouraged Paul Renfro and lovingly brought up some reservations and genuine questions that he had about the family-integrated model. Brandon Shields' response seemed a little more offensive and almost as if he were attacking Paul and his ministry model preference. There was one thing that Paul said in his response to the other two that I didn't agree with 100%.
"Yet age-segregated structures that remain in place in family-based and family-equipping churches make family reformation more difficult by tacitly reinforcing the false notion that professional ministers are the people primarily responsible for children's discipleship." (Pg 96)
I just completed a group project on these models, where my group was responsible for teaching and evaluating the family-equipping model. Through my research and studying, the family-equipping model doesn't promote the 'false notion that professional ministers are the people primarily responsible for children's discipleship' at all. In fact, the model actually provides resources and 'equips' (hence the name) the family, so that they will be able to do their job as the people primarily responsible for children's discipleship. I think that there is a bigger chance that in the family-equipping and family-based models that the focus can be shifted back to the church again, however if done correctly, the people who are primarily responsible for children's discipleship are the parents and the family. The church in these models, serves and supports as an extended family, offering to help wherever the parents/family need.
"Yet age-segregated structures that remain in place in family-based and family-equipping churches make family reformation more difficult by tacitly reinforcing the false notion that professional ministers are the people primarily responsible for children's discipleship." (Pg 96)
I just completed a group project on these models, where my group was responsible for teaching and evaluating the family-equipping model. Through my research and studying, the family-equipping model doesn't promote the 'false notion that professional ministers are the people primarily responsible for children's discipleship' at all. In fact, the model actually provides resources and 'equips' (hence the name) the family, so that they will be able to do their job as the people primarily responsible for children's discipleship. I think that there is a bigger chance that in the family-equipping and family-based models that the focus can be shifted back to the church again, however if done correctly, the people who are primarily responsible for children's discipleship are the parents and the family. The church in these models, serves and supports as an extended family, offering to help wherever the parents/family need.
Perspectives on Family Ministry - Chapter 5
The title of this chapter is 'Family-Integrated Ministry'. In this chapter, Paul Renfro, the discipleship minister at Grace Family Baptist Church in Austin, Texas describes and teaches about this model of family ministry. I have to admit, when I was first doing research and studying the three models of ministry (1 - Family-Integrated; 2 - Family-Based; and 3 - Family-Equipping), I thought the least about Family-Integrated, primarily because this model calls for the dissolving of age-segregated ministries. In a Family-Integrated church, the entire family does everything together. I personally saw (and still see) some issues with this model, but to quote one of my textbooks from Intro to Youth Ministry, the 'perfect' model is a myth (Purpose Driven Youth Ministry). However, I do see more positives now than I did before. This model places a HUGE emphasis on the primary 'discipler' being the family, more specifically the father. Renfro also explored the problems and issues that churches would have to overcome if they were going to implement this family-integrated model and brought up this interesting thought.
"In some cases a young person is so tightly connected to a youth group that he or she is more committed to that youth group than their own family." (Pg 74)
I must confess that I was guilty of this at times when I was younger. In fact there were times when I would miss meals and outings with my family in order to go to church and 'hang out' or work. Now, when I look back, I sincerely regret those times. Sure it was fun to hang out with other people my age and to work at the church and see my work count for and go toward something that was ministry related, but today I can honestly say that I wish I had spent more time, and had more time now where I could be with my family. That is one thing that see that this model of ministry truly helps to promote and make happen. Of course a majority of this model assumes a lot about the family, particularly the parents, being Christians and involved in the church. One of my questions regarding this model, would be how would this model address that situation, where there is a youth who is a Christian but his/her family/parents are not.
"In some cases a young person is so tightly connected to a youth group that he or she is more committed to that youth group than their own family." (Pg 74)
I must confess that I was guilty of this at times when I was younger. In fact there were times when I would miss meals and outings with my family in order to go to church and 'hang out' or work. Now, when I look back, I sincerely regret those times. Sure it was fun to hang out with other people my age and to work at the church and see my work count for and go toward something that was ministry related, but today I can honestly say that I wish I had spent more time, and had more time now where I could be with my family. That is one thing that see that this model of ministry truly helps to promote and make happen. Of course a majority of this model assumes a lot about the family, particularly the parents, being Christians and involved in the church. One of my questions regarding this model, would be how would this model address that situation, where there is a youth who is a Christian but his/her family/parents are not.
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