Perspectives on Family Ministry - Chapter 2

This chapter was titled "The Task Too Significant to Hire Someone Else to Do". Jones' point in this chapter was to explore the history of the Church and the Scriptures to figure out what the Biblically and traditional way of child discipleship was. He found that the responsibility to disciple a child is not supposed to fall upon the church and age specific ministers, but rather on the child's parents, often times specifically the father with help from the mother. There was a quote from Jonathan Edwards that really stuck out to me and got me thinking.

"Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by His rules. And family education and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual."  (Pg 22)

This started me thinking about what kind of job I am going to do as a father one day. I certainly want to be a father one day, and being that I am studying youth and family ministry here, I have learned many things as to how to minister to youth. But the question that popped into my head, is how is it going to be when I am faced with the opportunity and responsibility to minister to and my own youth. To be completely honest, it makes me a little nervous. But as I sit here and read about the importance and the intention of the family being the primary place for a child to grow and develop spiritually, I cannot help but feel a small, but growing sense of excitement. I believe that I have this excitement because it is something that God instills in us, to live the way He designed for us to, and to be. I believe that this is what we need to be instilling in today's families. They will not experience this kind of excitement unless they grab ahold of their responsibilities to disciple their children. They will not grab ahold of their responsibilities to disciple their children, unless they realize that it is their responsibility. What we need to do, is to help them see, that this is their responsibility.