Stan and I ordered a book months ago and it finally came yesterday: Perspectives on Family Ministry; 3 Views. I have been very anxious to read this book, as I’ve spent some time lately thinking about the role of churches in supporting and equipping parents for discipling their children. The book presents three ways churches do family ministry: the family-integrated model, the family-based model (separated contexts), and the family-equipping model. I’m just in the introductory chapters but have a few quotes to share:

There is a quote about churches building structures to support segregation…..churches will “build buildings to support segregation–and they will do it with excellence. They will not build for racial segregation, but to support age segregation…Both the natural appeal of such buildings and the programming centered there will guarantee [that] teenages will only experience church life with people almost precisely their own age. Adults will find no ways to bless children, much less even see them. Young people will be cut off from the richness of almost all adult relationships. And, most importantly, they will not see members of their own families until it is time to meet at their cars to go home.” -Richard Ross

The authors also state that “the ministry models that many ministers have studied in seminaries and inherited in local churches are fundamentally flawed. As a result, well-intended ministers have attempted to pursue tasks in the sole context of the church that God designed to occur first and foremost in another context. That other context is the family.”

I’m sure there will be other things coming on this as I read the book.