If we are not careful, our churches’ programming will widen the division already present among family members. Here are some changes to consider on how your church can unite your family to pursue Christ together.
#1. Disciple the Parents
To assist parents, ensure you have the right equipment. First, disciple the parents within your congregation. Grow them up to follow Christ characterized by lives of obedience. Provide them opportunities not just to come to church events and programming, but invest in their lives for them to grow up in Christ.
#2. Unite the Family
Second, unite the family at church rather than segregate them. The last verse in the Old Testament prophesies concerning the coming of the LORD. “And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and their hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Mal 4:6).Â
The significance of this verse concluding the Old Testament can not be overstated. The coming of Jesus was to usher in a time when families would be reunited. Unfortunately, we are creating church cultures where we do the complete opposite and segregate families as soon as they hit the church campus parking lot.
Currently, we are reversing the trend at our church and putting families back together. We still have age-appropriate teaching and programs, but we are also focusing on uniting families. We did away with some children’s services so that they could worship alongside their parents. We also removed different types of services so that multigenerational families could worship alongside each other. It has been amazing to see, in some cases, four generations of one family singing God’s praises alongside each other. With these changes, our family worship guides have proven to draw these families back together. Whatever your ministry context is, evaluate whether or not your church is currently uniting families or segregating families.
#3. Provide Some Training
Third, provide periodical training and resources for the parents within your congregation. These types of help can come in many different forms. Churches can resource parents by highlighting helpful books. Church leadership can provide training on how parents can evangelize their own children. Church leaders can also equip parents by partnering families with ministry organizations in which an entire family can serve together.
In addition to these types of resources, we have also trained parents on how to protect their children. We live in a very dangerous environment where many forces are trying to endanger your children. The only problem – walls can’t stop these intruders. The rise of media influence is gaining ground by the day. The problem is that most children are smarter with technology than their parents. Most parents are unaware that secret codes are used by teenagers to keep their snooping parents at a distance (ex. CD9 – Code 9 which means parents are around, NIFOC – naked in front of computer, S2R – send to receive pictures, etc.).
With the risk of seeming uncool to your children, you must take drastic measures to keep your children safe because other people are taking drastic measures to corrupt your children. Any attempt to provide a fail-proof plan to protect your children would be outdated within a week’s time, but certain questions can be used to serve as a guide. First, what type of access do your children have to media? Second, how knowledgeable are you concerning the content they are absorbing? Third, what are their friends like? Fourth, who is teaching them “sex ed?” Finally, can you monitor their activity? The very fact that your child would explode if you asked for a password shows the reason you need one. So much of text messages and social networking is done in a private world; what are you doing to monitor what your child is receiving and what your child is producing?
Why is it so important to monitor your child’s activity? Because other worldly forces are influencing their worldview. While you can do a fantastic job as a parent teaching your children, you can also lose your child by allowing sinful influences into their lives. You can’t keep your child out of the world, but you can, to some extent, keep the world out of your child. When churches can unite parents together to share collective wisdom and biblical guidance through these types of training events, multiple homes will reap the rewarding benefits.
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.
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