Planning for the long game

This podcast was recorded at the Disciple-making conference breakout session training. Many church leaders might see a need for whole family ministry, yet their approach frequently leaves an impression that they, and not parents, are responsible for the children’s spiritual growth. In addition, busy ministry schedules often do not leave time to plan beyond the upcoming season. Do great worship services, events and fellowships cause change in the homes of believers? Daniel Dye discusses one church’s effort to go beyond seasonal family ministry planning to a long-term process that teaches families to think with the end in mind and prioritize their own family’s spiritual growth. Discover how churches can equip and encourage parents to do what God has already empowered them to do in their families.

Here is an excerpt from this podcast:

Doing youth ministry, you heard the statistics that came out about how so many leave the faith after graduating high school. My question is, what’s the percentage we have to have to say there’s a problem? In my particular case, there was one youth that I thought was a strong youth, went all the way through in our ministry and freshman year in college, just maybe a month out of my ministry, did not even look or act like a follower of Jesus Christ. At that point, I thought, “What is the point? What are we doing? If we can’t have our strongest people go out there and stand up for Jesus when culture hits them, then what are we doing?” I took a long, hard look at our ministry. The challenge began and God started ministering to my heart to show me what His ultimate plan was. We don’t really have a problem anymore convincing anyone that we need to put the faith and spiritual growth power back in the parents’ hands. The problem that we have is that is Sunday is always coming. We know that we need to do this, but what ends up happening is that we start focusing on the next event. Even though we knew that we needed to be doing something to strengthen the parents and equip them and give them tools, we weren’t doing it. The Scripture text that we all know out of Deuteronomy 6 says the four times that the family should be working with the kids: in the morning when you rise, as you walk along the road, as you eat together and as you lay down at night. But I was at a loss how to teach the parents of the teenagers I was working with on what to do with it.

by Daniel Dye  /  Associate and Youth Pastor  /  Peninsula Baptist Church