Let’s begin with an illustration.

I am sure you have heard of the shoe company called TOMS. They do not make high quality shoes. They do not make the most attractive shoes. Nor are they the most comfortable shoes, yet this little company gained incredible popularity very quickly because of the reason behind buying their shoes: for every pair you purchase they donate a pair to a needy child. The reason behind buying these shoes is what drove their incredible success. TOMS became a movement in and of themselves, but the danger of a movement showed up when TOMS became a norm in youth culture; the true reason for their popularity was diluted as Sketchers, Forever 21, Justice, and many other stores started producing knockoff TOMS. You see what happened? The shoe became such a norm that now people don’t know why they are buying overpriced, low quality, and uncomfortable shoes. The reason was diluted by the power of the movement. The church cannot afford to let the reason drop in our pursuit of family ministry.

Family ministry is a necessity in the American church, and many bestselling ministry books are currently in the area of family ministry. The rise of the movement tells pastors that there is something important going on, so we all want to make sure we take part in it. The problem is that in our vigor to join the movement, we may miss the reason the movement began. Much like teenagers buying knockoff TOMS, we may be missing the point.

Average Christian mothers and fathers likely understand the family to be a launching pad for each child, providing them with all of the love, safety, and affirmation needed to be a successful individual.[i] That sounds great, but is it what God wants for the family? If you read through the Bible (including the Old Testament) it is very difficult to squeeze the individualistic, success-driven picture of the American family into a Biblical response of why God created the family. Time and time again God commanded fathers to teach their children all the commands of the Lord, remind their children of the great things the Lord had done, and discipline their children in order to teach submission to the Lord.

What if we, as Christians, actually believed God knew best? What if we, as parents, actually believed God had a greater plan for our families than raising successful (i.e. rich) children? What if God gave children to parents in order to fulfill the great commission?

Then Christian parents would probably believe themselves to be the primary disciplers of their children.

This is why we need Family Ministry. We need to retrain the American church to understand the family as a primary tool in God’s plan of redemption. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think that God wants to use families in His plan of redemption; he has been doing it since he called one man and his family to be a blessing to all other families. God still wants to use the family, but the family has to be redeemed. It has to be spiritually redeemed by Christ, and its purpose has to be redeemed by parents.

Parents need to see their role through the lens of the Bible. Deuteronomy 6 needs to become more than an idea; it needs to become a guidebook for how we make disciples, starting in our own home. Pastors need to reinforce this role to the parents in our congregations. We need to understand that the first and most important influence in the life of a child will never be our youth pastor; therefore, we should be working to train those who will be doing the heavy lifting of discipleship. We need to minister to families with a constant focus on the reason why. The local church is where parents meet to be equipped and trained; families are the frontlines of gospel warfare.

If we ride the wave of family ministry and lose the reason we need it, then we have done nothing more than take part in a flash in the pan movement, here today and gone tomorrow.  

If, however, we work through Scripture and come to an understanding of the family as God’s training ground for new disciples, then we are going to be a part of the greatest movement in the history of the world: the movement of a perfect, holy God towards his sinful, needy children.

Does this video remind you of your church or small group? I hope not. Unfortunately, though, I think the attitudes described here are all too common in our churches.

A few months ago my church held a business meeting to decide whether or not to swap the traditional and contemporary worship times. It was proposed that placing the contemporary worship service at 11 A.M. instead of 9 A.M. would allow for a younger crowd, accustomed to sleeping-in, to make it to worship. The church eventually decided to go ahead with the move but not before some heated debate. Some of the senior adults felt marginalized by the switch. Apparently, switching service times to accommodate a group that wasn’t coming to church because of the early time demonstrated the church’s lack of appreciation and respect for its older members. At one point a woman said, “We seniors are the ones giving our tithes and supporting the church!”

Despite the misguided generalization (many young members give generously and faithfully) and pretentious sense of entitlement, there was some truth in what she said.

Younger people, especially the college-aged, typically give inconsistently or not at all to the church. There are a number of reasons for this, but I don’t believe any of them are biblically justified.

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You are on the verge of wrecking your life.  I know that with certainty.  I’m not psychic, and I’m not reading your mind as you read this chapter.  I doubt this book will be in print long enough to be read by artificially intelligent androids; so for now, I’m assuming if you can read, I know you’re human.  And if you’re human you’ve been designed to picture God – more specifically to picture the union of God and humanity in the man named Jesus.

This means, if the ancient Scriptures are right (and I’m wagering my life, and the next one, that they are), unseen spiritual beings out there are disturbed by what you are reminding them of.  By the “you” in the last sentence, I don’t mean a generic colloquial use of “one” or “humanity” in general.  I mean you personally.

Within the next few weeks I am planning to post an article on how believers should determine the will of God for their lives.  Before doing so, I would like to ask our readers a question: how do you determine the will of God for your life?  Feel free to write as much as you want in your response.  Also, you can focus your answer to particular issues like dating, marriage, college, jobs, friends, daily activities, etc.  Thanks!

There was a time in my life when I absolutely hated reading! I couldn’t stand it, and I was really bad at it. It’s not that I couldn’t read or pronounce the words—because I could—but it was more that I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) force myself to sit down and read a book from cover to cover. To me, it was the most painful and arduous task and largest waste of time that I could possibly imagine. I was a math guy (I actually like it; so, I studied and became a mechanical engineer). But, rarely would you find me near a book, except for maybe my nightly Bible reading.

It wasn’t until about the age of twenty that I fully realized—as Mohler points out—that God has chosen to teach His people through the discipline of reading! From the inception of the Church, and throughout the Old Testament, God has instructed His people through the written Word. I had to do a heart check; I realized that God’s Word was available to me, that I was responsible to know it, and that I had to read it in order to know it. My heart and mind were awakened to the majesty of God and His Word. Have you come to this point in your life? Has the Bible gripped you in such a way that you cannot not read it!? If you are a Christian and you don’t like reading, then you need to do a heart check. To use Mohler’s words, “We’re not going to grow if we’re not reading and studying.”

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Ezekiel 18: 4 “For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son – both alike belong to me. the soul who sins is the one who will die.”

Humanity has a peculiar propensity to deny responsibility for wrongs done against others and God. Adam and Eve both made attempts at the blame game. How often the inherent pride causes in us a deep and unrelenting recalcitrance when confronted with our sin.  As we know, our God impartially judges each man. God-given free-will graciously and justly permits us to answer to Him alone for our actions. We are not held responsible, nor are we  pardoned on another fallible human’s actions. [...]

It’s that time of year again when gobs and gobs of money are spent appeasing and pacifying the wants and wishes of small children (and 40-something-year-old kids) across the globe. On December the 25^th millions of men, women, boys, and girls throughout the world will receive their yearly injection of that oh-so intoxicating drug called materialism. While I’m all for giving gifts—and receiving them—I would like for us to at least give thought to the sorts of gifts that we are giving to our loved ones this year. [...]

The reality that this video brings to our attention is an alarming one. Shouldn’t it shake us up a bit to hear that two-thirds of the young people who attend church throughout high school are leaving once they move into college? I’d say so. This video maintains that the church has failed the next generation, claiming that the church is in a state of emergency. I probably wouldn’t go so far as to say that we are in a state of emergency—since God still sits on His throne and is still in complete control—but these statistics should bring pause to those of us who are leading churches and cause us to ask ourselves some questions. Are we failing the next generation? Why is it that the youth are falling away from the church when they leave their student ministries? [...]

“But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed. Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope? Consider now: who being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it. At the breath of God they are destroyed; at the blast of his anger they perish.” Job 4:5-8

The book of Job is one of the most vexing and profound works in scripture. One cannot help being troubled and yet amazed when reading the story. Job was a blameless, upright man. His righteousness was such that he actually offered sacrifices for sins his children had possibly committed. But logical deduction fails to vindicate Job. God took up Satan’s challenge that Job only loved God because of the good life he had been given. God tested Job through a series of unparalleled adverse situations. Among them: friends who, far from being sympathetic and consoling, continually condemned Job as a man who must have sinned to have received the terrible tribulation given him. [...]