Hi, my name is Cheryl Wong, and I’m the Children’s and Family Pastor at Good Shepherd Church in Loveland, Colorado. Today, I get to talk to you about taking baby steps in approaching family ministry.
I know that for many of us we see a desperate need for family ministry in our local churches. We’ve watched and we’ve seen and we’ve read the blogs and articles of how this is changing churches across our nation and even our world.
We know that this is something we want in our own churches. And many times we want to take the giant steps to get there. We want to step right in with both feet and, just like that, change the world around us.
We want to see families inspired, equipped, and supported to lead their kids in their home.
But oftentimes it’s really the baby steps that we need to take in order for us to approach this. We have to remember that, as we look at family ministry, we need to bring others along in the vision that we have.
Many times we need to paint the picture for those who can’t see this. We need to help them see the need for family ministry.
My Experience Developing Family Ministry
That was definitely the experience I had in our church and that I am currently having. I wanted people to see this and to change everything and start over. But that wasn’t the step that we needed to take here.
We had to come to a place of everyone seeing the need for family ministry, why it matters, and what difference it makes in the lives of those we minister to.
We also had to bring them along in the vision of family ministry, helping them see this is something that could change current and future generations.
Evaluate and Adjust
As we’ve gotten along in changing and moving more toward family ministry here at our church, we’ve had to stop to adjust and evaluate what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
We started with some simple and easy things like changing child dedications and how we did baptisms for the kids. Those were things that were easy to do, but we saw great success.
And then we started a time for our student ministries’ pastor and me to have conversations about what it looks like to work together, side by side, to change this generation.
We want to see families inspired, equipped, and supported to lead their kids in their homes. But we also know that we need to come alongside and cast that vision for many of them.
Start with Baby Steps
I have to say that their approach to family ministry, at times, has been frustrating because I’ve wanted to be so much further ahead. But that isn’t where God has had us at this time and in this place at our church.
We’ve had to take baby steps. And in that we’ve learned so much along the way. But at the same time have seen great successes.
We have seen some things flop, but that’s okay because we’ve taken the opportunity to learn from those things, and we are now seeing our family ministry grow and develop. More and more people are coming alongside. I hope this is something that can be beneficial to you and your ministry.
Ready to help parents create an environment for spiritual growth?
Ready to help parents create an environment for spiritual growth?
