Leadership: Learning to Do Less So Parents in Your Church Can Do More
Parents in your ministry don’t have time to disciple their children—or, at least, that’s the way many of them feel when they look at their weekly to-do lists. According to comprehensive surveys and...
View ArticleBlog: Most-Read Posts of 2016 and Plans for 2017
Around twenty-seven thousand people racked up nearly one hundred thousand views of this blog in 2016. If you were one of them, thank you! Since there are no advertisements on my site, I don’t profit...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: A New Definition for Family Ministry (Part 1)
I delivered this paper proposing a revised definition for family ministry in May 2017 at the HOUSE Conference in Australia, a gathering sponsored by YouthWorks College and themed around the...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: A New Definition for Family Ministry (Part 2)
I delivered this paper proposing a revised definition for family ministry in May 2017 at the HOUSE Conference in Australia, a gathering sponsored by YouthWorks College and themed around the...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: A New Definition for Family Ministry (Part 3)
I delivered this paper on an expanded definition for family ministry in May 2017 at the HOUSE Conference in Australia, a conference sponsored by YouthWorks College and themed around the intersection...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: DiscipleGuide Church Leaders Cruise
Interested in apologetics and family ministry? If so, then you’re likely to be interested in this upcoming conference. God willing, I will be part of an experience in January 2018 that will bring...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Where We’ve Been, Where We Are, and Where We Might Go
The first family ministry book I ever read was Family-Based Youth Ministry by Mark DeVries. My first response was to reject family ministry as a preposterous idea in my particular context. It took two...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: The Discipline of Generational Diversity (Part 1)
The Function of the Family in the Storyline of God At the center of God’s story stands this singular act: In Jesus Christ, God personally intersected human history and redeemed humanity at a particular...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: When and Why Did Weekly Children’s Classes Begin in...
When did age-organized ministries for children begin? If you thought children’s classes didn’t begin until the introduction of Sunday School, you have a lot to learn! The post Family Ministry: When and...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: When and Why Did Weekly Children’s Classes Begin in...
This research into the history of age-organized ministries in the church is based on an academic paper that I presented to the practical theology section of the annual meeting of the Evangelical...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Two-Day Intensive Training in Family-Equipping Ministry
Do you have a desire to implement family ministry practices in your church? Are you looking to be trained in the ways of family ministry? Do you have two days to spare? Join me in January on the...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: What Are Faith-Talks and Why Do They Matter?
::WHY FAITH-TALKS?:: The purpose of faith-talks is to restore Christian parents to their God-ordained role as teachers of God’s Word in their children’s lives. Your ministry may choose some term other...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Do Parents Take Over Where You Left Off?
The youth head to camp, or a retreat or perhaps a mission trip. When they return, they’re sleep-deprived, hyper-caffeinated, and ready to change the world. But beyond the babbling summary that mom or...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Family Ministry is Not the Answer to Your Church’s Problems
Although the concepts behind family ministry are far from new, church-based family ministry has turned trendy in some circles over the past few years. After decades on the back burner of congregational...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: What Happens When Youth Ministers Work With Parents?
John Pond is pastor of students at West Jackson Baptist Church in Jackson, Tennessee recently provided some engaging thoughts on the value of youth ministers working with parents. He offers four...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Stop Inviting and Start Involving
Without thinking too hard, you could probably tell me exactly who they are. In many smaller and mid-sized ministries, you wouldn’t even need two hands to tally them. What we’re talking about are the...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Your Children and the Hobbit Films
With the much anticipated release of the newest Hobbit film, parents might be asking, “Is this movie okay for my children?” It’s a legitimate question to ask. In a recent interview with Mike Nappa, I...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Why Going Far Requires Us First to Go Near
Family ministry is not a series of activities. Family-equipping ministry in particular flows out of an identity that begins in the homes of ministry leaders. But this doesn’t mean that equipping...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: When Inviting Parents Isn’t Enough
How can your ministry equip parents with the resources they need? In the first place, help parents to see that if they are believers in Jesus Christ, God has already equipped them with his Spirit, his...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Building a Biblical Model for Your Church’s Family Ministry
So what does it mean to build a family ministry model for your church? And how can we be certain our model is biblical? Taking a moment to consider the meaning of a “model” in other fields of study may...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: An Ancient Christian Perspective on Family Ministry
This model for family ministry not only began before Paul’s generation but also persisted far beyond the lifetimes of the first followers of Jesus. Didache and Letter of Barnabas provide summaries of...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Family Discipleship in the Middle Ages and Reformation
With the dawning of imperial favor in the early fourth century and the crumbling of the Roman Empire in the fifth, the primary locus of Christian practice drifted from homes to dedicated institutional...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Growth, Retention, and Gospel-Motivated Ministry
Sometimes, when a ministry makes much of Jesus and the gospel, the results do include numeric gains or stellar retention rates. Seven weeks after Jesus erupted alive from a garden tomb, three thousand...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Caring for Your Pastor’s Kids
Chap Betts, executive director of The Apollos Project, provides a grace-saturated way to encourage your pastor and minister to his children. He states: “Too many children of pastors are casualties in...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: How Pastors Can Care for Their Children
Chap Bettis, executive director of The Apollos Project, previously wrote on ways in which church members can participate in the task of helping pastors shepherd their children. In a recent post, he...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: How Paul’s Teachings About the Family Apply Today
Not long ago, I shared with Christianity.com some thoughts about how Christians can apply Paul’s teaching in their homes. Paul established a priority-changing paradigm for marriages and families in...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Training to Launch Your Church’s Family Ministry
Have you ever wondered how to promote a family ministry model in your church? Perhaps you’re just curious about what family ministry is all about. Whether you’re ready to dive in or just testing the...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Three Motivations to Avoid
Jason K. Allen, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has written recently on various facets of parenting. He encourages parents to avoid three specific motivations: ambition, fear and...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: In Praise of Inefficiency
I saw something beautiful the other day while walking down Breckenridge Lane. In a front yard not far from my home, a young mother was removing a layer of leftover leaves from the fall in preparation...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Learning to Do Less So That Parents Can Do More
Parents in your ministry don’t have time to disciple their children—or, at least, that’s the way many of them feel when they look at their weekly to-do lists. According to recent research in the field...
View ArticleLeadership: Three Crucial Priorities for Shepherd Leaders
This post adapted and abridged from The God Who Goes Before You, by Michael S. Wilder and Timothy Paul Jones (Nashville: B&H, forthcoming). ________ A couple of years ago, an individual who thought...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: How a Biblical Worldview Shapes the Way We Teach Our Children
To have a biblical worldview is to interpret every aspect of our lives—including our relationships with children—within the framework of God’s story. At the center of God’s story stands this singular...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: The First Step Toward Launching Your Church’s Family Ministry
Strangely enough, the hardest first step toward family-equipping ministry for most churches is not an organizational step. The hardest step and the first step, when a church catches the vision for...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Join Me for Free Dinner and Family Ministry Forum at D6...
Are you planning to attend the D6 Conference in Louisville? While you’re enjoying D6 Louisville, the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism, and Ministry at The Southern Baptist Theological...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: The D6 Conference Celebrates Six Years
D6 launched its first family ministry conference in 2009. Six years later, the D6 Conference has developed into a global community of leaders who are forming the future of family ministry. I’ve been...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Three Truths and Three Tips for Engaging with Families in...
The animated feature The Incredibles is a favorite movie in our household—and one of our favorite scenes is the family meal early in the film. Dinner at the Parr household has deteriorated into...
View ArticlePractical Family Ministry: A Book I’m Not Embarrassed to Beg You to Buy
You may have noticed that I have a new book out that I co-edited with my colleague Dr. John David Trentham. In Practical Family Ministry, we’ve brought together several practitioners to provide you...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: What If Your Child Is Far More Than Your Child?
An excerpt from my recent book, co-edited with Dr. John David Trentham, Practical Family Ministry YOUR CHILD IS FAR MORE THAN YOUR CHILD Viewed from the vantage of creation and fall, children are both...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: PROOF Pirates Book and Vacation Bible School Material
Chore charts. Report cards. Standardized tests. Athletic banquets. Kids are inundated with messages about their performance. Because performance—work and reward—is one of the basic structures of our...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Three Models for Ministry to Families
When asked to provide a step-by-step process for implementing family ministry, Mark DeVries jokingly provided this progression: “Try something. Fail. Try something else. Fail again. Try something else....
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Parenting Conference in St. Louis
How can God’s story reshape the way you parent your children? That’s the question that I’ll be answering at an upcoming parenting conference in the city of St. Louis! On August 27, beginning at 9:00 am...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: D6 Conference in Louisville
Every year, I look forward to attending and speaking at the premier family ministry conference in the United States, coming up September 21-23 this year in Louisville. The conference is known as...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: The Importance of Apologetics Training for Parents
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of sitting down with Ron Hunter—founder and director of the D6 Conference—to talk about my passion for training parents to equip their children to defend what they...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: The Simplicity of Family Discipleship
How does family discipleship happen? The same way that we “disciple” our children in certain sports and certain teams. Read this brief post to find out how to form your children’s souls in the same way...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Who Is Responsible for the Discipleship of Your Children?
Discipleship is Too Important to Hand Over to Specialists There are some tasks so significant that they can’t be surrendered to someone else. Taking your spouse on a date, for example. Think of it this...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Leaving Behind the One-Eared Mickey Mouse Model of Youth...
In the late 1980s, one student minister depicted the relationship between his ministry and the rest of his congregation as a “one-eared Mickey Mouse.” To understand this analogy, imagine with me the...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: What Should We Do with Children in Community Groups?
One question that I frequently receive from churches runs something like this: “There are so many children in our community groups! We want to do something with them, but we can’t figure out what to...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: When the Coronavirus Hits Home
“I’m having a really hard time breathing.” One day earlier, our oldest daughter had stayed home from work because of a low-grade fever. By the time Hannah called us from her apartment, the fever had...
View ArticleFamily Ministry: Free Curriculum for Equipping Children’s Ministry and...
You now have access to free training curriculum for family ministry, for youth ministry and children’s ministry volunteers in your church. The post Family Ministry: Free Curriculum for Equipping...
View ArticleUrban Ministry Podcast: The Role of the Pastor’s Wife
What is the role of the pastor’s wife? Amber Williams and Karen Cheong serve faithfully as members of Sojourn Church Midtown in inner-city Louisville, Kentucky, and they join Timothy Paul Jones to...
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