Our God created the family. Ministry to families is not a strategy, a
goal, or a program; ministry to families must permeate all the church
does, because faith formation begins at home (Deut. 6:1-9). If we
ignore this reality, the church’s job is made much more difficult.
Meanwhile, where do we in the church stand on family issues?
For the most part, we’re playing defense. This is understandable,
because we are overwhelmingly a culture influenced by divorce. My
pastor, Robert Lewis, said once about our church’s staff, which at the
time numbered more than sixty-five, “The time our church staff
spends either preventing divorce, helping people go through divorce,
or helping people recover from a divorce, now encompasses more of
our time than all other issues combined.”
Now if I were the devil, I would want to get all the church staffs
in America totally on the defensive, spending hours each week untan-
gling relational mayhem. What would happen if we could reduce that
commitment of staff resources in half? Just think what we could
accomplish for the advancement of the gospel with all of that fresh
energy!
So how might we bring changes here?
First, we need to become intentional about equipping marriages
and families to be distinctively Christian. Ephesians 4:11 says that
Christ gave pastors and teachers “for the equipping of the saints for
the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ” (Eph.
4:12, NASB). But where does the work of service start? Sunday school?
The sermon? Wednesday night prayer meeting? No, it begins at
home. We need to dust off a little saying from the fifties: “The family
that prays together stays together.” The culture is ripe for the church
to step forward with spiritual initiatives that bring hope to families.
Second, we need to know the needs of our church families. You
may be thinking, Yeah, I counsel a lot. I know the needs of our people.I’m
sure that is true as far as it goes. But modern methods and technology
allow even more sophisticated measurements of what people are
thinking and what they need. For example, FamilyLife offers churches
a resource called the Family Needs Survey.^2 We call it a “CT scan for
a congregation.” More than 27,000 church members nationwide have
Local Church Family Ministry in the New Millennium 21