An integrated ministry - church and home

"In the most foundational of relationships – parent-child – parents rarely have a defined target. Test it: Just ask parents, ‘What would you want your child to be at age thirty?’ See if they have a ready answer. I predict that many will respond with a career choice, or with some version of ‘happy’. Some might say, ‘I want my child to be a committed Christian ,’ or ‘I want my child to follow God.’ But very few will give you a clearly detailed answer that demonstrates direction and guidance.

Look at what Psalm 78:5-7 says about God’s intention for parents:

He decreed statutes for Jacob
and established laws in Israel,
which he commanded our forefathers
to teach their children,

so the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.
Then they would put their trust in God
and would not forget his deeds
but would keep his commands.

We must have a clear vision for our children – even one that’s multigenerational – so we’ll be intentional every day to pass along to them the things of God. The clearer the vision, the better we’ll know what to do on a daily basis. The fuzzier the vision, the harder it is to be faithful to train our children daily in their spiritual development.

Joseph provides a clear model or target for the parent, and also for the children’s worker and youth worker in church… Here’s why:

First, Joseph was seventeen when he was taken from home (Genesis 37:2). It's fascinating to me that  he's the only biblical model we might pick whose age is given in Scripture. Seventeen - so close to the age when kids today leave for college, find a job, or join the military. It’s a time of significant life change for most young people today, and it certainly was for Joseph. While we are told nothing of what his parents did to pass on their faith in God to him, it’s pretty clear his personal values and worldview were firmly in place by the time he was taken from home.

Second, there's a lot of narrative about Joseph.… I find the Joseph narrative to be more to the point for today’s youth, because Joseph’s situation presents the greatest test of faith that could face a young person: a hedonistic culture opposed to God, continual temptation, extreme physical and mental hardships, and zero spiritual support. Joseph was all alone. His family would never have known if he had given in to Potiphar’s wife, compromised to avoid Pharaoh’s jail, or padded his own pocket when he was ruling. There was no external support to keep him on the straight and narrow; it was only his own integrity, his own heart. Slavery, improsonment, language barriers, cultural change - the list of challenges for Joseph's faith was long. Yet in facing it all, he remained faithful, righteous, and committed to God.

I find Joseph’s model to be particularly helpful because it gives us five specifics – I’m calling them Master Life Threads – that enable us to have a clear target for raising our own children.

Why Master Life Threads? Because these specific character qualities must not just be simply inserted as a segment of a scope and sequence, nor a theme in a curriculum. Rather, they must be woven throughout all of a child’s spiritual training, from birth to that Most Difficult Moment. They become integral in conversations, in lessons, in relationships."

This is an extract from Raising a Modern-day Joseph by Larry Fowler (David C Cook)

Larry goes on to encourage churches to devise an integrated strategy for children's ministry, youth ministry and for parents and church support for those parents.

"Some will say we shouldn’t be adding the involvement of parents; rather, parents should be the first involved in spiritually training children. Yes, they should. And if our current overall situation was different, I would express it that way. However, so many parents are not involved at all in the spiritual training of their children that, by default, children’s ministry and youth ministry workers must lead. Let’s pray that by God’s goodness, someday the situation will be different."

He encourages us to learn from the story of Joseph as we seek to teach his five Master Life Threads:

1. Respect (teaching children to respect human authority, human relationships, God’s standards and God)   2. Wisdom (teaching children the biblical foundations for wisdom, to know that wisdom is based upon God’s truth and to have confidence in relying on God’s wisdom) 3. Grace (teaching children to respond with grace and mercy when wronged and to view the good things they enjoy as coming from the grace of God) 4. Destiny (teaching children a sense of destiny and that destiny is found in following the calling and will of God) 5. Perspective (teaching children to know God is on control and to interpret events in light of God’s sovereignty)