Orange Week: Reactivate the Family

If I’m being completely honest and vulnerable, I’ll tell you one thing – I don’t want to let my kids down.  I want to pass on the faith well.  I want my kids to know and love Jesus in a way that impacts the rest of their lives.  I want my kids to pass the faith on to the generation after them.  I don’t want them to become just another statistic.

Every parent in your church feels the same way.  If you put a picture of their kids at the beginning of this post, they would sign off on many of the same things I think and feel as a parent.  If only every one of them understood what’s at stake when they drop off their kids in our programs…

Students are leaving the church.

Every Summer, we graduate kids into the abyss of post-high school and we hope and pray that what we’ve taught them at church sticks.

If, along the way, the church fails to engage and partner with parents in the spiritual formation of their kids, more students will walk away from the church.

The Orange philosophy of ministry calls on the church to partner with parents and Reactivate the Family.  Let me share with you a few ways Glenkirk Church is investing in families in 2010.

This Saturday, we’re offering a Marriage Conference featuring Jim Burns – an award winning author of several books on marriage and family, and host of the nationwide Home Word radio program.  We’re investing in marriages and telling our community that we believe the home should be the hub of ministry, not the church… the church exists to equip families to pass the faith on to their kids.

In two weeks, we’ll be taking a group of dads and sons (and some moms and sisters) to spend some time making connections and watching giant trucks crunch cars, fly through the air, and make a ton of noise.  Every parent in attendance will leave with a “parenting mission” for the next month.  Events like this give us an extra opportunity to speak into the lives of parents as they walk alongside their kids in everyday activities.  As the year progresses, we’ll offer other events that isolate one-to-one relationship in families (couples events, mother/son, father/daughter, mother/daughter) and leverage those events in a way that equips families and gives them tools to talk about their faith at home.

On Valentine’s Day, we’re welcoming couples back onto our campus in the afternoon for a little pre-date romance to start the evening.  We’ll have a string quartet, flowers, and prizes for couple married the longest, the most recent, the most times (well, maybe we won’t give out prizes for that last one).

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It’s not an accident that, in the first 2 months of 2010, we’ll have hosted 3 large events that look to strengthen families and marriages.  Each time we get parents together for a gathering, we have an opportunity to affirm their desire to pass their faith on to their kids and we have the responsibility to equip them to do so.

There is not a family that walks onto your church campus who wants to fail (even if your church is portable).  As parents, we can’t look at our kids without thinking of the men and women they’ll become and what they’ll do with their lives.  For parents who love Jesus, our top priority is passing our faith on to our kids.  As a church, you have a captive audience… you just need to start speaking their language and become intentional about using the 30 hours you have with a student over the course of a year to equip the 3000 hours their parents will spend with them.

Want to see what others are saying about Reactivating the Family? Head on over to ChildrensMinistryOnline.com to see what others in the kidmin community are saying during Orange Week!

Want to read a recap of Day 3 of Orange Week?
Check out “Orange Week: Tuesday Recap“