Family Matters

Read chapters 13-15 of PDYM.  I don't recall chapter 13, but 14 was about Parent involvement, which gets from me a hearty AMEN!

These are the people that we need to place the burden of lay ministry on.  The kids see me one day a week.  They see their parents all seven days.  We need to equip the parents for their God-given roles in raising little Christians. 

Then I realized, as overcomplicated as Doug makes youth ministry at Saddleback, it does feel like I should be doing more to reach parents.  I did start posting my lessons and Scriptures in the monthly newsletter.  I probably should start having parent meetings.  I tried to have one in January.  Not even the kids came to church that day.  I do like Doug's idea of "inviting" parents to volunteer rather than "recruiting" them.  Maybe I should send out invitations to a breakfast on a Saturday and discuss what both the parents and the kids would like to see.

I still only see the Christian education aspect of the church as only one of the purposes of church, the nurturing.  It's not in charge of the whole 5 purposes that I whittled down to two.  We are all supposed to worship no matter what we do; that's the purpose of all the church.  But the other four, which are all just extensions of the same thing, are delegated to all the church.  We nurture in Sunday School and Children's Church.  We evangelize when we send the kids to school during the week.  I still need to find more ways to do that, but without my help, kids keep bringing their friends.  We minister with Shepherd's Staff, and my 3 As are there with that as their parents lead the whole ministry.  And we fellowship whenever we just take a break and play or do a craft.  Maybe fellowship is just an extension of worship.  That is what we'll do forever in heaven.