If someone knows a simple definition of family-based youth ministry, please send it right away. I’ve read (and enjoyed) most of the books written on the subject. In fact, I can still remember reading Mark DeVries’ book Family-Based Youth Ministry the very week it was published. I said then and maintain today that this book presents one of the most important new paradigms for youth ministry in decades. However, I’m still looking for that simple definition and practical handle on family-based youth ministry.
Ray Whitson, a youth worker in Batavia, Ill., probably doesn’t know it, but he’s doing family-based youth ministry. Last month he received a horrible phone call; one of his students had killed himself. Ray immediately went to the distraught mother, father and two teenage brothers. That very night the family was robbed; and the father, an elder in the church, was shot four times. As I’m writing this, he’s in critical condition. The two boys are living with Ray and his family, while the mother helps nurse their father back to health.
Thank God this type of situation is not a normal daily occurrence for most of us. However, most days in youth ministry, we’re trying to help families succeed—whether we know it or not. Perhaps we’ve not been able to get a handle on family-based youth ministry because we’re more involved in it than we realized.
Family Involvement
Several years ago, I conducted a poll of key youth workers around America and Canada and asked them, “What are you doing to help families succeed?” The answers were almost all identical. “I know working with families and parents is very important, and it’s my top goal for next year.” Most youth workers I know are still trying to get their hands and minds around this important but illusive part of youth ministry. We know families are vital to the spiritual growth and well being of our students, but we don’t have enough time in our already over-committed schedules to add ministry to families and parents to what we already do for our teens.
Although I’m still looking for that simple and definite answer, a defining moment for me came at the Western Wailing Wall in Jerusalem as I stood with my family and a few friends. We were watching as several Bar Mitzvah celebrations took place. The young men were surrounded by family members who cheered as each teen read and quoted from memory the words of the Torah. It was an incredibly moving experience. These fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, siblings and friends were all taking an active role in these young men’s spiritual lives.
It reminded me of when our Jewish neighbors invited my family and me to their daughter’s Bat Mitzvah ceremony and celebration. It was such an intensely intimate family affair and a major rite of passage for this young woman.
The Shema
To be honest, I’m a bit jealous that the Jewish faith has such important, communal ceremonies while we Christians do so little with this special rite of passage. I remember an obscure lesson from way back in my seminary days. My professor explained what he called in Hebrew, the Shema. He told us that the Shema, found in
Every morning and evening of every day, Orthodox Jews recite this important section of the Torah. This Scripture is written on the doorframes of their homes. There isn’t a practicing Jew today who can’t quote it from memory. It’s the essence of the Old Testament summed up in a few sentences.
There isn’t much discussion of this section of Scripture in the New Testament, but I think that’s because it was so deeply ingrained in the minds and hearts of every Jew that there wasn’t much need.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
My time at the Western Wailing Wall caused me to look into the Shema anew and what I found surprised me. This Scripture is, in fact, the cornerstone of family-based youth ministry. In order to reach our students, part of our jobs as youth workers is to strengthen families by impressing the Word of God into their hearts and minds.
Changing the Mindset
For the first time, I looked at ministry to parents not as one more program on the periphery of my ministry, but rather as central to my calling. Family-based youth ministry isn’t about adding a program. It’s a mindset.
In biblical days, the people of Israel had a much better understanding of their roles as parents and family members. They knew their most important calling was to “impress upon their children” the Word of God. They were to talk about it and live out their faith daily. Each child knew his or her place in the family and in their faith.
Today, many families lack the understanding and tools necessary to raise children in the legacy of faith. We, as part of the church leadership, must shoulder some of the blame because we’ve let parents delegate their children’s spiritual training to us. I don’t see parents clamoring to take back this responsibility.
Despite this, can we in youth work do our programming and ministry with the family, and not just the kids, as a priority? I think we can, and I believe we must.
Helping Families Succeed
No easy answers here—perhaps just more difficult decisions to complicate our youth ministries, but we’re called to do family-based youth ministry. We must help families succeed. Hopefully in the next few years, prophets will appear who will speak to the practical needs of family-based youth ministry and light a fire for us. For now we need to change our mindset and make the biblical principle of helping families succeed a part of our daily youth ministry.
We can start facilitating families’ success in four ways: by informing, assisting, involving and encouraging parents.
Informing parents. Recently a youth worker polled parents in her youth group and asked, “What do you wish the youth ministry of this church did more effectively?” The overwhelming response was, “We wish you would communicate with us about events, topics you are covering in the youth group and other general information.” Parents want information, and we never should assume their teenagers are filling them in. The easiest ways to communicate with parents include a parent’s newsletter/e-mail, parent informational nights or after-church meetings, a youth group information hotline and a prominent message board.
Assisting Parents
Assisting parents is a critical part of our ministry to help families succeed. Many healthy youth ministries assist parents by hosting seminars such as Wayne Rice’s “Understanding Your Teenager,” as well as developing support groups, offering family counseling referrals and creating a lending library filled with some of the excellent resources that are available to parents of teens.
Involving parents. Not all parents would make good youth workers, but many would be excellent leaders and mentors, especially in a world where so many parents of kids in the youth group don’t attend church. My rule of thumb is if parents wants to volunteer in the group, they need the permission of their kids. However, there are several other indirect ways parents can get involved: prayer teams, advisory councils, retreat chaperoning, driving, food preparation, discipleship, fund raising and hospitality just to name a few. We need to provide a variety of ways for parents to get involved.
Encouraging Parents
I never understood how difficult it was to parent a teenager until I had three of my own. I need all the encouragement I can get. Some good ways to offer encouragement are developing parent recognition Sundays, writing affirming notes and sitting with the parents at their child’s events. Get creative. Every time you offer a parent the gift of encouragement, you’re doing family-based youth ministry.
I know the paradigm shift toward family-based youth ministry will continue to evolve, and hopefully it’ll become more and more an intrinsic and recognized part of a youth worker’s job.
