Next generation ministry prioritizes parents! Next Generation leaders understand that parents are the primary spiritual disciple-makers, primary spiritual influencers, primary spiritual nurturers, primary spiritual trainers, and primary spiritual leaders of their children. Next generation ministry leaders work hand in hand with parents so that the church and the family can partner together to raise spiritual champions.
Rob Rienow states that God created the home to be “the spiritual transformation center.”[1] Parents should serve their children as spiritual guides passing their spiritual heritage down to their children in spiritual conversations and spiritual actions. If parents are faithful to hand their spiritual heritage off to their children, spiritual growth and spiritual health will develop and a spiritual legacy can continue or begin.
Parents should have family Bible times in the home. These family gatherings could include a time of Bible story, prayer, song, game, and food. Making the event an intergenerational family meeting is all the better as many families have grandparents living in-home. As family worship meetings occur, families engage in spiritual disciplines resulting in both spiritual formation and spiritual maturity in the lives of those who attend.
Lync Taylor, next generation and family pastor at Brentwood Baptist Church in Nashville, TN has identified eight components that are central for next generation leaders leading next generation family ministry: (1) Create family ministry purpose and goals, (2) Understand that equipping the home is the central place of influence, (3) Build your family ministry on biblical truths, (4) Have an intentional comprehensive strategy, (5) Keep age-graded ministries as a vital part of church programming while championing the home, (6) Develop catalyst spiritual conversations that parents can have with their children, (7) Help parents grow spiritually themselves, and (8) Capture stories that convey the telling of life change.
Lync also discovered five methods for equipping and resourcing next generation families: (1) Focus studies, (2) Coaching guide that includes conversation starters, missional ideas, and daily devotionals, (3) Parent classes, (4) Weekly emails, and (5) Resource area somewhere in the church. Lync says next generation parents should leverage teachable opportunities (“God-moments”) and exert daily spiritual influence (“As you go”) on their children.
Timothy Paul Jones has noted how every next generation family event must TIE into the parents. TIE stands for the next generation leaders Training, Involving, and Equipping parents to be the primary spiritual disciple-maker of their children.
[1] Rob Rienow, Visionary Parenting: Capture a God-Sized Vision for Your Family (Nashville: Randall House, 2009), 9.