Missional Student Ministry & The Family

So much of what I have shared in my last 2 blogs have been on the need to change the way we do student ministry, moving from Attractional-driven ministries to Missional-driven ministries. However, in my attempt to prod us to shift paradigms to a more biblical strategy, I neglected to mention the most important foundational principle that should guide our approach to any model of ministry...THE FAMILY. There are only 2 institutions in all the Bible that are ordained by God....marriage (the family), and the church.

Everything began with God. He created man in the garden, and said it wasn’t good for him to be alone (Gen 2:18). So, he creates a wife for Adam. God performs the very first marriage ceremony in the garden and blesses them with this command...”Be fruitful and multiply”. Family is God’s idea!

He designed family to be the basic common institution through which every individual would experience the love of God, share community, and be discipled to repeat this same experience with their future family....on down through the generations. Therefore, family is the basic fabric of all communities & civilizations worldwide. That’s why when the family is destroyed through sin (premarital sex, divorce, addictions, bad theology, etc.) the culture begins to fall apart. I believe everything negative that ends up on the nightly news is a result of people not having the Gospel, which trickles down to families falling apart. Then, when people don’t experience family the way God intended it, life just doesn’t work, and all types of distortions are birthed (homosexuality, same-sex marriages, shacking up, etc.) Most charities, social justice projects, entitlement programs, and humanitarian aid efforts, other than natural disaster relief, are built to meet the needs of the fallout from broken families.

We need to also remember, when God does something, he starts at the micro level and moves to the macro level. [ie: A baby is born & grows into an adult. Our skin replaces itself every 30 days, not in sheets of skin, but from the cell level. God started with a man (Abraham), built a family (Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob), and formed a nation (Israel), in order to reach all the NATIONS. Salvation starts at the heart and works itself outward, ultimately changing our entire lives.] God is always working from small to large, or inside to out (which was my point about being missional rather than attractional in our ministries) Man, to marriage, to family, to the church, to community, to civilization, to the nations. This is what makes the Attractional model non-biblical. It tries to grow from the outside in, rather than the inside out.

Anyway, the family makes up the basic DNA of all our churches and is God’s design for passing on life at its fullest under the leadership of the Lord Himself. That being said, our student ministries must set our families up to succeed.

SOME THOUGHTS TO CONSIDER:
Biblically, God intends for parents to be the primary disciplers of their own children, not the youth pastor.
(Gen. 18:18-19; Deut. 4:9-10; 6:6-9; all of Proverbs; Mal. 4:6; Luke 1:17; Eph. 6:4; etc.)
We are not going to be connected to our students forever, their parents will.
All that we’ve taught or invested in students has little impact if it’s not modeled at home by their parents.
All statistics show that parents still rank as the highest influencer of their teens, over friends and culture.
Student pastors haven’t always existed. They are a recent phenomenon within the last 50 years.
So, we must consider that our role is secondary as a student pastor. We are not the all in all to the student. We should be equipping the parents to disciple their own students while we provide the secondary support and encouragement needed for true discipleship. Truth be told, if parents discipled their own students, our roles would diminish greatly. Maybe that’s a threat to you, but have you ever considered the total impact you could have & what your role might be with a super healthy, highly functional family structure in the homes of your students?

For further info on how to help parents succeed in discipling their own students, I’ve listed one of my very close friends and colleagues who has served the church for over 20 years. Their church has restructured their entire existence around total family impact. He is a forerunning leader in helping parents succeed as the primary disciplers of their own students. Feel free to connect with him for further Q&A.

STEVE WRIGHT
Author of “ReThink”, and Pastor of Parent & Family Discipleship
Providence Baptist Church; Raleigh, NC
CLICK TO CONNECT

May the Lord give you wisdom as you continue serving students & their families. Thank you so much for all your help and prayers as we move forward to Launch the Next Generation Missionary.

Until Every Nation Knows! (Hab. 1:5)

Chris White
President/Founder
Mobilizing Students