For the past ten years God has blessed me with the opportunity to speak to many church leaders regarding what it means to be a church focused on faith at home Yet, the question I hear most often is—“What do I have to do to get my senior pastor on board with this?” Let me try to address this question from the perspective of a senior pastor.
Senior pastors are inundated with pleas for support of all types of ministries; all needed, all meeting the needs of people. So, amid all the causes that need our attention, family ministry can easily become one of the many. If that is the case with you, how does family ministry hit the radar for senior pastors?
Here is what I have discovered as I have talked with senior pastors all across the world.
- Senior Pastors are NOT anti-family ministry. I have yet to find a senior pastor who does not support the importance of the family. In fact, most are very concerned about the disintegration of the family. They want to see their families succeed and they want to lead a church that will strengthen families. Unfortunately, they simply don’t know how to weave family ministry into their overall ministry vision or strategy. Senior pastors need to see how family ministry, or faith at home as I call it, can be an integrated part of your overall ministry strategy. When that happens, senior pastors get very excited about leading the charge.
- Language matters. Another thing I discovered was the fact that using the word family actually inhibited me from getting the people in my church, as well as other senior pastors, on board with what we were trying to do. When we changed our language from being a “family-oriented” church to being a “faith at home” focused church, we were then able to get all ages in our church on board. For me, the reality is simply this: Satan has been strategically and methodically attacking the home, realizing that if he can get people to be one-hour Christians, he can lead generations of people from truly following Christ. The home is clearly the primary place where faith is nurtured. Satan knows this, which is why he is attacking the home. Satan doesn’t want singles, seniors, students, or parents to live out their faith at home, everyday, all the time. Yet when we call it “family ministry,” those without kids tune us out. What we are dealing with is much larger than family ministry, and that’s why we intentionally changed the language to “faith at home.” The D6 gathering is about helping churches catch a vision for how every ministry can be more “faith at home” focused.
- Models are helpful. As a senior pastor I get excited when I look at different working models that can help me implement a new ministry strategy in my church. That is probably one of the things I am looking forward to the most at D6 because this conference will provide a place where church leaders can gather to see different “faith at home” models. Just like a small groups conference would provide lots of resources and models for becoming a church “of” small groups, D6 will provide multiple resources and models for becoming a “faith at home” focused church.
- We need a new measuring stick. When I became a senior pastor I felt the pressure to succeed. The previous senior pastor had grown the church from 200 to over 1000 worshipers during 25 years of ministry. The church named one of their buildings after him. When I began I had visions of growing the church to 2000 and someday having a building named after me. Yet, after two years of focusing on attendance numbers God gave me a different vision. My heart was breaking over the fact that we had a lot of people worshipping yet only 10% of them were praying, reading the Bible, or engaging in any type of devotions or worship in the home. And even though we had a great youth room many of our young adults were walking away from the faith. I gave up the vision to be a 2000+ worshiping church to being a “faith at home” focused church. Through an intentional, integrated effort within every ministry of the church, over the next five years we grew from having 10% of our people praying, reading the Bible, or engaging in devotions and worship in the home to over 40%. Do I want a building in my name? Not so much. Do I want my people living in a daily authentic relationship with Jesus Christ at home. ABSOLUTELY. While “faith at home” is not as easy to measure as church attendance, at the end of the day I believe it is more important.
