Warriors for Parents In a Family-Unfriendly Culture
A quarter-century ago I worked with family ministry pioneer Ben Freudenburg on his groundbreaking book The Family-Friendly Church. Together, we took a deep dive into Ben’s journey from conventional youth ministry to “home-centered, church-supported” strategies. Ben had struggled through a long season of ministry burnout, made worse by his disillusionment with common church practices that elevated church programs over equipping and supporting parents in their primary role as faith-nurturers. So his church pastor urged him to take a sabbatical to recover himself, and to clarify a major pivot in his approach to ministry.
Ben crafted a three-month adventure into the emerging research around the importance of parents in their kids’ lifelong relationship with God, and set up a series of surveys and in-person interviews to explore this pivot from every angle. Along the way he connected with more than 3,000 ministry leaders, who all agreed that healthy, faith-nurturing homes are the engine room for thriving congregations. But Ben also asked them to assess what the home environments in their congregations were like, and here are the common threads he discovered…
- Family relationships are often strained and disconnected;
- Many families are so much in debt that their activities and relationships are strained;
- Parents struggle to know how to discipline their kids;
- Homes are often not supportive, and are often not fun places to be;
- The pace and volume of family life squeezes out family traditions and activities;
- Families are like puppets controlled by the schedules and priorities of churches, schools, and recreational organizations;
- The media coming into many homes is rarely, if ever, monitored; and
- Many homes are more like rest stops than places to belong and grow.
What’s remarkable about this list is how little our home ecosystems have changed in the 25 years since Ben compiled these observations. Today’s parents still face every one of these challenges, and often struggle to move toward the kind of home environment they long to nurture. But Ben recognized something profound about the challenges facing parents—while parents are commonly blamed for the sad shape of home life (adults surveyed said very few parents are good role models, that parents largely spoil their kids, and mothers aren’t what they used to be), the truth is that parents do a better job than people think (in fact, mothers were more involved with their kids than their own mothers were, kids generally got more attention from their parents than kids in the “golden years,” and families did more activities together than previous generations).
In contrast, Ben says the real culprit undermining healthier home ecosystems is the wider culture: “The unseen enemy of stable homes is a culture of disunity that can’t agree on what’s right and wrong for kids,” says Ben. “According to writer Cheryl Russell in American Demographics, ‘Parents of the 1950s could afford to be laissez-faire about child-rearing. The schools, the media, the neighbors—all worked together to ensure the success of their offspring. Parents of the 1990s know only too well the danger lurking behind a stranger’s smile, the undertow of failure awaiting children whose parents are not vigilant.’ So parents are… working harder than ever to raise their kids well. But they’re fighting an uphill battle. It’s the culture itself that’s in opposition to faith-nurturing, strong families. And the church is stuck in an old pattern of teaching the faith to families—its programming and structure is focused to meet the needs of families in a culture that does not exist anymore.”
Again, Ben’s now-ancient insights into the forces arrayed against parents who want to guide their kids toward a deepening relationship with Jesus seem more present-relevant than quaint. Maybe, then, the ministry “targets” that Ben laid out a quarter-century ago are worth revisiting today. These are the questions Ben gave to churches that were committed to becoming a bulwark for parents against the pressure they felt from an often-antagonistic culture:
- What does a church look like that really believes the family is the place God intended for faith to be passed on from generation to generation?
- Are parents ultimately responsible for nurturing faith in their children? How is a church structured to model that belief?
- What are the rules and regulations that govern a family-friendly church’s practices and programs?
- What kind of resources would it have on its website?
- What classes would it offer?
- What would worship look like?
- How would it be staffed?
- What would Sunday morning, midweek education, and small-group ministry look like?
- If the church had a school, how would it include parents?
- What is absolutely critical for such a church?
- How will we need to change to meet the challenges of an entirely new paradigm?
If real change is going to happen in the way we partner with parents to disciple a new generation of Jesus-followers, we’ll need to gather our church stakeholders to wrestle with these questions. As Ben wrote so long ago: “It breaks my heart that we haven’t challenged families to make Christ a higher priority in their day-to-day lives. We’ve simply rubber-stamped families’ decision to let the church teach their children the faith. We’ve been lulled into perpetuating destructive patterns, and we have even championed those patterns by the way we’ve structured our churches.”
Take Your Next Steps
At Vibrant Faith we’ve created two resources designed to help ministry leaders live out what Ben dreamed of doing a quarter-century ago. Familying the Faith is a kit that includes a new e-book (written my Dr. Nancy Going and I) along with two MasterClass sessions featuring Dr. Christian Smith, sociology of religion professor at Notre Dame, and Laura Kelly Fanucci, writer and founder of Mothering Spirit. And Practical Tools for Raising Faithful Kids bridges the gap between knowledge and practice – for parents who want to influence their kids toward a deeper faith. You get six lessons for hybrid-learning formats, editable leader and participant guides, and a PowerPoint slide deck. Check out these one-of-a-kind resources, and take your next step toward a home-centered, church-supported revolution in your church culture.
Rick Lawrence is Executive Director of Vibrant Faith—he created the new curriculum Following Jesus. He’s editor of the Jesus-Centered Bible and author of 40 books, including his new release Editing Jesus: Confronting the Distorted Faith of the American Church, The Suicide Solution, The Jesus-Centered Life and Jesus-Centered Daily. He hosts the podcast Paying Ridiculous Attention to Jesus.
