This is the fourth in a four-part series on making churches family friendly.
Through our research and experience with churches and families, we have discovered faithful parents and caregivers want to engage children in the faith but often do not know how. Churches can help parents and caregivers by encouraging family spiritual practices and rhythms.
For more than 20 years, the children’s ministry model has been straightforward: Bring your children to church, and we will do all the work. This model has been successful in building beautiful children’s ministry spaces, extensive volunteer rotations and effective participant check-in models.
Sarah Boberg
However, a side effect of this ministry for children has been the lack of support for parents and caregivers to encourage and nurture faith formation in the home. Churches focused on children’s ministries to teach and nurture children without focusing on teaching and nurturing parents. This model also emphasizes program attendance over faith formation and growth.
We now are seeing the consequences of this ministry model. Children have an interest and excitement for church, but they receive little support at home from their parents or caregivers to nurture what they experienced at church. College students and young adults who experienced this model have few tools to take ownership of their own faith formation outside of attending church. This is neither healthy nor a long-term, sustainable spiritual formation model for families or churches.
Therefore, churches can help families best by empowering and encouraging them to create their own spiritual practices, rituals and rhythms.
One of those practices can be church attendance, participating in special church programs or events. For example, many families have a ritual of attending the Christmas Eve service together as a family as a part of their Christmas celebration and observance. However, families need to know how to connect to and experience the presence of God outside the church walls.
This will take intentional efforts by churches, ministry leaders and parents or caregivers. Churches and ministry leaders can model spiritual practices and rituals during programs and worship while also offering ideas and support for families to make some of those practices their own. Churches and ministry leaders can provide resources for families to explore and experiment with. Churches also can provide time during regularly scheduled church activities for families to explore and experiment within the faith community.
“The more comfortable families get with spiritual practices, the more likely they will incorporate them into their daily rhythms.”
The more comfortable families get with spiritual practices, the more likely they will incorporate them into their daily rhythms. Parents will have to take the initiative to explore and implement practices and rituals.
One simple spiritual practice for families is prayer walking. Families can build short walks into their weekly schedules. During the walks, parents or caregivers can make an intentional effort to set an atmosphere of prayer. These walks can focus on giving thanks to God for creation, while pointing out the things children see that God made. Another option is for family members to share when or where they felt closest and furthest from God that day.
Prayer walks can be in silence, focusing on listening for God and God’s creation. Another fun option is to lift a name or situation to God for every new sidewalk block you pass. Prayer walking could be explained and/or modeled to families by churches and ministry leaders.
Churches and ministry leaders need to consider a shift in children and family ministry mindset from program planning to equipping and encouraging. Instead of places to consume knowledge and activities, churches can become spaces to encourage, equip and empower families to live out their faith through practices and rhythms that are accessible and natural for each family.
This is a difficult shift that requires different models, communication and evaluation. This also assumes not everything will be one-size-fits-all for families. However, this shift allows families to be engaged in spiritual formation in ways that foster growth for individuals, the family and the faith community.
Empowering Families through Spiritual Formation is a Lilly Endowment Christian Parenting and Caregiving Initiative through Campbell University. The purpose of the Empowering Families project is to partner with churches, ministers and parents to develop strategies and resources to equip and encourage families to engage in regular, substantive, holistic, family-centered formation.
Sarah Boberg serves as assistant professor of Christian education and director of the Empowering Families Grant at Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, N.C. She earned a bachelor’s degree in religion and a Master of Divinity degree from Campbell; she earned a Ph.D. in educational studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her dissertation research focused on the call experiences of Baptist women in ministry.
Related articles:
Suggestions for family friendly worship
Creating welcoming church spaces for families
Families do not need another church program