Orange Week Peeled: Reactivate The Family
Written by Matt McKee // January 19, 2010 // Ministry // 2 Comments
Enlist parents to act as partners in the spiritual formation of their own children
Most families love Halloween. Right or wrong, there is something about October 31 that stirs the imagination of children and engages the hearts of parents.
Watch your neighborhood closely this fall.
Listen to the laughter.
Take a look at the generosity.
Taste the sugar.
Feel the energy.
See the glow in the children’s eyes.
Notice the parents walking with their kids.
And observe how families connect with other families.
It seems kind of … magical.
Why can’t church be more like that? Why can’t the church create the kind of atmosphere for the family that captures their imagination and incites a relational revival in the home? It can, if you think Orange. Halloween Orange! What if you started thinking differently about the family? Better yet, what if you started acting differently toward parents? Has it ever occurred to you that how you relate to parents may influence how you reactivate the family?
By “reactivate the family,” we simply mean the way you help parents actively participate in the spiritual formation of their own children.
What does that look like at Horizon?
We would rather see parents teaching small groups than anyone else. We are very intentional in all age groups to recruit, train, and equip parents to lead small groups. That being said this is the one area in the Orange philosophy where we fall the shortest. Outside of parents who are willing to lead small groups we have struggled how to get them to engage. I have tried everything from Twitter to text messages trying to engage parents during the week. Both were tried before their times but did not find the success we had hoped. We do not do any type of Family Experience or Family Service except during the Christmas season.
Not giving excuses about moving in and out of a school each week and working with rented facilities. Just being open about a portable church who hasn’t figured this one out 100% and we see this as the biggest question we have to answer.
Have you found any answers or how have you dealt with this aspect?
Posted via email from matt mckee Other media may be on the posterous site. Clink link if you are interested.
2 Comments on "Orange Week Peeled: Reactivate The Family"
Ouch. Portable church. That’s just plain hard. I would say that we often give up just moments before dawn sometimes though. Maybe something you’ve already tried would work if you tried again now. I have been swirling the idea in my head for a long time of how to create a small groups experience (from the curriculum side of things) that would actually draw out parents and help them get their own needs for community and small groups fulfilled at the same time. No answer yet. But it still seems like a worthy thing to think about.
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