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“Family-integrated ministry is by far the most radical model. In a family-integrated church, all or nearly all age-graded classes and events are eliminated. That’s right: No youth group, no children’s church, no age-segmented Sunday school classes."

I really like the idea of this, at least in theory. Having all generations in church from babies to ninety-somethings certainly has a big family 'feel' about it. I think we should do it a bit more at church (in addition to the all-age services we have in the summer holidays, where the small children are allowed to wander about a bit). But it must have a lot of limitations. How much can children understand from an adult sermon? Will they develop the idea that church is boring? What about if it is a sermon unsuitable for children? The noise is also a factor if you are hard of hearing!

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This book defines family ministry as “the process of intentionally and persistently realigning a congregation’s proclamation and practices so that members develop diverse discipling relationships and parents are acknowledged, equipped, and held accountable as primary disciple-makers in their children’s lives.”

The first definition was quite similar but it under-emphasised the role of church as family. I like this new definition as it seems to recognize better the reality that it's not just about training parents, and that as the author later says, the generations need each other to spur each other on at every life stage. Nonetheless, since my church isn't particularly "intergenerational" in its practices, I'm still not sure what this looks like on a Sunday (or at other times in the week). Are we saying that we want ministry from the front and in small mid-week groups to place more emphasis on church members seeking out others who are different? Are we saying that we want people to get to the stage where, for example, before and after the service, there are cross-generational conversations going on with adults talking freely to children, youth to adults, younger adults to older adults etc? I'd love to see more of that in my church - I think it would take adults being intentional about speaking to children and youth, and others of different life stages.

On implementing Family-Based ministry: I do wonder if the church family senses that there is a massive emphasis on family and parents as primary disciple-makers, there might be some push-back. Especially from single folks who might feel excluded. So there must be a big pastoral challenge in these Family Ministry churches to get buy-in from those who have little or no immediate family?

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“It requires persistent and intentional reorientation of the entire church’s perspective on the processes of evangelism and discipleship.”

This sentence captures why I am drawn to the Family-Integrated Ministry model. It’s not about adding more programs but about reshaping how we understand ministry itself.

Families and the church should not operate separately but together as one community of discipleship. In my context, this vision feels both inspiring and challenging. I see the need for a new culture where parents, children, and all generations share the same spiritual journey.

This approach also feels deeply authentic in a world that often values appearance over depth. Much of what passes for faith today seems external or performative. But when families truly live out the gospel together, it becomes real and convincing. People outside the church can see the Kingdom of God embodied in everyday life—and that’s what makes faith truly alive.

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"Full-fledged family ministry entails far more than the addition of one more purpose or program. It requires persistent and intentional reorientation of the entire church’s perspective on the processes of evangelism and discipleship."

When I read this part of the chapter it made me realize that so many churches build a program based on what is current and then in 3-4 years they find them questioning why are numbers dropping. Because people or families don't feel its relevant anymore. How raw of a thought that a church that is not consistently reorienting itself in its entirety will become irrelevant. I guess we could draw a parallel to technology advances. every couple of years something new comes out and makes the design of 2 - 3 years ago less desirable. The challenge becomes how to hold true to gospel truths consistently adapt to the newest issues facing families in your congregation over and over again.

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"I’m hopeful because I see a beautiful opportunity that towers far above these cultural transitions. It’s the possibility that churches will become contexts where the generations are drawn together instead of being driven apart, places where the hearts of fathers turn anew toward the hearts of their children, communities where nonbelievers cannot help but glimpse the glorious presence of something that’s absent from their homes."

I feel this is really the crux of the discussion in analyzing the different models of family ministry. Beyond the differences of thought and implementation, what we all must really pursue is to have a church that is salt and light, grounded in the truth of God's Word, and that is the living proof of being entirely different from the godless society around it.

I enjoyed much of the reading, and I agree with most of what the authors shared, not trying to prove which particular family ministry might be "the best", but giving different perspectives and encouraging the readers to do an accurate evaluation of their own church contexts, and then to decide which model could be the best suitable for that particular community.

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"In the first place, all agree that Scripture is the supreme and sufficient standard for how to do ministry. Scripture is not simply another source of authority alongside organizational psychologies, statistical correlations, and other social-scientific claims. The Word of God—which is to say, God enfleshed in Jesus Christ, whose plans for his people are impeccably revealed to us in the pages of holy Scripture—provides the regulative template for Christian faith and practice. Whether a method seems to work from a human perspective is beside the point. How ministries have been done in the past is significant only insomuch as these past ministries have conformed to the patterns preserved in Scripture. The Word of God stands alone as the first, final, and sufficient word."

This seems like quite a bold statement to me. Yes, scripture is supreme and sufficient for Christian life, but is it the exact standard for how to do ministry? It is, obviously, the place that we see God's mission, His character, etc, and, therefore, its where we see the heart behind ministry, but the Bible doesn't have a clear list of ways that we are supposed to minister to families. If it did, I can't imagine we'd be spending so much time questioning the exact grammatical wording of Deuteronomy 6.

Scripture is hugely interpretable. Arguments can be made for all sorts of things that do or don't line up with scripture depending on your tradition. Should we not then make use of the resources we have, of "organizational psychologies, statistical correlations, and other social-scientific claims?" Do we not want to learn from church tradition, evaluating, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, what does and doesn't work in our congregations and making informed decisions?

This line of argument, stating that these are entirely scriptural methods of family ministry, seems to set its own thinking on a pedestal, making the implication that if they don't seem to work from a human perspective (the only perspective that we as humans actually have), that's ok because they are based in scripture and are probably working in God's perspective.

I'm likely reading far more into this passage without the context of the entire book. Maybe the writer is specifically responding to methods of ministry which ignore scripture as a whole and rely entirely of secular structures and tradition. That being said, this seems like an overcorrection.

I would love to hear what others think on this and if it created tension for anyone else or if there is a more gracious reading of this paragraph than I have given.

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Though professionals may partner with parents in this task, such a vast and serious undertaking as a child’s discipleship is too significant to be relinquished completely to professionals. God has selected specific, ordinary people for this assignment, and these people are known as “Dad” and “Mom.” The primary formation of a child’s faith is not a job for specialists. It is a job for parents in partnership with the whole community of faith.

This part of the reading speaks to me because as a parent, I would never just rely on the school system to educate my child. I would never just entrust the medical doctors to ensure my child's health. We as parents are responsible for the raising up of our children, this is our God given responsibility. Seen in Proverbs 22 verse 6 "Start children off on the way they should go,
and even when they are old they will not turn from it."

Then again in Deuteronomy 4: 9-10 and again in 11:19.

I am starting to thing that a young persons foundational faith is strongly reliant on that of the family ministry, then can be further refined by the rest of the church the professional leader and the discipleship of other generations.

For me I find this to be true I entered into a church with little to no foundations as my family was a family of non believers. I had to rely solely on those in the family I married into and those in the church to help me grow. It was a much more slowly developing faith with many occurrences of failure and stagnation.

With these things in mind I'm strongly leaning towards a focus of family first ministry, with supplementation of the multi-generational church.

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“Though professionals may partner with parents in this task, such a vast and serious undertaking as a child’s discipleship is too significant to be relinquished completely to professionals. God has selected specific, ordinary people for this assignment, and these people are known as “Dad” and “Mom”.”

I think I have chosen the same quote as Jason!

I really enjoyed this section of the chapter where the author was touching on this overemphasis on professionalism. So often parents feel incompetent to disciple their children, perhaps they are new Christian’s themselves! Inevitably, parents give the sole responsibility to the church, they spend Monday to Saturday giving practical care to their children and then on a Sunday hand them over to Sunday school. Perhaps, the trained youth leader feels more competent and vital than the parents and therefore carries the weight of discipleship alone.

Yet, the pattern of Scripture is God using the unskilled, and the untrained, because ultimately it is God working through them. Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah, the disciples and even the Samaritan woman! I think this is an important thing to remember when discussing the approaches to children’s ministry - are we trusting in our own abilities or relying upon God?

I also appreciate that the author did not completely undermine the importance of training, parents must partner with “professionals”!

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"All of them agree that complete and continual segmentation of the generations does not adequately reflect God’s plan for God’s people. Churches must intentionally create contexts that equip dissimilar generations to live their faith together".

This is a truth that my community should discuss and consider how to apply. The first and second points in the “common ground” section are ideas that our congregants already affirm. We all believe that Scripture should be our standard and that parents have the primary role in their children’s spiritual formation—at least in theory. However, the idea that we should intentionally seek ways to live out our faith together across generations is, in my opinion, still far from being a reality. Currently, after our corporate time of worship, children and teenagers are dismissed for Sunday school. They return at the end of the service, bringing papers or crafts that show the topic they studied during their separate time. So far, there has been no effort to align the theme of the sermon with what the children are learning.

This reading made me reflect on the importance of addressing this gap. Since parents are primarily responsible for their children’s discipleship, aligning the themes could help them have meaningful D6 conversations at home and find practical ways to live out what they have learned together.

I believe it could be relatively easy to implement such a change at this stage of our journey, as our church is still growing and shaping its identity. What we need is simply to be intentional—to bring this matter into our conversations, make a clear plan, and act promptly while our structure and habits are still forming.

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"We affirm that there is a clear and consistent biblical pattern of worship and discipleship for the people of God that is age-integrated; and we believe that this pattern should be embraced and practiced. . . . We affirm that returning to a biblically-ordered, age-integrated methodology for the worship of God and discipleship in a local church is consistent with Holy Scripture and critical for the restoration of the kind of worship and discipleship culture we see demonstrated in both the Old and New Testaments."

This claim raises important questions about the nature of the church. Is the church a family of families, a body of believers (in the universal church sense), or even a body composed of both believers and unbelievers meeting together in the same local congregation? According to this claim, the church’s worship and discipleship depend on embracing this particular model. Which sounds a bit too much.

It would be interesting to see concrete examples of how this approach works in practice. How are children integrated into the worship service? Are they expected to participate in the same way adults do? While the term age-integrated sounds inclusive and unifying, if certain elements of worship are designed primarily for adults—even when children are present—the experience may not be truly inclusive for them. I am curious to see how worship and discipleship are genuinely restored simply by following this model.