I thought it would be a good idea to summarize my vision for what our Family Ministry at Dayton Avenue will look like. At the core, I hold to four key and biblical values that, I pray, will shape all of what we do. I hope these values provides some clarity in terms of my desire for how we will seek to serve you and your families, as well as what I believe lays at the heart of what we must be teaching our children.

Gospel Grounded.

Earlier this week I came across a meme that said something to the effect of: “The greatest feeling in the world is knowing that you have raised good kids.” I understand the sentiment. I desperately desire that twenty plus years from now, as Abigail and I look back over our years as parents, that we can say our children are wise and make good decisions. But as Christians phrases like this need to set off warning flags. At the core of this statement is the assumption that true joy and success in parenting is found in raising good moral children. The problem is, “good kids”, who fail to submit their lives to Christ’s Lordship, will spend eternity in hell alongside the kids who are raising hell in their neighborhoods as we speak. Our kids don’t need behavior modification, they need what we all need, which is gospel transformation. Our kids can never live “good enough lives” and we need to teach them this from day one. Our children’s greatest need isn’t morality it is a Savior.

Instead of obsessing over controlling our children’s behavior we are to serve as Christ’s ambassadors to them. We don’t primarily need to protect our children from the world, we must teach them of their need to be saved from themselves. The word “gospel” means good news. It is the truth that we are each fundamentally flawed. All of us, including our children, start our lives as enemies of the God and Ruler of the universe. With every act, we rebel against Him and seek to set ourselves up as rulers of “our universes”. This has earned the just condemnation and punishment of death. In ourselves, we all stand convicted, but the story doesn’t end there. The same God whom we disobeyed and slandered, loved us despite that. For the sake of His glory, He sent His one and only Son to die on our behalf. Now, there is hope, for the price of our sin is paid. For all who believe, forgiveness waits and life forevermore. No longer do we have to seek pleasure and purpose in all the wrong places. One has come to give us purpose, joy, and life abundant. This truth, or gospel, is the power of God unto salvation. (Romans 1:15). Notice, it isn’t morality that saves but faith. We can never be good enough because our righteousness is as filthy rags. It is not by “good deeds but grace that we are saved from our sins. (Eph 2)  The only thing standing between our children and eternal damnation is a choice. Will they worship themselves or God? Will they respond to the good news in belief or choose to continue in disobedience? All we do must be grounded in the gospel because only the gospel has meaningful power to impact and transform our children from children of wrath to children of God.

Christ Centered.

I am reminded of the story in Luke 24 in which Jesus is on the road to Emmaus with two of His disciples. This is soon after his crucifixion and they haven’t accepted the fact that He has been raised. When Jesus first starts traveling with them, the disciples don’t recognize him. Jesus plays along and asks them how they are doing. Long story short, they recount to him the happenings which had just taken place in Jerusalem the week before (Christ’s crucifixion.) and their amazement at the crazy story concerning His supposed resurrection. In verse ….it says””. When we read the Bible through the lens of Christ it fits together. All those stories in the Old Testament where sin runs rampant are pointing to the pressing need for One to save us from ourselves. When God judges sin, we see the truth that sin demands punishment and we deserve it. Jesus has always been the point. These stories aren’t meant to merely produce a moral lifestyle. They are intended to show us the One who has come to wash away our sins and clothe us in His righteousness. They are not meant to teach us more about ourselves but about God.

If everything in Scripture is about Christ, that makes Him the main character. That means the Bible is about Jesus, not me. Our children desperately need to be taught to read the Bible not with themselves as the center but coming to God’s Word desiring to come face to face with the Lord of all the universe who stepped down from Him throne, freely, to pay the price for their sins. In the midst of their sinful tendencies and the inferior pleasures they are tempted to seek, our kids need to experience the true joy and transcendent pleasure of being truly and fully loved by the one true God. The solution to all the “fake treasures” and “false pleasures” that our children encounter every day is not for us to build a wall because we can never perfectly protect them. THe answer is Jesus. He alone can satisfy the longing of our souls. Like C.S. Lewis said….the problem isn’t that we want pleasure, the problem is we settle for inferior pleasure. Our children must be taught that Christ alone can give purpose, joy, and fulfillment to their lives. Instead of settling for scraps, let’s teach our children to feast on the main course.

Family Focused.

I believe that the phrase “Children’s Ministry” is a bit of a misnomer. Instead, it should be called Family Ministry. The reason I feel this way is that I believe we are to reach and equip whole families with the gospel, not just children. Everything we do as Christians should strive to fulfill the Great Commission, which is to make disciples. The thing is, disciple making is a marathon, not a sprint. It is about moment by moment modeling and sharing the gospel. In addition, Scripture teaches that it is primarily the parents’ role to make disciples of their children. Deuteronomy chapter six details for us what Jesus calls the greatest commandment, (“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”) but what we don’t talk about as much is what directly follows. After spelling out one of the two foundational commands upon which the rest of the law rests, God commands parents to teach them to their children. In verse seven it says “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” From the very beginning of that verse, it is clear that parents are charged with ensuring that their children know God’s precepts. The fact that God has given this responsibility to parents makes total sense. Parents are the ones who have hours upon hours of influence with their children. You are the ones God has tasked with the temporary stewardship of their lives. The members of the church work alongside you in your task and we seek to encourage you at all times, but we cannot fulfill a calling that God has given for you, as the parent, to carry out.

Family Ministry should never merely be daycare. That doesn’t mean we don’t love to provide childcare and opportunities for parents to have a night out, but it does qualify when and how we approach ministering to children and their families. Each and every moment we have with the children should be geared towards gospel transformation. The church serves families by equipping the parents to disciple their children. In addition, the church serves alongside the parents in the discipleship process. Titus 2:1-8 paints a picture in which older men and women model for their younger counterparts what it means to walk faithfully before God. As a parent, you are never alone in this task. These gospel truths need to be spoken and restated at any and every opportunity. Sunday School teachers have the weighty role of teaching and modeling Biblical fellowship, but we only see your kids a few hours a week. Scripture teaches that we, as humans, are a forgetful bunch (Jer 2:32). Our kids do not need a “Jesus fix” once or twice a week when you attend church as a family. They need a relationship with the Lord of the universe. They need to be taught day in and day out about who God is and who they are in relation to Him. And most of all, they need to see that personal relationship lived out in the home by their parents.

Missions Minded.

One of the reoccurring questions I think we often wrestle with is, “What is God’s will for my life?” It has different nuances at different stages of life but ultimately, as Christ followers, we want to live faithfully. The good news is that Jesus has not left us alone to determine ourselves what His will is, we have His WORD. I would argue that all of God’s ultimate will for our lives is spelled out in Scripture. In Matthew 28 Jesus gives his disciples his closing instructions before He leaves. His final command opens as follows “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” “Make disciples” is the main verb in these verses and thus the main idea. Everything else in the verse relates back to this idea. It opens with the context, “As you are going”. Often this verse is used as a call to foreign missions, but that is actually not the point. The emphasis is on making disciples, not going. This charge applies to ALL Christians equally. If we are not actively working to make disciples we are living in sin and that applies to our kids who are saved too.

Here’s the problem, all too often we treat our children like they need to be coddled and sheltered from the cold and cruel world. We try to control any and every influence they come into contact with. Don’t get me wrong, I think there is biblical wisdom in shielding our children from unnecessary temptation. The problem is that, if that is all we do, we are teaching them that evil is “out there” in the world when the Bible clearly teaches that it resides in them. (verses about the wickedness of our hearts, etc). If we don’t clearly and consistently articulate to our kids that they have a crippling problem – their sinful nature – then we fail to communicate to them their deepest need, to have a Savior.

Additionally, I think that sometimes we think our children as the future of the church. The problem is, if our children are believers then they are part of the church NOW. This means that all Christ commandments apply to them just as much as they do to you and me. If we want to “teach them to observe ALL that I have commanded you,” they why is it that we tend to minimize the importance of evangelism? If we wait till our kids are adults to teach them to live evangelistically then we have wasted years of influence that they have had. If we spend 15 years training them to avoid “those people” (the sinners) at all costs, it is unrealistic for us to expect them to live missional lifestyles once they “grow up.” How we talk to about and model evangelism with our children when they are young is setting the stage for how they will live their lives for Christ when they are grown.