Living the Dream
I’m excited to be a guest blogger here at Without Wax. For those of you who don’t know me, I am Pat Rowland, Family Ministries Pastor at Cross Point.
My greatest passion (aside from my relationship with Jesus) is family. I’ve always wanted to be a Dad-I couldn’t wait to have kids. When Mandy and I were first married I couldn’t wait until we brought home our first child. For some reason I always thought it would be a boy… however, God has blessed me with 3 incredible daughters. I love my family more than anything which drives me to be so gung ho about seeing healthy families developing healthy children that impact communities and culture.
I believe it is vital for churches and church leaders to highly value the development of family ministry. In 11 years of pastoral and student ministry, I’ve seen my fair share of hurting kids, marriages, and adults. No one likes to see a child hurt; we cringe at the news reports of a 2 year old girl being beaten to death with a video game controller. No one likes to hear that their friends are separating after 15 years of marriage or that their teenage daughter is cutting. Typically, our response is to develop programs, throw money at the problem, or pray for them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about prayer-I have 3 daughters with one on the brink of adolescence!
Discipleship and spiritual development doesn’t happen in a classroom, program, or book study; it happens in the context of real life. Jesus’ invitation to his disciples was “Come and See.” In John 1, two of John the Baptist’s disciples asked Jesus, “Where are you staying?” What they wanted to know is “Who are you? What is your life like, because there is something about you that intrigues me?” I love Jesus’ response, “Come and you will see.” He was saying, “Look at my life, spend time in my home, watch how I live every moment and you will see who I am.”
If we are going to see deep life change in our children’s lives, then we have to develop a “come and see” discipling ministry. We have to train and equip parents to understand the influence they have in their kids’ lives. We have to give parents the tools to teach their kids the foundational and life-changing principles of scripture that are being taught at church. We have to have spiritually mature adults being another voice in the kids’ lives that is saying the same things their parents are teaching them. We have to continue to cast vision to board members, leaders, volunteers, and parents about the importance of life change in the context of family ministry.
I’m so thankful God has called me to live my dream as a husband, dad, and Pastor of Family Ministries, and I’ll give everything I’ve got for this calling!
I’d like to hear your thoughts on balancing church activites within the family structure. I’ve seen families get involved with so many activites that they have no time together.
I guess my guestion is, how do you determine when activities are just for the sake of having another “church” event?
Btw, great meeting Wed. evening.
I agree. The vision has to be recast to everyone and we have to step back and explore where we are in that vision.
Tammy great question, and a huge struggle for anyone doing family ministry, children’s or student ministry. Not to mention the struggles parents have in trying to juggle 3 kids schedules. I think we as leaders have to be extremely intentional about purpose and strategy when it comes to events. There has to be a balance in the strategy and we have to work hard at staying simple.
Also, I think as leaders we’ve had to give up on the idea that every family is going to attend every event. That just isn’t possible, so how to we continue to leverage our influence to the family that spends weekends traveling to soccer tournaments? I think we have to be Deut. 6 thinkers, equipping parents and giving them the tools to “talk about them when you walk along the road”.
I think our church does an awesome job of giving parents the tools they will need to teach their children the life changing principles of scripture. I challenge the parents of Crosspoint (myself included!) to actually take a look at those refrigerator door cards and God time cards (they are handed out every week in Kidstuff). They have great simple questions and activities that you can do with your kids in the car, around the dinner table or basically anytime you have a minute. Ian and I find that in the course of talking to our kids about the “virtue of the month”, we ourselves are challenged and encouraged.
Holly thanks for your endorsement!
Pat, I don’t attend your church. Actually I’m thousands of miles away this morning. But is there a secret of success in getting a teenager to church. We have have a dynamic youth group, and awesome youth pastor, but the dynamics are one of reaching inner street youth, my teen, doesn’t want to be in that label. He’s a straight A student with aspirations to be an animator and has been in church ALL his life. But lately, as his voice deepens he’s starting to question????????
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