Developing a Family Ministry for Your Church

By Gary J. Oliver

I grew up in a quiet neighborhood in southern California where the two-parent family was the norm. When I was in grade school, I remember being told by a friend that, only two blocks from his house, lived a woman who had “really been divorced.” In those days, divorce was rare. Times have changed.

I could fill an entire article with facts and figures to document the alarming decline and disintegration of the family. In unprecedented numbers our families are changing: there are fathers working while mothers stay home; families in which both fathers and mothers work; single parents; second marriages that bring children together from unrelated backgrounds; childless couples; unmarried couples with and without children; and gay and lesbian parents.

If this disintegration was taking place primarily in the homes of unchurched families, it would be tragic enough. The real tragedy, however, is that the divorce rate is as high among evangelical couples as unchurched couples. One explanation for this is that Christ doesn’t make a difference in our families and biblical truth is irrelevant for relationships. A better explanation is that we haven’t taken relationships as seriously as God does, and we haven’t developed meaningful ways to help our people discover how to apply biblical truth in their marriages and families.

The Significance Of Family Ministry

God intended for the family to be the basic unit in society. A casual view of history reveals that as go marriages, so goes the family; as go families, so goes the community; as go communities, so goes the nation; as go nations, so goes civilization.

The Bible tells us that in the beginning God created the family. In His infinite wisdom He chose the family to serve as the cradle for personhood. In Deuteronomy 6, as well as in other biblical passages, it is clear that God designed the family as the crucible in which the reality of the person of the living God is to be both taught (through formal education) and caught (by the example of the parents’ lives).

The quality of family life influences every other part of our life. Surveys have found that an American’s greatest source of happiness in life is the family. These surveys have also found that the greatest source of frustration and disappointment in people’s lives is dealing with family problems. The quality of family life also has a powerful impact on the believability of the gospel message. Joe Aldrich states: “The two greatest forces in evangelism are a healthy church and a healthy marriage. The two are interdependent. You can’t have one without the other. It is the healthy marriage, however, which is the ‘front lines weapon.’ The Christian family in a community is the ultimate evangelistic tool, assuming the home circle is an open one in which the beauty of the gospel is readily available. It’s the old story: When love is seen the message is heard.”¹