Saturday, November 14, 1998

Making churches more family friendly

By JUDY TARJANYI

Toledo Blade

Baby Boomer parents who grew up with the slogan, "The family that prays together, stays together," like to think they are doing the right thing by taking their children to church.

But a new way of looking at the relationship between churches and families suggests that both institutions may have overlooked an important word in the formula: "together."

The Rev. Paul Allen, a family ministries pastor who is editor of Group Publishing's Vital Ministry magazine, says over the last few years, parents have delegated too much of the responsibility for their children's spiritual training to the church.

"It's not working," he says.

Studies by pollster George Barna have shown that there is little difference in the moral standards of young people who go to church and youths who are unchurched, Allen says. When it comes to such behaviors as lying, cheating, or engaging in sexual intercourse, there is only a small percentage of difference in the responses of churched and unchurched youth.

Allen says parents have wrongly assumed that the church could take care of their children's spiritual training, much as the dry cleaner cleans their clothes or the pet groomer keeps the family dog looking good.

"We've become so consumer and service-oriented, we go to church to get spiritual training, go here to get physical training. We've kind of delegated our responsibilities out all over the place."

A group of family ministers from different denominations who came together several years ago to talk about the Barna findings concluded that the time had come for a new partnership between church and family.

They developed a Family Ministry Workshop, which is presented in churches around the country by Group Publishing of Loveland, Colo., to give pastors and family ministers guidelines for fostering a family friendly church.

The gathering also spawned a book, "The Family Friendly Church" by the Rev. Ben Freudenburg, minister of the Christian home at Concordia Lutheran Church, Kirkwood, Mo., and Rick Lawrence, editor of Group Publishing's Christian youth magazine. Their findings from a study of churches around the country indicate that a family friendly church is home-centered, rather than church-centered, when it comes to family ministry.

A church-centered family ministry, Allen says, lets the church do all the training and teaching. A home-centered ministry makes the church the equipping or training center for the home to do teaching and training.

If that sounds like it would place yet another burden on already overtaxed families and church staffs, Allen says home-centered, church-supported family ministry is not another program.

"Mainly, it's just that churches need to tweak a few of their ministries."

For instance, he points out that many churches have a Christmas program in which the children perform and parents watch. A family friendly Christmas program, however, would involve both parents and children by inviting them to perform together, or by having them decorate the church as family units.

Another church program that traditionally has separated parents and children has been the outreach project. This usually involves the youth group traveling somewhere to provide a service, accompanied by the youth leader and adult volunteers. A family friendly outreach program would bring family groups together to perform services like repairs and upgrades to the homes of senior citizens.

Allen said this even works with teens who no longer want to go places with their parents because it still gives them the opportunity to interact with other teens.

For a family friendly approach to the church tradition of handing out Bibles to young people, churches can hold a worship service in which the parents present the Bibles to their own children and explain the importance of the scriptures to them.

By changing the way they carry out such projects, Allen says, churches stand beside parents as partners and help them to nurture faith in their children.

"We're finding, especially with churches that already are doing this, that people are saying more families are wanting to do things together. Parents want to know where their kids are and what they are doing ... We're seeing that everyone has the same desire, that is, to strengthen the family."

Allen says enhanced family togetherness at church does not mean congregations no longer should have nurseries or age-appropriate Sunday school classes. However, he says, churches could adopt a Sunday-school curriculum in which every class is studying the same thing at its own level, providing families with a commonality in their spiritual growth.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)