Family Ministry as Youth Ministry
Youth ministry can take many forms.
Trinity United Methodist Church is a large suburban parish, serving four hundred worshippers each Sunday. Trinity’s staff consists of an administrative pastor, an education director, and newly hired Ted Reed, the family life ministry director.
When the members of Trinity realized that they needed a third staff member, they did an analysis of their congregation and their surrounding community. Before the demographics came in, there was a lot of interest in hiring a youth minister. But when demographics showed a high percentage of young couples in the church and in the local area, members realized that the best long-term youth ministry was to make families more effective at being families. They hired Ted Reed, who would work to strengthen the bonds of family interaction.
Ted was already a member of the congregation, and had completed his master’s degree in family science. His main three emphases are family education, support for families in transition, and crisis intervention.
Most of the resources of the family ministry program go to the first emphasis, the family education component. This consists of workshops, retreats, marriage enrichment weekends, materials in the new church library, free online classes, and several other avenues to get the messages across. Ted primarily works to help families learn skills of communication, conflict resolution, intimacy, and expressing faith in the home. He also spends time educating everyone in the variety of family forms. Family is not just a mom, dad, two kids and a dog. Families come in a wonderful kaleidoscope of diversity.
To realize the second component of his family ministry program—support for families in transition—Ted started several support groups: a group for people experiencing divorce (led by a local therapist), an online group for pregnant couples, and a face-to-face group for empty-nest parents. Ted also arranged for mentors to help the high number of pregnant teens in the church and community. These mentors visit or contact young mothers an average of once a week, helping them with parenting skills and other basic needs. Ted also curates transition resources and puts them on the church’s website.
The third component of Ted’s family ministry program is crisis intervention. This comes into play when there is a death in the family, a domestic abuse episode, an alcoholic intervention, etc. Ted arranged for the training of a group of people who have the skills to minister to people in crisis. Ted plans to arrange for training people to intervene in suicide ideation of LGBTQ youth. LGBTQ youth are at high risk of suicide attempts when they are rejected by their family. Ted’s future plans are to train more people to work with people in different kinds of crisis.
Ted knows that if he had come in and done a youth group, it would impact a few kids, but not the majority of them. During Ted’s interview, he said, “Maybe we don’t need more programs to further splinter families. Maybe we need some programs to put families back together again.” No one was able to argue with him. In a society where families are always doing their own thing and going their separate ways, Trinity is a place where families can come together and relearn how to be families.
This is an excerpt from Youth Ministry: Ten Non-Group Models. It is a booklet identifying ten ways to do youth ministry when traditional groups are impractical. It is available on Amazon Kindle for $0.99.
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Youth Ministry: Ten Non-Group Models
Conversations at the Pearly Gates: Six Dramas for Lent
Holy Week at the Jerusalem Café: Six Dramas for Lent