Tracing family (and thus family ministry) throughout both Scripture and the history of the church, Stinson and Jones have edited a helpful volume that highlights many key contemporary issues (including gender roles and homosexuality). Although the chapters on historical tradition may not hold interest for the casual reader, they do help cement the foundation of the practical viewpoints discussed in latter pages. While certain contributions outshine others, the book is a worthy (if occasionally repetitive) effort.

Many family pastoral leaders are convinced that the single reason we haven’t seen an even greater movement to embrace teaching faith at home is because so many pastors are ashamed that they aren’t practicing it themselves. Too many pastoral leaders are more in love with their churches and careers than they are their own marriages and children. Family ministry must begin in our very own homes. [263]

Family ministry doesn’t fit nicely into the typical three-fold formula that evangelical churches use to evaluate success: buildings, budgets, and bottoms in the seats. The goal of family-equipping ministry is training our children to love God and love others; our greatest measures of success may not be seen for twenty or more years down the road. [266] 

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This book presents three approaches to family ministry: family-integrated, family-based, and family-equipping. In other words, should churches divide groups by age or keep everyone together? How can a church minister to families and provide them what is needed to live properly? While this book is limited by restrictions of the format (fixed number of positions, varying effectiveness of each author, etc.), a solid attempt is made to provide a well-rounded understanding of this vitally important topic.

To suggest that age-oriented ministries, in themselves, cause disconnection between parents and children is an overstatement. The typical church-based student ministry teaches a youth for forty or so hours each year; parents have more than three thousand hours per year to disciple their child. [88]

In God’s providence the genius of the church is that its foundation rests on biblical principles that may be transferred to any culture and any setting. In the case of family ministry, the guiding biblical truth is that the faith of children is designed to be nurtured in homes of faith surrounded by a community of faith. [128]

Over time it became clear that it was not enough to have excellent preschool, children, student, and collegiate ministries. Those ministries had to agree on key philosophies, and at the core of these key philosophies was the recognition of the family as the context where foundations of faith should be formed. [146]

Parents have increasingly abdicated their children’s spiritual development or attempted to outsource their children’s discipleship to ministry professionals. Reversing this trend will require a generation of convicted ministry leaders who see family-equipping as part of who they are—not as one more ministry that they do. [160]

Pastors and ministers are responsible to equip the saints to do the ministry. What this means in the context of family ministry is that the vocational minister’s role is not to disciple children for their parents but to equip parents to disciple their own children. [163] 

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