Collaborate

Brian Haynes: Make a Shift in Your Ministry

First Things First

I loved Shift by Brian Haynes.  If I felt like parents on the West Coast has any name recognition with this guy, I’d be working the phone right now to come speak at a parenting conference.  If you haven’t given thought to the idea of “milestones” in your family ministry strategy, you need to scrap your gameplan and let Brian help you build from the ground up.

Brian basically sums up an entire book in 5 pages (well done, by the way).

The “milestones” Brian lays out for the church to consider celebrating in the life of a family are:

• Birth of a Baby
• Faith Commitment
• Preparing for Adolescence
• Commitment to Purity
• Passage to Adulthood
• High School Graduation
• Life In Christ

Quick Take-Away

Brian’s ability to lay out a specific strategy for discipling families speaks my love language and resonates with my soul in a way that I can hardly put into words.

There is no “quick” take away from Brian’s thoughts… basically, you have to read the book.

What I will say is this – I appreciate Brian acknowledging that not every child or student will have parents who are engaged in their faith journey.  For the first formative years of my Christian life, my parents were completely absent.  Churches looking at family ministry need to keep in mind that we will have to be the primary faith influencer for some children and youth.  When parents aren’t involved, the church takes the lead.  Brian – thanks for keeping kids like me in mind.

This post is 1 of many in a series.  I’m assuming that the contributing authors of Collaborate want to have a conversation with me.  You can read my open letter to them here.