Partnering with Families

We have recently changed our vision statement from Winning Kids to Christ and Growing them Spiritually to Partnering with Families to Win Kids to Jesus and Grow them Spiritually. Over the course of this last year the Kid Crossing leadership has begun to understand the necessity of partnering with families. We focused on that at our Main Stage production in June, I wrote about it in my blog, and we've talked about it at leadership meetings.
This partnership will not happen overnight. As much as I want it to happen NOW (those of you know know me well know this) it will be a process. Several events recently have shown me that while we are saying we want to partner with families we are still not looking at every activity we do through "Family" lenses. My goal for the next year will be to train Kid Crossing leaders and volunteers, myself included, to always ask "How will this affect the family," in all we do.
The KC leadership team is currently reading the book Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions by George Barna. This is an amazing book. Chapter 6 has really hit me in regards to Family Ministry. Barna is describing effective churches and says on page 99 " ...the resources used by the church in its ministry to young people are designed to prepare parents for greater effectiveness, to advance existing efforts by the parents, to serve as a catalyst for new developmental ventures attempted by the family and to enhance the quality of approaches and exercises used to mature children's faith."
Let that sink in for a little bit...