Encouraging our families

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 13 February 2008 15:52:00

Something thats on my heart at the mo is how we enourage our families to grow together spiritually.
Families no longer attend all age worship services because they worry they cant control their children or encourage them to join in so out of fear of how others may respond to this and frustration they choose not to attend. But this has grown to the extent that its not just happening in all age worship services but in most services, children cannot cope with being in the service for 20 minutes before they go out to their own groups. This isn't even limited to the under 5's who have very little concentration span but often seems to include the 10 and 11 year olds who think its cooler to hang out at the back of church.
It seems to be that parents no longer think they have responsibility for their child's spiritual development, but in a similar way to how discipline seems to have been passed on to teachers spirituality has been passed on to the church.
So the question is how do we encourage and equip our families? The Bible states clearly that it is the role of the parent to work alongside children growing and assisting their spiritual development and the role of the church is to assist parents within this.
When the community we live in barely has time to eat together and talk about the day how are they going to find time to read the Bible and pray together?
More to follow.........