Take These Stones Home

As we continue to focus a great deal of energy building a model of family ministry elements at Bush Memorial to use in helping other churches that are making a transition to a family equipping ministry model, part of that entire approach to the summer is the fourteen week series I am preaching on Memorial Stones. These stones of remembrance from Scripture represent the statutes and testimonies that we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren.

One of the key elements that we have implemented this summer that we want to use as a model is an idea called “Take These Stones Home.” The idea here is that every week we place a section in the worship folder for parents. The section includes an outline of the message for that week along with some ideas about how parents can interact with their children around the content of the message. They are normally simple conversation starter questions or craft projects that parents can do with children to help to teach the main concepts of the message.

Sometimes we are able to offer a little more help. For instance, when we talked about Creation out of Nothing, we challenged parents to talk with their children about how science reveals who God is and how many great scientist were believers in God. We were able to provide them with a list of biographies of some great Christian scientist to read with their children.
Here are some of the suggestions:
Men of Science Men of God: Great Scientists of the Past Who Believed the Bible by Henry M. Morris
Scientists Of Faith by Dan Graves
Scientists Who Believe: 21 Tell Their Own Stories by Eric C. Barrett

This week we will talk about the disobedience of the Fall and we will give parents instructions for playing a board game with their children that will lead to conversations about our beliefs resulting in actions. The notes from these messages, including the “Take These Stones Home” notes, are posted each week here on reidward.blogspot.com. Audio and video of the messages are also available through the Legacy office.

The big Family Ministry event of this month was the Family Mission to Sun Trace. Instead of investing so many resources in a traditional VBS that did not really fit the theme of the Family Ministry Summer, we would take the show on the road and provide a back-yard VBS to a missions area in our community.

Church members served together as families to lead the games, crafts, snack and teaching times for the families of Sun Trace. It was a three day event that allowed God’s people to serve their community by working together in family units to share the Gospel with those who are less fortunate and many who have never heard the Good News.

The best part is that our children got to experience the reality that it is not all about them. They also got to serve alongside their parents and watch them care for others and hear them share the Gospel. Parents got to watch their children be missionaries to the children in Sun Trace and cross every socio-economic and cultural barrier. Both parents and children were an example of the family of God to the residents of Sun Trace who participated.