Resemble: Do You Follow Jesus?, the new youth ministry resource from Seedbed is focused on helping you make huge strides in one of the most fruitful (and most often neglected) area of youth ministry: Family Ministry.
Family ministry is nothing new, but may be a critical part missing from your youth ministry. As we look through Scripture, God created a family, not just individuals. No family is perfect, not even Jesus’. In fact, outside of Mary, we what little we have recorded of Jesus’ family isn’t the picturesque example of a Norman Rockwell family.
In the second chapter of Luke, Mary and Joseph engage in some family ministry when they depart Jerusalem for Nazareth and lose track of Jesus for three days. Jesus is setting the curve in confirmation class, Joseph is frantic in his search, and Mary feels mistreated. It would be fantastic if the largest struggle we had was parents perturbed for having to get out of their cars to fetch their students who are soaking up knowledge from us, while asking intelligent questions.
The reality is that you are lucky if your ministry has direct contact with a student for 5 hours a week, compared to school around 30 and in the ballpark of 15 hours for high school extra curricular activity. Between sleeping, homework, social media, and online binge viewing, there is still a crucial amount of family time that can be spent together in faith development.
Given the fact that God created us in His image and designed us to be in relationships; given the importance of the family for growth and development personally and as a community; and given the significant opportunity for impact with your students and their families, where can you begin if you don’t already have families fully engaged in your ministry?
We think that empowering families to engage with the scripture is a great place to start. A contributor to the Youth Ministry Collective, Aaron Buttery, and his team at University United Methodist Church in San Antonio, Texas have crafted Resemble: Do you follow Jesus?, as a launchpad for their family ministry.
Resemble: Do you follow Jesus? is a twelve week study to foster growth with the families in your student ministries to be more like Jesus. While journeying through Matthew 28, each weekly lesson creates opportunities to progress in Scripture, prayer, reflection, understanding, praxis, in addition to increased family time. Aaron creates space and time for families to discover or renew spiritual disciplines, regardless of how much they already resemble Christ.
Seedbed knows that Summer is a busy season, but also a great time to launch a family ministry. In addition to offering an individual use PDF, they are also offering unlimited church access. With this option, you receive the rights to the PDF that can be used for your entire worshiping community. This booklet file is ready to print, fold, staple and hand out to all the families in your ministry.
Developing a comprehensive family ministry is one of the more effective means of assisting individuals help themselves and others. Crafting your ministry around the family, by offering tools, support, resources, and programs, equips them to resemble and follow Jesus.