15th Anniversary Tour / A Letter From Rich
Calling Parents as Partners
By Rich Melheim
Fifteen years ago my wife Arlyce and I took a sabbatical from parish ministry, threw our babies into the back of a borrowed Winnebago, and set off on a journey to talk with the church about confirmation models.
One year, 75 conferences and a lot of learning later, Faith Inkubators was born. Since then we’ve logged a million miles on planes, trains and automobiles. We’ve met a myriad of marvelous ministers, moms, pops, youth workers, volunteers and kids. We’ve conferenced from Maine to Milwaukee to Malibu to Melbourne to get a grasp on the challenges facing Christian education and those charged with its care.
In that time we’ve watched the mainline hemorrhage members. We’ve seen budgets cut, staff salaries frozen, worship attendance drop and church leaders knocking their heads against ever-thickening walls to find volunteers. We’ve also seen individual churches that use our integrated systems bursting at the seams, engaging nearly 3/4 of their dads, and purchasing land to build second sites. (Ask Amy Kippen at Faith Lutheran in West Fargo www.growinfaith.org).
What We’ve Learned
We’ve learned you’ve gotta open the kid before you open the book. We’ve learned that confirmation needs to start a heck of a lot earlier (try the cradle) and last a heck of a lot longer (try the grave). We’ve learned that adolescence may be the absolute worst time to teach doctrine, but it’s the absolute best and sometimes last chance the church gets to capture the imagination of kids for Jesus and plug them—along with their parents and friends—into significant servant ministries of the church. We’ve learned that family ministry must be redefined as families doing ministry rather than families doing programs. Ditto on preschool ministry. Ditto on children’s ministry. Ditto on youth
ministry. Ditto on all ministry.
Preschoolers Doing Ministry?
After investing the bulk of 2008 studying the brain science of early learning, I personally am convinced that preschool is the perfect time and place to pull parents—especially dads—into natural, intentional, nightly faith practices with their little ones.
Practices that bond. Practices that heal. Practices that create powerful meaning and memories.
Practices that can last a lifetime.
Surprise, Surprise
Through all the miles, migraines and ministry mutations, we’ve learned something else. Something we suspected all along—that parents have been, are, and always will be the most significant faith mentors, role models, and guides a child can ever have. No one else has the early impact. No one else has the nightly access. No one else has the love that would lay down its life in a heartbeat. No one. Nada. Zip. Everyone else is just a hired hand. A loving hired hand, maybe. A well-meaning and concerned hired hand, maybe. A well-trained hired hand, maybe. But a hired hand just the same.
We know from intuition and experience that parents can be the best, most effective youth staffers a church could ever hope to find. They are the most committed. (Most parents would die for their kids—try hiring that out).
And in our transient society where youth workers come and go every few years and families move, parents will likely be the ONLY consistent faith role models a child will ever know. We just have to be sneaky enough to figure out ways to call, recruit, train and motivate them to DO and BE what God once called them to do and be when they first held their babies in their arms.
Every Night In Every Home
At Faith Inkubators, we’ve invested the last 15 years working on just that: finding ways to help churches... help parents... help kids. Through testing and failing, traveling and talking to a whole lot of people a whole lot smarter than ourselves, we’ve learned how to turn parents into partners. Partners into youth ministers. And congregations into places that change Christian education from staff-run church programs into natural family processes that incubate faith from the cradle to the grave. Every week in every church AND every night in every home.
What might a simple nightly family ministry look like? We call it the “FAITH 5.” At the Melheim house we’ve intentionally invested five minutes a night—every night for the last 20 years—doing this with our own kids. Every night we turn the television off, gather everyone on our bed and share five minutes and five simple faith practices. As far as I’m concerned, this nightly touch is faith incubation at its best. Simple. Consistent. Intentional. Natural. Loving.
And it can’t and won’t be done nearly as effectively by anyone who happens to be paid to do it.
Multiplying Ministries in 2009
If you are frustrated with parents who show up at a baptism, then disappear for years; if you are tired of seeing those same parents suddenly reappear 13 years later to drop kids off at the church door expecting YOU to do their work for them; if you are sick of watching wonderful teens “graduate” on confirmation never to return; if you are searching for ways to multiply ministries at a time when everything else is being cut back; and if you are ready to realign your preschool, children, youth and family ministry with Deuteronomy 6 by enlisting parents to engage in family ministry every night in every home; we’d like to meet you. We believe we can help and would be honored to partner with you in this—the most significant shift in Christian education you could ever attempt. Maybe you don’t need a better workbook. Maybe you need a better way.
- Rich Melheim