Every church has its own unique culture, with its own sets of beliefs and values that the stakeholders embrace and express in terms of what they do as a church community. The kind of liturgy, emphasis on certain ministries, or special practices in community living are among the examples of such expressions.

Family discipleship is therefore such a practice that needs to be adopted by the church’s stakeholders. When the beliefs and values of family discipleship are firmly established, they will be woven into the very fabric of the church’s way of life, thus making it the church’s unique culture.

The task of making these cultural changes with all three stakeholders is not a trivial one. The changes include their:

• beliefs
• values
• expressions of these beliefs and values

To take the stakeholders from where they are at (Point A) to where they should be (Point B) involves a holistic developmental framework – covering all key building blocks such as faith formation, marriage, parenting, human sexuality, aging, non-nuclear living, and resource management. Indeed, the programme has to cover all of life’s stages!

This journey may take between 3 to 7 years to complete for most churches, especially when family discipleship is still a new concept to the congregation.