do home conversations

The DO Home Survey process, including disclosures of key survey findings at strategic intervals of the church calendar, is very effective in generating the interest of the whole church. If managed well, the aftermath of the survey will likely spark lively churchwide conversations surrounding family ministry. 

The church leadership should prepare well for this by identifying and seizing opportunities to rally the church to intentionally talk about the importance of family discipleship, what it is, and how the church can develop such a culture. 

With this in mind, we have three booklets available to support you in this journey of building family discipleship. They are: 

  1. The Family in Crisis, which addresses WHY family discipleship is important. 
  2. What is Family Ministry? which details WHAT makes a healthy family.
  3. How We Build, which deals with HOW to go about building a family discipleship ministry.

DO Home Conversations Resources

Booklet 1
The Family in Crisis: An Urgent Appeal to the Global Church

This booklet focuses on WHY the church needs to give priority to discipleship of the home. The four topics addressed are:

  1. Families are suffering.
  2. Families are under attack.
  3. Justice and safety depend on strong families.
  4. God created families to advance the gospel.
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Booklet 2
What is Family Ministry? Uniting Churches and Families for the Gospel

Not everyone has the same idea about ministry to the families in the church.
This booklet challenges us to explore such ideas. The five topics covered are:

  1. What is the family?
  2. What is family ministry?
  3. Pillars of strength for healthy families.
  4. Family discipleship in action.
  5. Family ministry: Getting started.
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Booklet 3
How We Build: Process in Establishing the Family Discipleship Culture

This booklet deals with the processes of mobilising the church from where they are today to where they should be, with the ultimate goal of building healthy Christian families as a way of life. The six topics discussed are: 

  1. Consider the culture
  2. Cultivate a sense of urgency
  3. Build a biblical base
  4. Practice what you preach
  5. Take small steps
  6. Be patient and keep praying
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DO Home Conversations Process

The church leadership has the freedom to choose which of the three booklets to use in starting the DO Home Conversations process. If your church has not paid much attention to building family discipleship as a culture, we suggest you follow the sequence of the booklets by their numbers.

How you choose to use the booklets is really entirely in your hands. Some churches use them in their small group meetings, some in corporate meetings such as Sunday worship services, and some in both. 

Because the culture you are attempting to cultivate is likely to involve major changes to the existing church culture, it is vital that you strongly establish the ‘whys’ of the shift to the family discipleship. This will be the foundation upon which you stand for further conversations about the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the new culture.

Administration

If you would like to involve your own network of churches in this project, you have the option of customizing your booklets in the following ways for a more personalized feel:

  • To include a welcome message from a senior network leader in the booklets.
  • To invite network leaders to be contributors and list their names below the ‘Global Contributors’ section of the booklet.
  • To insert worthy quotes from the network contributors at various points in the booklet.
  • To add additional questions under the heading ‘Additional Questions’ that the network wishes to include.

You may use soft copies of the three booklets or have them printed for distribution. Soft copies are provided free of charge upon request.

If managed well, the survey will likely spark off lively conversations on the subject of the family among the leaders and church members. 

The church leadership should seize this window of opportunity to lead the church further in this direction. We are suggesting below an approach you may want to consider in achieving this.

Any plan to develop family discipleship would require one to deal with the ‘whys’, the ‘whats’ and the ‘hows’. Towards this end, we are preparing three booklets to support the conversations on each of these areas.

Answering the ‘Whys’: A booklet titled, ‘The Family in Crisis’.

Here, we focus on the reasons why we need to invest adequately (much more than what we currently do) in building healthy families.

Answering the ‘Whats’: A booklet titled, ‘What is Family Ministry?’

This is about ‘what’ we need to do to develop for a healthy family. We will touch on the key building blocks of a healthy home.

Answering the ‘Hows’: A booklet titled, ‘How Do We Build?’

This booklet deals with the process of mobilizing the church from where they are today to where they should be through family discipleship). The ultimate goal is to build healthy Christian families as a way of life.

CONVERSATIONS GUIDE AND RESOURCES

The main focus of this booklet is on why the church needs to give priority to discipleship of the home.

There are 4 topics:

  1. Families are suffering.
  2. Families are under attack.
  3. Justice and safety depend on strong families.
  4. God created families to advance the gospel.

b. Booklet 2 (Whats). What is Family Ministry? Uniting Churches and Families for the Gospel

Not everyone has the same idea about ministry to the families in the church. This booklet challenges us to explore such ideas.

There are 5 topics:

  1. What is the family?
  2. What is family ministry?
  3. Pillars of strength for healthy families.
  4. Family discipleship in action.
  5. Family ministry: getting started.
Dowload Booklet
  1. Consider the culture
  2. Cultivate a sense of urgency
  3. Build a biblical base
  4. Practice what you preach
  5. Take small steps
  6. Be patient and keep praying
 
 
 
Dowload Booklet
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