Inside Out Families: Living the Faith Together

3 The Path into Family Ministry: Chutes and Ladders

49 3 The Path into Family Ministry Chutes and Ladders Heather and Jim Hall have been married almost twenty years. They belong to a nondenominational congregation of more than three thousand members. Jim is a chemical engineer, head of a large division of a petroleum company. Heather is a physical therapist in the Catholic hospital. Their three children, Marianne (15), Jonas (11), and Sarah (8), all attend the private Christian school sponsored by their church.1 The Halls have been very active in their congregation. Heather teaches Sunday School and Jim serves as an elder. Both of them have taken off from work to lead in the congregation’s summer Vacation Bible School. A year ago, though, Heather became restless and worried that they were not doing enough to nurture faith in their children. She wanted more in their lives as a Christian family than going to church in the same car. They had read Bible stories to their children when they were preschoolers, but now that they were all in school the bedtime story routine was long past. The brief prayer at the supper table was really the only evidence , other than going together to church activities, identifying their family life as “Christian.” First Heather tried reading a passage of Scripture together before or after supper—when they had a chance to eat together in 50 / Inside Out Families the pressure of all the soccer practices and music lessons and church and school activities. But no one had much patience for Bible reading when they were hungry and the food was getting cold right before their eyes. After supper did not work any better; the children wanted to get on with playing outdoors or doing homework or talking to friends on the phone. They sat obediently, but Marianne silently rolled her eyes and Jonas and Sarah fidgeted. It felt forced, and so, discouraged , Heather abandoned her attempt at “family prayer time.” One Sunday, the Scripture read during the church worship service was 1 Peter 4:8-10: Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining . Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. The passage hit Heather with such power that she remembers it more than a year later. The theme of the sermon that morning was that serving is not simply one of several possible spiritual gifts. Rather, serving is required of every Christian, even though our differing gifts may suggest different ways that we can love our neighbors as ourselves. Heather listened intently. She prayed for God to use her gifts, and as she did, she was struck that the most important gift in her life was her family of healthy, energetic children and her loving partner in parenting and in life. How might God want her to use her gift—her family—in service? When the pastor ended his sermon with, “How are you living your faith by serving others?” Heather felt convicted. “We have to do something besides taking care of one another,” she said to herself—and to God. After the service, the church offered a lunch of salad and sandwiches and encouraged people to visit the “missions fair.” Heather and Jim had planned to take the kids for burgers after church and then drive to Jonas’ Sunday afternoon soccer game. Marianne was planning to grab lunch at church and stay for youth choir practice; a friend’s parents could drop her off at home. Heather said to Jim after the service, “Let’s all just have lunch here and check out the missions fair really fast before we go to soccer.” The Path into Family Ministry / 51 While the children wolfed down lunch and she munched on a sandwich, Heather wandered among the twenty-some tables around the church fellowship hall, each with posters and brochures of various service opportunities in the community. Some were social service agencies that were asking for volunteers to teach English as a Second Language classes, to do chores for elderly adults who needed help if they were going to be able to stay in their own homes, to befriend a refugee family being resettled in their community, to be a mentor in a support program for impoverished single mothers who were attending a job readiness program at the community...