i'm interested (and from what i can tell, you are too!) in serving, loving, inspiring, and equipping families to spiritually form children. but i've noticed something lately when we talk about reaching families in our churches, i think we are referring only to a certain type of family. specifically, the married (husband and wife) couple with kids.and that's just fine, if we only want to inspire and equip a certain group of families. but as our culture reshapes what family means, the church must too, because "family" is starting to mean a lot of different things:
one out of every two children in the united states will live in a single-parent family at some time before they reach age 18. according the united states census bureau, in 2002 about 20 million children lived in a household with only their mother or their father. this is more than one-fourth of all children in the united states.
as of 2004, there were approximately 600,000 same sex couples (or 1.2 million parents) raising children in the us, according to the census.
the problem i think, is that we desire to equip ALL families, but our programs and strategies are really (when we're honest) geared towards a very small definition of family.
imagine a church and community environment where ALL parents felt energized and fully capable of raising faith filled children. fantastic!
stay tuned..more thoughts to come.