The Value of Family

Most of the kids that our local outreach team ministers to come from single-parent homes, resulting in a marred view and value of family. Fatherlessness is running rampant in our community, single-mothers are trying their best to be both mother and father to their children, homes are hostile environments, children are growing up with the lie that they are not valued, desired or secure and young and old alike are being trained to look out for self.

As a result, I have recently challenged our local outreach team to begin to think with a new paradigm, to transcend our culture’s dominant value of individualism, specifically when it comes to family. As a result, our team is intentionally working on allowing our ministry with kids, youth and families in our community to flow from our ministry among our own families.

In challenging our ministry to allow the value of family, community and shared life to become greater I have recognized that there must be a shift in thinking, believing and living. I have noticed that even in the church many Christians have the desire to grow their own spiritual lives, focus on their individual spiritual disciplines, but believing for and reaching out to their own families is not a priority.

However, according to 1 Timothy 5:8 caring for our family, especially for our immediate family, is an extremely foundational 

kingdom value; one that the church 

has swept under the rug.

Our team has to be sensitive to the different family and home cultures of the kids, youth and families that we are ministering too as not to judge, condemn or cause the single-parent mothers, fathers or grandparents to feel inferior. I have realized that to some on our team and those we minister too, the ideas of community, family (father/mother/children) and shared life are very foreign. However, on the other hand, I have recognized that some of those that we reach out to from different countries and cultures have such a stronger value of family then many Christians have. Therefore, I have been inspired to delve into scripture to gain God’s heart for family, as well as open my eyes to see how those we minister to interact with their families, understand why they guard this value so deeply and learn how they seek to maintain it.

As a result, I and our team have resolved to begin to work towards transformation in our homes, among our family members and among our relatives. I believe that as a kingdom value of family begins to overtake our hearts and is lived out among our immediate families then it will freely and uncompromising flow into the areas of ministry we are serving. My spiritual father Pastor Benjamin Robinson once said, 

“We have to be the most spiritual in our homes. We have to be more spiritual in our homes than we are in the ‘church.’” 

The point he was stressing was that when a kingdom value of family begins in our homes, our families and our churches, then cultural and community transformation cannot help but happen.

Too often we have sought to be more spiritual in the ‘church’ then in the home. As a result, we have great ‘church services,’ but our marriages, homes, families and communities are being ripped apart at the seams. It is time to see a paradigm shift. It is time for kingdom transformation in our marriages, homes, families and communities. It is time for us to gain a greater value of family.