Most believing parents have never been discipled and thus have a shallow faith. Parents cannot transmit what they do not have. If the church is going to champion parents as primary spiritual leaders, the first step is spiritually awakening and deepening the hearts of parents. This forum presents the need and practical strategies for impacting parents through the church.
Richard Ross, senior professor of student ministry, and Jonathan Williams, Southwesterner and adjunct professor discuss discipling parents to disciple their kids.
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Richard Ross 0:03
Well, Dr Williams, you and I are close friends, of course, but for the benefit of the people that are watching, I’ll introduce myself just a little bit. Can’t believe that I became a youth pastor when I was 19, but I did. I was barely older than the senior class, and I could have had no guess at that time that I was going to end up focused on those teenagers my entire adult life, actually, over 50 years now, got to be a youth pastor for 30 years. I love that, but every year since then, I’ve been a volunteer in youth ministry, and I’ve been teaching about youth ministry here at Southwestern Seminary since the year 2000 and by the grace of God, just like you. I’m out in the churches on Sunday, speaking mostly to parents and parent groups and whatnot, living in the d6 family ministry world and whatnot. But it’s been a wonderful life. Being able to focus on teenagers, especially and especially their families. It has given me a joy that I cannot describe. I wish you would introduce yourself to the group the same way.
Jonathan Williams 1:04
Yeah, thank you so much. Yes, we’ve known each other for a while. So currently, I’m serving as an adjunct professor here at Southwestern I teach a lot of classes in the family ministry realm and family ministry world, and then I also direct a non profit ministry called gospel Family Ministries that you and I have gotten to do some of that even together. And so I get to do a lot of family equipping conferences at different churches in the weekends, and create a lot of family worship resources and do some research in that world. But that all that started when I was pastoring.
Jonathan Williams 1:37
And so I pastored a church in Houston for 10 years. Is a multi ethnic Church of 50 different nations, and it was ministering to those families from all over the world that God really used that to kind of burden my heart for family ministry. And then I ended up going back to school to do my doctorate in family ministry. And now I get to teach here and get to work with you and Doctor Shirley, and it’s such a joy. But you and I, we met, I believe back in 2006 I just finished doing the IMB journeyman term. My wife and I just got married, we moved to Fort Worth, lived in this tiny, little apartment over there by Birchman Baptist Church. And I would drive into the seminary three, four days a week. And you’re one of my first professors, one of my favorite all time, professors, and what stood out to me the most you had all this knowledge and all this experience for all these years. But I tell you, what stood out so much was your passion. And anybody who’s ever been around Dr Ross, you just have this zeal, this passion that you would almost think surely after all these years, it would kind of wane a little bit, but I think it’s fueled every year. You know, I feel like the more I’ve gotten to know you, I see that passion isn’t going away. It’s getting stronger year after year. But that’s what stood out to me, and that’s one of my early prayers here at the seminary, was, Lord, give me that kind of zeal, whatever you call me, to let me be just as passionate about that calling as Doctor Ross, is about the calling you placed on his life. So you’ve been a mentor, professor, a friend, an example, and praise God for you. Now we go to the same church, even, yes, Wedgewood Baptist. Well, before we get to the questions, why don’t you share Dr Ross, what do you think our main focus is this morning?
Richard Ross 3:18
I think the people that are joining us, I think they’re really coming with an expectation that we would talk about, how how do you as a church leader, pour into parents? How do you even disciple parents so that spiritually, they have something to turn around and impart into their kids? Obviously, a spiritually shallow parent is going to result in a spiritually shallow child. So I think that the focus of our whole hour ought to be, what do we do in the lives of parents to prepare them spiritually, to prepare their hearts to be alive enough in Christ that they have something to give the kids? So that’s where we’re headed in this particular telecast.
Jonathan Williams 3:53
I love that. Yeah, spiritually shallow parents will lead to spiritually shallow children. What a great word. Well, let’s get we got a lot of questions from you all, and we’re going to jump into some of these right now. Rusty sent a question. He wants to know. Dr Ross, what is one thing you would encourage parents to do with their students at home? What’s one thing you’d encourage them?
Richard Ross 4:13
Well, this is an opinion, but, but I have some confidence in this opinion. I believe in spiritual practices in the home. With all of my heart, we’re going to talk about those for a parent sitting down and reading the Bible. I believe in all of that, but along the way, I have come to believe maybe the most powerful variable of all is a parent being really clear with a child about his or her own life in Christ. I think when mom and dad can say to a child, I delight in King Jesus. I love him with all of my heart, when their face is alive and and when they when they talk about Jesus, if their eyes are dancing a little bit, I actually believe that’s the biggest factor. And I think if you took 18 year olds or 20 year olds or. 30 year olds, and you were trying to track back, which one, what? Which ones walked in faith, which ones did not fall away. I really think what you would discover is those that are making the most difference for the kingdom of God are those who would say, oh, for my mom and dad, it wasn’t religion. It wasn’t even a doctrine of Christ. It was the person of Christ. I loved him with all of my heart, and I just feel like that’s going to make an impression on the kids that nothing compares to. We all know, especially when they become teenagers. Teenagers are going to push back a little bit if parents are, yeah, but when I’m talking about me, what I’m talking about what Jesus is doing in my life when I’m explaining how Jesus informs the decisions I make for the family. Well, there’s no defensiveness about that. The kids are interested in it. And I think if we’re going to choose one factor, number one factor, that’s what I would vote for.
Jonathan Williams 5:54
So that would that include parents sharing testimonies with their kids as well?
Richard Ross 5:58
Absolutely, absolutely not just it was Dr Howard that was preaching when I was saved, not just that, but what was going on, what made the gospel make sense to me? Who introduced me to Jesus? How did baptism confirm that? And I think kids are interested in that. So if you’re talking about it as something from your heart, I think that sticks with the with the next generation.
Jonathan Williams 6:20
I love that one of the main things God used to point me to Christ. You’re talking about that example seeing my father and my mother their relationship with Christ. And I remember coming down the stairs in the morning, and I would see my dad drinking his coffee, reading his Bible. Sometimes I get there a little late, coffee is gone because it still smelled in the air. Bibles on his blue velvet 1970 chair, and he would be on his knees in front of it, facing the chair, praying, you know, and just seeing how real it was for them, like you said that seeing their authentic, genuine walk with the Lord. What an impact that had on me. And I love that great, great question Rusty we actually have another one from Rusty, Doctor Ross. He wants to know, should we teach parents their identity in Christ and then trust the Spirit to lead them in their parenting, or do we give them a specific plan to disciple their students?
Richard Ross 7:11
Great question. It’s almost like asking, what do we as parents give our kids? Do we give them oxygen or do we give them water? Which are the two? It’s really both. And as I just said, I really do think it is that parents own life in Christ that’s going to be most pervasive. But the other essential element is, I think you’ve got to give families some systematic kind of way to have conversations that cover the fundamentals of the faith. I don’t think most parents are really prepared to just dream up topics that they’re going to bring up. We’ll probably talk later about teaching truth as you walk in the way. And I do believe in that, but I do think there is a time for mom and dad to sit down with kids, and our whole reason for sitting down is to talk about Jesus, talk about his word, talk about what he’s doing in the world. So I think it’s both. And I think there has to be some systematic way that we can show families how to have those conversations.
Jonathan Williams 8:04
I love that. And I talked about this survey that Barna did back in 2019 and they asked senior pastors, should parents disciple their kids? And you know, 99% said yes. But then they asked them, Do you ever give them resources to do that? And only 10% said yes. So to your point, yes, we want to call them to do this and equip them, and, of course, the spirits leading, but to give them those resources, that systematic plan, so they actually have a plan. You know, I love that. Yep, oxygen and water. Oxygen and water. I love it. Let’s keep going. We have another question from one of you all asked, what is the best discipleship tool you can use with teenagers? Now, if you don’t know it, Dr Ross has a lot of passion, a lot of experience with teenagers, and it’s a perfect question, so what’s a discipleship tool we can use with teenagers?
Richard Ross 8:54
I’m a little bit nervous to say this title from this publisher is the very best discipleship tool for every family, because families are so different. Now I’m going to provide some answers here, but I’m qualifying what I’m about to say, because some parents are spiritual giants, and some parents are still drinking milk. Some teenagers are just hungry for the Word of God. Some teenagers are very defensive, or maybe they’re very closed off, right? So I don’t know that we can say that title is the best in the United States. What I tend to do is, I tend to place confidence in publishers. I do care about, okay, who’s behind this tool that I’m considering. I have a lot of confidence in LifeWay for one thing, they’re an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. They’re trustees. We elect those folks. They have to follow correct doctrine that there’s no choice in the matter. And I served there for 16 years, and I know the vast majority of the people there are active in the church. They love the Lord. They are passionate about what they do. Yeah. So my tendency is to say, Okay, you put a tool in the hand of families to show them how to worship together. There’s just a whole lot going for that in terms of solidity.
Richard Ross 10:11
I feel similarly about the d6 family movement. I feel like, doctrinally, we’re right together with them. I feel like the people behind that are people of integrity. I have met so many of those editors and publishers and whatnot, so the things that they do, my tendency is to say, if they’re behind it, I think you can put confidence in it. I would also go on to say, though, the first time we convince a parent to sit down with a teenager and have a conversation about faith that may or may not go well. So I just want to mention pre beginning of sit downs. Pre beginning. It could be that we need to do some things to build heart connections between parents and teenagers. We may need to warm up the relationship. I think if a parent says you sit down and you’re going to listen to what I say, I’m not sure there’s going to be a lot of eternal implications there. So we have developed this phone app that we give to parents and teenagers, parents holding a phone, teenagers holding a phone, sitting knee to knee, and they discover how to say things back and forth that are powerful things. It breaks down walls, it warms up the relationship. And what we’ve learned with actually several 1000 families, is if we can rebuild the relationship, rebuild the enjoyment of us actually being together, then when the conversation turns specifically to Word of God doctrine, what you need to know, morally and ethically, teenagers are absolutely fine with that. I would love to know if you’ve run across a tool that you happen to have confidence in?
Jonathan Williams 11:42
Yeah, and I love the app. I’ve used the app with my daughter and started to use it with my sons. Where do they get the app and what’s the name of it?
Richard Ross 11:50
Beka is going to be emailing everybody that registered for this event, lots of follow up resources and whatnot, and all the implications, the links, everything families will need will be in there.
Jonathan Williams 12:01
Okay? Because I love that app. You know, one thing that our family looks for is some family devotion resources as well. And there’s one that you actually wrote with Rob Rienow Jesus, The Reigning King, and that’s one that, when I was pastoring, we would buy hundreds of copies of that and hand it out to every family in our church, because it’s basically a week of family devotions. But it also shares a little bit of the heart. Behind it. And so that’s one resource that I love is getting that into the hands. There’s a book by Donald Whitney called Family Worship that’s only, you know, 70 pages long. So it’s a kind of easy thing to give to parents as well, but those are two that when I was pastoring, I was constantly giving to parents to help disciple their teenagers, disciple their kids. Wonderful. I love it. Let’s look at this question from Bryant, how do student pastors not overwhelm parents who have busy schedules, time demands? How do we give them processes for discipling their children without overwhelming them in their schedule?
Richard Ross 12:58
That is a great practical question. It really is, I don’t know a single family today that is not under time pressure, and if there are teenagers in the house, it just amplifies that even more. You and I both believe in parents talking about the faith as you walk in the way, obviously, and that helps with time demands, because we can do that when we’re doing other things, just driving back and forth, the soccer practice, all of a sudden, becomes a wonderful place to talk about Jesus, but you have to be intentional. You have to have in your mind. I’m going to use this drive in a way that actually makes sense, so I just want to put that on the table. Part of how we spiritually develop is just in the flow of family life. We’re trying to bring up topics that would have eternal significance.
Richard Ross 13:43
But I do believe when you sit in your house, I do believe in that, and I do think there is a time for a sit down. Now you’re perfectly free to disagree, but, but I think for a lot of families in the church, 15 minutes is a good place to start. I think if you walk in and and say to parents, hey, we want you to spend 30, 45, minutes every night dealing with thought. I just think that’s almost suffocating to people Now, granted, granted, I think a lot of families, if they get in a conversation coming out of Scripture, it’s interesting, the teenagers are interested. Granted, they may go longer, yes, but nobody cares, because it’s going so well. But I think when you use that phrase, 15 minutes, Mom and Dad, could you sit down and have some wonderful times of prayer? Could you deal with the topic of scripture in an interactive way, and could you wrap that up in 15 minutes? I think most parents know I’m spending enough time in my social media. I’m spending enough time looking at different screens. I can find 15 minutes in there if, somebody has convinced my heart that that’s what I should be doing,
Jonathan Williams 14:44
Well, that’s a good word. I love that. Just yeah, adding intentionality. I read somewhere that parents, on average, have 3000 hours a year with their kids at home, just evenings, school, rides, weekends and so, like you said, a lot of times, just adding intentionality to those three. 1000 hours we already have, and some of those are in the evenings and at the table. And I love that, that 15 minutes great starting point. And some of our devotions have been 10 minutes, 15 minutes. And some of the they’ve been powerful though God moves. I love that. This is also from Bryant. It’s another question here, how do student pastors who are single or who haven’t raised teenagers? How do they show parents how to disciple their teenage children? How do they overcome their quote and experience in the eyes of parents?
Richard Ross 15:34
This is a question that comes up all the time when I speak to student pastors, because some of them are in their 20s, many of them are single, and they say, Hey, Ross, do I have any platform? Is there anything? Is there any way a parent would listen to what I have to say? Got a couple of different comments.
Richard Ross 15:50
First, I would say to younger leaders or to single leaders, I don’t think you need to have low self esteem related to having conversations with parents on the specific subject of, how do you have spiritual conversations with a teenager? I think a 40 year old mom and dad would think a 25 year old is probably pretty good talking to a teenager. They know how to make things interesting. They know how to communicate. So if that 25 year old says, I’m going to do a seminar and I’m going to talk to parents about how to have spiritual conversations with your kids. I think parents are okay with that now, all the nuances of teenage crises and complicated moral and ethical issues, okay, maybe that doesn’t work quite so well. So we need a plan B.
Richard Ross 16:37
Plan B, I think, is on some of those more esoteric topics. I think first you look for some older parents in the church that have reared kids successfully. Everybody in the church knows, yeah, yeah, they’re young adults. Man, they’re out there for the Kingdom. I think you can platform some of those folk. Now, they may not be the most polished speaker on Earth, but they have lived it. They literally brought kids up to love the Lord. They literally had spiritual conversations in their house. I think parents would be very willing to listen to these, these 50 somethings talk about their experience, because the parents know they did that, and it turned out really, really well.
Richard Ross 17:16
Another option, of course, is bringing in an outside speaker. And churches are doing that, and churches are doing that. Sometimes it’s a very special event. In fact, some people tell me when I come you’re here because we are kicking off a season of investing more in the parents that we’re just trying to jump start a new process. And we felt like having a speaker would help us do that. Now, you know, in the real world that sometimes involves budget. So what I would say is lots of church leaders are saying, we are for the family. We stand with the family. Well, that the words are good, but one way you put concrete reality to that is you redo your budget so that some of that is in behalf of impacting families, and if you do that, bringing in someone in the community, maybe on a spiritual leadership or maybe some incredibly complicated teenage problem or issue where you really need the clinical expertise, all of that is possible, maybe by bringing someone from outside.
Jonathan Williams 18:15
That’s good, so youth ministers don’t have to serve by themselves. They can have people to church, serving with them, and you started at 19, so you are single, with no teenage kids, discipling teenagers. So you’ve been in those shoes before, and so I’m sure you know what a blessing it is to have a strong team around you. I love that question, though I think it’s fairly practical, especially for a lot of our young youth ministers. This is a question from Hannah, how would you best support parents who have a communication gap with their children? She brings up even first generation parents from other countries who have second generation kids. So Hannah says they have a desire to disciple their teenagers, but they find the language and cultural gap challenging. Have you seen this?
Richard Ross 19:03
I have, obviously not in my own life and experience, but I have many students in my classes who are first generation students, and some of them are old enough as students to already have children coming up second generation students, and some of them are already beginning to note some of that, some of that communication difficulty, far more common would be in their churches. They’ve got parents that might be 40-45 maybe they speak a little English, not much. Kids are speaking English, almost exclusively in school, only a little bit of that native language at home.
Richard Ross 19:40
This, would be my recommendation. I think in that particular situation, it would be wonderful for the parents again to talk about their life in Christ and I think those are simple sentences. I don’t think that has to be long and I don’t think that has to be drawn out, but in those simple sentences that both generations easily do. Understand what you’re communicating is I love Jesus with all of my heart. I see Him as King over my life. I love spending time with him in the morning. I think you can say those things. And as I mentioned earlier, I think that’s really transformative. All the nuances of teaching doctrine and all the nuances of pulling insights out of Scripture and applying them to complicated life situations. In that case that that immigrant parent might say, I’m really counting on my leaders at church. I’m really counting on those disciples and teachers, even pastors at church, to teach my child all of those kinds of things in English. I at home, though, I’m always going to be supplementing that by revealing my heart in a simple kind of language way.
Jonathan Williams 20:46
I love it. Yeah, that’s such a great starting point. Just, can you share your heart? Can you share those testimonies? Tim has a question here. It’s little different. He wants to know what’s a reasonable biblical approach to discipling parents in an ongoing, intentional way. So it’s ongoing, it’s intentional. Should it be programmatic? Should it be more organic individual, you know, or in a group, life, sharing, teaching? So lots of ways we could do this. What’s your preference? What have you seen work?
Richard Ross 21:19
Well, okay, we can approach this really two different ways. I would wish, I think you would wish that churches, all churches, were far more intentional in discipling all the adults of the church. And actually, we need new wineskins. We have been teaching the Bible on Sunday morning in a very traditional way for 100 years, actually. And yet, everyone watching this webcast would say, I have got boatloads of adults in this church that are spiritually shallow, but not a few, it would be a large number. Okay. Maybe what that says is, if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we keep getting what we’ve been getting, we need to do something different.
Richard Ross 22:00
So one way to understand this question is to say, what should the church be doing to disciple all adults? And out of that, then we find adults who are far more spiritually prepared to impart that to their kids. But it could be that some even watching the broadcast would say, I don’t really have an entree. It’s not part of my responsibility to figure out how to disciple all the adults of the church. So the way I want to approach this is, what could I do uniquely for the parents, to help them grow and be spiritually prepared? That is way better than doing nothing. I just have a heart for that to be done across the congregation. The subject of how you disciple adults, that would be a whole nother hours broadcast. Maybe we’ll do that someday, but I’ll quickly say my preference.
Richard Ross 22:46
I think true discipleship happens when an individual is interacting, talking back and forth. I think if you sit and listen long at all, it stops being discipleship. I’ve got to be figuring out how I take truth from Scripture and massage that into my life. I have to talk about that. I have to react to that. And I think the only way you can have individuals in extensive conversations in the discipleship environment is to have a few enough people so that in an hour or 75 minutes, everybody is involved. So I would follow the thinking that’s becoming more common these days. I think that’s one to a few. I think that’s probably one to three, one to maybe four. You get to five, and now it’s starting to look like a class where somebody listens to a lesson, obviously single gender, because of the complicated issues we’re all struggling with today. And I think to a degree that has to be life on life. I know there are busy schedules, so I’m not trying to be unrealistic, but I think that little discipleship group as they can, tries to spend some time together outside that disciple environment, where they really learn to learn to trust each other, love each other, because that infuses more truth into the process. I would say if mom and dad for the first probably for the first time in their church life, if they were in a very small group and they were actively trying to apply scripture to their own lives in great conversation, I absolutely think that parent would walk back into that home way better prepared to massage a teenager’s heart in a spiritually important way.
Jonathan Williams 24:19
I love that. So yeah, discipleship of the adults ends up blessing the children in the home as well. I love your heart for the small group time together. So this next question, Doctor Ross, is a shift. We’re kind of going a different direction with this question. It’s a big question, though, and I know you and I when we go to different churches, this is one that comes up a lot. So Rusty wants to ask a question about transgenderism. He says transgender is an issue being accepted in the educational world, and even within some church families, transgender students are speaking up and even wanting to come to youth camp. How should the church respond to this? How do we disciple parents concerning. This issue. I know it’s a big question.
Richard Ross 25:02
It is a big question, and it is on everyone’s mind. I think there’s just no question about it. This is the kind of issue where you create a parenting seminar that’s going to deal specifically with this, and you may even discover that an hour is not enough. You might even do a couple of seminars. The question is, what do you do in an hour or an hour and a half to address the transgender movement? I think you’ve got two possibilities here.
Richard Ross 25:27
One is, you do bring someone in who’s very knowledgeable, who is articulate, who really understands the true, not the false signs, but the true signs. That’s involved here. I think you do have someone that is knowledgeable and it’s not just spouting some opinions or or you, you bring in very credible resources related to transgenderism, and I’m using that term kind of in a, in a, in a way that I’m not thrilled about, because I’m almost inferring that that actually exists and it doesn’t, let’s say gender dysphoria. But I think you could bring in some resources and carefully move through those resources so that you’re saying very truthful things to the parents at every turn the follow up email that’s going to come after this webcast, I’ve provided several organizations that are premier organizations in helping families with issues just like this. And I would say the church leaders click around, look at what’s available, and maybe you could quickly discover, oh, I could build an entire seminar related to that one other.
Richard Ross 26:31
Just quick comment, because this is such a complicated issue, especially for parents of teenagers, go to a great seminar, learn lots of information, but when you go home, you need to go home knowledgeable, but you need to go home knowledgeable and also carrying a balance. The balance is we are absolutely clear on what the Bible says. We don’t we don’t water that down in the least. We don’t give into the culture. So parents go home absolutely embracing biblical truth, but not but and, and they also express an attitude of compassion toward young people that are caught up in gender dysphoria. The the teenagers today are defensive on that subject, and they are defensive in a way where they’re protecting their friends in a little bit. And what we’re discovering is mom and dad might go home and have a clear biblical view of things, but as soon as that parent sounds mean toward those people, as soon as that parent wants to castigate those people, the teenagers just shut down. They will not pay attention. So I think when mom and dad say, hey, how could I help you love your friend even more? What does your friend actually need? What would be the most loving thing we could do? That opens a teenager then to listen to what a parent has to say, and that includes listening to what a parent has to say about biblical truth, but just a closing statement here, on every complicated moral and ethical issue at all of the scary things that are going on out there in the culture that’s affecting kids.
Richard Ross 28:07
I just want to remind parents, when your heart is connected to your child, I mean, there is a genuine heart connection, and when you are in conversation related to biblical truth together, that trumps all kinds of pressures and voices out there in the community. I don’t think parents have to live in fear. This is powerful. It is powerful here in the home. And I’m not saying we’ll never have a challenge or a difficulty, but I’m just saying the parents that are spiritually alive themselves, they’re allowing their spiritual life to be expressed easily to their child through a warm relationship for the vast majority of families. That’s going to allow those young people to serve above most of the terrible things that are happening with the young.
Jonathan Williams 28:55
I love that, yeah, we don’t need to live paralyzed in fear. We got the power of the Spirit. And then I love your emphasis on that compassion, on that heart connection. I heard one author say we need compassion without compromise, and that’s what you’re saying. Right? Maintain those biblical convictions and yet speak the truth with love, with compassion. I love that. Well, we’ve gone through a lot of questions you’ve already submitted. I think we’re gonna have kind of a second half of this now where we get to hear more questions. So I’m gonna turn it over to Beka, and she’s gonna walk through the second half of our time together.
Richard Ross 29:39
I’ll take a first stab at that there is no concrete rule. It has to be, well, there is one concrete rule. One concrete rule is anytime a child or a teenager expresses the fact that they are being harmed or abused, any time they express an inclination toward hurting themselves, any time they. Are saying, I might go hurt other people in all of those instances. There’s no question about it. Not only does a youth leader, church leader, report that to parents, but they’re also going to report that to the authorities. There’s no question about that these days. That is absolutely firm.
Richard Ross 30:17
The real the gray area is issues this side of that, what I what I try to teach the youth leaders to do is this, I will say to them, on very minor issues, you do maintain that confidentiality. And you meet with the parents and you say, Listen, it’s to your advantage that I maintain some degree of confidentiality on minor issues, because what that means is teenagers are going to suffer surface issues that they would not surface any other way and parent it’s to your advantage that I’m able to address some of that. So I do think that has value, and I do think a youth leader says that to young people now, how do they give the kids a criteria for what they’re going to tell or not tell, this is the phrase that I enjoy using. I will say to a teenager. I want to promise you that I will never repeat anything you’ve told me with anyone that’s not part of getting you the help you need. I promise not to tell anyone who’s not part of getting you the help that you need. You can see the latitude that I’ve left for myself now that that is simple.
Richard Ross 31:26
Youth leader, keep confidences on abuse and things like that, absolutely. You tell everybody, okay, what’s in the middle? In the middle, the guidance I try to give youth leaders is there are some things that are so life altering, not not suicidal, but they’re so life altering that parents do need to be in the loop. And so in that regard, what you do is you really press that teenager to tell or you press that teenager to be part of the telling process. Clear example would be pregnancy. If you’re pregnant, the authorities don’t require that to be reported, but that’s life altering. And so the youth leader says to the teenager, maybe you’re frightened about how your parents are going to respond. How about I go with you? How about I’m sitting in the living room with you? When you tell teenager says, Well, I don’t want to tell I think a youth leader can say, Listen, you’ve got till Saturday to tell if you want me to come. I’ll come. But if you choose not to tell them by Saturday, then I am going to come over and I’m going to tell them, because they need to be involved in your life. You need medical help. And then you go ahead and tell I think there’s lots of other things like that, where a teenager is thinking about running away, or this or that, and parents just need to know instead of, well, I’m going to go tell your parent. I think you’re always trying to say, let’s go do this together. Let me help you do this. But you’re still going to get that information to the parents. You want to add to that?
Jonathan Williams 32:51
Oh, that’s a great word. The only thing I would say is, like, you’re telling the teenager, hey, here’s kind of when I would share when I won’t. And you know, to your question me, I don’t think it’s breaking trust when you do have to tell the parent or you encourage. I think it’s telling those youth, if you trust me enough to tell me this, and trust that I’ll have the Spirit led wisdom to know what to do with it. And so I think when you have that relationship with the youth, then they kind of get I’m going to tell my youth pastor, Imma tell my youth minister, and I’m going to trust them to know how to handle it. And also, I think, as a parent, I like the idea that my kids would share things with their youth minister or Sunday school teacher, because I think once they’ve shared it, once they’re more likely to share it at home. And so sometimes that’s the icebreaker they needed. Just, hey, I shared it with somebody. They didn’t go crazy, they didn’t yell at me, it landed better than I thought it would. And if we have that heart connection you’re talking about at home, I think now they’re even more likely to share that at home.
Jonathan Williams 33:59
I actually had the same challenge and opportunity, I guess. But when I was pastoring in Houston, we had home groups. And I had this home group we met on Sunday nights. And at one point we had, I think, 20 adults and 22 kids, and the oldest kid was like, six, and so six to baby. So some Sunday nights, which is pure chaos, so chaotic, so loud, so messy. One time, we’re in the middle of the prayer time, and a two year old really rolled down the stairs at the house. That stops everything. And so we really wrestled through this.
Jonathan Williams 34:30
And a rhythm we found that worked really well is the the first Sunday of every month, we’d have everybody together. We’d do big family worship together with the kids. We’d have a meal together and really focus on just the families worshiping together. So we’d read the Bible. Kids are in the room. We’d sing song. Kids are in the room. We share prayer requests. Kids are in the room. The second Sunday of each month, just the men would get together, and they were able to go deep with one another. The third Sunday of every month, the ladies would get rogether with no kids, and really get a chance to share their hearts and go deep. And then the last Sunday of every month, we’d all come together again, except this time, it would just be fellowship. We just have a meal, hang out, maybe play a game. And so we found a way to really include the kids, while also finding a way to get that, you know, those guys time to just share with one another, sisters in Christ to share.
Jonathan Williams 35:22
And I just read there’s a dissertation written years ago, and we’re actually going to publish it in the spring section of it for our family ministry journal here at Southwestern. And a PhD student, he did research on home groups and on family worship. And his question was, if home groups or Sunday school classes, community groups, whatever it is, if they include the kids at least once a month in some sort of family worship. What impact does it have on the home, on each individual family? And what his research showed was individual families were much more likely to have family worship in their own home if they did it together in a home group first. And so I love the heart to say, let’s find a way to include the kids. And you know, if you have 22 kids, it might be hard to do that every week, but if you can find that way, his research, and I think even our own kind of common sense would show, yeah, that’s going to be more likely that you’ll bring it into your own home.
Richard Ross 36:18
Wonderful. I’ll mention another model. This is not quite so organic. This is something you would actually plan, but it actually turned out really well in several churches where I’ve done this, what I’ve done like at Bellevue and Memphis, several places where you’ve got hundreds of parents, I’ve gone into a gymnasium or some large room, and I’ve put Mom and Dad, if they both exist, I put mom and dad in two or three chairs in a circle, and have circles everywhere. Teenagers and children are out doing other things, and I’m really talking to mom and dad. How do you have a family worship? How do you have a conversation about faith? What does that look like? What would be an interesting way to pray? What would be an interesting way to deal with Scripture? And then after some general instruction, everybody gets pieces of paper, and the pieces of paper are a way to have a devotional, a way to have some family worship. And so we read through that we talk. Well, you could say this and you could do this. And so everybody’s listening, listening, listening. And then they put those papers away. And then here come all of the teenagers and children, and they flood the room, and they go, of course, where their families are, and they sit down. And now everybody is seated by families. And then new pieces of paper come into every group, and we just say, Hey, we’re going to have a really good time. We’re just going to have some conversations about faith, young people, you’re going to love this.
Richard Ross 37:41
And so dear old dad, if he’s there, Mom, if he’s not, are leading out, and they’re involving the family, and they’re doing interesting things. Here’s here’s what we discovered. Families that probably were freaked out about doing that the first time at home, they’re doing it because it’s safe. And everybody in the gym is doing the same thing, and it’s not me by myself. This is what I know about men. Men are not going to look foolish in front of their family, so if I just give them general instruction, do this at home, and dad doesn’t really understand what that’s going to look like, I don’t think he’s going to try, because he doesn’t want to look dumb, but in the safety of experiencing that as a church family, I’m thinking, Well, I did that as good as these other dads. I did just fine, and my kids didn’t laugh at me. And this turned out pretty well. What the church leaders and I have discussed after those events, we have just said, you know, we’ve got a really good hunch that a lot of these families are actually going to do that at home, because we let them do it with a safety net. So it could be in some churches. That would be a very nice way to move a lot of families in that direction all at one time.
Jonathan Williams 38:51
I love that. I love, yeah, starting with the parents, then bringing in the kids, and now they already feel kind of ready to jump into that. What a great, intentional way to model that for them. Great question.
Richard Ross 39:14
I guess I almost repeating myself, but I will make this a more general principle. I think whatever we’re telling parents to do at home, we always give them practice for that. And of course, I just gave you one example, but I think on other parts of parenting, letting parents practice what we’re teaching them to do, it gives them confidence. It gives them confidence to believe I can actually do this.
Richard Ross 39:37
One thing I really, really am careful about in my weekends with churches. I never cut parents legs out from underneath them. For instance, I never have a room where there are parents and teenagers, our parents and children, and I’m shaking a bony finger in their faces saying, if you’re not doing this at home, amen, I don’t do that because the kids are sitting there thinking, well, we don’t, you know. I’m looking down the row at my desk, I just don’t do that. And so what you might do to kind of help parents, I guess you would say, save face a little bit. What you might show them how to do is, hey, we haven’t done this, and our kids are already 11.
Richard Ross 40:15
I think one way you can approach that is say, Hey, y’all come sit down. Let’s, let’s, let’s have a conversation. You’re pretty big now, you know, I mean, 11 is you’re growing up. You’re going to be a teenager soon. I think you deserve to know some things that God has said in Scripture, things that he’s shown mom and dad. So I think that just sort of eases, eases the process. Hey, you’re a teenager. Now, let’s, let’s have a conversation, and especially if you’ve done some things ahead of that to work on the relationship. You’re warming things up. I think the kids mostly are going to be okay with that.
Richard Ross 40:48
In my class last week, I was teaching about some research where they asked teenage, these were high school students, what would you most like? And so there was different things, cars, expensive vacation, but you know what came out number one in that research, more time with my mom and dad. Now most people wouldn’t believe that. Most people would think if you say to a teenager, Hey, you want to hang out with your parents, that you’re going to get some rolling eyes. But the research didn’t say that they actually wanted more time. So parents might be surprised if they’re not making this scary and it’s not mean. I think some teenagers might be, might be willing to say, it’s cool, it’s cool. I mean, we’re talking about my life here. We’re talking about stuff that I’m dealing with, and my mom and dad are saying some things that are helpful. Maybe we just give parents confidence and send them home having shown them exactly what to do. I think a lot of parents will follow through.
Jonathan Williams 41:41
Yeah, so encouraging to hear what teenagers are saying. They’re saying, I want more time with my parents. They’re asking for that. You know, I think they’re KMB Growing Pains sometimes, if you never done it before, and all sudden, you’re doing it one I love your heart when you’re speaking at churches. You’re not trying to shame parents or guilt them into doing this. And I always tell parents, I don’t want you feeling bad about what you haven’t done. I want you getting excited about what you could do, right? Get excited about starting those rhythms now. But I love that, just even that approach of sitting down with the kids and getting them excited about it.
Richard Ross 42:14
You and I both know Brian Haynes. Have a lot of respect for him. Obviously, he’s the one that launched the whole milestones approach to family ministry, not in his present church, but in the previous church where he created milestones. He actually did the research. They polled their families as I don’t know the exact word, but they were basically asking them, do you sit down for conversations about faith for family worship? And 10% was the answer. And that didn’t surprise anybody, because the broad research always comes out pretty close to 10% but this is how I want to encourage the people that are watching a couple of years later, they, of course, were using this milestones approach, which people would want to read about, but using that approach where they were really showing parents carefully how to have conversations about faith. After two years, they did another polling, and my recollection is that that number had gone from 10% to 40% now everybody’s thinking, Well, why couldn’t it be 100 Well, in the real world with real families, I think that is unbelievable that that great jump in percentages took place. So I would say to those that are watching today, have hope. Be intentional. Have a plan. Pray over your plan. But I think you can literally move some families in a direction where they just have not been in the past.
Jonathan Williams 43:34
Yes, amen. I had not heard that 10 to 40% that’s amazing. It is that’s moving mountain growth right there. Come on, that gets me excited.
Richard Ross 43:53
One thing that I do see. You know, most churches don’t have a large multiple staff, but a few churches do. So let me speak to that first where there is a discipleship pastor, that would be a wonderful place for that discipleship pastor to say to the age group pastors, hey, I acknowledge this is on me primarily. I’m here to give leadership to the overall discipleship ministry with adults. So I’m going to be pulling a lot of parents of youth and a lot of parents of children into an adult discipleship process. I pray, I hope, that the result of that is going to be in your homes that you’re dealing with, we’re going to see more spiritual life there. So that would be a wonderful thing.
Richard Ross 44:34
And of course, a few past few churches have a family pastor, a family minister, and that is obvious. That’s what that person’s thinking about all the time. It could very well be that, let’s say a children’s pastor or preschool leader or someone like that, might say, you know, I don’t have the time or the training or the background to create this big, full blown ministry with parents and whatnot. I’m not sure how to do that, but. The beauty could be the partnership. Let’s do this together. Okay, family minister, this is this is your bailiwick, this is what you do. Let me get my parents more engaged with what you’re providing. And they do that, you know, hand in hand. I think that would be a real possibility. In fact, what I would wish for these days is an entire church staff. Everybody that’s on staff sitting in staff meeting, lock the door and say we’re not leaving until we figure out how together we’re going to impact the homes of our church. We’re going to do this together. I do know I have student pastors, different people that will come to me sometimes, and they will say, I have a heart for the family. I have a heart for parents. I can’t get anybody in our church staff to partner with me? Man, we need everybody on the same page.
Richard Ross 45:46
You know, a practical way to get at that would be the d6 family ministry conferences. That thing is designed for the senior pastor to bring all of the staff members at the conference to be at Ground Zero where all these things are being discussed, and my experience has been walking those hallways. I see entire church staff teams go home and they’re all on the same page. They don’t have to convince each other. They’ve all heard the same messages, and they’re all going home to say, we’re going to do this heart and soul together.
Jonathan Williams 46:16
That’s good. I love that. Dr Ross is always at that conference each year since April the d6 conference, I’ve been going the last three or four years now, and it’s fantastic to see the whole staff there. There’s a church here in Irving, and their senior pastor wrote a book on family worship. Their preschool children. Youth ministers are all in on equipping the parents, but they also they have a worship leader, and every year he creates a family worship guide for families. So he’s the music Minister, the worship leader, and yet he’s writing this family worship guide they put out every January, and it has different songs to sing, questions to ask, devotions. I know another church where the mission pastor, every time they do any kind of service project or mission trip, he tries to get families serving together. And so I think you’re right, when you have this whole church and they’re all on the same page, and they all get this vision, this heart for families, there’s opportunities for music, ministers and missions, pastors and discipleship pastors to lean in and lead out in this. So I love that.
Richard Ross 47:21
You know, there’s an analogy I use with senior pastors. When I’m just speaking to senior pastors, I’ll say, Hey, your schedule is beyond crazy, but maybe let’s just use your imagination. What if you did have one Saturday morning off, and there’s a project, there’s this little thing you want to build for your house, and it’s been on your mind, and you finally have a morning off, you go to Lowe’s, or you go to Home Depot to grab some lumber. Well, we all know about Lowe’s and Home Depot this, the lumber is not going to be that great. It’s going to have not holes in it. Some of it’s going to be twisted, but you that’s all the time you have. You can’t shop more, so you grab whatever they have, you go home to make your thing, and as you start building it, it’s frustrating because stuff is not lining up true because of a twist this or that, and you’re going, this does not look good. And I had, I imagined how fun it would be to build this, and it’s not, it’s not good. Okay?
Richard Ross 48:13
I think a lot of senior pastors are absolutely sincere in their desire to build a great church by the power of the Holy Spirit. They’re absolutely sincere, but what they’re doing is they’re discovering that that won’t true up. My project isn’t turning out right because I’m using bad lumber. I think the plan that we’re discussing right now is the lumber are the families. You get families that are more spiritually alive. You get families that are talking about Jesus, you get families that are talking about rearing kids to make a difference for the kingdom of God. When the families are good lumber, then you can build a great church out of that. But I don’t think you can build a great church with families that are struggling and spiritually shallow. So I actually believe everything we’re talking about today is absolutely strategic to the future of the church.
Jonathan Williams 49:04
I’ve not heard that illustration. I love that, though that will preach. Dennis Rainey said no church will rise higher than the spiritual condition of his families. Wow. Like you said, you gotta start there. So I love it. Great question.
Richard Ross 49:28
Boy, that’s a multi faceted issue. Obviously, we’re not going to make families not busy. I mean, that’s that is a that is a goal we shouldn’t even be talking about. The only question is, what are they going to be busy doing? That’s the only issue. Yesterday, I was with the church, and I shared an incident that I think speaks to this. I told the people yesterday, I said, Hey, I’m in a different state just about every Sunday, and yet, in three different states, I’ve had the. Same experience in three different states, I said, I have left this service after having preached a sermon similar to this. I’ve gone to the fellowship hall to get lunch. And in three different places, a man has followed me to the lunch room. And I said, In all three cases, I just by chance, I guess all three of these men probably were in their 50s, and all three of these men, when they found me, stood too close to me, and all three of them thumped me on the chest. That’s uncanny, that how similar this was. And then I said, all three of those men thumping my chest, said, Ross, you better keep preaching this because it’s the truth. And then I said their stories were slightly different, but pretty close to this.
Richard Ross 50:48
They were saying, my adult sons will not give me the time of day. Two of them said, and my sons have said, if you want to see your grandchildren, you have to swear to me you’re not going to be talking religion with them. And so those men said to me with great sadness. So Ross, here’s my dilemma. I either never see my grandkids again, or I never mentioned the gospel. My kids are obviously my grandkids are obviously not in church, and they may never join Me in Heaven. And then I said, All three men thumped me one more time to say, You better keep preaching this.
Richard Ross 51:32
Now here’s the point I’m making. Those dads, after the fact, figured out what’s most important. Now it may be they’ve got some rusting sports trophies on a mantle somewhere or something or other that was once upon a time important to them, but today, nothing is more important than my own adult children are not in church and they’re not taking my grandkids to church, and my grandkids aren’t even hearing the things of God. What I think you have to do is you have to try to help parents figure that out when they’re 35 or 40, and not wait until they’re 55 what you’re trying to help mom and dad figure out is what is going to matter to you most, what is central to your hope and desire for your child in the future. And I even say to parents, sometimes, I say, your kids in college, and you just think of some random reason you need to talk to them. And so you call them at 1215 on Sunday. You know you just love church, and you just call their cell, and you can tell when they answer. You can tell they’re waking up, and you know exactly what that means. And I said, so you can tell the pattern is set. They’re not going to be involved in church like they were when they were young. I have lost that part of their heart say, is that really, Mom and Dad, is that really okay with you? Are you willing to let them miss six Sundays for travel ball with the prospect that when they get to college, they’re not going to be in church at all.
Richard Ross 53:01
The point I’m trying to make, I think you have to help parents get their vision up. They have to be they have to see what is most important. What am I going to care about into the future when my kids are 30 or 40, what do I hope to see? And if you can help them see those priorities at that stage in their lives, then you can back that up and say, Okay, you’re busy today. Maybe you need to be a little less busy with some of these things so you can do what is most important. So
Jonathan Williams 53:30
So, you’ve seen on the other side of it, parents looking back, wishing they probably could go back and emphasize this. And so you’re saying we gotta prioritize it. Now, I heard one author say, what parents treat as optional their kids will view as completely unnecessary. Wow. And so yeah, if church and discipleship and our walk with Christ is kind of this optional, what it gets our leftovers after a busy week, then when they grow up, I think they’ll treat it as unnecessary. You know, what a great word. Good question, though, because it is busy. Parents are busy, and yet the priority doesn’t change. The emphasis is there, and God’s calling you all to communicate that to the parents, biblically.
