Where do you go when you want to start a family ministry in your church?
"We were looking for information on how to start a family ministry for a whole month, calling all over the country, checking the internet, and were unable to get any help," reveals Jere Vincent, the Family Ministry Team Leader at Durham Evangelical Church in Durham, NH. "When we attended a seminar with Mike and Maggie Rowe, we asked them if they knew where we could get help. They told us to contact Willie Batson of Vision New England’s Family Builders Ministries."
That is more than a year ago. Today Durham Evangelical Church has a thriving Family Ministry for a congregation of 550 that meets in two services each Sunday. Yet it was during the process of getting the Family Ministry started that they needed help—and Willie Batson provided that.
"Willie’s role was key to us getting the Family Ministry started. He has great wisdom in how to actually put the pieces in place and provided the tools we needed to make it happen. Ten of us attended Willie’s Becoming A Healthy Family Ministry Seminar, where we discovered that Willie had a framework for Family Ministry in a church in place—and a step-by-step plan to get one started and functioning properly," says Vincent. "The first step was to take a survey and discover what the needs were in the church."
Four key needs identified
When they did the survey, the Durham team discovered four key needs:
Working with Pastor Terry Sharbaugh, Vincent set up a 12-member Family and Marriage Ministry Team that included an elder (a suggestion made by Batson). This team began the planning necessary to initiate programs to meet the four needs. The first need to be met was the financial one, with a Larry Burkett financial planning seminar.
"We recognized that the mentoring program would involve the most people, so after recruiting couples willing to mentor others, we set up mentoring at four stages of marriage: pre-engagement, engagement, during the first five years after the wedding, and when marriages are in crisis. So far we have had 12 couples start at the pre-engagement stage and seven have already been married—and they are ecstatic over the help they received. They say they have received a solid foundation for going into marriage. And although they are married they are still meeting with their mentors, since they will continue to need affirmation and help," says Vincent.
Helping couples in crisis a key component
Helping couples in crisis is another key component of the mentoring effort, says Vincent. In fact, the mentoring already going on has reduced the counseling demands on the senior pastor by half.
"Pastor Sharbaugh does meet with those entering the mentoring program at the first meeting and then again at the last meeting," says Vincent, who indicates that a key component of the mentoring program is the relationship being developed between older couples and younger couples in the mentoring program.
According to Willie Batson, Director of Family Builders Ministry of Vision New England, the team at Durham Evangelical Church has demonstrated what it takes to launch a successful Family Ministry.
"There has to be a definite call to family ministry on the part of those wishing to start one in a local church. That call has been very evident with Jere Vincent and his team. Starting one also calls for a lot of persistence, and again the team at Durham has kept at it with great persistence. Jere and I have been in consistent contact throughout the process and we have lunch together every other month. I am thrilled to see what God has done in that church—and it can serve as a model for others," he says.
