February 2, 2000
Children's home helps church families
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___South Texas Children's Home is trying a new proactive strategy in helping children. Instead of just ministering to children whose home life has come unraveled, the Baptist children's home is seeking to help churches strengthen the bonds that hold families together.
___Les Chaney, vice president of family ministry for the Beeville ministry, said the plan began to take shape during a long-range planning meeting in 1995.
___"Someone said, 'We've been dealing with the aftermath of broken homes for 46 years; why don't we get on the other side of things and work on the prevention side of families' problems?'" he remembered.
___A donation a short time later paved the way for the dream to become a reality.
___Chaney works with churches to develop ministries to families. Some of the issues addressed by the ministries include marriage enrichment training, loneliness, divorce recovery, money management, retirement planning, grief, single parenting and blended families.
___He begins the process by preaching a sermon on families and asking those who would like to be trained to become a part of family ministry to come forward at the end of the service as a show of commitment.
___"The most amazing thing we encounter is the number of people who come forward and say, 'I've never done anything like this before.' Pastors are amazed at some of the people who never would agree to serve on a church committee but agree to do family ministry," he said.
___Then begins a three- to four-month process to assess the needs of the church, build an organization to meet those needs and train workers to make the ministry happen.
___Even with all the planning and work, Chaney admits the effort doesn't always have the desired results. "A lot of success and a lot of failure has taken place over the last two and a half years that we've been doing this, but we're finding out what works," he said.
___The importance of the ministry is never questioned, however, even if the program never really gets off the ground at some churches.
___"We believe family ministry can be one of the most effective outreach tools the church has, because every family has needs. The secret to developing relationships is to meet needs, and when the church meets the needs of families, they will build relationships with those families and bring them into the church," Chaney explained.
___Michael Hale, pastor of Travis Baptist Church in Corpus Christi, agrees.
___"We are able to offer them not only Jesus Christ, but help for their families," he said.
___While he would like his church to be doing an even better job of reaching out to families, he sees the value of what family ministry they are able to do. The temptation is to use the wrong measuring stick in assessing the effectiveness of family ministry, he suggested.
___"We Baptists want to measure success in buildings, budgets and baptisms--the three B's. If we're not building big buildings with big budgets and baptizing a lot of people, we don't think we're being successful," Hale said.
___But the value of family ministry must be measured differently, he added.
___The pastor said his training and other responsibilities limit him when it comes to marriage counseling, but the South Texas Children's Home counseling program helps.
___"As a pastor, I don't feel I am qualified to do long-term counseling, and I have referred many couples to the counseling ministry of South Texas Children's Home."
___Garrick Conner, family minister at First Baptist Church in Beeville, said the family ministry program there has energized the whole church.
___The ministry at Beeville is not as centered on marriages, but on a variety of small-group ministries, most of which meet in homes. Ministries include those to unwed teen parents, the parents of unwed teen parents, grief support groups for those who have lost loved ones and divorce recovery groups.
___Publicizing these ministries to the community has allowed the church a whole new way to reach out to the community, Conner said.
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