Life Giving Homes
Family: The Forming Centre for Faith & Life (32 pages)
“In the fast paced world of today, when so much of our thinking is shaped by scanning and swiping and reading just 147 characters, this small book has been deliberately created as a manageable read.
Listen to the chorus of voices in these pages that amplify the urgency to return to the central place where life is formed, celebrated, experienced and matured.
What is proposed is a counter-cultural paradigm shift away from quick fix solutions and program centred strategies towards a return to the ancient, God given priority for growing lifelong, active followers of Jesus.
Read on to find life … for you and your home.”

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Spiritual Parenting,
Michelle Anthony (US) – An awakening for today’s families
“Spiritual parenting is not perfect parenting – it’s parenting from a spiritual perspective with eternity in mind. It is a way of parenting that declares, “I want to parent the child or children that God gave me in such a way that I first honour God, and then second create the best environment to put my children in the path of the Divine.”

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Dreaming of More for the Next generation,
Michelle Anthony (US) – Lifetime faith ignited by family ministry
“The church must assume the role as a training ground for parents to be the soul doctors for their children – in order to bring spiritual healing. Parents must learn how to really be present with the children and to create space for contemplation and reflection in their homes.”

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Children’s Ministry in the Way of Jesus
David M. Csinos & Ivy Beckwith, (US) – foreword by John Westerhoff
“Children’s ministry is less about providing children with absolute answers and more about helping them live faithfully with questions and doubts that arise on the journey of discipleship. It aims at nurturing the whole life of child and not compartmentalised in the child’s ”church life” from the rest of the child’s life. It realises that children feel God’s love when they are surrounded by a close knit faith community who loves them and sees them as valued participants. It realises that children make the values of God’s reign their own by seeing them live that radically in their churches and homes– not simply by learning about them in a classroom or through a programmed activity. It understands that children are learners and teachers, and that they have as much to teach adults about life in God’s kingdom as we adults have to teach them.”

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The Legacy Path
Brian Haynes (US) – Discover intentional spiritual parenting
“The greatest obstacle parents have to overcome in leading their children spiritually is their own mediocre or morbidly religious relationship with God accompanied by a juvenile understanding of his Word.”

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Goodbye Generation
David Sawler,  (USA)
“Despite all our incredible children’s, youth and young adult programs, we have not been able to stop this mass exodus from our churches. We have not just lost one generation, we are losing several.”

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Putting Life Together
Phillip Hughes, Christian Research Australia
“More than 50,000 young people each year are leaving the Christian faith and deciding that they have ‘no religion’.”

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Becoming Intentionally Intergenerational: Models & Strategies (12 pages)
John Roberto (US)
“Every church can become intentionally intergenerational! Most churches are intergenerational or multi-generational by membership. Some churches are intentionally intergenerational. They make their intergenerational character a defining feature of their community life, ministries, and programming. These churches make it a priority to foster intergenerational relationships, faith sharing, and storytelling; to incorporate all generations in worship; to develop service projects that involve all ages, and to engage all generations in learning together. For these churches, being intergenerational is a way of life. It is an integral element of their culture. It is who they are!”

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Best Practices in Intergenerational Faith Formation (16 pages)
John Roberto (US)

“Intergenerational faith formation was an integral element of the Christian church from the very first days. The Israelites and the first Christian communities may not have used the term “intergenerational faith formation” to describe the transmission of the faith story and way of life to the next generation, but it most certainly was.”

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Faith Formation across the Generations (9 pages)
Mariette Martineau (US)
“As the parent of three young children, living in our current world, I have to create or seek out opportunities for them to intentionally relate with other generations. Their lives are mostly spent in an age-segregated context, whether in their classrooms at school, in their sports programs, or even in religious education at the church. Like many families of my generation who relocate to find work, my children’s grandparents and extended family are far away. And so there are few contexts for them to interact with older or younger generations. They have few teens or adults in their lives who share faith with them, and they often wonder why we as a household are believers.”

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The Family Friendly Church
Ben Freudenburg (US) – Equipping families for a home-based, church-supported ministry
“Parents are the primary Christian educators in the church, and the family is the God-ordained institution for building faith in young people and for passing faith on from one generation to the next. Over the years, this vision has been lost in program-centred church culture in which parents find themselves on the sidelines instead of in the game, shaping their children’s faith and lives. In this book, we are urging churches to shift their programming and structure to a home-centred, church-supported model for nurturing faith.”

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Intergenerational Christian Formation
Holly Allen & Christine Ross (US) – Bringing the whole church together in ministry, community and worship
“The church has remained one of the few institutions where people of all ages assemble. While many churches are multigenerational and seemingly healthy on the surface, the generations act like ships in the night that pass by one another but rarely have meaningful contact and interaction. This lack of significant communication and relations between generations must be addressed if churches are to thrive – not merely survive – now and in the future. An intergenerational outlook acknowledges that the gifts of every generation brings to the spiritual formation of the other generations strengthens the whole church.”

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Already Gone
Ken Ham & Britt Beamer, (Aus & USA)
“Students didn’t begin doubting in college, they simply departed by college. If you look around in your church today, two-thirds of those who are sitting among us have already left in their hearts.” 

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Mend the Gap
Jason Gardner, (UK)
“If the church is haemorrhaging young people, we have to ask our selves if it’s because we address the issue of discipleship too late. Is the spiritual education we provide for our young people neither consistent enough or rigorous enough to provide them with the means to have a strong and stable faith in a time when there are many challenges to the authenticity and relevance of our beliefs?” 

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Sticky Faith
Kara Powell & Chap Clark, (USA)
“Faith trajectories are often set in early adolescence. Sadly, most youth ministries are long on fun and fluff and short on listening and thoughtful engagement. The former produces a million paper boats; the latter produces a handful of seaworthy ships.”

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Lost in Transition
David Goodwin, (Aus)
“One of the biggest problems I have seen, and which I believe must be addressed, is that a large percentage of children who have been brought up in Sunday Schools and churches – and in Christian homes – do not continue on into adult church.” 

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Church + Home
Mark Holmen, (US) – The proven formula for building lifelong faith.
“The church is called to be a lifelong partner (not replacement) with parents to help people know God’s story,tell God’s story and be God’s story 24 hours a day, seven days a week, beginning in their homes and extending throughout all aspects of their lives. What happens in the home is more important and influential than what happens at church when it comes to faith formation and behaviour.”

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I Want To Believe But I Can’t
Karyn Henley (US) – Why our kids are leaving church.
“We set ourselves up as those who have all the answers, yet our answers often sound canned, recycled, cliché. They don’t sound like they come from our deepest beliefs, but from doctrinal statements to which we’ve given assent. Kids since a dissonance when we claim to be passionate about Christ, yet the phrases we use sound suspiciously like echoes of the latest popular Christian writer or speaker.”

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Collide
Tammy Tolman (Aus) – Exploring INTERgenerational Ministry
“Ministry to children within a healthy intergenerational community can be incredibly transformational, not only to the child, but also the family and the wider community..This book challenge’s the environment in which we raise our children. We don’t have to look too far to see that the current state of the Church and family is not conducive to developing strong mission focussed kids. If we are going to impact the next generation for God, we need to be as deliberately strategic and mission-minded as Jesus was when He walked this earth. This may mean a few collisions along the way, but it has been said, ‘It’s not worth having if it hasn’t been a challenging journey to get it”.

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Reimagining Faith Formation for the 21st Century
John Roberto (US)
This book is a proposal for what twenty-first century faith formation can look like. Much has been written about the challenges facing Christianity and faith formation. This book seeks to provide a way forward. How can we address the big adaptive challenges facing churches and faith formation? How can we reimagine faith formation with a vision that honours the past and is open to the future? How can we build a new faith-forming ecosystem that supports religious transmission and faith growth? How can we design new models with the best understandings and practices of learning and faith formation? And how can we engage all ages and generations in growing in faith and discipleship for a lifetime? 

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Faith Shaper
Seventh Day Adventist Church Children’s Ministry
Making lifelong disciples of children and youth is a key priority of our church. We believe that it is time to have the important discussions on what formational experiences they need. In partnership with the Interdenominational National conversation here2stay South Pacific Division and Australian Conferences Children’s Ministries have put together 7 Essential Experiences that will shape this faith that stays. We want this faith to be deep, and it needs to be strong and active.

This is not a program. It doesn’t sit with one department. It doesn’t sit with one age group. ‘Faith Shaper’ is a set of experiences from birth to eighteen years that should determine how all Departments do ministry.  We are asking that everyone – church, home and school, to study the experiences and put in place strategies that ensure they happen well.

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Aim Lower Journal
A global conversation about mission, discipleship and children.

The journal seeks to be a thoughtful stimulus to thinking about the nature of Christian work with children . It is seeking to engage the growing number of people employed by churches and Christian groups in a rich conversation about biblical foundations, mission and discipleship. This in turn should enrich the wider conversation in the church as a whole about work with children. It is not seeking to primarily appeal to the everyday volunteer but will seek to influence those who influence that volunteer.

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Visionary Parenting
by Rob Rienow

Readers will capture a fresh, God-sized vision for their family. It begins with understanding God’s purpose for the family and taking an honest look at the current state of the home. The author shares foundational truth that God created the family to ensure that the next generation grows up to know, love, and serve Him. He reminds readers of the instructions from God given to parents in Deuteronomy 6:5-7 that will transform your home. Considering using Visionary Parenting in your church or small group?

Read more…..Link here