2009 Christian Home Month: Families Called to Love -- Congregational Activities for Christian Home Month

• For congregational planners, reprint the Family Devotional Times material in your church newsletter, or place it on your website. List one suggestion a month. Ask families who followed the suggestions to write about their experience (or tell you about it). Create a "We Did It!" column in your newsletter or on your website and feature what these families did in following through with the suggestions.
• Plan a family fun time at church. Include a meal and use the time there to make the refrigerator reminders or Scripture/prayer/thought-for-the-day cards.
• Encourage families to adopt the Family Covenant for Love and carry out the practices for at least a month. Suggest a starting day for all in the congregation who want to participate. As part of worship, ask those who intend to live with the covenant to stand. Pray for the families. On the ending date, ask all families who lived with the covenant to stand. Recognize each family by name and join in singing the Doxology to voice your thanks to God for their efforts.
• As a way of including families of all types, recognize one family type per week for four to six weeks. Include a prayer for the family type highlighted in your worship bulletin, in your newsletter, or on your website or e-mail network.

With the permission of individuals in the congregation, feature one or more families and get their responses to two or more of the sentence fragments found in the Family Devotional Times material. Create a bulletin board with pictures of the various families and their answers to the sentence fragments. The following are suggestions. Select those family types that best represent your congregation.

Week One: Singles. Whether never married, widowed or divorced, singles are part of families. First and foremost, they are part of the church family. They are part of a biological family, whether any other family members occupy the same household or not. And many are part of an intentional family -- friends and loved ones who uphold one another and care for one another. Some participate in family devotions with family members by e-mail and phone, even though they are separated by distance.

Week Two: Older Couples. Sometimes as couples age and particularly if they have had children in the home but are now empty-nesters, they no longer think of themselves as a family or see themselves included in family activities at the church. As we age, we continue to grow in faith. Many older couples maintain a healthy devotional life, together engaging in such activities as reading The Upper Room Daily Devotional Guide together, studying Scripture together, and practicing acts of service in the church and in the community.

Week Three: Families with Young Children. If you were to ask families with young children about their devotional life, many would laugh, saying, "What devotional time? I can't even have time alone to go to the bathroom!" They would also be quick to remind you that with their children's short attention spans, lack of reading ability, and limited vocabulary, family devotions seem to be something for the future, not for now. However, the prayer life of a young child can be rich. The routines of meal and bedtime prayers open the door to family devotions.

Week Four: Foster Families. Those who serve as foster families may feel like a revolving door with children or teens entering the family then exiting, often at short notice. Establishing and maintaining patterns for faith sharing can be particularly difficult. Those who have found ways to do this often mention that this is part of the family practices they introduce to the children and youth as they enter their home. Prayer for each child or youth often precedes the ability for prayer with the children or youth.

Week Five: Single Parent Families. Time is the most precious commodity for adults raising children alone. Chores, homework, school activities, work demands, church commitments sometimes feel too numerous. And sometimes establishing a family devotional time is complicated by visitation and custody circumstances when there has been a divorce. Providing a friend in faith or prayer partner for the adult parenting alone helps to give support for establishing faith practices in the home.

Week Six: New Couples. Couples who are new in their relationship, no matter their age, may find it difficult to talk about faith with each other. When the congregation provides guidance for devotional times in the home, those who are new in their relationship can use this information to begin lifelong practices.

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