I am a big fan of the Sticky Faith movement. I had the privilege of meeting up and interviewing Kara Powell its director for Youthwork Magazine when I visited Fuller a couple of years ago.

So I was delighted to receive a review copy of this new resource.

I love the design of the book. Its printed on high quality paper and uses some excellent fonts and design features to help get the message across. This might seem like an unimportant detail but it just makes the resource feel very professional and up to date.
This is basically a companion resource to help churches bring about culture change on the way we do age integrated ministry. It’s a 180 day countdown with a fair amount of detailed planning including everything from a model email to send parents to plans for parent-youth-worker consultations. Some people will love the level of detail others will be frustrated by how much handholding there is and the relative lack of new content.

The three big ideas that make up the core of the material are very helpful.

•  Shift from a Behaviour Based Gospel to a Grace Gospel .
  This has got to be a core value for every aspect of the church to make sure that we are being faithful to the gospel. I believe we need to help every body involved in teaching from parents to preachers, from youth workers to those working with the elderly to be very clear about the gospel and to make sure when we are teaching everything from Old Testament stories, to sex or the book of James that we are underlining the nature of grace and also the scale of the gospel.

•  Shift from Dry Cleaning Parenting to Ministry Partnership.
  As parents we can’t just drop off our kids at the youth activities “dirty” and expect to pick them up “clean” at the end. We have to play our part in the spiritual formation of our children.
  

• Shift from Two Table Church to welcome young people around one family table
  Rather than having a separate kids table and a grown up table at family gatherings there is a great advantage on being one family table. So in the life of the church what can we do to integrate the two tables of youth and adults together. I would say that we have a bigger challenge; we have more than two tables dividing up the church. We have children, youth, students, 20s-30s, singles, married couples, retired and a whole bunch more that we need to find a way to integrate together.
  

This resource comes with some unlockable online material but after logging in with my unique code; no matter how I tried I couldn’t get the video content to download. When this does work I am sure that will add a whole new dimension to the training opportunities that this resource can provide.
This is a good resource which comes without some of the theological baggage that other US based family faith products come with. It could be used by churches from a very diverse spectrum of evangelical convictions. It does come with an American perspective and assumes quiet a bit about the scale and set up of your youth and children’s ministry. It lays the foundation for some changes to take place in youth ministry but I would say that it has gone for gradual step change that in the end only get you so far. I think we probably need a more radical shake up.

First published on krishk.com