7/8 Offsite Minsitry

Rich, I’ve heard you use the sentence "7/8 of your youth ministry happens off site in a FINK church" before, and I always wondered where this fraction came from. I suspect others have wondered the same. Brad

Every night in every home = 7
Every week in every church = 1

In a true FINK church, the church isn't doing the job for the parents. The church is simply there to get you started with a FINK theme on Wednesday (or Sunday) by kicking it off and giving you a great frame of reference.

Or a great frame of reverence.

The real work that is to be done by parent who commit to nightly “FINK FIVE” Home Huddles and do their:
1.  Highs & lows
2. Scripture
3. Talk
4. Prayer
5. Blessing with their own kids.

I spent the last 15 years trying to find ways to transform confirmation from information to faith formation through group formation.

I intend to invest the next 15 years trying to find ways to bring it on home.

Our new mission statement is “faith incubation every night in every home.”

If you're a true FINK,  you should be rattleing this off the top of you head to every parent you meet.  The shift that we are proposing will be from must doing FINK just at church to enlisting parents as primary faith incubators seven nights a week.

Comments

[Richard]

Great attitude to try and get into any youth ministry.

I am the State Chaplain for the Boys' Brigade Western Australia (Christin youth organisation that supports churches from many denominations).

A team of us are working on putting together an updated spiritual development curriculm for our groups to use. One of the overarching aims of this process is to produce something that not only runs really well on the night for the Boys, but to also contain something that allows the imapct of that night to follow them back home and reach the entire family via some sort of take-home activities.

Many (around 65% plus) of our Boys are from unChurched backgrounds and our dream is to see entire families transformed by God's power.

A big ask? You betcha.
Difficult? Much more than we thought.
Worth it? Most certainly!