Professional Dissertations DMin

Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry

College

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Program

Doctor of Ministry DMin

First Advisor

Michael R. Cauley

Second Advisor

Peter Swanson

Third Advisor

Ronald Flowers

Abstract

Problem

During the last decade, Calgary Central Church has not been intentionally involved in reaching families with children. They have done many different types of evangelism and community outreach programs but nothing to attract this specific segment of the population. With a large number of unreached families with children in the community, the need for a specific outreach project like this was obvious.

Method

A 12-week program to reach families with children was developed and implemented during 2016-2017. The approach of this project was to reach the parents by reaching their children first. For this purpose, Kids' Discipleship Club was developed and implemented. Its main purpose was missional, but during the course of the implementation stage, the purpose of the project became a combination of both reaching families in the community and helping church families in discipling their children.

Results

Twenty families enrolled their children in this program, 14 of them from the church and six from the community. In total, there were 35 children who attended the weekly meetings. As a result of this program, the families from the community had a chance to get to know our church and see that we care about them and their children. During this program, the leaders and the families from the church established relationships with the families from the community. The other result was that the families from the church strengthened their relationship with Jesus. The children had an amazing experience that helped them grow and mature on their discipleship journey.

Conclusions

This project demonstrates that churches must become intentional in reaching out to different demographic groups in our community. A one-size-fits-all approach does not work; therefore, the church needs to come up with new strategies. I believe that this type of project can be very successful in reaching out to families, and it has the potential to have a great missional impact on our communities.

Subject Area

Church work with families--Seventh-day Adventists; Calgary Central Church (Alberta, Canada)

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dmin/720/

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