Adventist Family Ministries

MISSION STATEMENT

The Family Ministries Department seeks to strengthen, inspire home and bring healing to married couples, families and individuals through the abundant love and saving grace of Jesus Christ.

VISION STATEMENT

To prepare families for the Kingdom of God by helping to hasten the coming of Jesus Christ

OBJECTIVES

Recognizing the mutual strength and support that the church should represent for the home, and the home for the church, and that the mission of the church must become a reality, the Family Ministries Department has adopted the following objectives:

1. To promote the reassuring and restoring message of the eternal gospel within the context of family life. Christ is, and should be, recognized as the Savior and Head of each home. In Him the family members can have peace with God and with each other. When we draw near to Him we draw near to each other with love, a forgiving spirit, reconciliation, restoration and renovation.

2. To reaffirm and strengthen each Adventist family as a prime unit within the discipleship. The purpose of the Family Ministries Department is to reach a deeper understanding of the correlation between being and making disciples and to strengthen the family members so that they would be able to make disciples within the family. The married couple is seen as the prime unit of the family. The department wishes to provide these couples access to opportunities for education, improvement and orientation to be able to increase and develop their skills of harmonious bonding necessary for the effective work of mutual discipleship and optimum growth of the Christian marriage, the relationships among siblings and their extended family,

3. To train the parents and their families to increase the possibilities of a successful transference of the Adventist values to the next generation. The Family Ministries Department produces materials and provides opportunities for learning within the framework of the church and the family, designed to train parents to attractively present the Biblical values to their children and teenagers. The department stimulates an atmosphere within the home and church that promotes the asking of questions and constant discussion among the parents, children, teenagers, adults and church leaders regarding Christian values and dogmas in an effort to foster the development of a mature faith.

4. To create a “family of God” type experience in each Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Family Ministries Department encourages an atmosphere in which we respect and celebrate diversity in the context of the congregation of the world church, recognizing that such unity is not found in uniformity, but in Christ the Head of the body. Through the surrender to a common message and mission and reciprocity that is open, honest and vulnerable with respect to our relationship to one another, the unity we have found in Christ can be transformed into a living reality.

5. To enable the family to give an attractive testimony. Even though the home is considered to be the most important mission field, the Family Ministries Department helps the families to discover and use their spiritual gifts in the community around them. The department encourages and trains families to relate in a winning way with family members who are not believers, to make friends with the neighbors, to share the good news of life in Christ and to support through their prayers, offerings and acts of service, the missionary efforts of the church.

RESOURCES

• Pastoral Family Week of Prayer 2014 (online videos)

Pastor Pedro Iglesias Director	Cecilia Iglesias Associate Director

Professional Assistant: Leticia Leito

This post is also available in: French Spanish