FormingFaith.com - Excellent Resource For Family Ministry

Pastor Greg Priebbenow of FormingFaith.com is an Australian Lutheran minister who specializes in family ministry.

His site specializes in helping Christians pass on the faith to the next generation and includes the weekly pamphlets the congregation he serves - St. Paul's Lutheran in Box Hill - distributes to their church family.

Family ministry has been growing in Lutheran circles thanks to 2 things I can discern... a reemphasis on catechesis is the first. Luther's Smaller Catechism specifically enjoins the parents to instruct the children at home. In Anglicanism this was a task reserved in the Prayer Book for presbyters... they were supposed to assemble the children Sunday's for catechism. The parents were never mentioned. Luther gets this right in his catechism. Plus it has the advantage of being short and focused on the essentials of catechesis in the Western Tradition... the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Sacraments along with some simple prayers and a table of duties.

The Anglican Prayer Book catechism is simple enough but the parents are not specifically encouraged to join in... Christianity must start in the home!

The reformeers did better in following Luther but their major catechisms are all rather tedious for instructing children - even the wonderful Heidelberg Catechism.

The reformed doctrine of the covenant that undergirds reformed baptismal practice jibes well with the content at FormingFaith.com if you're not a Lutheran.

The second impetus to the current Lutheran interest in passing the faith on to the next generation is, in my opinion, the work of Merton Strommen author of "Passing on the Faith to the Next Generation."

FormingFaith.com distills the teaching of Strommen et al into simple terms for reference and puts it in action through the weekly hand outs. I use them for inspiration and perhaps you might too?

An excellent resource awaits you here. Strommen's book is well worth reading too!