I think it’s strange that so many people in the church, and not just this church, believe that “ministry” is what happens at church. Many also believe that only people who are called “ministers” are the ones who do “ministry.” That can’t be further from the truth.
The “family” is probably one of the biggest mission fields that we have, and parents, then, are front-line missionaries. While the church helps missionary-parents be trained, to be encouraged, and to be equipped.
We can see this throughout the Scriptures. In Deuteronomy 6, we read how all of Israel was called to train up children at home. In Acts 10, Cornelius, the first Gentile Christian, invited his whole family and his friends to his home to hear Peter preach, and they were all baptized. In Acts 16, we read how Lydia and her household and how the Philippian jailer and his household all believed and were baptized.
Jesus recognized the influence of family as well. In Mark 5 we read about how Jesus had cast out a legion of demons from a man and into a herd of pigs. Because Jesus delivered him, the man begged to go with Jesus, but in Mark 5:19, Jesus said, “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” Verse 19 says that he went home and told everyone what Jesus had done for him and that “all the people were amazed.” One life was changed directly by Jesus, but many others were influenced back home.
Back home, with the family, that’s where life happens. That’s also where lives can be changed. Considering that parents spend far more time with their children—and grandparents with grandchildren and aunts and uncles with nieces and nephews, etc.—than all of them spend at church, it should be clear how much the family of Christ must minister to the family and with the family so they can be ministers at home.