Prediking binne die konteks van die hedendaagse gesinserediens (Afrikaans)

Abstract

Current collective church services, where families in totality are coming together although the focus only falls on adults, do not address today’s post modern families. For this reason two tragic routes were began to be followed within the church: <ul> <ol><li>Parents with small children began to give up trying to pressure their children to attend services because they themselves realized that it was not working for them, and started to go to church without their children, while parents with teenagers allowed their teens to attend services of other churches where they felt that their needs were met. Parents who still tried to pressure their children into going to services with them, started to experience the tension surrounding that within their families as well as in themselves.</li> <li>Congregations started creating generative services where the different generations were served separately from each other, within the premise of specialized ministry on the level of each unique generation.</li> </ol></ul> The result of this was disastrous for families as well as the church in general. On the one hand family members were spiritually alienated from each other and covenant families were tore to pieces; on the other hand covenant families were alienated from their own Christian tradition and church foundation, while the role of parents as spiritual mentors of their children were minimilised. Because of this, more and more families began to plead for the addressing of their needs to be ministered to as a whole within the church service and to worship together, while covenant parents began to demand to be once again empowered as primary spiritual mentors of their children. Consequently the urgent need within the church had arisen for the implementation of family ministry, and especially family services, where families in totality can effectively be ministered to so that the needs of each family member will be met. Principles for such inter generative services, as well as sermons to post modern families within that context, is necessary to make such a cross generational ministry successful. Precisely this is the focus of this study.