Biblical and Theological Resources for Raising Children - Marcia Bunge
Marcia Bunge identifies some fundamental insights from the Bible and the Christian tradition about the roles and responsibilities of parents and the complexity and dignity of children as resources for raising our children in the faith. The article includes a summation based on Scripture and Christian tradition of parental practices and responsibilities for nurturing the moral and spiritual lives of children.
(Source: Lutheran Partners, July/Aug 2009, Vol. 25, No. 4)

Equipping Parents to Be Spiritual Champions in their Homes - Pat Springle
Leadership Network hosted an Innovation Lab for Family Ministries for visionary pastoral staff from around the United States. This article reports on leaders who aren’t content to let the surrounding culture dictate the roles of parents and church ministries, and have developed a clear strategy and effective practices to equip parents to fulfill their roles of spiritual leaders.
(Source: Leadership Network, www.leadnet.org)

Faith Formation with Families in Today's Church - Leif Kehrwald
Leif Kehrwald proposes a four-step process to help families recognize God’s gracious presence in their daily lives, and see how the Christian tradition can illuminate their experience, turning “ordinary” human moments into religiously significant ones. He challenges churches to use processes like this to help families become aware of the moments of meaning in their lives, filter their experiences through the lens of faith and spirituality, become aware of God’s gracious presence in their lives—and respond to it—develop a faith rapport with one another, connect their informal faith experiences with the more formal religious practice of the community, and become intentional about their desire to grow in faith.
(Source: Lifelong Faith Journal, www.LifelongFaith.com)

Faith Formation with Hispanic/Latino Families - Ida Miranda
Ida Miranda addresses three key issues and challenges for faith formation with Hispanic/Latino families:1) understanding their faith and religious practices; 2) presenting ways in which we can support and encourage Hispanic families to nurture, celebrate, and share faith at home; and 3) identifying ways in which churches can nurture family faith through family-centered faith formation models.
(Source: Lifelong Faith Journal, www.LifelongFaith.com)

Family Daily Living Faith Practices - Christy Olson
Christy Olson challenges churches to re-look at the delivery system for knowledge about faith practices. To honor the faith growth of the family within the household, churches need to concentrate on family in-sourcing: getting the information to families in their homes with someone who can help in the family discovery. Rather than looking at the primary goal as getting the family to church, the new goal is to deliver faith information to the family at the place where they live. She provides a series of practical "how-to" suggestions that churches can use to help families live faith practices. 
(Source: Lifelong Faith Journal, www.LifelongFaith.com)

Family Perspectives - J. Bradley Wigger
For the past two decades, the Lilly Endowment has supported several projects among religious institutions designed to empower and serve families. This work has helped to shape discussions, policy-making, scholarship, ministries, and practices on national and local levels alike. This essay by Brad Wigger sketches out some of these efforts, exploring along the way, how attention to families can affect visions of ministry, communities, and the larger society.
(http://resourcingchristianity.org/essay.aspx?ESYID=d7d11374-7c0e-4ec0-835b-0930f3b5de7f)

Helping Parents Lead their Children Biblically - Brian Haynes
Brian Haynes describes three things that churches can do to empower parents to lead their children spiritually. He describes how his church realized they had been leaving parents out of the discipleship equation. They made the shift from the compartmentalized status quo of “church alone discipleship” to the ancient path linking church and family to equip the generations. They decided to equip parents to be the primary faith influencers of their children every day. 
(Brian Haynes' Blog: http://legacyblog.org; and website: http://legacymilestones.com)
(Source: K Magazine, Jan/Feb 2010)

Making Parents a Priority - Jolene and Eugene Roehlkepartain 
Using research from the Building Strong Families study, Jolene and Gene Roehlkepartain describe five key findings about parents today and offer practical strategies and ideas that congregations can use to make parents a priority in congregational life and programming.
(Source: Lifelong Faith Journal, www.LifelongFaith.com) 

One Home at a Time - Jennifer Hooks
Jennifer Hooks describes the Legacy Milestones approach that Brian Haynes and Kingsland Baptist Church use to create a common path that integrates church and home in spiritual formation. The milestone strategy syncs-up church and home through a path of seven milestones that are used to chart spiritual development.
(Source: Children's Ministry Magazine, July/Aug 2009)

Pass the Peas, Catch the Faith - Linda Staats
Linda Staats describes how congregations can partner with and equip the domestic church called "home" to help families share and teach the faith amid their busy and sometimes chaotic lives. Research and mental health experts consistently tell us that rituals and traditions, like those around sharing a meal, ground us and give us a sense of identity and belonging. The simplest of daily acts are the glue that keep families together. 
(Source: Lutheran Partners, July/Aug 2009, Vol. 25, No. 4)

Passing on Faith: Milestone to Milestone - Linda Staats
Linda Staats describes how to use milestones as a powerful way to engage parishioners of all ages and stages of life in nurturing their faith and spiritual growth. Milestones offer an opportunity to bring God’s presence into the home and connect the rituals of daily life with the life of the congregation, thus shaping a vital partnership between home and congregation. Most important, milestones ministry renews and transforms congregations by tending the baptismal journey through all the ages and stages of a life centered in Christ.
(Source: Lifelong Faith Journal, www.LifelongFaith.com)

The Rule of Family Faith: Practicing the Presence of God in Our Outward Lives - Bonnie Miller-McLemore
Bonnie Miller-McLemore explains that many of our preconceptions about spirituality mean that we do not
recognize family spirituality when we see it. The problem is as much the common perception of spirituality as any failure to practice our faith. In her article, she explores ways to envision the rule of faith in families so church leaders and those in families can nurture and uphold it. She does not suggest one more spiritual chore to do, one more program to create in congregations, or one more family faith activity to work into an already overloaded schedule. Rather she seeks to help enrich the active practice of faith already percolating in families and congregations by exploring the peculiar character of the rule of family faith. 
(Source: Lifelong Faith Journal, www.LifelongFaith.com)

Transforming Family Faith One Family at a Time - Jim Merhaut
Jim Merhaut writes that authentic faith formation in the home is absolutely essential if there will be any successful congregational formation. Institutional Christianity will decline into insignificance if congregations do not find ways to work from the family back to the institution, rather than from the institution into the family. This paradigm shift, from the false perception that faith formation originates in ecclesial institutions to the truth that faith formation, in fact, originates in the home, guides the suggestions and ideas that are presented in the article. 
(Source: Lifelong Faith Journal, www.LifelongFaith.com)