Editorial: Staying In The Same Story -- By: Timothy Paul Jones

Journal: Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry
Volume: JDFM 03:1 (Fall 2012)
Article: Editorial: Staying In The Same Story
Author: Timothy Paul Jones


Editorial: Staying In The Same Story

Timothy Paul Jones

Timothy Paul Jones (Ph.D., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) serves as Associate Vice President for Online Learning and as Professor of Leadership and Church Ministry at Southern Seminary. Before coming to Southern, he led churches in Missouri and Oklahoma as pastor and associate pastor. Dr. Jones has authored or contributed to more than a dozen books, including Conspiracies and the Cross, Perspectives on Family Ministry, and Christian History Made Easy. In 2010, Christian Retailing magazine selected Christian History Made Easy as book of the year in the field of Christian education. Dr. Jones is married to Rayann and they have two daughters. He serves in children’s ministry at Sojourn Community Church.

Accused by a member of Parliament of always repeating “the same old story,” British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once retorted, “Of course, it’s the same old story! Truth usually is the same old story.”

Whatever one may think of Margaret Thatcher’s politics, her words mesh well with biblical theology.

For believers in Jesus Christ, the same old story of God’s work in human history is what continually reveals the truth about our world and about ourselves. It is through this story that God forms, transforms, and reforms our lives.

At the center of the story stands a singular act: In Jesus Christ, God personally intersected human history and redeemed a particular portion of humanity at a particular time in a particular place. Yet this central act of redemption does not stand alone. It is bordered by God’s good creation and humanity’s fall into sin on the one hand and by the consummation of God’s kingdom on the other. This is the story that Christians have repeated to one another and to the world ever since Jesus vanished through the eastern sky, leaving his first followers gap-mouthed on a hill outside Jerusalem (Acts 1:9-12). 

So what does this have to do with family ministry?

This same story of creation, fall, redemption and consummation should frame every aspect of our lives—including our family lives.

Unfortunately, in many churches, the story line that has driven ministry to children, youth, families has not been creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. Instead, the motivating narrative for family ministry has been a desire to gain and retain numbers for the church or a longing to turn children into successful and mostly moral adults. Family ministry rooted in such transient whims will never have a lasting impact. Lasting impact must find its foundation in a far richer and deeper pl...

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