tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2253529165034405240.post-28981645359487504982008-04-20T09:43:00.000-04:002008-04-20T09:43:00.000-04:00Hey Vince (and everyone else who seems to be regulars on this blog) it is Chris Garrett. For those who don't know me, which I couldn’t imagine you would, I was baptized at Forefront back in Nov of 1999. Yep I was one of those lost, broken, unchurched (and dare I say church haters) that met Jesus for the first time when I walked into a Forefront service at the age of 29. I will lay off the testimony but let me just fast forward and say I ended up going to college to become a counselor so that I could help others find healing like I did and through some crazy twist I am now a Minister at a church in Indianapolis. It is a large established church so please don't think I sold out. I support church planting and always will. You guys are Rock Stars to me. It is just God gives each of a different gift and mine is working with families and hurting people and that is not on the must hire list of most church planters. Oh to clarify I do Family Life Ministry. Meaning I work in a pastoral care ministry that targets the family. <BR/><BR/>Now let me tie this into the current conversation. My mission is to turn the family upside down one at a time. Simply put I want to make PARENTS church planters in their homes. I am truly convinced that we are going to get nowhere if we keep seeing parents who are ill equipped to share their faith with their children, who pass on their brokenness to their kids, who simply can't for whatever reason live their faith out in their own homes. For every adult convert we see we are seeing three kids raised in a Christian home turn from the faith. Simply put we are losing more than we gain and the ones we keep more than often don’t know how to impact their community. So I think we are in trouble and that is largely due to the sad state of the family.<BR/><BR/>So, to answer the question, I think we need to start with the family if we want to change the society.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com