Take It Home: Inspiration and Events to Help Parents Spiritually Transform Their Children

by Mark Holmen, David Texeira

Take It Home is part of an exciting Faith at Home initiative, which seeks to help congregations develop an integrated and comprehensive approach to family ministry. If we want our children to have a faith that is “impressed on their hearts” as Deuteronomy 6 depicts, the Church must reestablish the home as the primary place where faith is nurtured, training and equipping parents to take up this vital task. To this end, Mark Holmen and David Teixiera have assembled a complete package for pastors, including a mission, vision and strategy for family ministry; thirteen reproducible and customizable Take-It-Home Event outlines; a DVD with compelling messages for senior pastors and Christian education leaders; and a Faith at Home interactive website. Now churches can help parents transform spiritual formation from the one-hour drop-off each Sunday to a daily walk with Jesus and to teach families how to fit Christ into the center of their homes and into the hearts of their children.

248 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2007

Reviews

[Abbie Riddle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take It Home, Mark Holmen
This is an excellent church resource. It is great for any church looking to make the family ministry central in the church. If your church has a heart for the family, as all churches should, this book is a must. Many families feel ill-equipped to present the gospel and lead worship time in their own homes. Many in the current generation have not experienced a home life where bible reading and devotion time is central to the family structure. The families of today are over extended in many aspects, they are rushed to and fro with extra-curricular activities, work and school. This resource offers ways to equip the family as to how to integrate these things into their lives. It presents activities that will inspire families to seek the face of God and pass on a legacy and heritage of a Christ centered life. As I looked through these pages I could not help recalling the story of the eunuch when asked if he understood what he read – His response was simple “How can I unless someone explain”. This book does just that by offering guidance in several areas such as blessing your child, and family devotions, talking to your teen about life issues and using the bible as your source of instruction. Highly recommended.
Thank you Regal Publishing for providing this review copy.

[Cary Sawatsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll give this 2.5 stars for the originality, but I was quite disappointed that there are so few ideas put forward. I would strongly recommend that other churches have a forum (which exists but is part of a book publisher's web site and hard to find at that) where others can post their best practices. This is a great book to get the ball rolling, and I applaud these pioneers (of sorts) for their efforts. This is a movement whose time has come, but this book is just the tip of the iceberg. Our church has added at least 8 more items that the Holmen/Teixeira team haven't even considered in this book, plus, our chuch is much smaller and we can't do things the same way a large church like theirs can. Again, thanks for getting the ball rolling, but this is like buying software at the 1.0 version. The upgrade should be much better.