Family ministry is of very special interest to the Church. By this we mean efforts made by the whole People of God through local communities, especially through the help of pastors and lay people devoted to pastoral work for families. They work with individuals, couples, and families to help them live out their conjugal vocation as fully as possible.
The term 'family ministry' is relatively new in the Catholic Church but encompasses a range of services offered to families at every stage of their life together, in order to strengthen the love between them and to strengthen their relationship with God. Families have a critical role to play in the world and the church in which the Church's family ministry aims to strengthen and sustain them.
This role is described by the Church in four ways: being a small community of life and love, serving life by protecting and nurturing each other, being actively part of the wider community that is society and sharing in the life and mission of the Church. Clearly many people, agencies and organisations are involved in supporting families in this broad, foundational mission: other families, priests, teachers, catechists, deacons, social workers, counsellors, adult educators, evangelists, liturgists and spiritual directors to name just a few.
However, the Diocesan Coordinator of Family Ministry has a particular role including listening and advocating for family needs; training, equipping and raising awareness; receiving and directing enquiries; providing information, advice and resources; organising events and liturgical celebrations.
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This role is described by the Church in four ways: being a small community of life and love, serving life by protecting and nurturing each other, being actively part of the wider community that is society and sharing in the life and mission of the Church. Clearly many people, agencies and organisations are involved in supporting families in this broad, foundational mission: other families, priests, teachers, catechists, deacons, social workers, counsellors, adult educators, evangelists, liturgists and spiritual directors to name just a few.
However, the Diocesan Coordinator of Family Ministry has a particular role including listening and advocating for family needs; training, equipping and raising awareness; receiving and directing enquiries; providing information, advice and resources; organising events and liturgical celebrations.
Read more
Family Ministry Resources Exhibition, Milan 2012
The Church's family ministry includes:
- Enabling family members to deepen their relationships with each other and to appreciate the significance of these relationships for their faith journey and their relationship with God
- Creating opportunities for families to develop supportive friendships within the parish and access peer support
- Affirming the spirituality of family life, and the richness of the ways in which families reconcile the demands of living faithfully in the world
- Ensuring that the graces and blessings of family life are formally celebrated and that the sorrows and heartaches are sensitively attended
- Providing counselling and helpline services and developing structures of peer support
- Safeguarding the vulnerable, especially victims of domestic abuse, so that no further harm ensues
- Responding to enquiries, sharing information about available resources, signposting people to sources of additional support
- Articulating the vocation of the Christian family in all its dimensions in family-friendly language
- Encouraging families with particular gifts to offer them in service
- Listening actively to discern unmet needs and working collaboratively with families to find practical, doable ways of responding
Useful Links
30th Anniversary Retrospective on the 1980 Family Synod
Association of Interchurch Families
Family Caring Trust
International
INTAMS
NACFLM