Where do Single Mom's fit into Family Based Youth Ministry?

The challenge to Family Based Youth Ministry is always what do you do for the kids that are growing up in a non-necular family. One of the major plights of the American family is that more and more of today’s students are growing up in single parent homes, with the majority of them being raised by their mother. So what can those who are working in youth ministry do to reach out to the epidemic of families where male headship is lacking? Below are some suggestions of how to better equip these mothers to shepherd their families.

1. Mentorship.

Maybe even more than some sort of support group for single moms women more and more need Godly women to pour into them on an individual basis. Especially in terms of accountability and growth. One of the greatest single events that will determine the projected future of a student is whom their mother marries in the future. This makes the task of women being in relationships where they are confronted with standards and need for transformation of habitual sin patterns. This is also a place for them to grow in the Word and learn how to as in Deuteronomy 6: 7 of the Shema says to teach their children the ways of the Lord, “”You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. “ It seems that it would be so valuable to a women raising children on her own to have an older women modeling to her how to train children in the Lord as they are growing in Him themselves. This relationship would also serve to help demonstrate for the single mom what a healthy marriage relationship looks like as she watches the older women function in the role of a wife.

2. Intentional Male Influence.

In a world where true men of God and character are a rare bread, it seems that the church should take this valuable asset of Godly men to serve these families. In a conversation the other day with a single mom of two teenage boys, she was sharing her desperation to find men to invest in her sons. She recognized that they were at an age where they are in need of men to teach them how to be men but there are few men who have a heart to serve in this way. She had explored avenues like boy scout to find that all the troops where being led by women and there were no men to be found. How will this cycle of lacking male headship be broken if there are no men to model Biblical Manhood? It also seems that as the men of the church stepped up the single women would see modeled for them a new standard of what kind of men they should be seeking as life partners.

These are two broad stroke ideas as to how the church can help reinforce the structure of a family unit where a mom may not have time to even think about anything but the shear survival of her family. The hope of this initiative would be that families would be strengthened and student’s lives would be impacted greatly through the Gospel as their home lives become more stable as a safety net of the church surrounds a student and that student’s mother. It also seems that as the family is strengthened that this same family could go on to minister to the next generation of families coming up.