About this Online Course

When we joined YWAM twenty years ago as a young family, we were under the illusion that life in a Christian community would somehow protect us from family crises. Today we know that this is not the case. Even though we are active in ministry for the Kingdom of God, becoming and staying a strong family does not happen automatically. As Christians, we’re not immune to the difficulties facing families today and our “different” lifestyle brings with it some challenges of its own. Whoever is aggressively advancing the Kingdom of God is on the spiritual frontline. It’s not just about defending who we are and what we have, it’s also about defining those differences and being a positive influence right where we are.

The question is, what do we want to achieve? How do we need to live our daily lives so that our dreams will become reality? What do our children need to learn and experience? What is the cost of all this? The biblical principle of sowing and reaping also applies to marriages and families – we reap what we sow.

Over the years, we have had numerous opportunities to ask other families involved in ministry about their experiences, both positive and negative. It was grappling with their answers, as well as the impact of a long-term study conducted by Dr. Nick Stinnett (“Characteristics of a Strong Family”), that initially led us to develop a course for families in our YWAM Hainichen community. All of the participants benefited from sharing with others about the various opportunities and challenges they faced as families in ministry. Then friends from various churches and organizations began asking if we could make the information we had gathered and the things we had learned from our own and others’ experiences available to them. The book “Families in Ministry”, dedicated to the development of strong families, is the result.

Some years later, we started to offer online courses about this material, 8 sessions via Zoom where we trained many couples together in a group – and together, it is a lot more fun than just reading the book alone! This module is based on a recording of such an online course.

Each of the eight units / sessions represents a “trouble spot” that we have identified during our two decades living in a Christian community as a family in ministry. Besides thematic input and guidelines for dialogue, we also provide practical tips for application at home, as well as suggested resources for further study.

Our desire is that this course material will help you to be a strong family in ministry. We hope it will encourage you to live well together and enjoy family life, as well as to be signs of hope in a world that needs godly role models.

If possible (and when you are married), watch the videos together with your spouse and discuss while you go along. Of course you could do the course alone, but it will be much harder to reflect on where you are at currently and initiate changes to your family system.

If you are not married, this course material can still benefit you greatly. It will prepare you for your future marriage, and many things are also applicable to deep friendships and team situations (e.g. church ministry team, small group, workplace).

You don’t need to do the 8 units in that order – there are only rare cases that we refer to what we have taught in an earlier unit. Just pick the unit that interests you most and start there!