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This workshop serves pastors and leaders working with a congregations’ children and families in a highly effective approach to raise children in the faith, beginning at baptism and continuing into adulthood. It is biblically guided and confessionally grounded, serving churches of any size (1 child through 500+). It can reignite Sunday schools and enhance catechetical programs and youth ministries.
The family discipleship approach taught by Dr. Thompson is based on clear biblical teaching, Lutheran Confessional instruction from Martin Luther’s catechisms and the Smalcald Articles, and is grounded in research, including the 2017 Millennial Research study. It showed that only one in five youth raised in LCMS congregations remain active in churches into young adulthood. Pastors learn how to equip parents and households in a Gospel-centered and forgiveness-focused strategy to fulfill their vocations. It looks to the home as formational with important habits, practices, and spiritual conversations, and emphasizes the faith life of parents as key in this work.
It also demonstrates what congregational ministries should and should not do per God's calling. It avoids the pitfalls of inadvertently turning pastors into surrogate parents and the opposite problem of expecting parents to do the work of pastors. This approach helps each vocation and location—the Christian home and congregation—do what God has called and equipped them to do well in raising children in the faith to remain in the faith.
For a Concordia Seminary chapel sermon on the Table of Duties by Dr. Thompson on this topic, click on this link: https://scholar.csl.edu/cs2526/117/. For a podcast discussion of the Family Discipleship Initiative directed by Thompson in partnership with Dr. Todd Biermann of Concordia Center for the Family, click on this link: https://concordiatheology.org/2026/01/family-discipleship/.
Dr. W. Mart Thompson is Associate Professor of Practical Theology and Director of the Family Discipleship Initiative at Concordia Seminary. His work is addressing curricular needs in pastoral formation to improve faith transmission to children. He has written a new book being published by Concordia Publishing House due out at the end of June, 2026: Family Discipleship with Christ: A Map of God’s Promises in Congregations and Families. (Guest chapters are provided by Dr. John T. Pless on Luther’s Small Catechism in the home and by Dr. Ely Prieto on multiethnic family discipleship. Dr. Robert Kolb has written the Foreword.)
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