How to Effectively Minister to Your Family & Friends During the Holidays

Recently I sat down with my palm pilot in hand and punched all of my scheduled holiday family gatherings into the calendar. After doing so, I realized that I am scheduled to attend 7 different family gatherings (from Dec. 6^th - 29^th). Some of those gatherings will be intimate, involving my immediate family, while others will be large, involving my extended family. All in all, I will interact with approximately 73 family members (55 adults, 18 children). That exercise got me thinking about my family members, my relationships with them, and my Christian responsibility to minister the Gospel to them.

After considering my family members and their specific life-situations, I came to this conclusion: Not only is there a great opportunity for Gospel ministry this month, but there is a desperate need and responsibility for me to employ the gifts God has given me to engage in it!

God directed me to 2 Timothy 4:1-5. It was there that I meditated for a number of hours. The following 10 principles and applications are a product of my study that night. If you read them, I trust that God will burden your heart to be a faithful minister of the Gospel this holiday season as He has mine.

¹I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: ² Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. ³ For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; ⁴ and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. ⁵ But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. - 2 Timothy 4:1-5

10 principles & applications for effective ministry to your family & friends during the holidays (derived from 2 Timothy 4:1-5):

• 1. We are accountable to Christ for all of our relationships. The eyes of the Lord are upon us and one day we will answer to Him for every relationship, for every conversation, and for every avoidance of the same. It is unacceptable for me to be ambivalent toward anyone God has placed into my family. It doesn't matter if I like them or not. It doesn't matter if they like me or not. It doesn't matter if I have anything in common with them or not. What matters is that God has placed them in my life, and my dealings with them are under the scrutiny of Jesus Christ. Therefore, I must realize that my connection with them is a divine appointment.

• 2. We must have a sober realization that every person in our family will one day be judged by the Lord Jesus Christ. Not one of them will escape their appointed time with the Judge, and we need to be acutely aware of that. For example, when we sit down beside Uncle Chester during the kids' gift-exchange time, we need to see Chester as a man who will one day have to give an account for his life. Thinking in these terms will motivate us to initiate a God-centered, Gospel-directed conversation with him. When we lose sight of judgment, we will lose sight of the urgency of our Gospel witness with our family.

• 3. Our job description is clear: preach the word! I believe the spirit of this command calls for us to proclaim the Word at these family gatherings. While the proclamation is certainly less public and less formal than from the pulpit, it should be as equally sincere and intense. By preaching the Word, I mean bringing the Word of God to bear on the lives of our family members. God is not interested or impressed with our ability to have cavalier conversations with our relatives. He is interested in our obedience to fulfill the ministry He has given to us, which is preaching the divine Word to people who need to hear it. Our declaration of God's Word can simply be in the form of a conversation, or in the form of a devotional before the gift exchange. But to think that God's Word has no place in family gatherings when much of the family already professes Christ is irrational. Consider this: The majority of our family members will not reject our request to read some Scripture and meditate on the person of Christ during these gatherings. Therefore, we should consider bringing our Bibles to the gathering and reading from the Gospels and explaining the meaning.

• 4. We must be prepared for Gospel ministry. I'll say it again: We must be prepared for Gospel ministry. We cannot go into one of these family functions without having prayed for the people themselves and for ministry opportunity with them, without having read our Bibles and reviewed the Gospel, and without having an acute sensitivity toward those who may have a spiritual need we can help meet. It is so easy to get swept away with getting the kids ready, wrapping the gifts, and packing the car that we quietly dismiss the necessity of personally preparing ourselves for ministry. Think about it! We only get one or two shots with some of these loved ones per year. And many of them rarely (if ever) come into contact with a man or woman whose passion for Christ is white-hot. If our desire is to see them get a glimpse of the glory and beauty of the Savior, doesn't it stand to reason that the Savior might use us to do that? Therefore, we must be prepared.

• 5. We should make good use of the prayer before the meal. If we are called upon to pray, we should be prepared to make a sincere comment about the blessing of gathering together as a family. Then we should pray a prayer that is thankful, intense, earnest, personal, God-exalting, and Gospel-saturated. Certainly we should not preach a sermon in our prayer for the meal, but prayer is not some throw-away time so that people can fix their buttons or wipe their noses. God wants to hear from us and we want to speak to Him. Therefore, let's take the opportunity to really speak to the Lord and demonstrate to our family what it sounds like when a man or woman who loves Christ speaks with Him.

• 6. God has not called us to be theological doormats in order to keep the peace around the dinner table at Christmas. We are men and women of God and of the Word. As such, part of our responsibility is to speak for God when the time comes. Paul gives these clear commands: "convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching." Our God-given responsibility is to correct false doctrine by carefully employing biblical argumentation in order to win our brother/sister. We are to rebuke sinful behavior. We are to take strategic opportunities for teaching people rich Gospel truth. We are not supposed to sit idly by while our loved ones make false statements about God, the Bible, or the Gospel. (The key to success when we speak for God in these situations is our tone, our choice of words, and our patience with others.)

• 7. We must recognize the propensity of our loved ones to neglect the hard truths of the Scriptures for a more comfortable, agreeable message. God definitely doesn't want us to be a lightning rod for controversy at these events, and we don't need to go around stirring up trouble where trouble isn't necessary. But at the same time, it is our job to steer our family toward the truth. It is our job to lovingly, carefully remind our Christian family members that Christ is worthy of our lives (Luke 9:23) and that the Word of God is worthy of our attention (Psalm 19:7-10). Generally speaking, pop psychology and television preachers are not the avenue for Biblical truth. We should dissuade them from these kinds of influences and point them toward more trustworthy ministers of the Word.

• 8. No matter how much a person may provoke us to anger, impatience, or unkindness we must be sober-minded, self-controlled, and clear-headed. Satan would love for us to ruin our Christian testimony by acting in a way that destroys our Gospel witness with our family. No matter what happens or what is said during these gatherings, the Lord would have us take the high road by speaking words of life and love and peace (Eph. 4:29). We are to be watchful and alert, so that we will not be led into sinful conversation, slander, or malicious gossip.

• 9. We should not resist affliction. If we stand firmly for Christ at these gatherings, it is inevitable that we will suffer in some form or fashion. Knowing this may make tempt us to be a little gun-shy to speak truthfully and lovingly to our family members, but we should not give in. We should count it a privilege to suffer for the cause of Christ if one of our relatives ridicules us for our zeal to obey the Lord.

• 10. We should be intentional about initiating conversation with any unbelievers with the purpose of giving them the Gospel. Paul says, "do the work of an evangelist." An evangelist preaches the Gospel to non-Christians. We should lovingly and carefully give the Gospel to our lost family members.

Practical Considerations[1]:

• 1. Remember that they are people, not projects. Sometimes we emphasize people as evangelism opportunities rather than individuals made in God's image, under God's wrath, and in need of God's grace. The "evangelism opportunity" focus, however subtle, can move us away from taking a sincere interest in their lives, hopes, fears, etc.

• 2. Pay attention to their lives. Exegete them (i.e. draw them out). As you interact with them, look for the area in their life where they are "suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness." Is it their approach to their work? Their family? Their view of the holiday? Is it their hopes or dreams for their life? Their perspective on current events or the world? Any and all and more of these things are all riddled with a sinful suppression of the revealing of God's glory. If we will pay attention and be good listeners, as opposed to waiting for them to stop talking so we can recite Rom 5, we will see the "points of suppression" and be able to address it.

• 3. Ask good questions. Humanly speaking (understanding God's sovereignty in salvation, obviously), many evangelistic opportunities fail because we do not ask good, non-"yes or no" questions. For example, "Is working going well?" is not a good question. But "How you been feeling about your job recently?" is a good question. Asking good, open-ended questions, and really listening to their answers will go a long way for substantive ministry with that person.

• 4. Avoid making sweeping condemnations without context. Sometimes all unbelievers hear is "America is going to hell" from Christians, but they do not have a biblical context to understand such a statement. So it rings as frightening, off-putting, and really pushes them away from real conversation with the believer. So, engage in conversations about current events, but be nuanced, explain everything, and do not assume the unbeliever approaches things with the same Biblical worldview or even that he or she comprehends the Biblical worldview.

• 5. Seek disciples, not converts. Often, because they are family or friends, we are more acutely aware of the issues in their life and the work that it would require if we were really to get involved in their lives and invest in them. Sometimes, even if it's less than overt, we shy away from such time-intensive relationships, keep it superficial, in order to keep ourselves from getting sucked into a long-term time commitment. Yet, this is discipleship. Evangelism is not just a one-time shot across the dinner table and/or seeking a "sinner's prayer" during dessert; it is a long-term investment in another brother for his maturity in Christ (Col 1:27-28).

• 6. Be Bold! Often we do not share with family and friends because we are afraid of the consequences. But this is where our trust in God's sovereignty comes into play. God will do the saving; all He asks of us is to be faithful. Don't be belligerent or rude (cf. 2 Tim 2:24-25), but be bold. Do not fear man or family over God.

[1] Recently I was communicating with a close friend (Steve Meister) about holiday gatherings with family, and he offered these six practical considerations. I thought they were worth including here as a practical guide for principle #10 "We should be intentional about initiating conversation with any unbelievers with the purpose of giving them the Gospel."