Mark Holmen currently serves as the pastor of Ventura Missionary Church in California. He has authored “Faith Begins at Home: The Family Makeover with Christ at the Center” and co-authored “Take it Home: Inspiration and Events to Help Parents Spiritually Transform Their Children.”

Holmen identifies the audience for his book as pastors and church leaders and the aim of his book by clarifying that one will “be armed with biblical truth and statistical data for why a faith at home-driven ministry must become a top priority in your church. You will receive a vision and a practical model for how to weave faith at home into the DNA of your church. And you will learn key principles for successfully leading a faith at home movement in your congregation.”

Mark begins his book by asking the question, “What are we accomplishing?” He presents several statistics which reveal the lack of transformation that dollars and programs have had on children and teenagers in the church over the past 40 years. He challenges readers to look at church ministries through the lenses of family ministry that “focus on equipping the home to be the primary place where faith is nurtured.” He shares his own personal journey about how he came to look at the church’s role as equipping homes to be the lighthouses of the community not just the church.

Holmen identifies the Scriptural basis for emphasizing family ministry and also provides a series of quotes from other contemporaries who are voicing the same concern. He discourages adding another silo ministry called family ministry but rather challenges pastors to lead their churches to become a church of family ministry where it is emphasized and woven throughout the entire strategy of the church. The strategy shifts from focusing on what happens at church to focus on how one’s time at church equips one to be successful at home.

He introduces his strategy of “take it home events” where they provide thirteen different events over the course of a year to equip families, with children from infancy to high school graduation, with tools and resources to build up their faith at home. The key question is not what happens at these events but “what happens when the family goes home from the event.” This strategy builds upon the fact that parents are the most influential relationship children have. Holmen’s heart is expressed in that, “What matters most to me is not getting more people into our church buildings or programs but getting Jesus into the homes of people who come to our church buildings and programs.” He does not advocate eliminating existing programs but merely looking at them through a different set of lenses.

In order to shift a church in this direction, Holmen indicates that the senior pastor must buy into this strategy, preach on faith at home, and model it in his own home for it to flourish. He challenges churches to incorporate faith at home into their mission as well as committing resources to the strategy. He encourages multiple staff churches to evaluate their specific ministries from a faith at home perspective and to make sure that all ministries and programs are involved in this strategy.

Mark begins each chapter with a brief summary of what the chapter will discuss and he ends each chapter with some suggested ideas to ponder, pray, and discuss. This approach to laying out his chapters makes the information presented easily accessible and applicable to the reader.

The ideas and strategies included in this book provide one of the best strategies the author has discovered for emphasizing family ministry in the church that provides some transformational help. The beauty of Holmen’s strategy is that it does not require churches to add more responsibilities to a staff member’s plate nor does it radically upset that status quo of existing programs and ministries within the church. His strategy includes a different way of thinking that begins to change mindsets over time that generates in families a vital and growing faith at home.

This book will excite, encourage, and challenge pastors to think more strategically about how to help families who are struggling in their congregation. Pastors will enjoy reading insight from a pastor who writes to pastors. Holmen thinks through issues as a pastor would in approaching how to implement a new ministry idea in the church.

Holmen lists a variety of other churches that have implemented a similar strategy which demonstrates the transferability of his ideas in other contexts. Whereas this book targets pastors, his book, Faith Begins at Home, targets parents and his other book mentioned above provides ideas regarding take it home events at church. The combination of these books will provide staff and churches ample resources to implement a faith at home strategy in their church that will begin the process of families learning how to build up the faith of their family at home.