Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church is committed to using our collective resources to strengthen families and communities. We are unapologetically youth-oriented and believe parents serve as important teachers of character values. But they cannot do it alone. The objective of this project is to develop a new program within our church that supports parents to raise young people with integrity, honesty, trustworthiness, commitment, and compassion. Our church has been a force for good in our community for nearly 150 years. Our congregation members already possess many character strengths to draw from. Yet, our parents also tell us they want additional support to build teen character strengths.
This project will fulfill that need with a novel approach that merges our Christian values and family strengths with proven practices in effective parenting. We will explore two important questions through our work: 1) How can our church support families to foster character values? and 2) How can we inspire families and other churches to deepen their understanding of adolescent character development and parenting?
To answer these questions, we will develop a program that offers families opportunities to learn, share, connect, and practice together. By the end of the project we will have established a new parenting program in our church that we hope will be long-lasting and beneficial to our families. We will distribute program materials throughout our congregation and share them widely outside our church walls. This project has the potential to impact thousands of families within our church. The more prepared our parents are, the more prepared our youth will be. If successful, our parenting program has the potential to become an inspirational model for other churches both locally and nationally.
