About Christina
Christina Embree is the founder and director of ReFocus Ministry. She holds a Masters in Ministry focused on Children, Youth, and Family Ministry and a Doctoral degree in Spiritual Formation with a focus on Age Segregation and Intergenerational Ministry. In addition to coaching churches of multiple denominations and traditions all around the globe, Christina serves as the Minister of Generational Discipleship for the Great Lakes Conference of the Brethren in Christ and as a pastor at Plowshares Brethren in Christ in Lexington, Kentucky. She is widely recognized as a speaker and author in the areas of generational discipleship, intergenerational ministry, and family ministry. As the mother of three children, she is familiar with the challenges of faith at home and pastoral ministry. She along with her husband Luke share a love for the church, their community, and the global work of peace and restoration through Jesus. Learn more.
About ReFocus
Over the past two decades, a movement has been sweeping the churches in America and changing the way churches minister to children, youth and families. Termed “family ministry” by most ministers, this change has at it’s heart a desire to equip and support the home as the place of primary spiritual growth and faith formation by partnering with parents/caregivers. Instead of church being the place where most kids and parents hear and talk about God, the home becomes the place where discipleship and training take place and the church offers support, resources and community to add to the process.
As more and more churches adopted this approach, it became clear that while the home was a place of primary faith formation, the community of the church to nurture, support, and equip the home was absolutely essential. As it turns out, we all need one another!
The idea of passing the faith from one generation to another through generational discipleship is not a new one; we find it all through Christian Scripture and tradition. What is new is a society that is more and more segregated along lines of age and life experience. That makes it difficult for multiple generations to find space and time to grow together in meaningful relationships that lead to discipleship and mentorship.
The mission of ReFocus Ministry is to connect generations at church and at home. We provide information, resources and support necessary to facilitate that connection in your faith community. Through individualized coaching, group cohorts, seminars, workshops, and our Connecting Generations Ministry Assessment, ReFocus seeks to help you identify the bridges and barriers to intergenerational ministry in your church and give you the tools you need to create a culture of generational discipleship and faith formation.
The idea of passing the faith from one generation to another through generational discipleship is not a new one; we find it all through Christian Scripture and tradition. What is new is a society that is more and more segregated along lines of age and life experience. That makes it difficult for multiple generations to find space and time to grow together in meaningful relationships that lead to discipleship and mentorship.
The mission of ReFocus Ministry is to connect generations at church and at home. We provide information, resources and support necessary to facilitate that connection in your faith community. Through individualized coaching, group cohorts, seminars, workshops, and our Connecting Generations Ministry Assessment, ReFocus seeks to help you identify the bridges and barriers to intergenerational ministry in your church and give you the tools you need to create a culture of generational discipleship and faith formation.
Learn a bit more about what we do and why we are so passionate about connecting generations in meaningful relationships for lifelong discipleship in this conversation between Christina Embree, founder/director of ReFocus Ministry and Amber Pike from Renewanation.
To set up your own conversation with Christina or to learn more about what ReFocus can offer your faith community, contact her at christina@refocusministry.org.
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What People Say
Our training with Christina was wonderful and I look forward to putting my gained knowledge to work at my church with my families. I feel that I came away with so much to consider and pray about things that might have seemed undoable in the past. I learned that family ministry isn’t cookie cutter, but it is worth the work!
I am so grateful for Christina meeting with our pastoral staff to talk about generational discipleship. As a senior pastor, I haven’t left a meeting feeling this energized and hopeful in a long time!
Our Pastoral staff has had a number of ZOOM sessions with Christina as we attempted to enhance and enlarge our Intergenerational Discipleship ministry. Her insight into this facet of ministry has illuminated our thinking and her experience in this realm of ministry has wisely guided us as we formulated a structure and plan of implementation for our own local ministry both within the congregation and reaching into the community for God’s glory. Christina has enabled us to view our congregation from a different perspective that has served to help us embrace all age groupings and to purposefully become more inclusive in our disciple-making endeavors