the ministry is located within the family in accordance with the 'relational' Hebrew model described in Deuteronomy 6. A movement of family integrated churches has arisen within American evangelicalism. The National Center for Family-Integrated Churches lists around 800 affiliated churches. However, with growing frequency of non-traditional families, Scott Wilcher ("The Orphaned Generation: The Father's Heart for Connecting Youth and Young Adults to your Church") suggests a broadening of the interpretation of family from a birth family to a spiritual family into which all believers are adopted. The book encourages inter-generational discipleship by identifying current conceptual metaphors that the adult church uses to organize their thinking and speech about young people, (animals, aliens and closed spaces) and suggest reframing those thoughts with the metaphor of "orphan in need of a wise guide." He argues that Hollywood has primed a generation of movie goers to expect that young heroes require a wise guide in order to gain a new identity, a new community, and the path to their destiny, which creates a valuable opportunity for the adult Christians to become the Obi-Wan Kenobi, Gandalf, Rafiki, Mr. Miyagi or Alfred to a young person. History Many denominations have instituted offices or programs which focus on inter-generational ministry. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has an office of Family and Intergenerational Ministries The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod has a list of res.pdf Intergenerational resources on its website. References Bak, Mindy. (1999). Together in Faith, Youth and Family Institute. Barna, George. (2003). Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions, Regal. Seymour, Jack and Miller, Donald (eds). (1982). Contemporary Approaches to Christian Education, Abingdon Press. External links Christian missions