Welcome to Family Life Ministry (FLM) in the Diocese of Leeds!

This site, launched on the Feast of the Holy Family 2005, offers an introduction to Family Life Ministry resources which are available to you to help you to enrich your family life and relationships. These can also enhance connectedness between families, schools and parishes and the wider church and deepen our sense of ourselves as people of faith, the body of Christ. The news items at the right show current developments including how we are implementing national strategies like 'Celebrating Family'.

Family Ministry is what families do:

 

Families minister to each other in the daily routines and encounters of just being family and living together. Families minister to each other in the relationships they maintain in the wider, more complicated, connections of extended family life and through the cycles of change and growth. Families suffer the pain of brokenness and separation as well as the joys of loving intimacy, trust and reconciliation.

 

We recognise that families are already, in so many ways, living their mission ‘to guard, communicate and reveal love’ (John Paul II).

 

Families not only support themselves and each other as intimate ‘communities of life and love’ (John Paul II) they also reach out and support the wider community in a million different ways. And families are supported in various ways by the wider community including the church. 

 

Family Life Ministry at the Diocese of Leeds is part of this by acting as a resource centre for people who want to bring something new to their own families and local communities, to celebrate and enrich existing relationships. In this way family ministry is a peer or ‘like to like’ ministry: for example parents can find support for themselves and each other by running a parenting programme at home, school, parish or community centre.

 

So, Family Life Ministry depends on ordinary people like you who care enough to do something to make a difference.

 

If you are a family person, or work with families or family people, and want to do something in your home, parish, school or local community to celebrate and support family life you may just find something here for you.

 

Begin by browsing this site. To find out who else in your area is interested in or already supporting Family Life Ministry contact us.

 

Most of our resources are ready, flexible and easy to use. They are all relationship and community building and serve to help families discover and nurture the holiness already present in their homes.  

 

We are not equipped to support families in crisis so families in distress should seek specialist care: the Helplines leaflet  at 'Contact' and the connections found in ‘Links’ may lead you to the support you need.

 

Please NOTE: From September 2008 until the office is reconfigured and two new staff are being introduced our availability for normal work will be reduced and calls may not be answered as quickly as we would like. Please browse and use links from the website to access what you need elsewhere.