Welcome! Thanks for stopping by.

Gospel Shaped Family is the online home for Josh Mulvihill. I hope you take a few minutes to explore the site, check out the resources, and consider how I can serve you.

I’m passionate about family discipleship and biblical worldview. I serve with a wonderful ministry called Renewanation where I am the Executive Director of Church and Family Ministry. I have the privilege of equipping the church, family, and school to help children develop a biblical worldview through speaking, preaching, writing, and consulting.

I married Jen in 2000 and it has been one of the greatest blessings of my life. We homeschool our five children: Jay, Asher, Kate, Jon, and Emily. Our two oldest children are in college. We live in Lester Prairie, MN at Prairie Hill farm where we have Jersey cows, Kune Kune Pigs, chickens, cats, and two labs. We’ve been renovating our 1890’s farmhouse, which has been a labor of love. Jen and I love laughing with friends over coffee, mentoring younger parents, and reading or writing a great book. I also love to fish, camp, and a crackling bonfire. My greatest privilege is being a husband to Jen and together raising our children to know, love, and serve Christ.

I like to joke that I’ve been in full time ministry my entire life. My parents served with Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) for 37 years, so I guess that makes me a missionary kid. My parents trained Christian professors at state colleges to integrate Christianity into their classroom. Education, apologetics, and discipleship were key pillars of my parent’s ministry and I had the joy of being their ministry associate and learning on the job. My parents did a fantastic job of discipling us as children and often reminded us to “Live in light of eternity.”

It was 2000 that I stepped into my first pastoral role. One of my first priorities was to get to know each of the families at the church and learn about what they were doing to disciple their children at home. What I learned turned out to be alarming and transformational for me as a pastor.

Parent after parent confessed that beyond mealtime or bedtime prayers and the occasional faith conversation, that they were not doing much to intentionally disciple their children. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this was a major problem. The secular influences from media and education combined with limited discipleship at home and irregular church attendance was a recipe for disaster for children.

This problem sent me on a path to learn how to equip parents. I enrolled at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to get a PhD in Family Ministry and my course work trained me in three areas: Family Ministry, Education, and Leadership with a focus on biblical worldview. On that journey, God opened my eyes to the importance of grandparents in the discipleship of children and I wrote my dissertation on the biblical role of Christian grandparents. At the time, the topic was largely ignored by churches and my professor told me that the only people who would want to read it where my wife and mother.

Dennis Rainey heard about my research and invited me to join him on Family Life Today radio. During a three-minute recording break Dennis asked me to provide the title of my grandparenting book (which didn’t exist) and informed me that I had seven weeks to get it published. That’s how the book Biblical Grandparenting came into existence, which eventually grew to be a seven book grandparenting series with Bethany House Publishers called Grandparenting Matters. Since I’m not a grandparent, I still marvel that God used me for this purpose. God has used these books to create a Christian grandparenting movement and I’m honored to have been a small part of it.

In 2010, I joined the staff of a mega-church in Minneapolis, Minnesota and was tasked with pastoring the children’s ministry and developing a family ministry for the church. God grew my vision for family discipleship from equipping parents to include grandparents and then again expanded it to include education. I spent close to a decade developing family ministry around the four primary, God-designed influences in a child’s life: parents, grandparents, education, and the church.

During this season, I began to create resources for parents and some of these can be found in the Gospel Shaped Family store. I had the joy of helping to create four children’s albums called Roots Kids Worship. I believe what is sung in song is remembered long. So, we put core doctrines and key Bible verses into music. I also wrote our children’s ministry curriculum, which is available at church.renewanation.org. I’ve written numerous parenting books: Preparing Children for Marriage, Biblical Worldview, Believer’s Baptism, and 50 Things Every Child Needs to Know Before Leaving Home, as well as a book for pastors called Family Ministry. I serve as the General Editor for The Review Magazine, which is a fantastic resource for any parents, grandparents, church leaders, or educators and is free at renewanation.org. A few of my articles are available in the article section as a free download on this website.

In 2015 I joined the Renewanation team and I have the amazing privilege of working with pastors and church leaders as well as parents and grandparents all over the United States and Canada. I help families and churches apply the Bible to life and ministry. I’m a regular preacher, conference speaker, radio guest, and writer. I’ve had the opportunity to speak at The Gospel Coalition, D6, Children’s Pastors Conference, Truth78, The Legacy Grandparenting Summit, Family Life Today, Moody Radio, and Focus on the Family. Many of these talks or interviews are available in the speaker tab. You can also learn more about some of the topics and conferences I offer in the speaker section. I have the joy of serving as the incoming chairman on the board of Awana, a ministry that impacts over ten million children weekly.

Take a moment to explore this website to learn about what I do and how I can serve you. You will see a passion for the discipleship of children, love of the family, and the importance of a biblical worldview. Feel free to reach out to me. I would love to hear from you!
Josh Mulvihill