Because I'm a culture-watcher, I'm a TV watcher. Television offers a reflection of culture that's as big as the massive mirror that hung in my grandparents' living room over their couch. You could look into that mirror and see just about everything. Since last fall, the new TV show that's offered one of the most wide open and insightful reflections of our changing culture is ABC's comedy mockumentary "Modern Family."

According to "Modern Family," the definition and makeup of the American family is changing and changing fast. The show chronicles the relationship between Jay Pritchett, his two grown children (Clarie Dunphy and Mitchell Pritchett) and their families. Locked in a mid-life crisis, Jay is re-married to a much younger divorcee from Columbia. They are raising her young son from a previous marriage. Stay-at-home mom Claire and her husband are raising their three children in a traditional family. Mitchell lives with his homosexual partner, and together they are raising an infant daughter adopted from Vietnam. Incidentally, Entertainment Weekly branded "Modern Family" as "the best new sitcom of the fall."

As a reflection of reality, "Modern Family" gets it right: Things are changing. Several years ago, I began asking high-school-aged audiences about their family situations. Asking for a show of hands in a room full of kids was eye-opening. Listening intently to their sometimes harrowing first-person accounts of life at home led me to the conclusion that family meant something different to many of these kids. Little has changed for the better. Some live with Dad and Mom. Others live with Mom. Some with Dad. Some with neither. A few don't know one or both of their parents. The words divorce, separation, abandonment, abuse and broken come up repeatedly. A growing number of kids from what are known as traditional intact families describe living in homes filled with deep turmoil.

We're living in a period of unprecedented and historic change in family composition, family life and family experience. This radical shift in family patterns can't help but affect our kids, creating more stress and confusion. The shift is the result and cause of a growing amount of childhood heartache, pain and difficulty.

While these issues are deep and complex, they require our attention and response. Youth workers are uniquely positioned to minister to kids who have been hurt deeply by their families' past and present, through ministry that brings the way and will of God to bear on the present and future families of these kids in some amazing ways.

How should we minister with sensitivity to kids growing up in a modern family? We must begin by raising our awareness of the cultural shifts and changes taking place in terms of the family and how those shifts and changes are visiting and effecting the kids we know and love. Here are five of the main family shifts that are visiting the homes of kids in your community and church.