I was recently talking to a friend who is walking through some deep waters in his marriage and family. As we were unpacking some of the issues he is facing and I was recommending some resources for him, we became mutually aware of a disturbing reality.
He has been a believer for many years and has been a part of "gospel-preaching" churches—some that even add the word "full" to their gospel. He has heard multiple sermons on tithing, on the importance of bringing your family to church, getting involved in "ministry", supporting the vision of the pastor. But he has never been exposed to any substantive, biblical teaching on the role of the father as a shepherd and pastor to his own family.
As the lights went on, my friend became angry, as he realized that many of the things he had been taught in church had not been for the purpose of empowering him to fulfill the primary role God had given him. Instead, he was being systematically programmed to orient his life and his family's life to support and to become dependent on a religious institution and to subcontract his God-given responsibility to professional clergy.
Two types of people will one day be held accountable for this travesty: first, the pastors who encouraged it for the sake of increasing their egos and ensuring the security of their careers; and second, the lazy and cowardly fathers and husbands who farmed out their responsibilities.
4 comments:
Certainly the church has an opportunity/responsibility to call, encourage, and equip people for fathering... but I wonder: Is the mechanism of the "sermon" the place to equip people for a role that only maybe a third of those in attendance are in a position to fill? My pastor, like many, tends to try to cover his bases and mention applications to people in various demographics. Personally, since all the preaching I get comes from guys who are husbands, I hear a lot more about that @ sermon time than about being a wife and mother. Pretty sure I've =never= heard a Sunday sermon that significantly addresses singles and those of us who haven't been able to have children.
I'm not suggesting that a pastor focus a huge percentage of his time on this topic, but it is related something that is arguably one of the biggest crises facing the church today: dysfunctional families. The problem my friend had was that he recalled huge swaths of time supposedly being taught in church, but so much of it was dedicated to encouraging increased church involvement, not equipping people to fulfill their God-given responsibilities--whether it be single, married, husband, wife, father, mother, child, etc.
Good point, Matt. Much of what we hear in church is about how to be in church, when each of us is part of something much more core to who we are to be (shocking but true) than the institutional church may be.
I jotted down these words from Dallas Willard's "Divine Conspiracy" some years ago. It still makes me smile:
"I am learning from Jesus how to lead my life, my whole life, my real life. It is crucial for our walk in the kingdom to understand that the teachings of Jesus do not by themselves make a life. They were never intended to. Rather, they presuppose a life. But that causes no problem, for of course each of us is provided a life automatically..."
I came to the realization back when I was serving as a youth pastor. God spoke to my heart that I was so focused on "doing the work of the church" as a youth pastor that I was neglecting my responsibilities of discipling my own wife and kids. That was six years ago! The Lord has been teaching me how to "shepherd and pastor to his own family" over these last six years.
I recently won a book titled "Disciple Like Jesus For Parents" on twitter. This quote is from one of the endorsements on the back of the book:
"The training up of children and youth has alwasy been the God given responsibility of the parents and not the Church or government."
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