Americans are desperate for a sense of community. Eventually many of these lonely people search for fellowship in a church setting.
—James Dobson
The church I grew up in was the center of our social life; I felt loved and accepted by this extended “family.” That little body of believers provided an unshakable foundation of values and understanding, which I still hold firmly. I was three years old when I knelt and gave my heart to the Lord.
I’m still grateful for the teachings I received in those early years.
The greatest contribution the church can make is to draw families to the person of Jesus Christ in an attitude of genuine repentance and renewal. Nothing brings husbands, wives, and children together more effectively than a face-to-face encounter with the Creator of families. In fact, it is almost impossible to stand in his holy presence without recognizing our pettiness and resentment and selfishness with those closest to us.
Each size of church has its contribution to make to the family. Some people thrive better in a crowd; they need the programs and specialists that can be provided only in a large church community. Adolescents, for example, are driven by this “urge to herd,” and they feel more secure with larger numbers of their peers.
On the other hand, some people need the intimacy and personal touch of a small church family. In my life, this sense of being known and cared for in a small church hooked me into the fellowship. The warmth I felt there compensated for the lack of sophistication in program and personnel.
Whatever the size of your church, you can become more family friendly.
What Families Need
The local church is the first line of defense for the family. The pastor is there when sickness occurs and heartaches abound and needs are expressed. Furthermore, the vast majority of people who come to Christ do so by the efforts of organized churches, which nurture and feed them as babes in Christ.
We need fellowship with believers, we need reinforcement from those of like mind, and we need biblical exegesis from someone trained to explain the Word. We need the church.
On the other hand, the church cannot substitute for the role of parents in the lives of their children. Boys and girls look deep into the eyes of their mothers and fathers to see if they really believe what the pastor and youth leaders are saying. Any ethical weak spot, any indecision is discerned instantly and magnified by the next generation. That’s why home Bible studies and immersion in the gospel provide the foundations of faith in children. This is a responsibility of the home.
I once conducted a poll on our radio program, asking people if they felt their churches were supportive of families. We received 1,440 responses: 61 percent were decidedly positive, while 39 percent tended to be negative.
The first group of respondents focused on the pastor himself. People said, “He teaches us about the importance of families.” “He is a family-oriented man.” “He models good fathering for the men of the church.” “He obviously loves his wife.”
There’s nothing quite so forceful as a pastor getting up in the pulpit and stating, “You won’t be able to find me on Mondays or Saturdays, [or whatever day] unless there’s been an absolute emergency. I will not be here; my home phone will ring, and no one will answer it. What I’m saying to you is ‘Go thou and do likewise.’ No one should work seven days a week.”
Those who responded positively to the questionnaire also compliment their churches for conducting programs on marriage, communication, and adolescence.
Finally, they appreciated the spirit of love expressed to their families by the entire church—not just the pastor.
The most frequent complaint of the negative 39 percent, however, surprised me: They criticized the church for fragmenting families. They regretted, for example, that children don’t worship with (or even see) their parents while at church. Even at picnics and informal activities, the children have separate activities while the adults play softball or whatever. Most felt that families should not be together all the time, but there should be some common experiences to unite them spiritually.
I agree.
I believe it is possible to minister effectively to a transgenerational audience. The key is storytelling. Children love to hear stories, and surprisingly, adults listen to them, too. Obviously, we can’t gear the whole preaching ministry to a preschool level, but we can certainly come together occasionally for meaningful worship. Even when a message is beamed to adults, children hear and understand more than we suppose. If nothing else, they see their parents responding to the worship, the music, and the pastor. They need this experience.
Targeting the Key Life Stage
Adolescence is the great turning point, perhaps the key stage in family development. At this point, teenagers who have been raised in the church are either strengthened in their faith or lost to the world. During this difficult and risky time, beleaguered parents desperately need the church’s support. Not only are wholesome activities and biblical teaching necessary, but instruction is needed to counterbalance the un-Christian experiences young people are exposed to every day.
For example, most students now encounter sex education in school that undermines (or at least fails to reinforce) basic Christian standards. Who will set the record straight, if not the church? Who will have the courage, in a day of sexual revolution, to say, “Abstinence is God’s commandment”? Who will address the social and sexual questions posed on television and offer biblical arguments and scriptural underpinnings?
My point is that the Western world has moved away from the Judeo-Christian heritage, and no one is more vulnerable to that departure than teenagers, who live on the cutting edge of culture. The family that holds to traditional understandings needs all the help it can get to preserve the faith and morality of its children. Unfortunately, many churches offer no formal sex education programs and seem to feel their ultimate objective is merely to socialize the youth.
Our purpose in the church is not merely to give kids something to do on Friday night. I agree with Tony Campolo that we must give teens something worth living and dying for. When we introduce them to Christ and give them a passion to serve him, we draw them to the Lord—and from there to their families.
That doesn’t mean we can keep adolescents from going through adolescence. The low self-esteem and the inner conflicts won’t be entirely eliminated, no matter what we do. The turmoil is rooted in the hormonal changes of those years. As soon as puberty becomes apparent, the personality becomes more volatile and irritable. I believe those factors are directly linked. They result from an ongoing glandular upheaval, similar to premenstrual tension or menopause or a severe mid-life crisis.
No amount of church activity and counseling will eliminate that. Nevertheless, youth pastors can help teenagers cope with their stresses during this time. They can also facilitate communication between parents and adolescents. Of course, there will be times when even the most competent and dedicated parents are unable to relate to their children. Their situation reminds me of the early days of our Apollo space programs, when astronauts were blasted into the sky aboard small capsules. As they reentered the earth’s atmosphere, there was a period of about fifteen minutes when the buildup of negative ions prevented ground controllers from communicating with them. We waited anxiously, wondering about the ship’s safety. Then, Chris Craft in Houston would say, “We have reestablished contact, and the astronauts are safe!”
Something similar often happens to parents and teens as they go through the negative ions of adolescence. During this eerie phase, a youth minister or a pastor can sometimes get through, can establish contact, and influence the spaced-out cadets. Hopefully, the time will come when parents will be able to heave a sigh of relief and say, “Thank God, they’re safe!”
Wounded-Family Care
More than a third of our population is unmarried, with an increasing number of single-parent families represented in our churches. Those families, almost without exception, have enormous needs. Women who are working and raising children alone are often desperate for help—financial, mechanical, educational, and spiritual. Just getting through each day is a major accomplishment.
There are exceptions to this pattern, of course, but most single parents of small children are struggling for survival. If I understand biblical imperatives correctly, it is the task of intact families to extend a helping hand. The Lord has a special place in his heart for widows (including rejected husbands and wives) and fatherless children.
The churches that best serve these wounded families usually offer these kinds of assistance: Fathers invite children of divorce to recreational activities; mothers do the same for the increasing number of children being raised by single fathers; educational programs are provided; loans and gifts are offered, especially at Christmastime or when illness strikes; houses are painted and cars repaired; meals are brought over for the working mother.
Perhaps most importantly, single adults are made to feel accepted and loved by the church—part of the mainstream instead of the periphery.
Related to care for wounded families is social action. The pro-life issue is the most important cause now on the scene. Someday, the killing of unborn children will be as evident as the killing of Jews by Nazis. When that day comes, the church will be judged by its record on the abortion question.
The primary reason for the controversy today is that Christians don’t know what goes on in abortion clinics, and they’ve been deceived by the rationalizations laid down by the abortion forces—”A woman has a right to her own body.” “We’re only removing a ‘product of conception,’ a blob of protoplasm.” In reality, we are killing babies, and the church must find a way to defend these innocent little ones.
That’s part of building a family-friendly church.
Reaching Peripheral Families
I’m concerned about the number of families that come through our churches each year and give us a fleeting opportunity to introduce them to Jesus Christ. Typically, it’s not our theology that brings them to our door. They’re not even primarily motivated by our facilities or our program or our pastor. One thing is uppermost on their minds: Are they needed here? Can they find acceptance? Will they be included? Could this be the place where they will fit in and find friends and fellowship?
I’m convinced Americans are desperate for a sense of community. Eventually many of these lonely people search for fellowship in a church setting. But what happens when they arrive at the sanctuary? Often they encounter busy, harassed people who are focused on their own needs.
Now certainly Christian people have been trained to be friendly to newcomers, but their response is superficial. “Sure glad you came today” will not suffice for follow-up phone calls and invitations to dinner and lasting friendships. That’s why visitors often attend services for a while but eventually conclude “we’re not needed here” and then fade away.
I wish I could convince my fellow Christians that the most productive form of outreach is right under our noses. Nothing links families to Christ like linking them to the established community of faith.
Sunday can be an exhausting day for Shirley and me. We work hard to reach those whom we feel need our involvement. Sometimes it’s a couple standing alone in a Sunday school class. Perhaps they’ve attended the church for five years or more, but the social awkwardness is evident on their faces. Even though we attend a friendly church, I occasionally become irritated by the lack of dedicated workers in this critical task of caring for people. It is, in my opinion, the most important family ministry a church can implement.
But this does not come easily. The problem involves the self-concept of established members; they don’t see themselves as part of the in-group, being needed by the out-group. They are struggling themselves to find a sense of community.
How often do we hear established members generalize about “them”—the rest of the congregation: “They never call us. They don’t seem to care whether we come to church or not. They’re snobbish to us.” What these people don’t realize is that each family in the “they” also tends to see itself as being left out. The tragedy is that commitment to Jesus Christ and to the church is lost because of these unmet needs and expectations.
True commitment to building strong families requires strategic action. Here are some specific concepts a church might implement in its setting:
1. Mandate a vigorous premarital counseling program. The best ones provide a trained person to do at least six sessions before the wedding and two or more “check up” sessions six months afterward.
2. Assign couples as department heads, teachers, and other workers. The idea is to get families involved together instead of further fragmenting their time.
3. Be diligent not to overwork the more dedicated members. Families of the committed are vulnerable. The wise pastors I know keep track of how many nights per week families are expected to attend church activities.
4. Provide free baby-sitting whenever the church doors are open. Many mothers desperately need relief from constant child care. Some of them may not be able to attend if childcare isn’t offered.
5. Target young mothers. One of the best forms of family outreach I’ve seen is a program called MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers). It is an educational, recreational, artistic, and spiritual program each week for young mothers, who can be some of the most harassed people on the face of the earth. While these moms are engaged in Bible study and craft activities, the children have an interesting program elsewhere in the church. Mothers love this program and will come even if they have no interest in or knowledge of the church. Then, if the program is conducted properly, they usually begin attending the Sunday services.
The Most Important Family
If you don’t have your homelife in good order, you have no business teaching others how to handle theirs. But no one is perfect at home. You can no more be a perfect father or husband than you can be a perfect human being. You may know all the rules for good family life, all the biblical principles—and yet simple fatigue will affect your ability to implement them at certain times.
After a sermon it is always possible for a pastor’s wife to say to her husband on the way home, “I guess you know you don’t live up to what you preached today.” That is the nature of human imperfection.
Shirley is generous to me because she loves me, but it’s not difficult for her to identify my faults. That’s why I frequently talk publicly about my shortcomings at home. In one of my books I describe our classic “umbrella fight.” I’d come home from a trip exhausted. Shirley wanted me to clean the backyard umbrella that Saturday, while I felt entitled to watch a football game. After all, I’d been working hard and deserved a day off. But while I was out of town, she had been taking care of our children and managing the family. Now that I was home, she felt it was high time I offered her some relief. We had a three-day collision of wills over that.
I think it’s important for family specialists to reveal incidents like that. I have also tried to describe times I did not father our children properly. We need to admit we’re not perfect at home. Honesty demands it.
And people love it.
At Glen Eyrie in Colorado, we were filming one of our series, and I told about a frustrating day when I rode the backs of my children. I said, “That day I violated everything I write about.” The audience applauded! They need to hear about times I haven’t measured up to my own standard.
I’ve struggled through the years to balance family and career. My most difficult decision was to quit accepting speaking engagements, regardless of how influential or interesting the setting. I reached this decision in 1977, after I began to feel I was not at home with my family as much as I should be.
I had never abandoned my wife and children, but most speaking commitments occur on weekends—prime family time. I began to agonize over the contradiction: The Lord had given me a message about the family I wanted to convey, but how could I do it without sacrificing mine?
The dilemma continued for more than a year. Finally, a day came when a decision had to be made. Auditoriums had to be scheduled for the following year, and the booking deadline had arrived. One evening, we prayed together as a family and asked the Lord to make the decision for us. Then we went to bed. Shirley and I decided to read for a while. I picked up a book, and after about twenty pages, I came across a reference to the eighteenth chapter of Exodus, where Moses is visited by his father-in-law, Jethro, who is concerned because Moses was accepting too many responsibilities. As I read the first verse, the Lord seemed to say, “This is your answer.” I continued reading as Jethro told Moses to stop counseling all day and get some help. The Living Bible quotes Jethro as saying, “If you follow this advice, and if the Lord agrees, you will be able to endure the pressures, and there will be peace and harmony in the camp.”
I met the next morning with Mac MacQuiston, my representative, and told him I would not be speaking in 1978. Unfortunately, Mac represented only three speakers; he needed each of us to keep his business solvent. I had just jerked one leg of that stool out from under him. He stared at me for a full minute, until finally I said, “For Pete’s sake, Mac, say something!”
He said, “I’m shocked. I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “All I know is that the Lord does not work on half an equation. If he is telling me to do this, he’s got something for you as well.”
As it turned out, Word Publishers videotaped one of the last remaining seminars, which became the “Focus on the Family” film and video series. It has since been seen by 50 million people, while I’ve stayed home. In the meantime, Mac became vice-president of Focus on the Family and later went on to other important Christian service.
I put my family first, and the Lord did the rest. What I thought was the end turned out to be the beginning. Even our Focus on the Family radio ministry grew out of that decision, and it now reaches more people than I could have spoken to in a lifetime of travel. But most importantly, I now have the memories of my children as they walked through the teen years, which would have been lost to me otherwise.
The problem of balancing career, church, and family is a constant struggle. It is rarely possible to realign priorities once and for all. An imbalance can occur in a matter of days. The moment I relax and congratulate myself for having practiced what I preach, I tend to say yes a few times when I should have said no—and suddenly I’m overworked again.
Nevertheless, I am determined to fight the dragon of overcommitment tooth and nail.
Copyright © 1997
