THE FAMILY: Christian families troubled on several fronts, observers say

For the post-“Father Knows Best” and “Leave it to Beaver” generations, the traditional concepts of family and marriage have broken apart, been redefined, and, ultimately, minimized.

The causes are myriad and the church and home are not without culpability, some Southern Baptists contend. That is why Southern Baptist leaders addressing recent gatherings in Texas hope to stem the tide of cultural trends by engaging the denomination in a discussion of how to fix the family problem.

Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, LifeWay Research and a long-term University of California study highlight what many Southern Baptists see as worrisome trends: married families are now in the minority, and most students involved in youth ministries during high school will drop out of church for a period of time upon leaving home; some of those students will become avowed atheists.

The SBTC, two affiliated schools and local churches hosted three forums over the past four months to address the concerns of the family unit in Southern Baptist churches. For many, the diagnosis may be difficult to hear. Just as lack of exercise and poor eating habits can lead to a host of medical problems, spiritual lethargy and insufficient scriptural intake within the home has left the Christian family in America languishing on the margins of society as other spiritual forces work to redefine the very meaning of “family,” observers say.

“Taking Back the Family” was the theme of a June forum hosted by Lamar Baptist Church in Arlington and KCBI-FM, a ministry of Criswell College. Moderator Jerry Johnson, president of the Dallas-based school and host of a weekday talk show, said the impetus for the live-radio discussion was a report of the 2005 U.S. Census indicating married families are now a minority.

Compared to 1950 when 80 percent of the American population was married, the number slipped to 49 percent in recent years with a large percentage of women living without a spouse, climbing to 70 percent among African- American women.

Gathered for the panel discussion were co-host Penna Dexter; author Voddie Baucham, pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring; Gary Randle, executive director and founder of H.O.P.E. Farm for inner-city boys in southeast Fort Worth; and Bruce Schmidt, pastor of Lamar Baptist Church.
The forum included pre-recorded audio addresses in addition to a telephone interview with Dennis Rainey of Family Life Today and Jim Daily of Focus on the Family.

The premise of the discussion asserted “the family is under attack.” But none of the speakers absolved individual Christians, their families, or the church from contributing to the current problem. In a later interview, Johnson said the problems can be traced to a spiritual attack on the family combined with a failure to maintain spiritual integrity in the home.

“Look at the Old Testament and fast-forward through all the patriarchal families. There is a spiritual attack on the family,” Johnson said, noting Satan’s attempts to dismantle society have always targeted the family, the foundation of a healthy culture.

Richard Ross, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professor of student ministry and assistant dean, said, “It is a Baptist [value] to believe the family is central, but it is not a Baptist practice for that to be happening. Most of our leaders give lip service to this concept, but it is not normative.”

Ross was one of several guest speakers at Southwestern’s recent Baptist Distinctives Conference on the family in September. The church is only as healthy as the families on its rosters, Ross said.

Baucham said the problems facing American society today result from the breakdown of the family. Divorce is not the quintessential representative of that breakdown, he said. It is manifested in a more subtle, yet equally destructive, manner–the lack of spiritual communication and interaction within the family.

Ross used the language of Malachi, stating, “It is a heart connection–the turning of the hearts of the fathers to the children–as their hearts turn toward each other, there is a connection across those hearts.”

For parents who have lost the connection, restoration of the parent-child relationship is essential if matters of faith are to be passed on.

Ross said, “The first order of business needs to be to get the heart of the son or daughter back. It is the turning of the hearts of the fathers to the children and children to their parents–that is the scriptural principle–it is realistic, research-based, how you re-establish spiritual impact.”

But establishing and maintaining those lines of communication is difficult as families scurry about their lives. With the self-imposed busyness of life, Dexter said, “Parents’ influence gets squeezed out of the equation. Other things outside parental influence become the priority.”

Bruce Schmidt, pastor of Lamar Baptist, said, “There should not be a secular segment of a Christian’s life.” All things, he added, should be devoted to God, interjecting Christ in all we do.

With God left out of the formula, parents have incrementally lost their role as primary caregivers and influencers, Dexter said. Feminism, “keeping up with the Joneses,” and families “farming out” their kids to daycare and extracurricular activities have resulted in the reduction of parental influence, a factor she said is causing the exodus of young people from the church once they leave home.

Confirming Dexter’s assertion is a 2007 study released by LifeWay Research in August revealing that 70 percent of young adults ages 23 to 30 stopped attending church regularly for at least a year between the ages of 18 and 22. The survey was conducted in April and May of this year, polling more than 1,000 adults ages 18-30. Each indicated they attended a Protestant church regularly for at least a year in high school.

Contributing to the problem of waning parental influence is a cultural redefinition of the roles of men and women, dads and moms.

“Culture wants to homogenize the roles so there’s no difference,” Johnson said. Many sons and daughters, he added, don’t know a “real man” or the “essence of woman.”

Referring to Nehemiah 4:14, Schmidt said, “He is speaking to men and dads. It’s time for men to be men and fight for what’s worth fighting for in your home.”

In many homes there is no father to lead the family. The legacy of divorce has manifested itself in society and the church. The lack of parental influence is magnified in most one-parent households. And that reality is more common, statistics show, in African-American households. Panelists at the June forum referenced statistics indicating black women have the highest percentage of out-of-wedlock births and fathers in those homes are often absent.

An extreme example of such abandonment is Denver Broncos running back Travis Henry, who in early September was ordered by a judge to create a trust fund for one of his children. Henry has nine children by nine different women. The mothers of some of his other children are also considering legal action.

Speaking to the issue of single-parenthood in the black community was Gary Randle, founder and executive director of H.O.P.E. Farm, a program in Fort Worth designed to help African-American boys and teens develop healthy ideals of manhood and devotion to God.

“We have a common enemy,” Randle said. “We allowed Satan to get a toe-hold in the African-American community and once he gets a toe-hold, his appetite is not going to be quenched.”

The social ills that commonly afflict single mothers–poor education, poverty–are problems Christians in white and African-American churches must address, he insisted.

Satan has momentum in the black community that will spill over into the greater community if proactive measures are not taken, Randle added. He said churches must “band together to assault this enemy.”

The speakers agreed the church has been part of the problem by allowing secular reasoning to influence biblical doctrine.

In a pre-recorded audio message, Tony Evans, pastor of Oak cliff Bible Fellowship said: “We have sold out the biblical ideal. The evil one and society are dictating the grounds for divorce. People are getting divorced for non-biblical reasons,” he said, adding, “The church has facilitated this change.”

Baucham, the pastor from spring, called on local churches to raise the bar. Growing up in Southe Central Los Angeles, he recalled the first time he met another boy who had a father at home. It was significant. In his own family his marriage of 18 years is a milestone on both sides of the relationship. Of the 25 marriages on his and his wife’s side of the family, 22 have ended in divorce.

The cycle is repeated, Baucham said, when young people are not given a standard by which they should live and resources to aid in living up to those standards. He argued that young people are more prepared to take a college entrance exam than they are for the life-long commitment of marriage.

Not only is individual preparation essential but accountability within the body of Christ, a concept that has gone by the way, is paramount, Baucham contended.

At Grace Family Baptist Church, Baucham said, “We practice church discipline. If {a married person] even breathed a word about walking away from his spouse, he would get a visit from us.”

Ross said the root of the problem is a lack of fundamental biblical teaching in churches and, primarily, an abdication by parents of the biblical mandates regarding the spiritual upbringing of their children.

“The great majority of Baptist parents do not know there is a direct relationship between the spiritual lives of their children and their own sense of relationship with those kids,” Ross said.

Baucham added, “We’ve farmed everything out, including the spiritual nurture and discipleship of the children.”

“There has to be a sense of ‘Enough already!’ Enough fluff. Enough cotton candy. Give me some meat,” Baucham said of churches where preaching is little more than talks offering advice. “As long as people are running to the cotton candy, there’s going to continue to be cotton candy factories.”

Even intact families active in church can still lose their children to the world, Baucham added. Only when fathers reclaim their God-given role as spiritual leaders in their homes and live out the mandate of Deuteronomy 6:4-7 will families have the fortitude to stand in the counter-currents of the world. Baucham said parents, particularly fathers, must evangelize and disciple their children at all times.

“[Discipleship] is a constant process,” Baucham said. “Not just passing on facts. It is teaching and patterning.”

Ross tald the seminary conference: “too many parents take the approach that through their tithes they are paying someone to teach the Bible to their children. Faithfully taxiing those children to the church is what most parents see as their piece of the puzzle.”

Despite the rise in youth ministries since the late 1970s, fewer and fewer teenagers are baptized each year and those who appeared committed to God during high school show a decided turn once leaving home.

“I’m talking about the kids who did what we asked them to do—went to all the Disciple Nows, camps, and they’re sleeping in dorms on Sunday morning.”

A frequently quoted study indicated students are not only leaving church but leaving their faith. Published in 1994, the study was written by George Fox University professor Gary Railsback, chairman of the Educational Foundations and Leadership Department. Railsback followed students from the point they entered college in 1995 to graduation in 1989. A follow-up study, polling the class of 1997-2001 and published in 2006, showed little deviance from the original research.

The most cited figure—one of concern to parents and youth pastors—showed anywhere from 27-56 percent of students who refer to themselves as “born-again Christians” upon entering college no longer claimed that title upon graduation. (These figures are from the 1997-2001 study but show little variance from the earlier sampling.)

In a telephone interview, Railsback said he sought to determine the college influences on religious beliefs. He compared seven types of college campuses with schools affiliated with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Students at schools that CCCU describes as intentionally Christ-centered institutions showed only a 7 percent dropout rate.

“This consistently lower dropout rate for CCCU campuses is understandable considering their overt efforts to integrate faith and learning and have a college faculty that adheres to religious beliefs,” Railsback said in his report.

Such a perspective creates a biblical worldview, an essential tool parents must give their children, Southeastern Seminary’s Reid said while speaking at Sagemont Church in Houston. Parents should never assume their children will just pick up scriptural truths, he said, but should systematically teach and reiterate those concepts.

In his book “Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and Doesn’t,” Stephen Prothero, chairman of the Religion Department at the University of Boston, argues that the lack of biblical knowledge in America creates a civic problem. When so many domestic and international policy discussions are couched in religious verbiage, it is apparent, through his studies, that many within the American population are not completely understanding the conversation.

In a March 14 column posted in the Los Angeles Times, Prothero noted: “In a religious literacy quiz I have administered to undergraduates for the last two years, students tell me that Moses was blinded on the road to Damascus and that Paul led the Israelites on their exodus out of Egypt. Surveys that are more scientific have found that only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the four Gospels, and one out of 10 think that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. No wonder pollster George Gallup has concluded that the United States is “a nation of biblical illiterates.”

In the column Prothero went on to argue for Bible literacy courses to be taught in every high school in America. Understanding “the most influential book in world history.” Not proselytizing, would only be to the benefit of upcoming generations and society as a whole, he concluded.

Ross explained, “A God-centered worldview and understanding of absolute truth is central to children—[and] can’t be wishy washy.”

He said youth pastors can play role in codifying that worldview but the primary teachers must be Christian parents.

“[Teenagers’] view of the world determines their beliefs and beliefs shape their values and that’s what drives their behavior,” Reid said.

How best to instill that worldview is up for debate among Southern Baptist pastors and seminarians, but all agree it begins in the home.

Reid joined SBTC evangelism associate Brad Bunting at Sagemont for the Sept. 14 taping of “Inheritance: Passing on a Legacy of Faith to Your Children.” The DVD and accompanying workbood will be available from the SBTC by the end of the year.

Reid’s lecture focused on the Deuteronomy 6 passage, emphasizing how parents can implement each of the commands to teach their children.

Ross said when parents “walk along the way”—to soccer practice or to school—they should be constantly looking for opportunities to teach. The “when you sit” exhortation implies a purposeful activity in which the father gathers the family for a time of worship at home, he added.

Until about 130 years ago, this was the main form of worship for families. But today the practice is almost exclusively relegated to functions of the local church, Baucham and others said.

Ross continued, “When you rise up and when you lie down do something spiritual that causes a child at beginning of day and end of day to bookend that day in terms of a focus on Christ.” To the audience gathered for the seminary forum, Ross said, “I bet every one of you at the end of the day prayed with that little toddler every night. Are parents of 16-year-olds doing that? Who needs prayer at bedtime more, a 2-year-old or a 16-year-old? Why on earth does that practice stop in Christian homes?”

Baucham’s 2006 message to the SBTC evangelism conference on the centrality of the home “literally traveled around the world,” he said, leading to “a firestorm of conversation and a revolution in the way many view the role of the home and the church in evangelism and discipleship. He wrote “Family-Driven Faith” as an instruction manual for those who have asked, “How do we do it?”

He calls on parents to take up the mantle of discipleship by homeschooling their children and recommends family-integrated churches where adults and children study the Word together.

Jerry Johnson said the “simple church” idea needs to be revived. “We need to come back to doing things together and have a higher expectation of the children. They can understand more than we give them credit for,” he said.

Ross said: “We need a home-centered, church-supported approach to the spiritual transformation of children and teenagers. That is a dramatic paradigm shift in how we view the church today. It is not going to be easy and it will not be quick, but the change can come.”

The church is to be a support system for the family, not the primary instrument of instruction for children and youth, added Bunting. He admitted that, to date, some youth ministries have not been parent-friendly. But that is changing. More youth ministers, Bunting said, are working to incorporate parents into the youth programs. By doing so they no longer usurp—albeit unintentionally—the parents’ authority but step up beside them in their challenges of raising godly children.

When a youth minister is freed up from being expected to disciple the teenagers of Christian parents, Reid said they are then able to focus their energies on kids whose parents are not Christians and work to draw lost kids and their families into the church.

Churches often add to the frantic pace of life for their members by offering too many programs and ministries which faithful church members feel obligated to support with their presence. Until parents reclaim their God-ordained status as primary spiritual counsel for their children, the church will continue to falter, not meeting its God-ordained potential, asserted Ross.

To pastors at the Southwestern conference, Ross said: “You might say, ‘I’m trying to build a great children’s ministry over here and it’s not working out so well.’ Could the reason be that you’re trying to build something great out of bad materials—troubled families, biblically illiterate parents, families in broken relationships?”

He said it was analogous to trying to construct a building with warped 2×4’s.

“It just never dawned on them that that was the lumber they were trying to build a church out of. Doesn’t it make sense to take a step back and when the families are strong and the 2x4s are straight—out of that we will build a grand church to the glory of God?” Ross said.

Though their strategies may vary, the Southern Baptist pastors and professors agree that unless the family stands firm on the truths of Scripture, there can be no building up of God’s church in America. Children must be disciple in the home. Parents should not expect it to happen anywhere else and churches should equip parents to that end.

Last year, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary announced changes to prepare future leaders to integrate local church ministries in a way that builds healthier families and churches.

“When everything is segregated by age or gender or in some other way, it inadvertently ends up fragmenting the way that the family should operate. We are going to seek to reinforce spiritual growth as it occurs as a family,” explained Randy Stinson, dean of the School of Leadership and Church Ministry at SWBTS. That includes:

New training that will encourage integration of women’s ministries with children and youth to follow a Titus 2 model of mentoring younger women, coordinating men’s ministries to provide male leadership for families, widows and orphans in keeping with James 1:27, unifying views of marriage and parenting as well as gender roles in the home and church, equipping husbands and fathers to serve as spiritual leaders in their homes, while aiming all local church ministries toward evangelism.

At Southwestern Seminary Ross asked parents attending the conference, “How long has it been since you said [to your child], ‘I want to show you something God showed me this morning.’ Are your children hearing out of your mouth the wonder of your own growth in Christ? Are they hearing from you that this is an alive faith, not just a Baptists something or other?”

In order to claim or, in some cases, reclaim the hearts of their children, parents must put their own self-interests aside and concentrate on what is most important.

Ross concluded: “My first step in getting there is going to be to warm up relationships in my home. Quit running around so much furthering my own goals. Look at the eyes of my own children—not over the newspaper or with one eye on Sports Central. Listen to my children. Focus on them. Turn off that box, sit and enjoy each other, study the things of God.”