Too tough for fathers?

My daughter Jill and I riding in a Colorado parade.

It’s Friday the 13th and, fathers, this may be your lucky day. Last week I encouraged you to dream about NBFamilies (family ministry). Some have expressed fears that we have articulated a vision that is too extreme for the culture. They are concerned that parents, especially fathers, will shrink back and not want to participate. They’re worried that others will not feel qualified to lead their families. I don’t believe that. I believe if you challenge a father to do something great for his family, he will rise to the occasion and meet that expectation. This week I was surprised and pleased to read historical accounts of extreme expectations of fathers as a spiritual leaders of their families.

Dr. Timothy Paul Jones, a Christian historian and contemporary leader of family ministry, wrote an interesting blog about family ministry and Puritans during the early days of the Reformation Period (1650-1700). It is interesting and challenging to discover that Puritan fathers had much higher expectations placed upon them. There was no fear that the vision for family ministry and disciple making would be too difficult for the fathers. Below, I will scatter actual historical accounts of early Puritan fathers for our comparison. I hope you will be inspired and challenged too.

• Educating Parents About Family Ministry: The Family Ministry model of discipleship is a fairly rare concept among churches. Most churches do their best to support families with willing volunteers. Larger churches can hire staff, but the primary responsibility of the staff is directed toward the target group: preschool, children, middle school, and teenage students. Unfortunately, many churches simply do what they have always done whether it is working or not. New Beginning’s Family Equipping Ministry Model is not just another add-on to our present ministries. The family-equipping ministry is a process of realigning New Beginning’s proclamation and practices so that parents—especially fathers—are acknowledged, trained, and held accountable as persons primarily responsible for their kid’s discipleship.

  In Scotland, the church leadership instructed ministers to discipline any “Head of the Family” who neglected family worship and to discern in their pastoral visits, “Whether God be worshipped in the family, by prayers, praises, and reading of the Scriptures? Concerning the behavior of servants towards God and towards man; if they attend family and public worship?

  The Family Equipping Ministry Model does not do away with staff. Instead, this model reorients every ministry to partner with parents in the task of discipleship.
  New Beginnings Family Ministry Pastoral Staff, all fathers with children themselves, is devoted to empowering parents to influence their families to grow deep, vibrant faith. The links/tabs above cast the vision for how families can effectively engage their kids.
  

  1. FAITH TALK
  2. FAITH WALK
  3. FAITH MAP
  4. FAITH MISSION

If you are a parent, you should learn to utilize and fine tune these skills “on-the-fly.” Though the days seem long when your kids are young and heavily dependent upon you. Or you can’t wait for your gnarly teenagers to finish distancing themselves from you their embarrassingly dorky parents. Take it from me, those day are done before you realize it and your one opportunity to influence their faith is seriously diminished.

One Reformed Baptist pastor reminded his church members in 1769,

It includes family government, and discipline; the daily reading of the scriptures … , and at some times, especially on the Lord’s Day, other practical books; watching over the ways of our household, catechizing Children, instructing servants; reproving, admonishing, and correcting for irregularities of temper and conduct; and more especially for sins against God. But family worship is the most important part, and will have a great influence to promote the regular and useful discharge of the rest.

• Inspiring Parents About Family Ministry: Family Ministry is not supposed to be hard, mechanical, or methodical. Although the parenting skills seem like methods that can appear to tedious to the newcomer. Nothing can be further from the truth. The inspirational nature of effective family ministry should be like lovely music or stunningly beautiful art. Making disciples, especially with those you love more than life itself, should deeply stir your soul.
  • Hearing stories of kids and parents having genuine faith conversation,
  • Listening to you kids pray prayers from their hearts,
  • Watching your kids embrace godly character strengths (humility, courageous, honest, dependable, thankful, responsible, content, generous, purity, compassionate, wisdom, enthusiastic, optimistic, obedient, agreeable, committed, etc,)
  • Enjoying the blessed, holy fellowship of the Holy Spirit in your marriage (while your kids observe),
  • Experiencing the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) like family glue,
  • Laughing with joy with your family as they experiences the thrill of being used by God,
  • Crying tears of delight which express profound fulfillment when you realize your kids are now young adults with vibrant, abiding faith.
  • Appreciating that your family is a part of an eternal movement, God’s mission, when you hold your grandchild tightly, praying that the faith continues through the generations.
  Can you remain stoic when you hear how God is impacting a family in a powerful way. Why can’t this be your family? Is that a lump in your throat?
• Connecting with Parents About Family Ministry :Parents need each other. New Beginnings needs to create a family ministry community that celebrates family wins together, grieves family losses together, and refuses to allow passive family neglect together.

  Even as Puritanism faded, Jonathan Edwards cautioned a congregation that had forcibly terminated him with these words:

  Let me now therefore, once more, before I finally cease to speak to this congregation, repeat, and earnestly press the counsel which I have often urged on the heads of families, while I was their pastor, to great painfulness in teaching, warning, and directing their children; bringing them up in the training and admonition of the Lord; beginning early, where there is yet opportunity, and maintaining constant diligence in all labors of this kind. … Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by His rules. And family education and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual.

  Family ministry families, of all ages, should lock arms and provide a culture of prayer, encouragement, accountability, protection, and honor. Now that is connection! Our family pastors are encouraged to be transparent in their daily blogging. We (Phil, Terry, Jeff, Matt, and Sankie) want you to know us. We want to know you! We want you to know that we don’t have everything figured out. We struggle with the same family problems as everyone else (crammed schedules, school stress, fits thrown, cranky attitudes, etc.). We are with you in this journey. We need you and we a praying that you will agree to be partners with us to change the world one life, one marriage, and one family at a time.

In 1743, Edwards described his custom in a personal letter to an acquaintance:

At the conclusion of the public exercise on the Sabbath, I appointed the children that were under sixteen years of age to go from the meetinghouse to a neighbor house, that I there might further enforce what they had heard in public, and might give in some counsels proper for their age. … About the middle of the summer, I called together the young people that were communicants, from sixteen to twenty-six years of age, to my house; which proved to be a most happy meeting. … We had several meetings that summer of young people.

I hope you can see there is a long history of churches partnering with parents to raise vibrant and devoted disciples of Jesus Christ. I hope you can also see that expectations for fathers have dipped to a new low in the prevailing American culture. It is time to challenge fathers to rise to the occasion. Your children deserve your best. Your Lord and Savior, the Anointed One who sacrificed Himself, deserves your greatest effort.



Me and the 3 enjoying time together!