As I mentioned before, I went out of town this past weekend to Wake Forest, NC. During my stay, I had the privilege of attending a conference on integrating the family and church. Basically, the whole general premise was, “How can the church best be structured to support, encourage, and equip parents in their roles as the primary disciplers and disciplinarians?”
Why would an organization even ask such questions in the first place?
There are multiple reasons why this is the case, take for instance the lack of male leadership in the home, the rate of “professing Christians” that leave the church between the ages of 17 to 19 (the statistics range between 75% and 88%), and the lack of a Biblical worldview among this generation.
The speakers emphasized the importance of male leadership in the home, especially when it comes to leading his family in the teaching of God’s Word as well as the worship of Him (i.e. prayer, study, singing, etc…). Now, if one is a single mom, just as my wife was for nearly 8 years, the woman will need to take this role and responsibility, and the church will need to find ways of being more supportive than it typically is.
All in all it was a good conference. There were some practical things that I came away with that can be readily applicable in my current position. For example, I need to continue to find ways to encourage and equip parents and caregivers in their God given roles, to immerse new youth in relationships with mature Christian adults, particularly families, to structure ourselves around the role of the family in disciplining and disciplining their children, to even creating more of a relational based evangelism that takes place through the home and not necessarily through the churches building.
