Protecting the Family

Here is an excerpt from a recent Family Life Today radio broadcast with the hosts, Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine, and the guest, Voddie Baucham. The topic and the basis for this excerpt is a discussion on the problems with youth ministry.

Bob: So a pastor who would say, "Well, I hear you, and we've got kids in our service as well, and we're trying to challenge dads to do what you're trying to challenge dads to do, but on Wednesday night the youth group gets together, and we've got a young pastor, and he's ministering to those high school and junior high kids and it seems to be a good thing that the families appreciate." You would say it's a problem?

Voddie: I would say a couple of things. Number one …

Bob: Now he's – he's not sure how much he wants this boat to rock, is he?

Dennis: Bob's trying to see how far you're going to rock this boat.

Voddie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Number one, let's just say, "Okay, great. We've got this Wednesday night service for the youth." What purpose would we have for that meeting? Why do my children need a pastor who is not my pastor? That's my first question. And it automatically assumes this myth called "the generation gap" – that my children somehow cannot understand the language of a culture that is not their own. That creates egocentrism in my children; that creates animosity between my children and myself; it also creates an allegiance with my children spiritually to a person who is seen as being able to minister to them because they understand my children and their culture.

My children's responsibility is to understand culture at large, not to think that the world revolves around them. Well, what if the youth minister is just teaching the Word, and it's solid. Well, if he's teaching the Word, and it's solid, how come they can't come in where the rest of us are having the Word taught, and it's solid.

Again, the Scriptures do not dictate this segregation. They don't even allude to this kind of segregation, and the only reasons that we can come up with for this kind of segregation come directly from our culture and the un-biblical portions of our culture that move toward this age segregation.

I liked Voddie's response to the question because it sounds like a question many of the folks in my church have had to answer in our own minds or from people around us. What's wrong with a little fun on Wednesday nights for our children, given the assumption that great biblical truth is being preached on Sunday mornings? I like the first aspect of his response...

Why? What is the reason for doing this?

For whatever we do, we need to know why we are doing it. Before we talk about whether it's bad or good, first state the reason that it exists. Just accepting things because we did them as youth or because most people around us do them is not sufficient. Without understanding why we do what we do, we are opening up our families to things that could be unprofitable and even detrimental. We should identify what the intended or desired outcome is. In other words, we must take everything back to the vision we have laid out for our families which of course is based on being transformed by Scripture to join in God's good work.

And another aspect of his response...

What is it bringing to the family?

For the so called good that this may bring, what bad comes along with it? We should examine carefully the things we choose to do in order to understand what baggage comes along when we participate. For example, when my family used to rent videos more frequently, we often skipped past the previews because they were typically inappropriate, even to the point of causing us to stumble. Now we're too busy doing other things to rent movies much at all any more.

Sports is another mixed bag. Despite all of the defiling advertising that comes with sports (which might be able to be filtered), what appetites are being nurtured and fed in our children (and us) with sports? Am I giving my children an appetite for something that will consume a large part of their time and attention and compete with the time they need to prepare and train for righteousness? Do I myself struggle with participating in and watching sporting events which takes away valuable time from my family or my own training in righteousness?

And in the youth ministry case, the Wednesday night fun brings into the lives of my children a new Spiritual authority in the form of a youth pastor. With whatever biblical truth he may speak, he is also bringing a temptation for my children to begin listening more to him than to me. Sure it might be biblical truth, but is it necessary or even important enough to expose my children to the temptation? Again, a family vision helps to determine what is worth doing and not doing and what to watch out for when doing it.

And finally....

What does it assume about the family?

This one is tougher. What must be true in the family in order for the good to actually be good? In the youth ministry question, we see that an assumed generation gap must exist in order for the methods and techniques used by so many youth ministries to be good for our kids. It assumes that the parents aren't able to fully reach their children because of a gap, and the hip, funny, cool youth minister can finish the job by "relating" to the children "on their level" and then attempting to squeeze a bit of biblical truth through that relationship.

The church really ought to spend its time and money teaching fathers to turn their hearts back to their children, so that the fathers can recapture trust, obedience, and loyalty of those whom he is responsible to train. And really, this question opens up a big can of worms when you go down the path that flows from it. When you begin asking the questions about what an activity assumes about the family, it often leads to what is assumed about biblical discipleship. And when you take that topic further, you hit the topics of manhood and womanhood. And when you keep going, you end up ultimately at what authority is played out as the basis for an activity. Is it the Bible? Is it man's thinking?

The youth ministry, as demonstrated by its actions, assumes that it is more important for the church to try to reach the children than it is to reach the parents. And this stems from a view that the child's spiritual training is best led by the church. After all, if the church actually believed that it was the job of parents to train their children, then they wouldn't give them "an out" in the form of a youth ministry.

Having now stripped the children away from the parents, the adult spiritual training is so often structured in a way that splits the husband and wife. Women's ministries abound, and it is highly encouraged for a woman to learn and be discipled outside of the teaching of her husband. Husbands, with nothing left to do because the church has convinced them that their wives and children are covered become bored and disinterested and so they go off to the golf course (or wherever). Passivity is encouraged in the husbands because there is nothing left to do, and men recoil away from the idea of stepping up to the plate and doing the jobs themselves. Women grow in knowledge with training that is structured in a way that reinforces their natural tendencies to supersede the headship and authority of their husbands. It builds into the women a sense of spiritual superiority that breeds a victim attitude when the truths of submission are taught and women are faced with the weight of confessing pride and coming under the leadership of their husbands.

And this ultimately goes back to what is the source for our instructions on how to treat men and women in the church. Is the plain teaching on headship and submission taught as sufficient for all husband-wife relations? Or is a rebellion against submission and a weak, soft view of family order mixed in to what the Bible says in an attempt to make it palatable? It really does go back to the concept of the sufficiency of Scripture. Where do you find the authority to do what you do?

What a tangled web we weave in our churches today.