“For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.” Romans 12:4-5 NKJV
At the heart of the essential position of the nuclear family to the local church is 1. The Complimentary Relationship of Family and Church, 2. The Component Reality of Family to Church, and 3. The Critical Revitalization of the Family and Church.
Component reality of family to church. The health and vitality of the local church is a direct indication of the state of the Christian home as families are the central components of this divinely ordained institution (Rom 12:4-5; 1 Cor 12:12, 27; Eph 4:16, 5:33-6:4).
Attrition of young people from church involvement and oftentimes the Christian faith altogether is therefore an alarming trend that is a grave concern to both entities. David Kinnaman of the Barna Group addresses this issue in his timely work, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith, in which he provides accurate documentation about millions of young people who leave active church engagement upon exiting their teen years (Kinnaman, 2011, p. 19). Some of these, Kinnaman (2011) notes, never return whereas others do which includes those who merely remain on the marginal fringes attempting to redefine spirituality according to their own preferences (p. 19). A contributing factor to this exodus is the observation that millions of young Christians perceive Christianity to be in opposition to modern science (Kinnaman, 2011, p. 131). In this respect, science is unfortunately considered as virtually synonymous with Darwinian naturalism.
Due to this alarming trend, Answers in Genesis, the world’s largest Christian apologetics ministry, conducted research in order to gather data on why young people are leaving church and published their findings in Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church and What You Can Do to Stop It. This project revealed that the philosophical worldview of evolutionary scientism whose deep time scale is antithetical to Scripture is the primary factor contributing to the exodus of two-thirds of youth, raised in conservative churches, from the Christian faith (Gen 1:31; Ex 20:11) (Ham, 2009, pp. 167-180). Perhaps the most troubling statistic from this particular research showed that prior to their physical departure in the college years, these young people are already gone in their hearts and minds during high school and even as early as middle school (Ham, 2009, pp. 21-22).
It is quite interesting to note that Rienow (2013) mentions that a number of research projects cite a contributing factor to this trend is the disturbing reality about the superficiality of churches despite the proliferation of programming (p. 1) This assessment is based upon statistics that indicate a decreasing number of genuine disciples are being made as evidenced by the lack of a biblical worldview among professing believers in Jesus Christ (Rienow, 2013, p.1). The collateral damage to all this is what Rienow (2013) affirms the worst of all as families are losing the majority of their own children and grandchildren to the world (p. 1).
Dr. Voddie Baucham, Jr., currently the dean of theology at Africa Christian University’s seminary in Zambia, notes that the vast majority of so-called Christian teens raised in evangelical homes jettison the faith by the end of their freshman year of college (Baucham, 2007, p. 7). In his seminal work, Family Driven Faith: Doing What it Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God, Baucham (2007) poignantly diagnoses that children are falling away because the church has been asked to do what God designed the family to accomplish (p. 7). Discipleship and multi-generational faithfulness, Baucham (2007) affirms, begins and ends at home as the church is designed to play a supporting role of equipping in their complimentary relationship (p. 7).
Further, George Barna’s research found that less than 10 percent of self-proclaimed “born-again Christians” in America have a biblical worldview and that only half (51 percent) of American pastors possess one themselves regarding the five most basic elements including our view of God, man, truth, knowledge, and ethics (Barna as cited in Baucham, 2007, p. 76). It is therefore unsurprising that The National Study of Youth and Religion conducted by Christian Smith and his team of researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and published in the book called Soul Searching, discovered that the overwhelming majority of American teenagers do not possess a biblical worldview but rather one that is more closely aligned with secular humanism (Smith as cited in Baucham, 2007, pp. 11-12).
The late evangelical scholar, Chuck Colson along with Nancy Pearcey define worldview as the sum-total of our beliefs about the world, in other words, the big picture that directs our daily decisions and actions (Colson & Pearcey as cited in Baucham, 2007, p. 73). Colson (1999) further explains that genuine Christianity is more than having a relationship with Jesus Christ expressed through personal piety, church attendance, Bible study, and charitable deeds but a full-orbed perspective of life that encompasses a comprehension of all realty (p. 15).
Applying this to the context of the component reality of the family to church, Jones (2013) affirms that to have a biblical worldview is to interpret every aspect of our lives including our relationships with children within the framework of God’s redemptive narrative of history (p. 2). The spiritual vibrance of the local church is indeed a reflection of the health and vitality of the Christian family as home is the central component that affects everything.
To be continued…
References
Baucham, Jr., V. (2007) Family driven faith: doing what it takes to raise sons and daughters who walk with God. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
Colson, C. & Pearcey, N. (1999) How now shall we live? Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.
Ham, K. & Beemer, B. (2009) Already gone: why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.
Jones, T. P. (2013) How a biblical worldview shapes the way we teach our children. The Journal of Discipleship & Family Ministry, vol. 4 no. 1 (Fall – Winter 2013, pp. 2-4).Retrieved from the ATLA Religion Database.
Kinnaman, D. (2011) You lost me: why young Christians are leaving church and rethinking faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
Rienow, R. (2013) Limited church: unlimited kingdom – uniting church and family in the great commission. Nashville, TN: Randall House Publications.
