How thankful I am to be part of the reforming influence of the NCFIC in calling the church back home to foundational biblical practices. In this article I will work to identify one of the major modern problems that has come from turning away from the biblical order in the church and the home. 

This turning away is vividly illustrated as in the schedule of the average church and in the behavior of the average father in his home.

The Scriptures are perfectly clear: children should be trained in spiritual matters primarily by their fathers and mothers, the preaching of the word of God in the church and by gifted brothers and sisters in the fellowship of the church. Husbands should be teaching their wives and fathers their children. It is primary because the Word of God commands parents to perform this function of teaching daily, while a church’s instruction is less frequent. Fathers are commanded to teach, “when you sit in the house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up” (Deut. 6:1-9). Scripture is clear: the father is a key component of the delivery system for the message of the kingdom of God. Therefore, we need to face the fact that when you bypass him or replace him, we have rejected the biblical order for the church and the home.

In the modern church, we have reversed the Biblical order of priority. The Bible makes the home the primary priority for teaching in terms of frequency (Deut. 6:1-9), and the church as an indispensable secondary means in terms of frequency. The modern church has reversed the Biblical order and the result is that children get less instruction than God’s design requires.

As the church has followed the world’s system, she has nearly obliterated the scriptural role of the family, and especially the fathers, and denigrated it in church life. This has paralleled what the world has done in the broader culture. Progressively, and often unwittingly, the church has taken over the fathers role and given it to preachers, women, Sunday school teachers, and childcare workers. I believe that until fathers take their jobs back as the primary preachers of righteousness, there will be no sustained reformation.

Instead of children receiving a breadth of teaching from their fathers (Deut. 6) AND from gifted teachers in the church — as it should be — they normally receive little or no teaching from their fathers because the church has either given him a pass, or actually scheduled him out of the deal.

The problem is clearly observable. Look where the bulk of the energy of human resource is directed in the average church. Massive amounts of energy are plunged into things that secure short term attendance bumps by making low entry level slots for people to be involved, but neglect the daily long term activity and energy investment that secures a future for many generations.

There Is a Right Way and a Wrong Way

As we analyze the collapse of biblical practices in the modern church, one principle that we need to understand clearly is that there are right and wrong ways to conduct ourselves in the church. This idea is discordant to our relativistic, postmodern ears. Paul made this plain to Timothy:

“I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” I Tim. 3:15.

Paul makes it clear here that there are right ways and wrong ways when it comes to the church.

Men Tend to Be Posers

Men tend to be posers. We want things to look good even though we know they are bankrupt. This is nothing new. Jesus referred to the posers of His day as “whitewashed tombs.”

This tendency has affected our churches. We have large buildings and growing churches with programs that target every conceivable demographic slice. We appear to be reaching people. It is a good-looking collapse, but it can be a façade. “Whitewash” too often disguises an inwardly decrepit building. The appearance looks good enough, but underneath there has been a breakdown of basic biblical order, practice, and authority.

Gains and Losses

In the process of reversing the biblical order, we gained more nickles and noses and programs, but sustained fewer long term disciples. We can boast of a full portfolio of activity based programs, but we neglect the basic order and authority of the church and the family. The programs often drain the energies of fathers from their basic, clearly defined role. We gained the energies of men as Sunday school teachers or committee members once a week, but we lost their energies for the daily ministry of the Word of God and prayer in their homes.

In our postmodern, relativistic culture, it is important to understand that when it comes to the church and family, there is a right way and a wrong way. There is a way that “you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God” (I Tim. 3:15). One of the “wrong ways” that is commonly accepted in the church is the diminished role of the father in the spiritual training of children. This has collapsed the biblical order. Fathers hardly do this work anymore. They have allowed the church to carry the load.

My view is that we have come by the collapse honestly. We did not intend to reject the biblical order. We got where we are, through a mix of creativity and good ole' American pragmatism. We even prayed about it. In our creativity, we have amassed so many non-biblical structures, and have become so busy with them that they have forced us to push the biblical things to the periphery. It was a poor swap that has caused the mortgaging of the future for the present success.

What we gained was programmatic Christianity where everything is packaged in a professionally run program and measured by it’s numerical success.

I want to be clear: In saying these things, I am not diminishing the prime importance of the local church in the life of a family. The church must take center stage in a family’s life, but, as it does, it should never usurp or diminish family discipleship that is defined in many places in Scripture (Deut. 6:1-9; Eph. 6:1-4; Ps. 78; Ps. 27-28). 

What Was Lost

What we lost in the process was the relational model of Hebrew discipleship where the father was the chief delivery system for scriptural truth to the next generation.

We gained youth groups, but lost our youth. We gained our Sunday schools, but lost our fathers. We outsourced the teaching of the Word of God to them sporadically (once or twice a week) in church settings instead of daily at home. Result: Collapse of the Biblical order! 

Now, the Millennial generation does not know its right hand from its left. It has no biblical foundation. This is one effect of reversing the biblical order… Eventually, everything is reversed and now you have a whole generation questioning which gender they are.

It’s Time For Reformation

It is time for reformation. It is time for a return to the biblical order for the church and the home for the delivery of the message of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ to the world, for the eternal joy of all who believe, to a thousand generations.