Let’s begin with an illustration.

I am sure you have heard of the shoe company called TOMS. They do not make high quality shoes. They do not make the most attractive shoes. Nor are they the most comfortable shoes, yet this little company gained incredible popularity very quickly because of the reason behind buying their shoes: for every pair you purchase they donate a pair to a needy child. The reason behind buying these shoes is what drove their incredible success. TOMS became a movement in and of themselves, but the danger of a movement showed up when TOMS became a norm in youth culture; the true reason for their popularity was diluted as Sketchers, Forever 21, Justice, and many other stores started producing knockoff TOMS. You see what happened? The shoe became such a norm that now people don’t know why they are buying overpriced, low quality, and uncomfortable shoes. The reason was diluted by the power of the movement. The church cannot afford to let the reason drop in our pursuit of family ministry.

Family ministry is a necessity in the American church, and many bestselling ministry books are currently in the area of family ministry. The rise of the movement tells pastors that there is something important going on, so we all want to make sure we take part in it. The problem is that in our vigor to join the movement, we may miss the reason the movement began. Much like teenagers buying knockoff TOMS, we may be missing the point.

Average Christian mothers and fathers likely understand the family to be a launching pad for each child, providing them with all of the love, safety, and affirmation needed to be a successful individual.[i] That sounds great, but is it what God wants for the family? If you read through the Bible (including the Old Testament) it is very difficult to squeeze the individualistic, success-driven picture of the American family into a Biblical response of why God created the family. Time and time again God commanded fathers to teach their children all the commands of the Lord, remind their children of the great things the Lord had done, and discipline their children in order to teach submission to the Lord.

What if we, as Christians, actually believed God knew best? What if we, as parents, actually believed God had a greater plan for our families than raising successful (i.e. rich) children? What if God gave children to parents in order to fulfill the great commission?

Then Christian parents would probably believe themselves to be the primary disciplers of their children.

This is why we need Family Ministry. We need to retrain the American church to understand the family as a primary tool in God’s plan of redemption. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think that God wants to use families in His plan of redemption; he has been doing it since he called one man and his family to be a blessing to all other families. God still wants to use the family, but the family has to be redeemed. It has to be spiritually redeemed by Christ, and its purpose has to be redeemed by parents.

Parents need to see their role through the lens of the Bible. Deuteronomy 6 needs to become more than an idea; it needs to become a guidebook for how we make disciples, starting in our own home. Pastors need to reinforce this role to the parents in our congregations. We need to understand that the first and most important influence in the life of a child will never be our youth pastor; therefore, we should be working to train those who will be doing the heavy lifting of discipleship. We need to minister to families with a constant focus on the reason why. The local church is where parents meet to be equipped and trained; families are the frontlines of gospel warfare.

If we ride the wave of family ministry and lose the reason we need it, then we have done nothing more than take part in a flash in the pan movement, here today and gone tomorrow.  

If, however, we work through Scripture and come to an understanding of the family as God’s training ground for new disciples, then we are going to be a part of the greatest movement in the history of the world: the movement of a perfect, holy God towards his sinful, needy children.

Abortion has been legalized since the 1973 Roe v. Wade supreme court decision. During the course of these 38 years, nearly 50 million unborn children have been murdered before taking their first breath. Much attention has been given to the harmful physical, emotional and psychological effects to the potential mothers. Kermit Gosnell, a Pennsylvania abortion doctor received national attention for his abominable clinic deemed a “house of horrors” where seven babies have died during gruesome, barbaric abortion operations. One woman also perished after an overdose on pain medication. Gosnell made millions performing late-term abortions in the poverty-striken West Philadelphia section. See the article HERE.

The atrocious acts of destroying unborn life should rightfully be brought to light. The harmful effects abortion has on women warrants our outrage as well. But a third dimension, one necessarily present in every single life terminated cannot be marginalized: the man. A woman cannot become pregnant without a man’s sperm. By virtue of this, a man does, and should have an equal right to the life created. The feminist notion of “my right for control over my own body” is false considering the indispensible dual-role in procreation. And although some men pressure, threaten and even pay for the abortion, the countless men who do not concede to the mother’s abortion are negatively affected –in a few cases, guilt even drives men to suicide. Consider the following case: [...]

This Wednesday, January 5^th, marks the two-year anniversary of my arrival in Suriname, South America. In the dark, early morning hours of that first day, my feet touched the pavement at Zanderij International Airport and I inhaled my first breath of the balmy, moisture-laden Amazon air. What proceeded was 22 months of service with the International Mission Board as a short-term missionary in what is known as the Journeyman program. Naturally, the width and depth of the life-changing, worldview-shaping, spiritually blessed experience is much too long to sum up in a thousand or so words. To sum it up in a sentence: God was good and his hand was at work throughout my entire term. [...]

The reality that this video brings to our attention is an alarming one. Shouldn’t it shake us up a bit to hear that two-thirds of the young people who attend church throughout high school are leaving once they move into college? I’d say so. This video maintains that the church has failed the next generation, claiming that the church is in a state of emergency. I probably wouldn’t go so far as to say that we are in a state of emergency—since God still sits on His throne and is still in complete control—but these statistics should bring pause to those of us who are leading churches and cause us to ask ourselves some questions. Are we failing the next generation? Why is it that the youth are falling away from the church when they leave their student ministries? [...]

Do you ever cringe at the sight of a homeless man standing alongside the road holding his usual cardboard sign? Do you swap lanes as you approach a traffic light, so that your vehicle won’t have to come to a stop next to him? Do you intentionally and casually glance the other way, hoping not to make eye contact with him, as though you really don’t even notice him? While giving the man on the side of the road our money might not be the most efficient way to help the homeless, I would venture to guess that most of us never think about homeless people at all unless we are confronted by their cardboard signs as we turn off the interstate.

As this video shows, several people in my church have taken it upon themselves to lead a ministry to the homeless people of Louisville. I have had the personal opportunity to take part in the outreach only once, but it was a life changing experience to say the least. Unless you take time to talk with and listen to these people (yes, they really are people), you might not ever come to know their stories and how they have ended up the way they are. Most of them have made one or two life-changing decisions in their past, forcing them to live on the streets without shelter. It’s a sobering thought to consider that we are potentially only one or two choices away from being in their same situation. This should humble us and lead us to recognize that it is only by God’s grace that our basic needs are met.

This Christmas and even in the upcoming year, I hope you will take time to think about someone besides yourself and your family. What can you do to show Christ’s love and compassion to the hurting, the needy, the poor, the starving, the diseased, and the homeless who live all around you? Will you do anything? Does the whole idea of serving these people make you feel uncomfortable? Rest assured that they know all too well what it feels like to be uncomfortable. They are, in fact, no strangers at all to discomfort. They know what it feels like to attempt sleep in the midst of a snow storm, to eat a meal during a thunderstorm, or to hide from the burning sun during the scorching heat of summer. They know full well what it feels like to spend Christmas alone, without anyone except their fellow homeless buddies to walk through their loneliness with them. We who live in our comfortable homes, we who never miss a meal, we whose closets are overflowing with clothes, we who sleep in thousand dollar beds need to wake up to the needs that surround us. What will you do to help? Will you help anyone beside yourself? Or, will you turn your mind’s eye away from the man on the side of the street who cries out to you for help with his cardboard sign?

I have a theory. I would like to try it out on you, so please let me know what you think.

I believe that apologetics is a lost church practice that, when brought back into common practice, will bring forth revival in America. Let me unpack this a bit; I will explain what I mean in my theory, and then I will address what it does not mean to avoid pointless straw man battles.

First things first, apologetics means defense of the faith. An apologist is one who defends the faith. They are not professionals at the art of asking forgiveness. We are not talking about that kind of apology. So, apologetics, not apologies, are a normal and scripturally mandated task of the universal church. It is in 1 Peter 3:15 where Paul tells Timothy that he should always be prepared to give an answer for the joy he holds even through suffering. The Greek word used for “give an answer” is where we get the words apology and apologetics. Going deeper, apologetics is the defense of the faith against non-believers.

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“Our walls are crumbling and our people are in shame.” This is the answer that Nehemiah received when he asked a fellow Jew about the state of their people. You see, Nehemiah was working in a foreign land in the court of a foreign king. Without the aid of the internet, he could only hear of his homeland through second and third hand sources. When he heard that answer, he was devastated, as I am sure you could imagine.

Fast forwarding in the story, we see the king allowing and assisting Nehemiah to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls and fix the gates. Along the way, Nehemiah shows himself to be a very adept and natural leader, securing the king’s grant of safe passage through the kingdom with all the materials necessary to complete the job, also given from the king. Once he arrived in Jerusalem, Nehemiah got to work. More specifically, he got the people to work.

Nehemiah scouted out the state of the city walls and he appointed all of the different people to different areas, and by the end of the day, the city walls were half their original height, much to the chagrin of the enemies of Judah. When they threatened to attack the city to stop the rebuilding, Nehemiah recorded his response in Chapter 4:

• 13. So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open spaces, I stationed the people by their clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. 14. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and the officials and the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.

Now, I say to Christians living in America “Our walls are crumbling and our people are in shame.”

It is time for those with the authority of King Jesus to rebuild the walls in order to protect our land. I want to give three areas of Christian culture in America where I believe the walls are crumbling. Then I exhort all believers and, more specifically, pastors to defend the low places in our spiritual walls and bring honor and glory back to the Kingdom of God. The three areas are:

1. The Family. As the foundational institution of society, the slow eradication of the family is the first area where Christians need to buildup the spiritual walls of the Kingdom. Pastors should focus upon training men to be authentic husbands and fathers. They should love their wives as Christ loved us, his people. Christian men should raise their children in the way of the Word, teaching them honor and respect. If men were really being Christ-like husbands, I promise you that divorce would have no place in the church.
2. Doctrinal Integrity. In America today, it is cool to be spiritual. But Christians are not called to be spiritual. We are called to make disciples, baptizing in the name of the trinitarian God of the Bible, and teach these disciples to obey all the commandments God has given us. We are not supposed to follow our heart, seek a global truth, or define God in any way other than His revelation of Himself in the Bible. If we do not preach our doctrine, Christianity will become one more small voice lost in the crowd of modern spiritual seekers.
3. Missional Abandonment. By this I mean that pastors should encourage their people to adopt the zeal, determination, and reckless abandonment that is evidenced by foreign missionaries. What if God’s people began to reorient their lives around the Gospel instead of their career? What would happen if Christians moved places and set up their lives based upon the needs of the Kingdom, the spread of the Gospel, or the call of the Holy Spirit instead of following the call of their profession? That would not only change the face of Christianity in America, that would change America.

Therefore, I implore pastors and concerned Christians to concern themselves with the weakest areas of the spiritual walls of our time, just as Nehemiah stepped up and addressed the needs of his time.

All believers are called to the ministry. Jesus set this precedent for all who seek to follow after him. He called the disciples to follow him and leave what they were doing, and for most of them, that meant choosing him over their work. They were asked to leave their jobs and follow. In case you need a reminder, the disciples were not the intellectual elite with years of theological training; they were simple tradesmen called out of spiritual death to find new life in Christ. Once alive, they were expected to bring new life in others through the power of Christ. He expects the same of all who take on his name; “all” includes you.

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