Page 4007 – Christianity Today (2024)

For the past four years, a church in our area has grown at a phenomenal growth rate-more than 20 percent a year. From a single service in a strip mall, it now offers three Sunday morning services, two Saturday evening services, and a Wednesday night service. Without question the church needs a bigger facility.

Plenty of buildings are available for rent, but here’s the problem: repeatedly the city council has refused to give them the “conditional use permit” that would allow them to change locations and hold services in an industrial park, warehouse, or even the old flea market building. Today the church is trying to relocate further down the strip mall into a vacant former box store, but the city has threatened to declare the entire mall as “blighted” and just passed an ordinance whereby “there could be no church located within 25 feet of a liquor store.” A liquor store happens to be adjacent to the box store. (Normally ordinances of this type are passed to protect a church not the liquor store!) The city leaders, in effect, have declared, “Growing Churches Not Welcome Here.”

Is this a scene from a Peretti novel where the forces of good are pitted against the demonic forces of evil? Not necessarily. There’s another side to the story.

City leaders are elected to represent the interests of the community. By and large they are rational folks weighing economic alternatives. The city needs revenue, and to them, tax-producing businesses benefit the community more than churches do. Many city officials cannot imagine how a church could possibly benefit the community more than another Starbucks, Blockbuster, or tanning salon. They’ve never been given enough evidence to the contrary.

In contrast, on the west side of Jacksonville, Florida, every month the city council holds its meetings at Potter’s House Christian Fellowship. The mayor of Jacksonville has spoken at Potter’s House events and openly credits the church as one that is changing Jacksonville for the better.

What makes the difference? How can one group of city officials be so against a growing church while another group so openly embraces one?

A growing number of churches have realized that church has got to be more than growing attendance, seeker sensitivity, and small groups. They’re fighting the perception that churches are isolated, insulated, and uninvolved with the life of the neighborhood. Seeking to be transformational salt, light, and leaven, they’re taking ministry outside their four walls, and thinking about themselves and their neighborhoods differently.

Bishop Vaughn McLaughlin, pastor of Potter’s House continually challenges the 60-some pastors he mentors with a haunting question: “Would the community weep if your church were to pull out of the city? Would anybody notice if you left?”

Here’s how churches are making the changes necessary to transform their communities and leave people fundamentally better off-whether or not they ever join that particular church—and thus show themselves to be good neighbor.

From “serve us” to service

Chuck Colson has observed that when the Communists took over Russian in 1917, they did not make Christianity illegal. Their constitution, in fact, guaranteed freedom of religion. But they did make it illegal for the church to do any “good works.” No longer could the church fulfill its historic role in feeding the hungry, educating the children, housing the orphan, or caring for the sick. What was the result? After 70 years, the church was largely irrelevant to the communities in which it dwelt.

Take away service and you take away the church’s power, influence, and evangelistic effectiveness. The power of the gospel is combining the life-changing message with selfless service.

In the mid 1980’s a small group in Mariner’s Church in Costa Mesa, California, met for a year to study every Scripture that had to do with the people of God and the needs of a community. They read Christian authors and began to acquaint themselves with other community agencies that were meeting the needs of people. They challenged themselves with two questions—”What could we do?” and “What should we do?”

They landed on four ministries they felt they could help—the Orange County Rescue Mission, Habitat for Humanity, Hannah’s House (a women’s shelter), and World Impact (an urban church planting movement).

This was the beginning of Mariner’s “Lighthouse Ministries.” Lighthouse volunteer ministries are built around relationships. Light-house pastor Laurie Beshore says it this way: “What the hurting people of our community need to know is a small part of what they need. These people need someone to believe in them. And we believe in them.”

Today Lighthouse is employing volunteers’ hearts and entrepreneurial skills to believe in the under-resourced in Orange County. In 2001 Lighthouse Ministries employed nearly 3,400 church volunteers who gave 95,000 hours of service (the equivalent of 46 full-time staff!) in the form of tutoring foster children, mentoring motel families, taking kids to camp, visiting the elderly, teaching English at one of their learning centers, working in the Mariner’s Thrift Store ($168,000 in sales last year) distributing Christmas gifts, team building with teens at their leadership camp, assistance with immigration papers, working in transitional housing, or volunteering with Orange County Social Services. They they touched the lives of nearly 12,000 people in their community.

This year they had their first student from their Teen Leadership Team, who lives with his family of nine in a one-bedroom apartment, to be accepted to a 4-year college. Their mission of “Bringing Christ’s hope to those in need” is being fulfilled.

Embracing city services

In our Colorado community a number of pastors realized that they knew very little about the various agencies serving our community. They organized a one-day “Magic Bus Tour” to meet the directors of these agencies, to find out what they did and what help they needed.

They visited eight agencies, including the local homeless shelter, the food bank, a day-care facility, a women’s safe house, a home for runaway youth, and the AIDS project. Though initially met with skepticism, this was the beginning of bridge-building relationships between the churches and the city.

In the spirit of Jeremiah 29:7 (“Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper”), new openness, healing, and friendships have begun. Like Nehemiah who was changed when he came face to face with the needs of Jerusalem, our pastors were changed.

One pastor, who is now taking meals to AIDS patients on a weekly basis, was drawn into this ministry by two things: “This was a group of people who were in need of the grace of God and also the group I was most uncomfortable with, so I just thought it was something God wanted me to be a part of. If anything, this ministry is changing life.”

Nearly every community has a number of human service agencies, morally positive and spiritually neutral, that are doing their best to meet the needs of the under-served and under-resourced people of the community.

Rather than starting a new ministry (which is quite costly to begin and maintain) these pastors found they could form partnerships with existing human service agencies as “partner ministries” of their local congregations.

Instead of each congregation having its own food pantry, they partnered with the local community food bank. Now, when hungry people request food, they refer these folks to their “partner ministry” in which many of their members are serving, thus working side-by-side with others, but as partners who serve “in the name of Jesus.”

In our community, after the “Magic Bus Tour,” churches are effectively touching their cities with the love of Jesus through agencies and mechanisms that already exist! They are now ministering to AIDS patients and using their churches for overflow nights in partnership with the homeless shelter.

No need to expend all the energies to launch a separate tutoring program when Big Brothers and Big Sisters have 200 boys on a waiting list, and Christians are able to invest in the lives of these young people.

Scores of new volunteers are teaching children to read, building Habitat homes, and serving meals to the homeless.

From churches to The Church

Just as the church can be more effective in community transformation when it partners with the community, each congregation can be more effective as it unites with other churches doing together what can’t possibly done alone.

This recaptures the biblical sense that there is really one church in a particular community (The Church in Corinth—or, say, The Church in Little Rock) even though it’s made up of various local congregations throughout the city. All around our nation, from Boston to Maui, ministry leaders of different ethnicities and denominations are uniting around a common purpose, and in the process they are learning to be friends, prayer partners, and co-workers.

Little Rock, Arkansas, is a growing example of the effectiveness of working together. Several years ago several pastors began to meet yearly for a four-day prayer retreat. Praying together led to knowing, respecting, and eventually loving one another.

Unity of spirit grew into a resolute unity of purpose. Was there something they could do better together than any of them could do by themselves? The idea of implementing a significant community service project emerged.

Fellowship Bible Church (FBC) pastor Robert Lewis writes, “Whereas prayer became the catalyst for a new unity between our churches, good works have become a catalyst for building a new credibility with our community.”

The pastors made an appointment with the mayor of Little Rock and asked one question, “How can we help you?” The mayor responded with a list of challenges facing the greater Little Rock area.

For the past four years, more than 100 Little Rock congregations and over 5,000 volunteers have served their communities by building parks and playgrounds and refurbishing nearly 50 schools. They set records for Red Cross blood donations and have signed up thousands of new organ donors. They began reaching out to the community through “life skill” classes (on marriage, finances, wellness, aging, etc.) in meeting rooms at banks, hotels, and other public forums (with more than 5,000 people attending).

Together the churches have donated nearly a million dollars to community human service organizations that are particularly effective in meeting the needs of at-risk youth. They have renovated homes and provided school uniforms, school supplies, winter coats, and Christmas toys for hundreds of children.

After getting new shelving for her classrooms, one school principal said, “I think this is the most fabulous day of my life as far as education is concerned. I’ve been in this 29 years, and this is the first time a community or church project has come through for us.”

As a result of churches becoming The Church, they let their light shine brighter. The love and values of Jesus Christ are made real to the community. Did anyone notice?

Last year Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee commended the work of the faith community when he said, “It is the work of the church that makes possible what never could be accomplished by a governmental agency. A check will never substitute for a church.”

The city is my parish

As we see our congregations as part of a larger city church it frees us to think of our city as the parish in which God has placed us. A parish differs from a congregation in that a parish is a geographical scope of concern and responsibility. A congregation is a subset of a parish.

Urban theologian Ray Bakke says that every minister has two functions: (1) to be pastor to the church’s members and (2) chaplain to the community.

Rich Bledsoe is a pastor of a small church in our city.

“My congregation is around 70 people, but my parish is over 90,000!” he says. Rich loves his congregation but also has a heart for the parish. He thinks about the city, prays for the city, visits and prays with our city leaders and workers. Rich is a city pastor. His office is the local coffee shop. His tools are his cell phone and his laptop.

I see him as an embodiment of Isaiah 61 and those who “rebuild … restore … (and) renew” the city, thus earning the title, “And you will be called priests of the Lord, you will be named ministers of our God” (Isaiah 61:6).

A church they’d miss

Let’s finish the story of Potter’s House Christian Fellowship in Jacksonville. In 1988 Vaughn and Narlene McLaughlin moved into a depressed area of Jacksonville to begin a church designed to meet the needs of the whole person.

Today their converted Bell South building called the “multiplex” houses nearly 20 for-profit businesses including the Potter’s House Café, a credit union, a beauty salon, a graphic design studio, and a Greyhound Bus terminal, all started by church members who lacked capital but had a dream. Another building serves as an incubator for two dozen new businesses. The multiplex also houses a 500-student Christian Academy.

In addition to ministries of economic empowerment and education, they have nearly 25 other ministries such as a prison and jail ministry, youth ministry, Big and Little Brothers, and free car repair. They have a team of 250 volunteers who “look after things in the city” even if it means to simply sweep the streets of Jacksonville.

Though an outstanding preacher, Bishop Vaughn McLaughlin considers ministry what happens outside the church. “If you are not making an impact outside of your four walls, then you are not making an impact at all.”

In 1999 Bishop McLaughlin was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Florida State University. Is it any mystery why the city and its leaders have so wholeheartedly embraced Potter’s House?

The question he repeatedly asks is the question that churches in all kinds of neighborhoods are increasingly asking themselves: “Would the community weep if your church were to pull out of the city? Would anybody notice if you left?”

In Jacksonville, they would notice. In Jacksonville, they would weep.

Eric Swanson is the associate director of the Urban Church Network and lives in Louisville, Colorado.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

A friend is on a search committee seeking a full-time worship leader. So far they have sifted through more than 100 names. Picky? Yeah, but the committee has to satisfy five culturally defined generations that now populate most churches. Each has its own taste in worship, and each thinks the other four are a bit off-the-wall. So the search is difficult.

How we got here

Fifty years ago they would have sought an arm-waving song leader who fired up people to sing three gospel songs, led in prayer, sang a solo, and turned things over in a timely manner to the preacher. Sound systems didn’t exist then; neither did light bars, words on screens, or drums (in church anyway). Under those conditions, “Blessed Assurance” never sounded better!

About forty years ago, song leaders morphed into choir directors, who were paid (this ticked off some folk) to recruit a choir and present anthems. Most people came to like this and didn’t notice that we amateur worshipers in the pew were singing less now.

Thirty years ago (give or take) full-time ministers of music appeared. They championed age-graded music programs: multiple choirs, cantatas, concerts, and complex musical extravaganzas with orchestras (and live animals at Christmas even). Most of us thought this development was quite classy.

But in truth we pew-people were worshiping less and being entertained more. Clapping (to do or not to do) became a serious issue for elder boards. The professional Christian musician debuted, and a star system was born.

Over the past twenty years, we saw the advent of the worship leader and the worship team. Each team member was armed with a long-cord microphone (uniformly held). The team was usually young, sincere, enthusiastic, often quite talented. Organs were replaced by electronic keyboards, drums, and bass guitar; and we all learned to clap (on 2 and 4, I think). Hymn books were discarded, and churches mounted video projectors and displayed PowerPoint. Sound speakers grew bigger than your garage; programmable lighting stirred the senses; artificial smoke simulated Gethsemane.

We worshiped. But, sometimes, we sacrificed the experience of worship to the … well, the experience itself.

The good and the bad

My opinion: for many young people choosing a church, worship leaders have become a more important factor than preachers. Mediocre preaching may be tolerated, but an inept worship leader can sink things fast. Worship leaders now do more to define a church’s culture than anyone else on the staff. This is my opinion, not my wish.

The good things about worship leaders: they arouse our feelings and our desire to be joyful; they offer less performance-based music (exit ministers of music) and more congregational singing (enter leaders of worshipers); they realize that people need to spend more time loving God through personal and corporate expression. A good worship leader is a precious gift.

The not-so-good things: some worship leaders don’t quit a song easily and tend to take the endings into mantra-like overtimes. Many seem unaware that the over-50 crowd can physically hurt when they stand too long (pitched floors are deadly on hips, knees, and feet, while stages are flat). Oh, and many worship leaders don’t seem to know that worship involves more than music. Thoughtful, sensitive prayer, provocative readings, and soul-stirring liturgies enlarge the menu.

Spotting a good one

You can appreciate why my friend’s search committee has a bear of a challenge on its hands. If they sought my advice, here are five things I’d tell them to look for in a new worship leader:

1. How the worship leader prays in public. Are the leader’s prayers marked by deep reverence? Do they reflect an awareness that every decade of an adult’s life brings new issues and preoccupations needing intercession? Some younger people know this; others don’t. Are the prayers purposed to accomplish more than just segue between songs?
2. The dignity given to public reading of Scripture. The people need to hear the Bible read with a quality that rivals that of a good soloist.
3. The songs the worship leader picks. They should be singable (so we can hum them during the work week; sing them if we go to jail, like Paul and Silas). Realistic (not schlocky, with vocabulary we’d never use outside church). Honest (not promising God things we really have no intention of being or doing). Broad (representative of the varied singing traditions of the last several centuries; old songs with new instrumentation is a great idea).Worship music that speaks to us is both timely and timeless.
4. The use of corporate silence and encouragement of historical reflection. Not all worship is done to the beat of a drum. We need expressions that speak to all the senses. And we need connection to the ancient expressions of our faith. Note how the worship leader feels about the great historic traditions of creed, liturgy, and sacramental symbol that remind us that folks have been worshiping for centuries before we arrived.
5. How the worship leader lays the carpet for a sermon to reach both heart and mind. Are the worshipers prepared emotionally and theologically to be encouraged, challenged, or reproved?I have tried to think of the single greatest worship experience I’ve ever had. It happened, I think, just after midnight on New Year’s Eve at the InterVarsity Urbana Missionary Convention of 1976. There was no worship leader. Not even a preacher (which amazes me).

The convention concluded with a Communion service. After the benediction, 17,000 students began to head for the arena portals and their buses for trips back home. Someone in the crowd—not a worship leader, but a worshiper—began the song “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord.” It’s one where the men sing a line and the women echo back.

Some 17,000 stopped in their tracks and sang! And sang, and sang, and sang. We sang it over and over, without leaders or musicians. No one wanted to exit from holy ground, to abandon the memories of sacred hours, to step out of God’s special presence. So we just kept singing.

My daughter, Kristy, then nine, was with me. She felt the charisma of the moment. She grabbed my hand and said softly, “Daddy, this is what heaven is going to be like.”

I think she was right. I want to tell my friend to find a worship leader who can make that sort of moment happen more or less regularly.

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Jennifer knocks nervously on the pastor’s door. She wonders if she can find the courage to explain her story of a painful marriage, physical abuse, and divorce. When she enters the office, the pastor sees the pain in her eyes. “Jennifer, I think I know why you are here. You and Dave are divorcing.”

After an hour of talking, Jennifer feels neither comfort nor support from her pastor. But they do pray together. As she leaves his office, Jennifer wipes back tears and looks for her car. She has no idea how she is going to support her three children. She has been a stay-at-home mom for eight years. She feels alone, confused, and afraid of the future. Praying with the pastor was good, but Jennifer is losing hope. Her pantry is nearly empty, and she doesn’t have the courage to tell anyone how desperate she is.

When Jennifer arrives home, her kids ask, “Mommy, what’s for dinner? We’re hungry!”

There are countless Jennifers in our churches today: single parents who have to accomplish nearly everything alone, like working full-time, keeping house, maintaining the car, paying the bills, and ferrying the kids to school, church, Little League, and piano lessons.

While many churches are helping single parents with practical and financial needs, the churches that most effectively assist single parents also listen to the needs of the heart.

Make them visible and valued

Alan and Linda Kibble of Faith Community Church in The Woodlands, Texas, first became aware of these needs when their daughters befriended children from single-parent homes.

Realizing these single moms needed encouragement, they presented the need for single-parent ministry to their church’s governing board and offered to help meet it. The result is a ministry called the Oasis.

The goal of the Oasis is to encourage single parents by making them a visible and valued segment of the congregation. The Oasis team does this in four ways:

1. “Bless a Single-Parent” connects families with goods and services. An insert in the bulletin lists material needs, projects, and ministries the congregation can provide. Church leaders personally participate in meeting these needs.
2. Activities and classes. At Faith Community many educational and social opportunities are offered, and childcare is provided at all weeknight meetings so single parents can participate in the programs and ministry teams.
3. A Web site especially for single parents: www.faithcc.org/oasis. The site lists all the church ministries, solicits donations such as furniture and appliances from the congregation, and provides links to other single-parent ministries in the community.
4. Single Parent Sunday. Worship services are dedicated to and hosted by single parents, giving them opportunity to be recognized for their role in church life.

According to Alan and Linda, this is the most effective event Oasis sponsors. The message is “We welcome and value you.” For moms or dads raising their kids alone, who feel apart from to the two-parent culture, they need to hear that often.

“A woman in her thirties came to the Oasis Sunday school class,” Alan says. “She was unmarried, pregnant, withdrawn, and alone. She had experienced more than her share of rejection.

“She was in a town where she knew no one, and the father of her baby was gone. She had little church background. We welcomed her to the group and tried to make her feel comfortable.

“One Sunday after class, with teary eyes, she told us she felt no one cared about her. She said she wanted someone who would always be there for her no matter what happened.”

In Faith Community Church, she found a church that welcomed and encouraged her. She also found someone who would always be there for her; she received Christ that morning.

“Today,” Alan says, “she continues to blossom into a capable, loving Christian mother of a beautiful three-year-old daughter.”

Offer connections

Laura Dodson, a single mother and former coordinator of family life at Church of Our Savior in Cocoa Beach, Florida, wanted to know what caused her church’s families to struggle. She and the pastoral staff developed a survey and placed copies in the pews at every service. Eighteen responses were from single parents, and they all requested a support group.

Laura then planned an ongoing support group, not only for the single parents, but also their children. The evenings began with a fast food meal for everyone. After dinner the children, working in two age groups, were given opportunities to explore and express their emotions through puppet shows, craft projects, and other activities. The parents went next door to a video-hosted discussion on issues like alienation, finances, and the grief slope. Before rejoining their children, parents were given a key question to provoke discussion of the night’s activities at home.

Fellowship for single parents doesn’t always have to take the form of a traditional support group. Crossroads Church in Corona, California, does not offer a separate single-parent ministry. Yet the church has been successful in ministering to single parents.

Carl and Noryne Mascarella, both on staff at Crossroads, realized that the church’s singles shared much in common with its single parents. In fact, the single parents insisted they didn’t want to be separated from the other singles. Instead of dividing the two groups, Crossroads Church created an All Singles’ Night for the whole community.

To facilitate the mixing of singles and single parents, Crossroads Church offers free childcare during the weekly Friday night gathering. The evening includes a meal for everyone, including the children, a lesson and discussion time at round tables, and an activity. The activity might be a movie, a concert, board games, or even dance lessons. Carl says, “Think of it as a date night, with you and a hundred of your closest friends.”

Provide ears and opportunities

Pamela McKnight lost her husband to a lengthy illness while a member of Richland Hills Church of Christ in Fort Worth, Texas. Her plight awakened the church to the growing number of single parents in the congregation, so they decided to hire someone to work with single parents and their children. During their search, the leaders recognized something else. Pamela had a tender heart and a vision for single-parent families. So they hired Pamela!

They learned that enabling and empowering single parents can address many needs at the same time. Pamela seeks to do for other single parents what the church did for her. She networks single parents with reputable community resources, including financial and mental health counselors, to help them build a secure foundation for family living. As an example, Pamela reports this story:

“Cathy, who is in her forties with two kids, had been away from the church for several years. She owned her trailer, but then lost it, was driving a borrowed car, was out of work and unable to return to her trade because of a neck injury.

“When Cathy heard about our ministry through a mailing, she met with me one-to-one. A year later she is working successfully at a Christian business, is living in a house as part of our church’s homeless ministry, has a car that was donated by a member of the church, and has completed counseling.”

Pamela says the individual attention she offers may be the most important factor in single-parent ministry. She often takes people to lunch and simply listens to their journeys, to assure them that in this church, the single parent is more than a faceless statistic.

These churches succeed not because of programs and budgets, but because they listen to practical needs and prayer requests. And they listen to what single parents desire most: to be valued, to be part of a supportive community, and to be empowered to build a new and healthy family life.

Barbara Schiller is a single mother and founder of Single Parent Family Resources. www.singleparentfamilyresources.com.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

When I divorced 20 years ago, I couldn’t find a Christian support group for divorced people. There were groups that could help psychologically, but I couldn’t find one founded in the Bible and prayer. Without faith-centered assistance, I felt a huge emptiness.

Later, when I joined my church’s staff, we searched for something that would minister to the divorced from a uniquely Christian perspective. We discovered DivorceCare, a 13-week program that helps divorced people minister to divorced people.

Each session begins with a video presentation from an expert like Larry Burkett, Tony Evans, or Les Carter. The local church leader—who must also have suffered divorce—then facilitates discussion and prayer. Since 1993 more than 8,000 churches in 22 countries have been equipped to host DivorceCare groups. The nearest group can be found at www.divorcecare.com.

Our ministry has welcomed men and women from inside and outside the church, some in the process of divorce, some who have been divorced for many years.

The reaction of one attender: “I couldn’t have gotten through without our group. The rest of the world tells me to ‘get on with my life,’ but when we’re together, we know it takes time to hurt and time to heal. I feel loved again.”

The greatest healing comes from helping each other. It has been particularly helpful to combine men and women in the same group to affirm that divorce hurts everyone and to avoid villainizing the opposite sex. Mostly, the group provides answers and support. But we have also seen some couple reconcile and remarry.

Cathy Cryer is the director of caring ministries at Hosanna! Lutheran Church in St. Charles, Illinois. To find out more about DivorceCare, call 1-800-489-7778 or visit www.divorcecare.com.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Let me be blunt: If this article doesn’t work, blame my editor. If it does, you can thank me. Just kidding—sort of. He suggested the topic of this piece. I’m inclined to trust his wisdom. Besides, I could never walk away from a fight when I was a kid. But this is scarier than a fight for an old man. It’s about sex.

You know that book, The Joy of Sex? Think of this as The Terror of Sex. What could be more frightening for an old man than the cold realization that your sexual desire is less now than it once was? And you see a definite trajectory.

I led a Bible study made up of men from 23 to 64. Sometimes we older men would swap stories about the indignities we suffer at our yearly physical exams.

We would laugh uproariously as we watched the color drain from the faces of the younger men. They had no idea! Neither did we when we were their age.

But one thing we never joked about was the fact that our sex drive was considerably less than theirs. Then the color might have drained from our faces.

Do most men feel this fear? The boom in Viagra sales, along with the proliferation of potency and penile enhancement clinics offers strong support. There has to be a better way to get old than this, to find out what it means “to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). A good start would be to let diminishing sexual desire do its proper work of humiliation, especially if we have worshiped sex, as so many of us have in this culture.

Though painful, it’s good to be stripped of an idol, to find out that the growing bald spot on our heads really isn’t a solar panel for a sex machine, after all. It was good for the false god Dagon to topple when set next to the Ark of the Covenant.

Prop up the idol all we want, with drugs and surgery and psychotherapy, we will be better off to just let it fall over—if its demise leads us to worship the Creator instead of the creation. Jesus said the humble would inherit the earth.

I don’t want Viagra! Finally, at long last, my errant desires are more manageable. Why would I want to go back to the raging hormonal myopia of adolescence?

Frankly, I think I see my beloved wife—and all women—more clearly now, more appreciatively. She and I used to joke that sex makes kids and then kids kill sex. We were referring to the exhaustion many couples feel when caring for little ones.

Then we discovered that sex rises back up again, better, stronger, wiser. Maybe the urge dropped a bit, but the meaning soared, and meaning is a powerful aphrodisiac. It horrifies my young adult kids to hear us say this, but sex now is paradoxically better than ever.

How do old people make love? Very carefully, says the theologically perceptive joke. We are careful because making love with one foot closer to the grave, and the other on a banana peel, is a dangerous thing. But hope makes it safe, and fun.

Like Job, we can thank God for what he gave instead of cursing him for what he took away. More important, we can thank God that we now see that sex was always less, and more, than we thought. It is not a stairway to heaven, or heaven itself. It’s a signpost to the God of heaven.

If we like sex, it’s because it is a little bit like the God who made it. In ways our shrunken imaginations can only guess at, our bodies were not made for sex, but for the God who made sex.

What can that possibly mean? The only way to find out is when sex ends and what is sown in weakness is raised in strength, and we say, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

Ben Patterson is campus pastor at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The City of Philadelphia called recently and asked for the names of some “good families” they could honor. I knew we could give them hundreds of names from our church. I don’t know why we hadn’t had a special day to honor these families before.

Every year we recognize men on Men’s Day and women on Women’s Day. The whole church nominates people who are living a godly life. All those nominated are recognized, but the ones who are at the top we name “Mighty Men of David” and “Women of Great Price.” We give our congregation examples to follow. And now we’re doing it with whole families. Our church has become known for growing “good families.”

In fact, our church has a near-zero divorce rate. Only one couple that’s taken our family ministry training course in the past twenty years has divorced.

We’re training men to be strong husbands and fathers. Our church membership has been as high as 48 percent male, that is until the single women started hearing about the kinds of men we produce!

The pregnancy rate among our teenagers is much lower than the average, and our children are significantly less involved in drugs and gangs.

These statistics would be outstanding for any church. What makes them more amazing is where they’re happening—in urban Philadelphia. As our name suggests, our church has become a stronghold for the African-American family. And we’ve done it by teaching people the biblical standards for marriage and family life before they get married, by training couples to minister to couples in trouble, and by honoring those who live a godly lifestyle.

Team-teaching a new standard

Family has been an important focus for us for over 35 years, but what we call “family” has changed a lot since I founded the church in 1966. In our society, there has been such an emphasis on being single that many people don’t know how to be married. And with the commercial reinforcement of the single lifestyle, many people don’t know if they want to be married. Many churches don’t have a real strategy to train and develop families, so the single and divorced people don’t have anyone to turn to for help.

As a former mechanical design engineer, I wanted to bring some structure and planning to this problem. Marriage is more complicated than anything I’ve ever done in engineering, but over the years, we have developed training courses and counseling ministries to teach our people how to have good marriages and strong families. We have ministry teams for single mothers and blended families, hurting teenagers, widows, and families affected by drugs and poverty. We have 57 ministry teams in all.

We’re into prevention as well as restoration, and the church is a training center for Christian families. On Sunday afternoons, we offer the Bible Institute with several tracks. There are Bible studies and courses for preparing people for life issues. And we have a two-and-a-half year, university-level course in counseling to teach our church members to counsel others.

Each week my team and I also teach pastors from churches in our area how to start family ministry teams in their own churches. I advise them to start with an assessment of their congregation’s needs. What kind of training do they need first? Let them tell you. In a smaller church, the pastor may be the only one leading family ministry, but if the pastor is committed to it, he won’t be the only one for long.

Family ministry with proven results

Our church is located in a low-income neighborhood, but our members are mostly middle-class. The reason they are in the middle class is because of the way we train them.

A sociologist from Eastern College in Philadelphia studied our church about ten years ago. She found that within three years of joining our church, most people are out of debt, out of poverty, and are often moving out of the neighborhood. But they continue to worship and minister here, because we’re committed to evangelizing the inner city, leading people to faith in Christ and teaching them a better lifestyle.

We have high expectations of the people who join our church. With 4,400 active members, I tell the pastors I work with, “Don’t worry about demanding a high level of accountability from your members. The church may be the only place that makes any demands on them.”

New church members join a six-person discipleship group. Over the next nine months, we teach them about following Christ and sanctification, the roles of husband and wife and the sanctified single life, and about men not exploiting women and women being honest with men. We deal frankly with sexual issues and relationships.

We begin by training single adults about marriage and about the mate selection process. So many problems can be avoided if people will simply find the right mate. Even if both of them are Christians, it may not be a good match. I refuse to marry any couple until they have been courting for one year and until they have completed our 16-week premarital training class.

I make a few people mad, but with only one divorce from all the couples who have completed the course, it’s worth it. We want to develop families that are good families from the beginning.

We also retrain dysfunctional families. With so many out-of-wedlock births—more than 60 percent in the African-American community—many women bring children from other relationships into their marriage, even their first marriage. Then that becomes a new problem area. Blended families do not function at all like regular families. The highest divorce rate is in blended families that don’t blend. And they won’t blend unless we teach them ahead of time what to do.

Our classes for blended families are well attended, but often the people who most need help don’t come to the classes. That’s when we do the “wrap around.”

A holy SWAT team

Typically the wife is the first to contact the church. A friend tells her about the services we offer, and so she calls for a counseling appointment. The counselor learns that there are many problems involved, and so he or she calls a team of people together from our different ministries, usually a team of four to eight, and they surround the family to teach them and encourage them. They’re a kind of holy SWAT team.

If they didn’t graduate high school, we help with GED classes. If the husband is out of work, they help him work through some issues and get work. If the teenagers are getting into trouble, we connect them with our youth ministry and begin to hold them accountable for their actions. And we teach the family domestic budgeting and how to get out of debt.

I recall one couple that was very undisciplined with money. The husband was stubborn and impulsive. He would waste money on questionable investments on the Internet.

The couple came in for one session, and the counselor could tell there was something unspoken going on between the couple. After a while, they stepped out of the room to talk. When they returned, the man confessed that a relative had loaned them $10,000 to help get out of credit card debt. The man had planned not to tell the counselor about it, and instead to invest it in something speculative. He knew the counselor would not allow that.

As part of our financial training, the couple must agree for the counselor to decide how their debts are paid off. We require a high level of accountability.

Before we begin working with them, we ask, “Are you willing to do what the counselors tell you as they try to help you? If you stop submitting to their leadership, then you’re on your own. Will you give me your word?” Once we get the commitment, then we almost always have the accountability.

This was a breakthrough for this family. When they submitted to the person on their team who is an expert on money, they began to submit in other areas, too. They began to see how God was blessing them and getting them out of debt.

Another family I remember came to us affected by drugs and depression. Both the husband and wife were underemployed. Their story is typical. We brought them into a relationship with Christ, worked with the drug and depression issues, taught them how to get and keep jobs, and how to handle their finances. Within three years, they purchased their own home under a program we support for low-income people.

Setting blessing in motion

I recently preached a twelve-part series on family curses—as the Bible puts it, “The fathers eat grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” I wanted the congregation to see how habitual sin is handed down from one generation to the next, and how the effects are felt for many generations.

I dealt with dishonest gain, immorality, children born out of wedlock, incest, drugs, and depression. There were shocked looks on some faces, but folks were sitting up. I warned them in advance when I would be preaching on subjects they might not want young children to hear, but they brought them anyway. The services were packed and attendance grew during the series, because people wanted their families to break free from the strongholds of the past. And from our experience, they know it can be done—with prayer and repentance and training.

Next I’m going to preach on the blessings of family life—how God blesses those who are obedient to his Word, and the blessings of fidelity in marriage and a two-parent family. From looking around our church, they know that it’s true. We have lots of “good families” and we’re growing many, many more.

Willie Richardson wrote Reclaiming the Urban Family (Zondervan, 1996).

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The most obvious thing in Robert Lewis’s office is the sword. The pastor’s desk and shelves of commentaries are standard issue. The large photos of his four children hugging Minnie Mouse and the family in a raft shooting the rapids are warming, but expected.

Not the sword. It demands to be examined.

A full three feet long, it looks like Excaliber, the sword Arthur pulled from the stone, thereby becoming king. “The men gave that to me,” he says. “It’s attached to the frame by magnets, so I can draw quickly if I need it.”

We chuckle and pull our fingers back a bit.

“The men” are the Men’s Fraternity, the 1,100 who gather at the church Wednesday mornings at six to hear Lewis teach on what it means to be a man. Some are members of his church, Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, Arkansas; many are not. Many are not yet Christians.

“We had a car dealer in town bring all his salesmen,” Lewis says. “He opened the paper and saw our ad: Learn how to be a man. He said, ‘We’re all going to go.’ And you know what, they did. They stuck with me the whole year and finished, too.”

The men haven’t crowned Lewis king, but they hold him and his teachings in high regard.

With fractured families and alternative family forms increasing, and the traditional family in the minority, Lewis’s approach is changing his church and his community. He’s helping harried working parents to cut back their kids’ overprogrammed schedules and to take charge of their moral and spiritual development. He’s taking well-to-do suburban men into the inner city where there are few fathers and giving kids a hope and a future. And with his wife, Sherard, he’s raised four children. Their youngest son is in high school.

Lewis founded Fellowship Bible Church with Bill Parkinson and Bill Wellons in 1977. They are still the preaching team today. Leadership editors Marshall Shelley and Eric Reed met with Lewis to talk about his notable work with men and their families.

What is noble masculinity?

I love that term. Guys stick out their chest when I say the word noble. We still live in a time of dumbed-down masculinity. Nobody knows what it means to be a man, or if it’s okay to be a man. I think guys want to step up and be men, in the way that knights were men.

It started one night in 1989 when the three of us pastors and our families had supper together. Our children were playing around us, and one of the wives said, “How are you going to raise these boys to be real men?”

It was a simple question, but it stopped the conversation. Among us we had seven boys, two about to enter puberty.

Someone else asked, “What is a man?” Amazingly, we couldn’t answer that most basic question. Just silence. Three pastors, and we had not a clue. But it started us talking.

Not long after, my family and I spent the summer in Poland. Our church partners with a seminary there, and it was just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. My two boys and I would take trips into the countryside where we visited huge castles overgrown by the forests. One, right on the German border, was hanging off a cliff. Inside we found armor from the Teutonic Knights. They had feathers attached to their armor so when they galloped into battle, it gave off a terrifying whistle to their enemies. The scene captured our imaginations.

When I returned home, I began studying about knights. Knights grew out of a dark age, a time when there were no noble men. The knights were called to stand above the age, and to stand for something. I knew these were values I wanted to teach my sons.

So you put this to work at home first?

Yes. Bill Wellons and Bill Parkinson and I began to develop the ideals we wanted to teach our sons. We designed family crests and eventually manhood rings.

We learned that knights became knights through a process, and we knew that raising our boys to become men would be a process, too. I thought it was a good model.

We crafted four knighthood ceremonies corresponding to our boys’ development: a page ceremony at 13, a squire at eighteen, and when he completes college, a knighthood ceremony where we at last dub him “a man.” He joins our “roundtable” and he receives his ring. (Lewis adjusts the ring on his right hand.) Later, when he marries, we challenge him a final time with a knight’s calling—to faithfully love a woman for a lifetime.

The boys really got into this. They loved the ceremonies. But more than that, it gave us opportunities to talk with our boys. We developed a short definition of manhood for them to learn, and we said, “We’re going to hold you accountable to this calling, and you can hold us as your fathers accountable to it, too.”

What is your definition of manhood?

A test! (laughter) We compared the first Adam with the last Adam, Christ, and we found four differences. They are our four foundation stones for authentic manhood.

A real man is one who rejects passivity, accepts responsibility, leads courageously, and expects the greater reward, God’s reward.

It gave our sons understanding of who their fathers are and what we expect and hope of them. Our boys are mostly grown now. Of the seven, four received their rings. My oldest son will be the next to finish college. We’ll have a big party and dub him into manhood.

So you wrote the book Raising a Modern-day Knight. What happened when you brought knighthood into your congregation?

We touched a nerve. Fathers took the idea and ran with it. When I shared our story from the pulpit, within six months we had hundreds of dads initiating elaborate ceremonies with their sons and teaching them about manhood. Someone was saying, “It’s okay to be a man, and here’s how.”

Your ministry to the family seems to be about building up fathers.

Men. If men aren’t reclaimed, you can say good-bye to the family. I think that’s the most important challenge of the church today, to create new masculine heroes rather than complain about how dads don’t do enough and how families are falling apart. Young men want to grow up; they just don’t know what up is. I think the most powerful thing that has happened in this church has been this new identity for men. Our men know what a man is; they know what up is. It has energized our church to be a force in the community.

How is the lack of parenting in the previous generation, particularly the lack of a strong male identity, affecting the family and the church?

It shows up in two ways in church life: One is a young man’s inabilility to make and keep commitments. They’ve been raised without a noble calling, and, naturally, it’s made them selfish. They demand more from the church and they give less.

The other is the busy-ness of families but the passivity of fathers. There’s a lot of activity in families, with kids and Mom and Dad all busy with their own schedules. But they don’t do anything together.

I surveyed young families of our church. Many rarely sit down and eat together. I think a lot of this non-stop activity is masking pain and a lack of direction. Suburbia tries to buy it off with sports camps and things that often give kids a narcissistic focus, but little substantive meaning and purpose.

Even in families where parents have stayed together, there’s not much real parenting. We have a lot of hang loose dads. He knows he’s supposed to attend his kids’ games, but aside from that, he doesn’t take an active role in parenting his children. He’s there, but directionless.

How do you prevent the church from contributing to the overscheduling of the family?

At Fellowship Bible Church, we expect only three things: regular worship attendance, participation in a bi-monthly small group and the ministry that flows from it, and spending time with your family. If you don’t do all three of these, you’re not a member here. You go on what we call “independent status.” You’re doing your thing, not ours.

I tell them, “I’m pastoring a church of 5,000, and I’m at home with my family at least four nights a week. If I can do it, you can too.”

And to make time for families, we limit the elective ministries we offer. The staff meets once a year to “cleanse” the calendar. We put on the calendar what each ministry wants to do, then we put on our “family hats.” We go through month by month and ask, “Is this too much for the families of our church? What are we going to drop?” And we drop a lot of stuff.

We tell our people, “Choose your church activities carefully. You don’t need to do everything.” Families are too busy, and somebody must give them permission to say no.

From your own account, the present-but-absent-father scenario describes your childhood home.

We were, in the 1950s, the modern family before it was modern. My family didn’t attend church. Both my parents worked. My mother was the assistant to the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Louisiana, and then administrator of a big law firm. My dad was the son of the editor of our hometown newspaper, but he was spoiled. He was better known in town for how much he drank. My two brothers and I were pretty much on our own. We were hellions.

I have a photo of us boys and my father standing together. Dad is the farthest from the camera, and a shadow covers his face. You really can’t distinguish who he is. That’s how I remember him from my childhood.

As I got older, he drank more, and when he drank he got angry. I became the mediator between him and my mother. When I was in high school, I broke up a lot of fights.

What was the impact on your brothers?

My older brother, who was super smart, became an artist and a lawyer. He became a practicing hom*osexual, and tragically he died of AIDS. My younger brother kind of got lost in life. He studied classical guitar, majored in Oriental History, and after college he drifted off to Wyoming to work, hunt, and fish.

I was an athlete. And gratefully, I had a coach who encouraged me and believed in me. In college I played football for the University of Arkansas, but my freshman year was miserable. I was miserable. A fellow started a chapter of Fellowship of Christian Athletes in our dorm, and in a Bible study I received Christ. Later, I got into a Bible study with Campus Crusade. Two guys there, Don Meredith and Dennis Rainey, who would later found Family Life here in Little Rock, really had an interest in family. I liked what they were saying about families; mine was totally out of control at the time.

In fact, during that time my father seriously injured my mother. In a drunken rage he pushed her as he was leaving the house. He didn’t know that, as he went out the door, she fell backward into the coffee table and broke her neck. It was a terrible time, awful, but God used it to bring my dad to Christ.

Later I helped mediate a reconciliation between my parents.

So that’s the kind of model you brought into your own marriage?

Yes. And that’s why I was so interested in what I was learning from the Scriptures while I was in college. Don taught that men should love their wives as Christ loves the church. Sacrificial love was a new concept to me. So was servant leadership. But I tried it, and my girlfriend, who is now my wife, responded. So I was ready to give another verse a try.

But authentic manhood was still a mystery. I carried a lot of pain there. I was a closed-off, screwed-up male. I probably went into the ministry, in part, to find some answers. Ultimately, it went back to my relationship with my father.

Did you have what you’ve called a “father wound”?

Absolutely. I had no idea how deep it was. A lot of kids of alcoholics have this moment when they really start to get healthy. I think it’s a moment that most men who struggle with dads also need to have. I had been a speaker for Family Life conferences eight years when I had my breakthrough.

Dennis Rainey had gotten on a kick on honoring your father and mother in your adulthood. He described a tribute he wrote to his parents. It stirred me since mine were getting older. So, while on a retreat with other Family Life speakers, I took a free day to write my tribute.

I sat at a table in the hotel restaurant. It was the off-season, and the only guy in the place was behind the bar. I got out a piece of paper and started to write down a few thoughts. I began remembering things, and a half-hour later I found myself wailing. The bartender came over to ask, “Should I call somebody?”

I went back to my room. I was having flashbacks. This is only time I’ve done this in my life, but I threw myself across the bed and cried for about three hours.

What kind of flashbacks?

All the things I missed because of my father’s emotional absence. I was crying for the affirmation and guidance that I rarely had with him.

I remember being the only kid in seventh grade who didn’t know what a jock strap was. When the coach said we’d need one to play football, I was just stupid enough to raise my hand and ask, “What’s that?” I was teased the whole year, because Dad didn’t tell me. I wanted to go fishing with him, and we never did. I cried my eyes out when I realized how much anger I had over things like this. I discovered the anger and tears were more a cry for Dad than at Dad. It was an honest admission. And then—no anger.

I came back and told the guys at Men’s Fraternity. It was like—errrrrkk—opening the lid on emotions I’d had closed off since childhood. I know a lot of men who need to take a look inside. It’s so painful, but it’s the key to our healing.

Did you finish the tribute?

I did. I called it “Here’s to My Imperfect Family.” I acknowledged some of the pain, but I also thanked Mom for not divorcing Dad. And I thanked Dad for making his way back and trying to make things right.

It was a healing time for us all. They took down the big mirror in their living room and hung my tribute in its place until they died.

Both my parents came to Christ in the end, and my younger brother, John, met a pastor in Wyoming who encouraged him in the faith. John is now a pastor and a seminary professor—teaching New Testament Greek.

Is this “father fracture” something men think about? How do you get “closed-off males” to start talking?

I ask, “How do you remember your father?” In a few minutes they can quickly see the fracture they have with their fathers. Then the stories start pouring out. I usually tell them to go to their dads, if they’re still living, and talk it out. Get in his face and say, “Dad, do you love me? Are you proud of me?”

Sometimes, it’s the fathers who recognize they’ve wounded their sons. One man whose son was about to graduate from medical school heard me. He got on a plane, flew to the east coast, and took his son to lunch. He said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what it meant to be your dad. Will you forgive me?”

Before the man arrived back home, his son had called. He said, “Mom, I met with Dad today. It was the finest day of my life.”

Isn’t that incredible stuff?!

The pastor’s role seems central to a life-transforming men’s ministry. How can the pastor who hasn’t had your personal experience guide men?

Some pastors aren’t going to lead from a position of family brokenness. They’re going to have to say, “Guys, I never lived this. My parents were there for me.” They can speak out of strength and help men see what spiritual health looks like.

Our churches are full of guys who are killing themselves working, trying to make up for the pain in their pasts.

One guy said to me, “I remember when we lived in Ohio. We lived outside of town in an old trailer. Every day I would step outside to go to school, and I’d say to myself, I’m gonna get as far away from this trailer as I can. And I have. Today I’m a millionaire. I’ve owned hundreds of restaurants. And I work 100-hour weeks. Today, I found out why: I’m still trying to get away from the trailer.”

Many men are trying to get away from their “trailer” and they don’t know why. They have to identify the source of their pain, deal with it, and move on. I’m not talking massive amounts of therapy. But men need to understand much of their behavior comes from the hurts of the past, and they need God’s help addressing it if they’re going to be the men he created them to be.

What can the church provide for men that their own fathers did not?

Robert Bly said, “If you’re not being admired by other men, you’re being hurt.” That struck a chord with me. As I talk with men about their struggles, I realize many men are languishing because nobody is recognizing the noble things in their life. Men need male cheerleaders. If no one cheers for nobility, men are going to collapse back into a dumbed-down masculinity that follows the cheers of the world—obsessive careerism, selfish pursuits, and ignoble deeds. We try to cheer men on—for the right things.

How do you help men find the right cheerleaders?

I can do two things: first by talking to men about the importance of male cheerleaders, and second, by challenging older men to cheer on the next generation.

I had one man tell me, “I’m old. I’m sick. I have no purpose in life.”

“Oh, no,” I told him. “You’ve got a lot of things you can do.”

“Like what.”

“Tell younger men your story.”

He objected. “Nobody would want to listen to me.”

“You’ve got seventy years’ experience, and here’s a generation of guys who haven’t had anybody to share real life with them.”

He sputtered, but said he’d meet with a younger man if he had the opportunity.

Later at a Men’s Fraternity meeting, we were talking about teammates in life. I told them the story of this guy and that he was available. Young guys came up after the meeting wanting to meet with him, and to this day, the older man meets with five or six guys a week and has a waiting list of more.

Every time I mention it in Men’s Fraternity, we have young guys who want a mentor. They want to know what’s real. They want to know was the marriage worth it, how you spent your time, and what you did with your money. They want to learn from an older man’s successes and failures.

I ask the younger guys to initiate the mentoring relationship, because older men aren’t likely to. But when asked, the older guys often say yes. We call it “investing down.”

Your new book details your shift in philosophy from programming for church success to “investing” in the community. Has that grown from your investment in men?

Definitely. Given their new identity, we first saw men stepping up to the challenges in the church. Now we have no shortage of male volunteers. They even lead our children’s ministries. Then we saw men investing in fatherless boys and girls within the church.

Then men and their families started going into the community. Eastgate, which was one of the most violent neighborhoods in Little Rock, is one example. When we first began ministering there, there was just one father in the whole community. The rest were pass-through males.

We started reading readiness programs and sports programs. Church members started working down there, and today we’re operating a gymnasium and teaching all kinds of life skills. We take the kids to summer camp. And we’re offering college scholarships for those who finish high school. Now a bunch of men involved with Men’s Fraternity have started Sportsman’s Quest. They mentor young boys from single-parent homes and take them on duck-hunting weekends with the guys. And those are just a few of the ministries our men are leading.

Today’s congregations are filled with single people. How do you preach about family in a way that doesn’t increase their brokenness?

We hold up the family relationships God intended us to have, and if we’re willing to help people move closer to those ideals, there’s no need to apologize for it.

In preaching, I want to give our people a North Star, something to guide their family life by. That is, of course, Jesus Christ. Christ and his Word are above all we are and do. Our families aren’t perfect. We’re all different distances from the goal, but at least we all know where we should be headed.

By calling men up, I feel I’m helping, not offending the single mother. The woman raising a child alone can see the importance of a male role model for her son. And when the men offer to take her son fishing, she believes what we’ve been preaching. One single mother spoke to our church recently. Her son was about to go into high school. She said, “I want to recognize the male mentors who carried me through the last eight years with my son. He looks up to all these guys.”

Another woman walked up to me the other day and said, “I hated men till I came to this church. And I still struggle some. But,” she said, “I’ve been in a small group, and I’ve watched how respectfully the men treat their wives. I’m beginning to believe there could be a man like that.”

Robert Lewis is the author of Raising a Modern Day Knight (Focus on the Family, 1997) and The Church of Irresistible Influence (Zondervan, 2001).

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

I just finished reading two magazine articles: "Piercings—The Ouch Factor" and "371 Ways to Look Hot This Spring." I'm still trying to figure out how to look hot with my receding hairline.

Years ago I resigned my senior pastorate to become a youth pastor. Worries about boards and budgets were replaced with Sunday school, junior high lock-ins (don't try this one), cliques, peer pressure, break-ups, make-ups, supportive parents, irate parents, and explaining why the church van looked like we'd just come back from Afghanistan.

Fifteen years later, I've returned to the senior pastorate. But those years in youth ministry changed me. I am now convinced that a church that cares for teens wins the hearts of the community. I don't know if I'll ever be a "normal" pastor again.

Staying hip, er, cool

Ministry tools should come with an expiration date: Caution, this can lose potency if used after a certain date. Kids change. Keeping up-to-date is essential because yesterday's success may be tomorrow's disaster.

The goofy competitions I once used now no longer work. Our teens would rather listen to a band or relax ("kick it") than compete.

Age has little to do with keeping current. I know 80-year-olds who kids think are cool, and 18-year-olds who are too old to work with the youth group.

Reading teen magazines (YM, Cosmo Girl, Seventeen) helps clue me in. I may draw stares at the library, but I stay up on the fears and interests of teens. I also teach junior and senior high Sunday school once a year (besides the good contact, it impresses parents and promotes humility). And I attend a youth ministry convention every few years. The electric atmosphere alone helps me stay sharp.

How they're changing me

After teaching a Sunday school class, a junior higher (why are they always so honest?) responded, "Ray, the lesson was fun—for about five minutes. Then it got really dull."

She was right. I had put all the good stuff in my introduction. I worked hard to get their attention but neglected to keep their attention.

Her remark taught me that every sermon is a mixture of alive and dead air. So now I check each section of the message to make sure it is alive enough to hold attention.

They've also taught me that a stiff upper lip is a poor substitute for authenticity.

After five years of marriage, my wife became pregnant. We were thrilled. We waited 14 weeks, then made the announcement. Days were filled with congratulations and teens lining up for lucrative baby-sitting jobs.

Two weeks later we were devastated by miscarriage. I hadn't counted on how tough it would be to share the news. I went to the youth group determined to be the model Christian, praising God in tough times. But I couldn't do it. In front of the kids I lost it. Through my tears all I could say was, "We're really disappointed. Pray for us."

Their response was amazing! Kids wrote notes, baked cookies, and told us they loved us. The love of those teens helped heal us. They also began coming to me with their hurts. Honesty changed me and opened up avenues for ministry with the youth.

How we're changing them

A lot of things don't matter to today's teens, like what degrees I hold or what seminary I attended. A few things, however, make a major difference.

Hope and joy. Teens today are worried, stressed, not sure there will be a future. We can give kids an environment where they see positive, life-affirming adults enjoying life. That attracts kids to the Christian faith.

Last year on Valentine's Day, my wife and I and four other couples boarded our church van for a group date. On the freeway, the husbands "faked" a breakdown (very believable in our church van!). Just as our wives were recalling their single days fondly, a stretch limousine we had secretly rented pulled up.

We escorted our stunned wives into the limo and proceeded to several stops where teens from our church served the courses in our Valentine's Day progressive dinner.

For these kids, seeing us celebrate (adults having fun!) had greater impact than my carefully crafted sermons. Now more than ever, teens hunger for the message that life can be more than endured. It can be enjoyed!

Community matters more than content. In 15 years of youth ministry, I never heard a student say, "Ray, what will you be speaking on at the retreat?" Their question (and the deciding factor concerning their attendance) has been, "Who else is going?" Teens are attracted to relationships.

Our church launched a ministry called Secret Spiritual Sponsors to encourage relationships between youth and adults. Adults "adopt" a teenager in the youth group. They commit to support the student with prayer, birthday cards, notes of encouragement, Christian books and CDs, and such. At the end of the year, we hold an appreciation banquet to introduce the teens to their secret sponsors, a great example of community.

Overcome insignificance by involvement. I spent years producing apathetic kids. I didn't plan it that way, but apathy was created.

A turning point came when I read Keeping Your Teens in Touch With God by Robert Laurent. He researched the top 10 reasons young people leave the church. The leading reason: "Lack of opportunity for meaningful involvement." Most teens are convinced there is little place for them in the church.

In an attempt to turn this around, I recently led a four-week group on "Discovering and developing your spiritual gifts." They were just going through the motions until I had each one sit in front of the group and take notes while the others shared what they thought his or her gifts might be. The atmosphere came alive! Seeing their friends (and their pastor) believing they possessed gifts, their confidence and interest rose.

My youth are inspired when they hear stories of kids serving Christ in remarkable ways. Suzanne and Stacey, two high schoolers in Jackson, Mississippi, lead a Bible study that has grown from two to 50 in one year.

Maybe the fastest growing junior high ministry in the South is led by two teens who have known adults who believed their gifts were worth discovering and developing! The gifts of your students are equally worth encouraging and putting into action.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Michael rushed up to me just before morning worship, his face alight with excitement and joy. “Guess what?” he gushed. “Annette wants to be baptized!”

My stomach tightened. My friendly grin suddenly developed rigor mortis. This couple had been living together for nearly a year and attending our church for a few months. Now they wanted a full relationship with God through Christ and a full relationship with the church. What should I do about their obvious and continuing sin?

I told them I’d be happy to talk it over with them.

Michael and Annette seemed to step into our church out of a TV drama. They are intelligent, attractive, and accomplished young professionals who quickly and casually decided to move in together, untroubled by moral questions. We soon began a Bible study together and developed a friendship that drove me to learn more about such couples.

Annette and Michael mirror a growing slice of society and an increasing challenge within the church. Young adults are intentionally delaying or forgoing marriage. The average age for first time marriages is 25 for women and 27 for men. Polls show many consider marriage a risky economic prospect, assuming that a quite likely first-marriage divorce will bankrupt them. For such vow-shy twenty-somethings, living together seems a convenient stopover on the way to later, legitimate family.

Michael and Annette came to our church only because we were in their neighborhood. Even though I grew to love them personally, I was not confident about their future. My experiences with such couples did not tend toward optimism.

Smiling tensely at Michael that Sunday morning, I hoped I wouldn’t see a repeat of Robert and Kristen.

The ones that got away

We met Robert and Kristen though a church outreach program. They seemed excited and interested in making Christ the center of their lives. When it became obvious that they were living together with no plans to change the situation, I sat down with them to talk. My advice was not well received.

“We’re glad you’re with us and excited about our future together, but I have to discuss a delicate matter with you.” I took a deep breath and dived in. “Surely you know that God isn’t pleased with your living arrangements. His plan is for people to be married or else remain apart. He’s not OK with unmarried people sleeping together.”

Kristen shot a glance at Robert and blurted, “I’m ready to get married whenever he says.”

A flat, vaguely hostile stare shuttered Robert’s expression. He said nothing.

“I’m not trying to tell you that you must get married,” I pressed on. “I’m saying that it is not God’s will for people to live together without being married. Maybe it would be better for you to move into separate quarters until you decide whether you want to be married.”

Robert carefully bit off each word. “I’m not ready to make that decision right now.” He was finished with this conversation.

In my most sympathetic tone I responded, “Well, it’s a decision that you both need to examine. I know that you can’t remain in a right condition with God if you are going to persist in this arrangement.”

Kristen sniffed and dabbed at her eyes as they walked out into the sunshine. That Robert clearly intended no commitment deeply wounded her. Two more worship services over the next month were all they could muster before they left us, still living together in an uneasy and unhappy accommodation.

Talking in a fair way

The situation with Michael and Annette was a bit different. Michael and I discovered we shared a passion for golf. Michael is a superb golfer. It was on the course, after another of his pro-style drives, that we began to approach his living arrangements with serious intent.

“I wish I could hammer the ball the way you do!” I repeated for the sixth time that day.

He glanced back at me and replied, “Well, I wish I could get my life with God straightened out.”

He covered the clubhead and slid the driver back into his bag. “I mean,” he sighed, “we study the Bible together, and I know what I need to do, but I don’t get it done.”

“Changing your life is never convenient,” I agreed. “Some sins you can eliminate quickly and easily; others you’ll struggle with for years before you detect any progress. Some things are sinful until you do them God’s way. For example, your living arrangements with Annette are wrong now, but if you marry, that problem is resolved.”

He nodded. “We’ve talked about marriage, but that’s a big commitment, and we’re not sure we’re ready for that right now.”

“I understand that it’s scary,” I replied, “but you have to remember that a marriage based on Christ can be everything it’s supposed to be. Marriages without Christ are the ones that are in greatest danger. And it’s going to be hard to maintain a commitment to God if we can’t maintain a commitment to a spouse who we see all the time.”

“All I know is, I can see the kind of life I want, and I’m not getting it right now,” he said darkly.

We headed back to the clubhouse, and I waited for another opportunity to speak to the issue.

Prevailing assumptions

I’ve been surprised to learn that many people today do not realize that cohabitation is morally wrong. One woman discussed her struggle with minor sins, then casually lumped in her four-year live-in relationship. She remarked, “That, I think, is considered a sin.”

These couples may realize that they have disappointed their parents and adopted a nontraditional lifestyle, but calling cohabitation “sin” puts the matter in a new light. Examining God’s plan for our lives in Scripture helps them to understand that he is interested in their whole lives, not just their Sunday observance.

I’ve also discovered when I tell a couple cohabitation is wrong, a new tension is introduced into their relationship.

In a Bible study session after my fairway conversation with Michael, the subject came up again. Annette vented some frustration and settled back in sullen reproach, then I ventured a conciliatory word.

“I know this is hard,” I said, “and talking about it throws a chill over your whole relationship. You want to be right with God, but your time together reminds you of failure, not victory.”

Michael muttered, “You don’t even know.” At that point we had been friends long enough that he was willing to hear the truth from me.

I’ve learned that long-term friendship is crucial. When I approached Robert and Kristen very early in our acquaintance, their response was predictably self-interested. They did not know me well enough to trust that I had their good at heart. By developing a genuine friendship with Michael and Annette, I demonstrated that they were very important to me. The biblical principles I revealed to them were not for my comfort and benefit, but theirs.

The deepening of our friendship required deeper courage from me. Out of loyalty to Christ, we must speak to living arrangements that will keep people away from a full and unhindered relationship with him. Even gentle firmness may drive away some couples, but compromising moral truth will be my own failure as well as theirs. Even those who reject it will respect us for telling them the truth.

The ring of truth

I stood in front of Michael and Annette and spoke of the fearful nature of commitment, how it binds us to one another and makes us vulnerable. I spoke of the transforming power of Christ and how he sanctifies and confirms our vows. I spoke of the joy of surrender and the grace of submission.

I don’t think they heard much of it. Annette was gorgeous in her wedding gown, and Michael looked like a formalwear advertisem*nt.

He picked up the ring and slid it on her finger, looked intensely into her face and repeated, “This ring I give you in token and pledge of our constant faith and abiding love.”

They embraced and gently kissed, and I smiled as I presented the newlyweds to their assembled guests. Few in attendance that day realized that their trip up the aisle took more than a year, conquering several personal and spiritual hurdles. All they knew was that a beautiful young couple was starting a new life together.

And they were doing it God’s way.

Chris Stinnett is minister of Park & Seminole Church of Christ in Seminole, Oklahoma. ckstinnett@aol.com

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Lyle Schaller denies he’s a prophet. I’m not sure I believe him. He’s at least a world-class tracker—reading footprints, sniffing the air, seeing what others miss. And when he tells you what you’re going to find over the next ridge, I’ve learned you’d better pay attention!

Lyle is an author (more than 30 of his books are still in print), a former city planner, and perhaps this generation’s best analyst of church sociology.

He’s also a neighbor. A few weeks ago, Eric Reed and Drew Zahn and I drove down Naperville Road to pay Lyle a visit. His living room was jammed with boxes and files that he was cleaning out at his wife’s request. (“We’ve been married 20,209 days,” he told us with typical deadpan. “If you keep track of it this way, every day is your wedding anniversary,” which tells you something about the way his mind works.)

We asked him what cultural trend will most significantly impact the way churches do ministry in the next few years.

“The changing definition and configurations of ‘family,'” Lyle said. He explained that with divorces, cohabitation, single-parent homes, blended families, grandparents raising infants … important assumptions have shifted. We acted on the tracker’s advice. This issue of Leadership is the result.

Lyle also offered two more bits of wisdom.

First, he warned us to watch our language. “Language evolves, and the word family is one I would use with caution,” he said. “It can be unintentionally offensive. Yes, many people place a high value on the family in our society. ‘Family values’ has a positive connotation in some political circles, and many churches list as one of their core values ‘strengthening the family’ or ‘undergirding family life.’ But to folks who don’t have a traditional family structure, which is the growing proportion, it says, ‘People like you aren’t welcome.'”

Lyle sees a parallel here with the term fundamentalist. “Not long ago conservative Christians identified with that term,” he said. “But language changed. Now being a ‘fundamentalist’ is not a term many of those Christians want to use of themselves anymore.”

So what term should replace “family”? Lyle asked if we had noticed that the U.S. Census Bureau had stopped referring to “families.” The more precise term now is “households,” which incidentally is an equally biblical term. While we didn’t completely follow this practice (because strengthening families continues to be a need, especially where they’re falling apart), we took his alert seriously.

After warning us to beware of our language, he told us to be aware of the church’s great opportunity for tomorrow:

“Traditionally, life was sequential: school, job, marriage, then parenthood. Today people do those four in different sequences. But this traditional sequence, especially job and marriage preceding parenthood, is still the number one way to avoid poverty.”

“State governments are recognizing this through the rising costs of Medicaid. About two-thirds of people in nursing homes are under Medicaid. But did you realize that one-third of all I are paid for out of Medicaid?”

As a result, three states (Arizona, Louisiana, Arkansas) already have laws encouraging “covenant marriage,” about half the states have legislation pending, and Schaller predicts that marriage education will soon have as much state support as driver’s education.

This is going to create a great opportunity for churches to prepare couples on “How to build a healthy, happy, and enduring marriage.”

As we drove back up Naperville Road, we wondered if we’d been with a prophet. But one thing’s for sure, Lyle’s scouting skills are worth keeping in mind. We pray this issue of Leadership prepares you for ministry just over the ridge.

Marshall Shelley is editor of Leadership.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.