Maximizing Our Influence as Family Leaders
The call to biblical leadership is the call to serve our families. Accepting our positional authority and using it to firmly discipline our children is crucial for effective influence upon our children. Parenthetically, we don’t need to fear that wielding such authority will harm our relationship with our kids. Scripture assures us, We have had earthly fathers who disciplined us AND WE RESPECTED THEM. Firm discipline, in the long, run wins our kids’ respect. They will not respect a dad who just wants to be their play buddy. On the other hand, to maximize our influence there is no substitute for winning their hearts by caring for them well.
Some years ago, I found myself praying about whether I should pursue a DMin degree and write my dissertation on men’s ministry. But a rather sobering thought struck me. If my kids are in my home roughly twenty years and I live to be seventy, they are only going to be with me 2/7ths of my life. The price of pursuing the degree now will be paid by my 5 kids, who will get less time with me. I decided to put it off until 4 of my 5 kids were in college.
The years of greatest influence in our kid’s lives go by in a flash; so, dads whose kids are still at home, need to know how to maximize their influence, before their kids are launched into a world full of destructive worldviews. But it is not only Dad’s with kids at home who care about their influence. Even if our kids are already launched or have gifted us with grandkids, we also want to know how to maximize whatever influence we can have with both our adult kids and grandchildren. This episode examines God’s two-part design of the influence we wield as spiritual leaders of our home, positional influence and relational influence. In both cases, we must overcome false worldviews that undermine the way God wants us to lead our homes.
This is the third episode in our January series, Leading Our Homes Well in a Culture That Doesn’t Want Us to Lead. Last week we answered the first leadership question, “Where am I taking my family?” noting the biblical answer, to spiritual maturity as Christ’s disciples. Like Paul, home leaders say, One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus… Brothers, join in imitating me. (Phil 3:13ff). Today’s episode examines the second leadership question, which has to do with my relationship with my followers. “How do I use my leadership influence to motivate them to come with me?” The biblical answer to this question, once again, requires us to overcome strong cultural headwinds, i.e. worldviews promoted in the culture, which undermine a man’s leadership calling. We identify four.
A. False Worldview #1: Men Are Unnecessary
This view is rooted in feminism, egalitarianism, and the LGBTQ+ movement. A lesbian couple can parent as well as a heterosexual married couple. Men bring nothing unique to the process of raising children. Egalitarian-leaning, church-going men know their wives have more intuitive insight about kids than they do. When the kids ask permission to do something, their response is, “Go ask your mom.” Such men don’t wear the pants in their family.
Biblical View #1: Fatherhood Is Irreplaceable
- Creation, itself, tells us that the nuclear family is not just a social construct. The biological fact that conception takes place in the context of husband and wife making love speaks volumes about the best environment for nurturing that child to healthy adulthood. In God’s obvious creation design, for a child to thrive, he needs a family built on mom and dad’s love for each other.
- The family code sections of Ephesians and Colossians are significant. They address wives, then husbands, then children—commanding them to obey their parents. So, we might expect the next group Paul addresses to be parents; but it is not. How about mothers? No. It is striking that when Paul addresses the training of the children, he doesn’t mention mothers but gives commands to fathers. This pattern of responsibility began with Abraham, the Father of the Christian Faith. God said of Abraham, I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him (Gen 18:19). Perhaps fathers are specifically addressed because we inherited Adam’s passivity. He should have protected Eve from Satan and reinforced the truth of what God said.
- Substantial research confirms that fathers and mothers discipline their children differently. Focus on the Family writes, “Dad takes an objective approach and provides his children with much needed instruction in the area of moral absolutes and the consequences of right and wrong actions. Mom, on the other hand, emphasizes compassion, empathy, relationship, and the importance of appreciating the uniqueness of each individual” (Online article, Mom and Dad Approach Discipline Differently). Both Mom and Dad are needed.
B. False Worldview #2 Teaches a Parent-Centered Approach to Children’s Discipline
In our narcissistic culture, it should not surprise us that some approaches to discipline are more about the parent’s feelings than the child’s behavior. It is reactive discipline. Here is an example. A dad on the playground says to his son, “Stop playing on the monkey bars.” But his son knows that this command means nothing. His father will not act until he has told the boy four or five times to stay off the monkey bars. So, the son continues to ignore his father’s command. The father, who is busy talking, yells at him again, but the son knows that his dad is not steamed up enough to act. Finally, the father reaches his limit and explodes,“You’ve got me really angry with you now. Get into that car.”
Instead of clarifying his instruction once, and then giving painful consequences for disobedience, this parenting approach is based upon the exasperation of the parent. Kids live up to whatever is demanded of them. The dad didn’t want to be bothered with the responsibility of being a good parent, but instead to continue his conversation. Furthermore, when my parenting is based upon how patient I feel, or how irritated or angry I am, punishment becomes random, and inconsistent, which provoke hot anger in a child. One moment, he gets away with murder, the next moment he barely steps across the line and is slammed with punishment. The dad trained his son not to obey until he started to get angry. He also made the issue HIS anger instead of the son’s disobedience. Good parenting isn’t rooted in how a parent FEELS but how a child BEHAVES. In fact, good parenting makes sure that the child understands that painful consequences for his misbehavior are NOT personal and do not interfere with the parent’s love for him.
Biblical View #2: Disciplining Children Is Part of a Training Plan for the Child. Paul Writes, Fathers, Do Not Provoke Your Children to Anger, but Bring Them Up in the Discipline and Instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4)
- Here are four wrong approaches to discipline that provoke anger: 1) Inconsistent discipline, as we’ve seen. Consistent discipline trains a child to know what the boundaries are because the parents have thought them through ahead of time. It is not a seat-of-the-pants, reactive discipline. 2) Discipline that attacks a child’s character using the words, you always or you never instead of correcting behavior provokes anger. 3) Disciplining a child in public will wound his spirit. 4) Discipline that is more frequent than praise wounds our child, also provoking anger. Studies show that parents use critical words ten times more than they use words to praise their children. Mostly correction with little or no affirmation CRUSHES kids’ spirits and can lead to a rebellion.
- In context, as Ephesians 6:4 continues, Paul implies that the alternative to provoking anger in our children is to exercise discipline in connection with the rest of the training plan for the child. Paul describes the plan: 1) bring them up: Dads are NOT to watch their children grow up but to actively raise them with intentionality 2) in the discipline: This Greek word is PAIDEA, from which we get pediatric. It means using consequences to train children. A father’s punishing authority is never to be used selfishly, or reflexively, but as part of a TRAINING plan. Paul continues, 3) and instruction (of the Lord): Instruction, means literally “to put into the mind.” This requires a plan for what biblical truths, godly qualities, and characteristics of Jesus we plan to impart to our kids.
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Targeting Transgenderism: Two Overtures to the PCA 50th GA
In my opinion, the BCO is not the main issue. The issue is not simply women in the pulpit, nor the sexual mutilation of children, nor even the legitimacy of homosexuality (in some form or another). The issue is transgenderism. The issue is men and women giving in to sinful impulses that cross the lines that God drew in creation when he created male and female and assigned them their roles in the world he created.
Transgenderism has just recently replaced racism as the great sin of the modern day. Yes, racism is still in the game, but it has been hijacked by the transgender movement. Like the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement of a few years back, transgenderism is becoming very aggressive to the point of violence. Transgenderism is the new wokism, and the church appears to be staying out of the debate, or in some cases following their lead.
In the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) we have seen a Christian school associated with one of our churches attacked by a brutal transgender murderer, leaving 3 children and 3 adults dead. Shortly after this event a national rally scheduled in Washington D.C. called the “Trans Day of Vengeance” was cancelled, but only because of bad publicity, not because there was any change in the attitude of the potential participants.
The definition of transgenderism is simple. It describes men acting like they are women and women acting like they are men. Whether it is simply a mind-game, a creeping gender role reversal, a change of clothes, a change of name (or personal pronouns), hormone treatment, or surgical mutilation of the body, it all goes back to the same sinful impulse in the hearts of both men and women to be something they were not created to be. God Almighty assigned our sex at birth, and our sex determines our gender roles in the church, and to some extent in society taken as a whole.
When women claim they have a right to the pulpit, whether in preaching, exhorting, or teaching, they are attempting to reverse the gender roles God has ordained in the church. It is a form of what I call creeping transgenderism. It is a subtle form, but it is one nonetheless. Paul said plainly in the context of church worship that “A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man but to remain quiet” (1 Tim. 2:11-12).
Overture 15 seeks to change Book of Church Order (BCO) 53 by adding a new section number 7: “No woman shall preach, exhort, or teach at a public worship assembly, including assemblies or chapel services where men are present in any congregation, educational institution, or gathering overseen by the Church or one of its agencies.” This is good as far as it goes, but it needs to be amended to add the prohibition of the public reading of the Scriptures and the public leading in prayer by women in congregational worship services. Afterall, Paul said women are to remain quiet.
But regardless, the main issue here is not simply women in the pulpit, but we must realize that the root cause is incipient transgenderism, that is, women unhappy with their calling and with their role in the church, and the sinful impulse to take on the role of a man. Or maybe, even worse, it is about men who are transferring their headship to the woman by taking on the submissive role of the female.
The second Overture (#12) requests that the PCA petition the United States Government and the 50 State Governments to “Renounce the sin of all medical and surgical sex change procedures in minors by the American healthcare system because they result in irreversible harm.” Again, this is good as far as it goes. However, the Bible forbids any transgenderism, including in adults (see my article Deuteronomy and Transgenderism). Here again, we see the sinful impulse of males and females seeking to transform themselves or their children (or the children of others) into the opposite sex, and vice versa.
If we dive even deeper into the root causes which has necessitated both overtures (#12 and #15), it should be noticed that the need for these overtures arises out of the PCA’s ongoing struggle which is being addressed again this year (overtures #9, #16, #17, #23, #24). This issue is that homosexuals (which includes those who identify as homosexuals, but do not practice it) have no right to the pulpits in the PCA. Homosexuality again is just another form of transgenderism. It is nothing less than men seeking to play the woman in sexual relations. In the bedroom, you be the man and I will play the woman, or at least let me dream about it and go public about it without guilt.
The PCA seems unable to make definitive statements anymore. Maybe, we hesitate because we think it would be unloving toward others to tell them the truth. However, I believe it is better to preach the truth and call men and women to faith and repentance in Christ than make a half-way covenant with sin.
Every year, as we go to General Assembly meetings and to Presbytery meetings, we must recognize that we are engaged in more than simply ecclesiastical and mere academic exercises. When we ask the question about what does the Bible teach on these issues, we are not just voting on changes to the Book of Church Order before we safely go home. Actions have consequences. How we vote will impact our people and our nation. We are voting on issues that have resulted in the shedding of blood in our nation.
As we commissioners make our way to the 50th General Assembly of the PCA, let us make sure that we realize what we are doing. In my opinion, the BCO is not the main issue. The issue is not simply women in the pulpit, nor the sexual mutilation of children, nor even the legitimacy of homosexuality (in some form or another). The issue is transgenderism. The issue is men and women giving in to sinful impulses that cross the lines that God drew in creation when he created male and female and assigned them their roles in the world he created.
Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.
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Living with Religious Scrupulosity or Moral OCD
This life demands more of us than we can imagine, but not more than we can bear. Because we don’t bear it alone. True conscience is not a hyper-individual inner experience, but a knowing with others, a cleaving to the wisdom of God’s Word and the witness of his body here on earth, the church. Conscience, understood this way, demands not that we follow every whim of our fallen minds, but that we collectively trust in the grace and goodness of the Father.
Growing up evangelical, I was taught that your personal conscience is law. God uses the Holy Spirit to guide and convict us through our innermost selves. So when the conscience speaks, not to listen is a sin. Your conscience can be mistaken, of course, but really only in one direction: a seared conscience. If you are insufficiently attentive to God’s word, or if you allow a particular sin to dominate you, then your conscience, rather than being God-guided, becomes “seared”: deaf to the promptings of the Spirit. But otherwise, I was told, when your inner voice speaks with conviction, you are morally obligated to obey.
What nobody told me was that your conscience, or what feels like your conscience, can be entirely mistaken through no fault of your own. Just like it’s possible to feel no guilt when you should, it’s possible to feel guilt or anxiety or shame over things that you shouldn’t feel bad about at all. Nobody told me how your mind can be your own worst enemy. How it can fixate on imaginary sins. Nobody warned me about moral scrupulosity, the type of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) I suffer from. Nobody warned me how anxiety and fear can take the thing you care about most – your faith – and turn it against you.
OCD is what psychologists call an “ego-dystonic” condition: your fears come from the things you value the most, your greatest hopes, your most cherished aspirations – the kind of person you most deeply desire to be. I deeply desire to be a trustworthy, safe, responsible, morally upright person. So my OCD takes the form of fear that I’m exactly the opposite. Fear that I’ve behaved irresponsibly. Fears that I’ve harmed people in the past. And no matter how little evidence I have for these fears, no matter how many times or in how much detail wise friends reassure me that I haven’t harmed anyone, my OCD never lets me accept that reassurance. There’s always something my friends must have missed, that I must have overlooked. There’s always “one more thing.”
Having OCD is like living with Columbo. There’s always just “one more thing,” one more doubt, one more detail. One more fear. And each fear feels like an accusation. The accusation that I’m an immoral, irresponsible person who has done grave harm and must live under judgment forever. That I can never be redeemed.
OCD is surprisingly prevalent in the general population: around one in every hundred people has it. In spite of this – and in spite of how disabling the condition can be – the condition is widely, sometimes frustratingly, misunderstood. Typically, when people hear the term “OCD” they imagine obsessively tidy people: it’s not uncommon to hear someone refer to themselves as “a little OCD” about tidying their desk. The better informed, when asked about OCD, may think of someone who compulsively washes their hands. But the reality of OCD, especially in its severe and extreme forms, is much more debilitating.
It’s washing your hands until they bleed. It’s ruminating alone for hours about harms you fear you’ve caused. Thinking over an event that occurred a decade ago again and again, finding it impossible to let go. And those are the good days. On the bad days OCD can look like locking yourself in the bedroom to agonize alone for ten or twelve hours. And when you’re done, you have a kind of hangover to deal with: the physiological cost of intense, anxious focus on the same thought for hours on end. Your body is worn out. Your mind is in a fog. And even then, when you’re wracked with shame over your endless rumination, the guilt you feel acts to tip you back into the habits that brought you to that point in the first place. Just check one more time. One more thing.
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CRC Synod Tells Grand Rapids Church to End Term of LGBTQ Deacon
The vote to “affirm that unchastity in the Heidelberg Catechism encompasses adultery, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, polyamory, pornography and homosexual sex, all of which violate the seventh commandment,” passed 123 to 53, with two voting to abstain. Delegates voted to not add a footnote to Q&A 108 of the Heidelberg Catechism, a confession of faith written as a series of questions and answers that the CRC affirms.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — The Christian Reformed Church of America on Wednesday voted to make its stance on LGBTQ relationships a core belief.
It also told Neland Avenue CRC, located on Neland Avenue near Martin Luther King Park in Grand Rapids, to end the term of a deacon who is in a LGBTQ marriage.
The 2022 CRC Synod has been meeting throughout the week at Calvin University in Grand Rapids. Delegates on Tuesday voted to recommend a Human Sexuality Report to churches “as providing a useful summary of biblical teaching regarding human sexuality.”
Synod continued its discussion Wednesday, voting to make the denomination’s stance on human sexuality, first set in 1973, a confessional issue, or a core belief.
The vote to “affirm that unchastity in the Heidelberg Catechism encompasses adultery, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, polyamory, pornography and homosexual sex, all of which violate the seventh commandment,” passed 123 to 53, with two voting to abstain.
Delegates voted to not add a footnote to Q&A 108 of the Heidelberg Catechism, a confession of faith written as a series of questions and answers that the CRC affirms.
Some say the issue could cause people to leave the church. Dozens gathered on Calvin’s campus to rally in support of the LGBTQ community on Tuesday.
“The report has been somewhat upsetting to many of us who are in the LGBTQ community and who are their family members and allies, because it is so negative and we think there are many, many flaws in the report,” CRC member Tom Hoeksema told News 8 on Tuesday.
Many in the group were concerned about what the changes will mean for leaders within the church who are part of the LGBTQ community.
In a 134-44 vote, synod on Wednesday voted that Neland Avenue CRC must end the term of a LGBTQ deacon.
It instructed “Neland Ave. CRC to immediately rescind its decision to ordain a deacon in a same sex marriage, thus nullifying this deacon’s current term.”
CRC Synod votes to recommend Human Sexuality Report
Read: CRC Human Sexuality Report
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