In this Father’s Day message, allow me to share some thoughts on why fathers are important to the local church.
Look around in the Christian church you attend. What do you see? You are most likely to see far more woman in attendance than men. Of course, one contributing factor is that a disproportionate amount of those who are deployed and in the military are men. But I am talking about the men who can attend church but don’t.
Why is this current reality a problem? Because God has called the father to be the spiritual leader in the home. “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord,” Paul writes (Eph. 6:4, NASB). Moreover, “The head of the woman is the man” (1 Cor. 11:3, KJV). These two verses underscore reasons why fathers are important to the church.
But based on the current attendance of men in most churches, one has to conclude that the spiritual leader in most homes is the mother and not the father.
Some churches may feel no incentive to change the current reality. They have enough money to do the ministry work. And they have an ample pool of workers as well. But even when that is the case, these churches need the involvement of more of the fathers.
The Church Needs Fathers to Mentor Their Sons
You see, if God has called fathers to be the spiritual leader in the home, their sons are to be the spiritual leaders of tomorrow. But sons don’t intuitively know how to do that. They need their dad to model that role before them.
They need to see their father take and not just send his family to church. They need to see him be a worshipper in the house of God. They need to see the spiritual side of him, as opposed to just his physical side, around the house. The dad who does these things will facilitate his son doing the same when he becomes a father.
This is not a put down of you mothers reading this. Many of you are doing a bang up job of raising your sons and your daughters. But I think you will agree with me that it’s easier when dad takes the lead in mentoring his son(s).
So far, I have dealt with this subject from an ideal situation. Many sons don’t have the benefit of having dad in the home with them because of divorce or separation. But if the opportunity exists for these fathers to spend time with their children, they can still play a fatherly role. And they can still contribute to helping their sons become spiritual leaders for tomorrow.
That brings us to the bottom line as to why fathers are important to the church. Fathers can’t take their sons where they don’t go. They can’t show their sons a way that they don’t know. It is only through a relationship with Christ that fathers can become the spiritual leaders they have been called to be. By the way, I believe local churches can help by finding a way to make church attendance appealing to more fathers.
Copyright © 2022 by Frank King. All rights reserved.