Family ManFitchburg Nazarene Church

June 19, 2016

by

Rev. Charles W. Pendleton, Jr.

(These are the Pastor’s notes. He may have said more which is not noted here. He could have ignored certain portions of these notes in our actual service.)

Happy Father’s Day!!

Those of us who are old enough, remember a bunch of television Dad’s who were pretty much everything you’d want a Dad to be:

Danny Tanner, Full HouseThere was no problem he couldn’t solve with a "very special talk" set to soft, comforting music at the end of a 22-minute episode.

Jim Anderson (Robert Young) – Father Knows Best

was a successful insurance agent at work and a fantastic dad at home. Jim always ended each episode by teaching his children some important moral lesson. 

Andy Taylor – The Andy Griffith Show

As a single dad, Sheriff Taylor did a fantastic job raising his son Opie. In every episode, Sheriff Andy taught his son and the rest of America one important lesson- do the right thing. Not only did Andy teach little Opie important life lessons, he also made sure to spend plenty of time with him on fishin’ trips.

Steve Douglas – My Three Sons

was one of many dad sitcoms from the 1950s and 60s based around a widowed father raising their kids. Steve Douglas was an aeronautical engineer trying to raise three sons first in the Midwest and then in Los Angeles, California. The show ran for 12 years and during that time, America saw Steve’s three sons move out, go to college, and get married. Raising well adjusted and successful family men definitely makes you a great dad. Of course he had help from…… Uncle Charlie

Ward Cleaver – Leave it to Beaver

was a businessman that took his job as seriously as his family. Even when frustrated, the man hardly raised his voice. He read Mark Twain to his sons. When he did give bad advice, (like telling the Beaver to get in a fight with a

girl) Ward would admit his mistake and teach his sons a lesson in the process.

Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable – The Cosby Show

not only did he amass the most awesome sweater collection in the history of TV fatherhood, but he taught his children that personal responsibility is the key to success in life. 

Mike Brady – The Brady Bunch

was faced with the challenge of integrating his three sons with another woman’s brood of three girls. He handled the situation by being both a strict disciplinarian and an empathetic guy.

Howard Cunningham – Happy Days

(or “Mr. C.” as the Fonz lovingly called him) was not only the dad to Richie and Joanie Cunningham, but he also acted as a father figure for the Fonz (who Mr. C let move into the family garage), Ralph Malph, and Potsie. He always laid down the law in his house. He was never his kids’ friend, but was always their loving authority figure. Although he loses points for not losing any sleep when his son Chuck disappeared in the second season, in general, Mr. C was a great dad.

However, it seems like for the last 30 years almost all we’ve gotten on television is a bunch of reject dads.

Al Bundy- Married With Children

Al Bundy had no redeeming qualities. He was loser who wished he could go back to his

high school days when he was a football star. Sitting on the couch with his hand in his pants, he doled out criticism to his family with apathetic aplomb. He was stuck in a dead end job as a shoe salesman, and couldn’t even excel in that capacity. He was up to his ears in debt. His relationship with his kids was poor and his attitude toward women, including his wife, was deplorable. If you want a lesson on how not to be a man, watch   Married with Children.

Archie Bunker- All in the Family

All in the Family was a critically acclaimed show that broke boundaries in regards to race, religion, and gender all thanks to Archie Bunker, the most bigoted old man in television history. Archie pretty much spent his entire time sitting in his living room chair spouting off

racial epithets and calling his son-in-law “Meathead.” While Archie started to soften up as the series progressed, he was still pretty much a racist jerk.

Frank Costanza- Seinfeld

There’s a reason why George Costanza was a paranoid shell of a man- his father, Frank Costanza. Frank Costanza was a loud, neurotic, and abrasive man. Frank always found some way to make George’s life more difficult. In the episode where George Steinbrenner, George’s boss and the owner of the Yankees, comes to tell George’s parents about George’s apparent death, Frank Costanza screams at Steinbrenner for trading Jay Buhner. Thanks dad.

Peter Griffin- Family Guy

Peter Griffin is a lousy father. He makes fun of Chris, pays no attention to Stewie, and treats Meg like garbage. His selling of Meg to pay off a debt at the local drug store is a perfect example of his failure as a dad. A father that sells his daughter into slavery deserves to be hit across the face with the baseball bat. Of course, if that happened to Peter, it would be hilarious. And probably involve some kind of wacky TV sitcom flashback.

Ray Barone- Everybody Loves Raymond

Ray is a good natured and funny guy, but definitely falls into the “incompetent man-child” stereotype currently dominating the airwaves. He’s not good at communicating, and cracks a joke instead of dealing with things seriously. He’s still tied to his mom’s apron strings and can’t confront her. While he works from home,

he doesn’t spend much time with his kids and wife, preferring to watch TV. When he does spend time with his kids, he prefers his twin sons over his daughter. He’s not sure how to relate to her since she’s a girl and so buys her gifts to solve her problems or makes his wife deal with it.

I could have put more men into either one of these categories, but you get the idea – our society – at least in our television shows – has not had many good father role models in quite a long time.

If you don’t think this is an issue, then you are certainly not a student of psychology.

The Family Movie night that we had last night quoted some statistics about how fathers impact the family – especially their children.

I did some of my own research on the subject – just so we didn’t get a movie bias in our understanding of the issue.

The Consequences of Fatherlessness

Some fathering advocates would say that almost every social ill faced by America’s children is related to fatherlessness. Six are noted here.

As supported by the data below, children from fatherless homes are more likely to be:

poor, become involved in drug and

alcohol abuse

drop out of school, suffer from health and emotional

problems. 

Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens.

1.   Poverty – Children in father-absent homes are almost four times more likely to be poor.

In 2011, 12 percent of children in married-couple families were living in poverty, compared to 44 percent of children in mother-only families.Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Children’s Living Arrangements and Characteristics: March 2011, Table C8. Washington D.C.: 2011.

– Children living in female headed families with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6 percent, over 4 times the rate in married-couple families.Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; ASEP Issue Brief: Information on Poverty and Income Statistics. September 12, 2012 http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/12/PovertyAndIncomeEst/ib.shtml

 

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; ASEP Issue Brief: Information on Poverty and Income Statistics. September 12, 2012 http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/12/PovertyAndIncomeEst/ib.shtml

2. Drug and Alcohol Abuse

– The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states, “Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse.”

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics. Survey on Child Health. Washington, DC, 1993.

– There is significantly more drug use among children who do not live with their mother and father.

Source: Hoffmann, John P. “The Community Context of Family Structure and Adolescent Drug Use.” Journal of Marriage and Family 64 (May 2002): 314-330.

3.   Physical and Emotional Health – A study of 1,977 children age 3 and older living with a residential father or father figure found that children living with married biological parents had significantly fewer externalizing and internalizing behavioral problems than children living with at least one non-biological parent.Source: Hofferth, S. L. (2006). Residential father family type and child well-being: investment versus selection. Demography, 43, 53-78.

– Children of single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to commit suicide.Sources: The Lancet, Jan. 25, 2003 • Gunilla Ringbäck Weitoft, MD, Centre for Epidemiology, the National Board of Health and Welfare, Stockholm, Sweden • Irwin Sandler, PhD, professor of psychology and director of the Prevention Research Center, Arizona State University, Tempe • Douglas G. Jacobs, MD, associate clinical professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; and founder and director, The National Depression Screening Program • Madelyn Gould, PhD, MPH, professor of child psychiatry and public health, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University; and research scientist, New York State Psychiatric Institute.http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20030123/absent-parent-doubles-child-suicide-risk

– Data from three waves of the Fragile Families Study (N= 2,111) was used to examine the prevalence and effects of mothers’ relationship changes between birth and age 3 on their children’s well being. Children born to single mothers show higher levels of aggressive behavior than children born to married mothers. Living in a single-mother household is equivalent to experiencing 5.25 partnership transitions.

Source: Osborne, C., & McLanahan, S. (2007). Partnership instability and child well-being. Journal of Marriage and Family, 69, 1065-1083.

4. Educational Achievement

– Children in grades 7-12 who have lived with at least one biological parent, youth that experienced divorce, separation, or nonunion birth reported lower grade point averages than those who have always lived with both biological parents.

– Children living with their married biological father tested at a significantly higher level than those living with a nonbiological father.

Source: Tillman, K. H. (2007). Family structure pathways and academic disadvantage among adolescents in stepfamilies. Journal of Marriage and Family.

– Father involvement in schools is associated with the higher likelihood of a student getting mostly A’s. This was true for fathers in biological parent families, for stepfathers, and for fathers heading single-parent families.Source: Nord, Christine Winquist, and Jerry West. Fathers’ and Mothers’ Involvement in Their Children’s Schools by Family Type and Resident Status. (NCES 2001-032). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2001.

– 71% of high school dropouts are fatherless; fatherless children have more trouble academically, scoring poorly on tests of reading, mathematics, and thinking skills; children from father-absent homes are more likely to be truant from school, more likely to be excluded from

school, more likely to leave school at age 16, and less likely to attain academic and professional qualifications in adulthood.Source: Edward Kruk, Ph.D., “The Vital Importance of Paternal Presence in Children’s Lives.” May 23, 2012.http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/co-parenting-after-divorce/201205/father-absence-father-deficit-father-hunger

5. Crime

– Adolescents living in intact families are less likely to engage in delinquency than their peers living in non-intact families. Compared to peers in intact families, adolescents in single-parent families and stepfamilies were more likely to engage in delinquency. This relationship appeared to be operating through differences in family processes—parental involvement, supervision, monitoring, and parent/child closeness—between intact and non-intact families.Source: Stephen Demuth and Susan L. Brown, “Family Structure, Family Processes, and Adolescent Delinquency: The Significance of Parental Absence Versus Parental Gender,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 41, No. 1 (February 2004): 58-81.http://familyfacts.org/briefs/26/marriage-and-family-as-deterrents-from-delinquency-violence-and-crime

– A study using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health explored the relationship between family structure and risk of violent acts in neighborhoods. The results revealed that if the number of fathers is low in a neighborhood, then there is an increase in acts of teen violence. The statistical data showed that a 1% increase in the proportion of single-parent families in a neighborhood is associated with a 3% increase in an adolescent’s level of violence.

In other words, adolescents who live in neighborhoods with lower proportions of single-parent families and who report higher levels of family integration commit less violence.Source: Knoester, C., & Hayne, D.A. (2005). “Community context, social integration into family, and youth violence.” Journal of Marriage and Family 67, 767-780.

– Children age 10 to 17 living with two biological or adoptive parents were significantly less likely to experience sexual assault, child maltreatment, other types of major violence, and non-victimization type of adversity, and were less likely to

witness violence in their families compared to peers living in single-parent families and stepfamilies.Source: Heather A. Turner, “The Effect of Lifetime Victimization on the Mental Health of Children and Adolescents,” Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 62, No. 1, (January 2006), pp. 13-27.

-A study of 109 juvenile offenders indicated that family structure significantly predicts delinquency.

Source: Bush, Connee, Ronald L. Mullis, and Ann K. Mullis. “Differences in Empathy Between Offender and Nonoffender Youth.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 29 (August 2000): 467-478.

6. Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy

– A study using a sample of 1409 rural southern adolescents (851 females and 558 males) aged 11 – 18 years, investigated the correlation between father absence and self-reported sexual

activity. The results revealed that adolescents in father-absence homes were more likely to report being sexually active compared to adolescents living with their fathers.

Source: Hendricks, C.S., Cesario, S.K., Murdaugh, C., Gibbons, M.E., Servonsky, E.J., Bobadilla, R.V., Hendricks, D.L., Spencer-Morgan, B., & Tavakoli, A. (2005).

– Being raised by a single mother raises the risk of:

teen pregnancy, marrying with less than a high school

degree, and forming a marriage where both partners

have less than a high school degree.

Some of you are probably wondering at this point, “Pastor – are you ever going to teach from the Word of God today?”

I’m glad you asked.

I’d actually like to use a few different passages of scripture to finish our time together.

Before I finish, I will have attempted to speak to every man here today – married, unmarried, living with children in your home, and living with children not in your home.

Col. 3:18-21 has some….

Instructions for Christian Households

18Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.19Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.20Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.21Fathers,c do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

Every time I read this passage of scripture out loud, I know that there are women sitting there who are saying,

- BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE ASKING!

Let us remember something this morning – we are talking about Christian Households.

Remember too, that Paul was writing here to Greek Christian homes.

The submission of wives was not some novel idea – just coming about because of Christianity.No – in Greek culture, submission was more OBEDIENCE than submission.

The submission that Paul speaks of here is a picture of the submission that a Christian woman would have in her faithful obedience to Christ as her Savior.

Obedience was a bitter thing in Greek culture where a woman had no real choice in the matter.Paul was saying – hey, in the Christian home, let’s make it more like how we obey Christ – out of loving gratitude for all He’s done for us.

And so, let’s go to the real issue in this whole picture – it is all about the husband here.

Men - Do we love our wives in the same measure that Christ showed His love to us?

Or is there something else going on here?

The scriptures have spoken about it this way in 1 Peter 3:77Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

Weaker partner – or as the KJV says it, the “weaker vessel.”

What Paul was having to deal with was the selfishness of the stronger sex, supported by the force of habit and social usage, and it was hard to subdue in the Greek Christian Churches.

 Full of business and with a hundred cares and attractions lying outside the domestic circle, he too readily forms habits of self-absorption and learns to make his wife and home a convenience, from which he takes as his right the comfort they have to give, imparting little of devotion and confidence in return.

This lack of love denies the higher rights of marriage; it makes the wife’s submission a joyless constraint.

Along with this selfishness and the uneasy conscience attending it, there appears sometimes an irritability of temper that

chafes over domestic troubles and makes a grievance of the most trifling mishap or negligence, ignoring the wife’s patient affection and anxiety to please.

Too often in this way husbands grow insensibly into family tyrants, forgetting the days of youth and the kindness of their espousals.

Forgetting the love and tenderness that their young love was filled with.

"There are many," says Bengel (on this point unusually caustic), "who out of doors are

civil and kind to all; when at home, toward their wives and children, whom they have no need to fear, they freely practice secret bitterness."

And then there were these verses:

20Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.21Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

Fathers – we have a huge role to attend to in having children. Remember some of the statistics that I talked with you about earlier.

Well, it goes way beyond just being a parent who lives at home.

How approachable are you?

Does the smallest trifle set you off on a tirade?

Do you withhold endearments of hugs and kisses from your little ones as some kind of punishment for childish indiscretions?

Do not embitter your children – they are not little adults with these great capacities for rationalizing our insensitivities.

They get deeply hurt when we speak thoughtlessly to them.

Words hurt – names hurt!

And that brings me to my closing thoughts!

We cannot ignore the reality that we live in a world where so many children are living in far less than idyllic situations.

What is the role of us men in the church?

Do we have the right as Christian men to sit idly by as children find themselves in at-risk homes through no fault of their own?

NO, No, no – a thousand times no!

Read this passage with me.

1 Cor. 4:15 Surrogate fatherhood14I am writing this not to shame you but to warn you as my dear children. 15Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.16Therefore I urge you to imitate me. 17For this reason I have sent to you

Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.

We may not be the father of some of the children who walk into our doors – but shouldn’t we say along with Paul,

“in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.”

Men – I believe we have a holy obligation to nurture children everywhere we find them –

especially if they do not have father figures in their lives.

We could sit and weep every night of the week, bout the devastation of young lives, as we watch the evening news.

But what are we willing to do about it?

Are we willing to invest our time – our energies – our capacity to show godly love and concern to at-risk children.

We came to a point in our movie last night where we were introduced to a resolution for fathers – a resolution for men, everywhere.

I’m going to pass copies of these resolutions out to every man here today.

I’m not asking you to take one and sign it – far from it – I am begging you, don’t sign it.

But please, do take it home and study it, pray about it, seek to understand if this is something that you should place into your life as a commitment.

At some future date – probably before the summer is over – I will be asking you to consider making this commitment.

It’s not a MUST DO – it’s a CAN I DO?

Take it – pray about it – contemplate it.

Closing prayer

THE RESOLUTION

I do solemnly resolve before God to take full responsibility for myself, my wife, and my

children.

• I WILL love them, protect them, serve them, and teach them the Word of God as the spiritual leader of my home.

• I WILL be faithful to my wife, to love and honor her, and be willing to lay down my life for her as Jesus Christ did for me.

• I WILL bless my children and teach tem to love God with all of their hearts, all of their minds, and all of their strength.

• I WILL train them to honor authority and live responsibly.

• I WILL confront evil, pursue justice, and love mercy.

• I WILL pray for others and treat them with kindness, respect, and compassion.

• I WILL work diligently to provide for the needs of my family.

• I WILL forgive those who have wronged me and reconcile with those I have wronged.

• I WILL learn from my mistakes, repent of my sins, and walk with integrity as a man answerable to God.

• I WILL seek to honor God, be faithful to His church, obey His Word, and do His will.

• I WILL courageously work with the strength God provides to fulfil this resolution for the rest of my life and for His glory.

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. – Joshua 24:15