Acts Forum: The Sanctity of Life

As a follow-up to the post from January 31st on Cultivating A Culture of Life, we would like to make available a message delivered by Dr. Mark Liederbach. This message was delivered as a part of the Acts Forum teaching ministry at Providence Baptist Church. Dr. Liederbach is an associate professor of Christian Ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and received his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

The message can be listened to or downloaded at the
Providence Baptist Church Acts Forum audio download site.

Parents Standing In The Gap

Many of you who frequent this blog know that Blake and I are active youth ministry leaders. Blake is a middle-school pastor and I am a Discipleship Coordinator for both middle and high school. We have shared our philosophy of youth ministry in many of our blog posts since we started. In a nutshell, the Bible teaches that parents are the primary disciplers of their children and youth pastors should equip parents to play this role instead of usurping parental authority.

Last night Blake, Steve (our head youth pastor), Joel (our high school director), and myself put our money where our mouth is. We had a discipleship kick-off reception and invited parents and students to come. Our intent was to initiate a Bible study/reading plan and to inform parents of what we expected of them. Going into last night we were short leaders for some of our discipleship groups. So we informed our parents that it was primarily their job and not ours to see that their kids get discipled. We told our parents that we will not exercise a drop-off youth ministry and that we expected them to volunteer to fill in gaps in our leadership team. We raised the bar and God has blessed us for it. We had over 270 parents show up for the meeting, and the vast majority of them instead of chafing at our admonition, became engaged and energized. I would have been happy if only 10 or 20 families had come on board, but God had other plans.

My point is this, had we continued to do youth ministry at the status quo, we would never have seen the overflow of parental support and engagement like we saw last night. If you are a youth pastor and are doing the dog and pony show to keep kids engaged, stop. Stop now. Read Deuteronomy Chapter 6, challenge your parents to fulfill their God-given role, stop running a drop-off youth ministry, place expectations on your parents. If the baseball team, the soccer team, the pta, and all the other groups have expectations of your parents why should we as pastors be any different. If anything we should be at the top of the pecking order because the future of their children hangs in the balance. It's time that we demand that our parents stand in the gap. And the good news is I think that many of them are ready.

The Path To Sexual "Tolerance".

What precedes sexual tolerance? How does a church, or a family for that matter, go from healthy sexual expression of its members to tolerance of whatever sexual practice society embraces? This question was dealt with poignantly in the latest missive on Dr. Al Mohler's blog. Ever the vigilant religious watchdog, Dr. Mohler gets right to the heart of the problem...

"This process does not start with issues of sexuality, of course. Long before these churches faced controversies over sexuality, they had already allowed the doctrinal foundations of their churches to be eroded and compromised.

In other words, a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on doctrine preceded a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on matters of sexuality."

Now lets take his statements to their logical conclusion. If doctrinal compromise precedes sexual tolerance then logically to avoid sexual tolerance a church or a family should teach its members sound doctrine. So, how good of a job are evangelical families and churches doing at teaching its members sound doctrine. To quote a famous Eight-Ball, "Outlook not so good."

You can't have sound doctrine without practicing the self discipline of Bible study and teaching. This responsibility doesn't just rest on the shoulder of pastors either. Parents you have a command to teach your children sound doctrine regardless of the support of a pastor. This is especially true of fathers. When Paul admonished Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:1-3, he was speaking to a pastor, but aren't fathers the shepherds of their flock at home? Do fathers have any less of a responsibility to follow these words in their homes than pastors do in their churches?

The path to "sexual tolerance" beings at home when fathers abrogate their calling. The path to "sexual tolerance" also begins in the pulpit when a pastor cares more about the opinions of the folks in the pew than the Father in heaven. I hope that before we get too far down the path to "sexual tolerance" that God will ignite a fire in our hearts and we will erect the much needed road-block of sound doctrinal teaching.