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.

Random Musings...

There is so much going on in life right now. So, so much. As I was in the shower this morning I got to thinking about a lot of things. For one, college football begins this weekend. Man, am I thrilled that it is here. I have been consumed by thinking about that, but specifically this morning I was thinking about it because my two oldest sons were decked out in their Alabama hats rehearsing for what will be a great day on Saturday. If you have read this blog for long now, you know my family is my passion and that brought a smile to my face.

But I digress to less important matters. I was also thinking about the church. I do that a lot as well, and quite often what I think about does not bring a smile to my face. Quite often what I think about makes me sad and well, sad covers it.

In my heart I long for the day when the church gets back to being about what the church should be about. I must confess my lack of faith to believe that this will ever happen. I was thinking this morning about a challenge that our pastor had given us as pastors recently. He wants us to be focused more on evangelism. Now this is where it will get dicey for some of you. You won't believe what I say or you'll choose to believe that things are not as they appear in my work environment, and you are entitled to your wrong and flawed opinion.

My pastor wants our church to focus more on helping people understand their need for a savior. He wants us to be a church that is responsible for the advancing of the Gospel. He wants to know that the people in our church care about the fact that their neighbors and family members may be dying without hope of salvation. And he doesn't care if the result of our emphasis on evangelism merits us one more number on our attendance log.

As I sat and listened I was convicted beyond belief. I am not evangelistic at all and to my detriment. Sometimes I like being reformed a little too much. As I sat there that day I realized that if I were honest with my self, part of my problem with the church is with me. I love to sit and write about what all is wrong and talk about how we shouldn't focus on numbers, yada, yada, yada. However as much I talk about that stuff, I need to ask my self "Do I care about people's souls as much as I say so those people don't?"

I pray that God would help us be biblical. That we would care about people as he cares about people. That we would be overcome with the burden that comes with knowing the Savior and knowing that there are more who don't. That we would allow the love of Christ and the winsomeness of the Gospel to show to all we come in contact with. AND that we would be committed to the Great Commission. That we would seek to make disciples, more than to win converts. My hope and my prayer is that the church as a whole, and I mean everyone who is a part of the church, would experience a wake up call. And I pray that it will happen sooner rather than later.

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.

A Cry from the Fatherless

“It may be hard for some father’s not to have a son, but it is much harder for a son not to have a father.”- S.D. Gilbert
Three boys. Wow! As of 11 days ago I am the father of three boys. Asher, Caleb and Nathaniel Hickman have me for a dad. Now before you start sending your sympathy wishes to them, let me make one statement. Blake Leslie Hickman will do whatever it takes to make sure those boys know their dad.

Many people see the above quote and automatically assume that it is in reference to single parent homes. Unfortunately, that is not the case. One of the saddest things in our culture is the rate of fatherless homes where the father is still present. One thing that we need to make sure of is that we are not adding to the rise of that rate. Are we making our kids a top priority? Are we being intentional in how we participate in their lives? Are we having conversations with them with no ulterior motives? Are we telling them we love them with no strings attached?

It is an understatement to say that our kids need us involved in their lives. How we are involved means a lot. If you are a father of a daughter, don’t think this lets you off the hook. You could just as easily substitute daughter where you see son in the quote. Trust me. As excited as I am to have three boys, I would have loved to have a daughter. The bottom line is that our kids need us in their lives. They may say and display actions that communicate differently, but they want and need us in their lives. We can’t afford to let this training ground that God has given us go to waste. We need to take action.

Integrity In Church Membership

Integrity as defined by Websters dictionary is a firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic value. I have also heard a colloquial definition of integrity that says integrity is doing the right thing even when no one else is looking. Both of these definitions are sufficient but unfortunately neither of them can be strictly applied to the record keeping of many Southern Baptist churches.

The issue of integrity in church membership has been debated for years in small groups and behind closed doors. It has not, however, seen as much attention (for obvious reasons) like it has recently. Dr. Tom Ascol, pastor, and executive director of Founders Ministries has spearheaded a movement to discuss the issue in Southern Baptist circles. His ill-fated attempt to bring the issue to a vote at the Southern Baptist Convention this past June can be viewed by clicking on this link: SBC Integrity In Membership Video. Unfortunately, Dr. Ascol's resolution in support of church integrity was dead on arrival. Why you might ask? Good question, and frankly, I have no good answer.

What is encouraging, however, is that despite the lack of cooperation on the part of the SBC committee on resolutions, the issue is gaining steam among grassroots Southern Baptists. This issue also made its way into a feature article in the August 07 edition of Christianity Today. The CT article entitled, "Statistical Shell Game" talks about how Southern Baptists have boasted 16 million members when in fact the number is closer to 6 million. I guess we need to beef up our cooperative fund contributions to our SBC colleges for improving the math skills of our future pastors. Anyway you look at it, we need accountability. How can we expect to have a healthy church if half the members on our rolls couldn't even be found by the FBI? Its time for pastors and churches to lovingly practice church discipline and personal integrity no matter what the consequences. If we don't take this seriously then we run the risk of being relegated to the level of the charlatan hucksters that ran Enron into the ground. The time to practice integrity in membership is now!