Church for the Fatherless

A Ministry Model for Society's Most Pressing Problem

Mark E. Strong

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780830863365
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Fatherlessness has reached epidemic levels.Forty percent of children in the U.S. will go to bed tonight in a home without a father. Studies show that people without fathers are at much higher risk for low educational performance, drug abuse, crime and poverty.Fatherlessness is rampant in our churches as well. When planting his church, Mark Strong realized that fifteen of twenty core leaders, whether they were in their twenties or sixties, white or black, had grown up without an active father figure in their lives. And he determined to make a difference in the lives of the next generation.The church is uniquely positioned to minister to the fatherless, both within its own community and in society at large. Strong shows how we can make our churches places of refuge for our nation's fatherless. Churches can reveal a true picture of God as loving Father through mentoring both children and dads, meeting the practical needs of children, and much more. By embedding key values into your congregational culture, your church can become a church for the fatherless.Be part of the solution. Are you ready to make a difference?

Part One

Understanding the Problem

1

Father, Where Are You?

Some time ago, Newsweek magazine featured an article titled “Father, Where Art Thou?” The picture above the title showed a teenager in jail garb. Just inches from his acne-blotched cheek was the shoulder of an officer bearing the seal of Fairfax County Corrections. The following page included a picture of the first Beltway bullet fired by seventeen-year-old sniper Lee Malvo. Malvo was on trial for the sniper shootings of twenty-one people and the death of fourteen in six states. Those two pictures alone ask a troubling question: what would drive a young man with all his life before him to choose to destroy himself and the lives of others?

Malvo’s actions may have a number of plausible explanations. His aunt, Marie Lawrence, articulated one explanation that carried considerable weight: she believed her family was cursed. The curse, however, was not a hex or some sort of incantation, but the absence of fathers. She said, “We don’t know what is father love.”

As a boy, Malvo was abandoned by his father, just as his mother was abandoned by her father. In addition, his mother left him to survive on his own at times while she went to search for a better life in other cities. At age fourteen, he was left in Antigua in an old shack while his mother went to Florida in search of the American Dream.

During her absence, the landlord cut off the electricity in the shack, and Malvo was left alone in those four walls with anger and frustration no child should have to bear. In that state of mind, he began to attach himself to John Allen Muhammad—a lethal father figure—and the rest of the tragic story is history. Muhammad filled the father void for Malvo and led him down a road that no loving father would ever choose.[1]

While not all fatherless children go to these violent extremes, the truth remains that children long for and need the influence of a father. Unfortunately, some seek to fill the void in ways that result in their own detriment.

A few thousand years ago, Malachi the prophet penned a statement that is applicable to the fatherless climate of our day. Speaking of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, he wrote, “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse” (Mal 4:6). Without discussing all the theological nuances and implications of this verse, I simply want to stress that the prophet identified a disconnection between fathers and children and implied that it would have harmful repercussions.

We are currently experiencing a disconnection between fathers and children in dramatic portions. The questions we must ask ourselves are, Why are nearly half of the children in our nation going to bed at night without a father in their lives? If you had asked these questions fifty years ago, the answers might have been a bit simpler, because the major cause of father absenteeism was death, not a myriad of other factors.[2] However, times have changed, our culture has changed, values have changed and the political landscape has changed. In this chapter we’ll examine the major causes of father absenteeism to help us understand the fuel that feeds the fire of fatherlessness in our society.

A Historical Cause: World War II

Quoting Ernest Burgess, scholar Donna Franklin states, “So comprehensive and fundamental are the changes brought by war, and so closely is the family interrelated with the larger society, that perhaps there is no aspect of family life unaffected by war.”[3] In the eyes of many sociologists, World War II greatly impacted American culture and placed a great amount of stress and tension on families. Franklin stresses this point:

World War II had a profound effect on American society. For the United States, it lasted twice as long as World War I, brought over fourteen million men and women into the armed forces, and added another ten million to the labor force. Family life considered an institution began a period of significant change. Arthur Marwick has argued, war always tests existing institutions, and sometimes leads to their transformation or collapse.[4]

World War II did indeed bring change to the American family and in many ways collapse as well. The war altered and in some cases permanently changed the lives of twenty-four million people directly and millions of other people indirectly. Unlike the Vietnam War, during which everyone knew of a family who had someone in the war, during World War II, every family had someone in the war.

While I don’t necessarily buy into the Ozzie and Harriet or Brady Bunch view of marriage and family, I do believe it is good to have both Mom and Dad in the house. How they work out the roles is up to them; however, both need to be close enough to be lovingly accessible to the children and to one to another. When a parent is absent, something is lost that can be very hard to find again.

World War II ripped the heart out of the family ideal by separating mothers from their children, husbands from their wives and fathers from their children. Mothers were forced to work and in many instances to spend long hours away from the family. The percentage of working women rose from 17 in the 1930s to 25 by the end of the war.[5] This meant that while Dad was off fighting, Mom was off working in the shipyard. During this time, opportunities opened up for many teens and youths to enter the labor force. It’s interesting that juvenile crimes rose to the highest level during this period.[6]

At the beginning of the war, military leaders did not favor drafting fathers. The rationale for this was that every child needed and deserved to have the blessing of a father in the home. However, by 1943 it was deemed necessary to draft fathers because quotas could not be filled with single men and men without children. This ruling brought a considerable amount of protest. In his book Fatherless America, David Blankenhorn writes,

Popular opinion remained decisively opposed to drafting fathers. A Gallup poll during the fall of 1943 found that 68 percent of Americans believed that compared to drafting fathers, it was preferable to draft single men employed in industries essential to the war effort. Public opinion also favored drafting single women for noncombat military service to avoid drafting fathers. As George Gallup put it, the public objected to the father draft because it would break up too many families where there are children.[7]

The public was right. It’s estimated that three to four million fathers were killed in combat, and many others returned home as frustrated, angry men never able to readjust to family life. Others who made it out alive remained absent from their families for months and years.[8]

World War II not only affected the family structure of white America, but also had adverse effects on African American families. In her book Ensuring Inequality, Donna Franklin points out several ways she believes the war hurt black families. One such way was the sudden and late northern migration to urban sprawls.

World War II placed severe strains on all American families, but its heaviest impact was felt by the African American family, weakened by slavery, share-cropping and the northern migration. During the 1940s, twice the number of blacks migrated to the North than had relocated between 1910 and 1930. By the end of the postwar decade, the proportion of blacks in urban areas would finally exceed those in rural areas—a shift that had been made by whites some thirty years before.[9]

As African Americans made the trek northward, they encountered obstacles that affected their families. The first was a lack of housing. The government attempted to rectify the situation, but failed miserably. The majority of its attempts were aimed at white communities, and when it tried to develop housing for blacks, it was met with strong resistance from whites. It goes without saying, it’s hard to raise a family without a roof over your head.[10]

Franklin also points out that blacks were thirty years late in their migration. In my family, when you were late for dinner, you were privileged to eat the leftovers. By the time blacks made the northern migration, there were not many leftovers available, as whites had had a thirty-year head start. The reality of slim resources, complicated by racism, made this harsh transition doubly difficult. Franklin points out the effect of poverty on the family life of blacks:

Facing a weakened economy without the social controls that once provided communal aspects of the southern life, black marriages disintegrated and out of wedlock births proliferated, especially among adolescents. Although clearly dissatisfied in their competition with white women for jobs in the labor market, many black women opted not to return to the paltry wages and irregular hours of the domestic service jobs they had before the war. In an effort to cope with their much higher desertion, separation and divorce from black men, and with the difficulty of securing support from the financially beleaguered fathers, black mothers became more reliant on welfare.[11]

My grandmother tells of migrating from Oklahoma to Portland. In Oklahoma the job opportunities were scarce. Most of the jobs available to blacks at the time were hotel clerk positions, stocking jobs in markets, house cleaning, nanny jobs and other menial labor positions. It was difficult for my grandfather to support his family with the slim opportunities present. Being a black man in the Depression era and during a world war complicated the situation even more.

In 1943 my grandfather was forced to move northward. Leaving my grandmother, my dad and my uncle, he went to Portland in search of a way to support his family. Upon arriving in Portland, Gramps encountered discrimination on many levels, but fortunately was able to land a job at the shipyard. Our story turned out fine, but as Grandma says, “It was good but difficult.” For some families, things were difficult and things did not turn out so fine.

While economic hardships alone can’t be blamed for the deterioration of black families in the World War II era, the impact of poverty can’t be denied. Af...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praxis
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One
• 1 Father, Where Are You?
• 2 The Impact of Fatherlessness
• Part Two
• 3 Embedding a Corporate Fatherless Value
• 4 Getting the Message Out
• 5 Equipping Men to Be Fathers
• 6 Mentoring the Fatherless
• 7 Praying for the Children
• 8 God Our Father
• 9 The Healing Path
• 10 How Do I Get started?
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Notes
• About the Author
• Endorsements