According to a 2024 Gallup poll, only 20% of Americans attend church on a weekly basis—a significant decline from 32% in the year 2000. This is highly significant to note in a culture that is increasingly un-relational, uncommunicative, and isolating. It is also an important concept to consider as we witness an equally important issue—the decimation of the family at a similar all-time high, with 40% of U.S. children now born to into single-mother households.
A study recently highlighted in the Christian Post revealed that “80% of church attendees grew up in a home where their mother and father stayed married.” As leaders of the church, we recognize that these two issues—the destruction of the family unit, specifically in relation to absent fathers, and the aggregate decline in faith—are interrelated. So, how do we begin to fix this endemic issue?
The answer is simple: The church must lead the way—in obedience to God’s Word—and take action.
The Role of Men in the Family
According to the Word of God, men are called to be the leaders of the home, stewarding their families responsibly, acting as devoted pastors, providers and protectors to their wives and children. The problem we are witnessing today is the absence of biblical manhood, resulting in the widespread lack of husbandhood and fatherhood in emotional and/or physical capacities.
In turn, many mothers are left to try to lead the home, a role that falls outside of the God-ordained design, raising up children without true male headship and growth. Despite the narrative that present society would like us to believe, this negative shift in the family dynamic is significantly harmful. In fact, children from fatherless homes account for 63% of youth suicides, 71% of pregnant teenagers, 90% of runaway or homeless kids, 85% of youth sitting in prisons, 71% of high school dropouts and 75% of teens in drug treatment.
Therefore, family ministry needs critical attention from the church—specifically in relation to men. We must encourage men to be present husbands and fathers—to be the righteous men they are called to be in God’s Word—by providing them with encouragement, accountability, wisdom and knowledge to lead their families boldly and honorably. In doing so, these men will accomplish the first ongoing step in the grander plan of Christ’s love through righteous manhood.
Pure and Undefiled Religion: Adoption Beyond the Family Bond
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27).
This passage of Scripture, which is utterly crucial to the Christian faith and calling, compels us to extend Christ’s love beyond our homes. No other ministry effort within the church body is addressed in the same way; it is an integral, unique command that is mentioned more than 110 times throughout God’s Word. The fatherless are important to God and should be a priority to the church.
If this calling is so valuable to our Father in heaven—and so glaringly absent in our world today—shouldn’t this also become the primary concern for church leadership?
Not only should we minister to men and their families in effective ways to ensure that this issue is halted first at the family unit, but we must also make sure that we are not merely giving lip service to the issue at the pulpit.
In other words, we must earnestly review our congregational demographics for fatherless children, teens and single mothers, the “widows” of our day and age, to ensure that our efforts to tackle this issue aren’t lost altogether. If these individuals aren’t in our churches, then we must seek them out and welcome them in.
Pastors, you are called to boldly lead this courageous charge.
