The Cost Of Family Break Down

One of my ministry goals is to engage the culture with Biblical truth. Writing letters to the editor of the local newspaper is a way to inform, exhort, and rebuke the community audience.

My latest piece:

What is family breakdown costing American taxpayers? According to a recent study by The Institute for American Values and the Georgia Family Council, it is a minimum of $112 billion a year. The principle causes of these astronomical expenses are high divorce rates and an increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births. Today 36.9 percent of all children and 69.9 percent of black children are born out of wedlock.

America is not alone in its woes. Great Britain is also reeling from family fragmentation. Justice Sir Paul Coleridge, a senior Family Division judge in England, has pronounced “The collapse of the family unit is a threat to the nation as bad as terrorism, crime, drugs or global warming. The government must put the family at the top of its agenda, alongside the economy and the war on terror.”

Clearly we have an expensive problem that needs fixing, both at home and abroad. The solution, I believe, requires much more than government attention. Family breakdown is a moral problem. We need spiritual revival and reformation. An ancient prophet has said that God would one day “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:6). May that day soon dawn.

One of the reasons Coram Deo Church has chosen to be family-integrated is to counter the ongoing trends of family-fragmentation. We believe strong families are a blessing to our community and to the nation.

Sincerely,

Pastor John Sleadd

I'm a Marvel and I'm a DC You Tube Video

This funny parody to the PC and Mac commercials sheds light on the box office competition for this summer's superhero movie choices. Which will in turn spill over into competition over choices of which character to be for this Halloween! Will you be a Marvel or a DC?

American Stealth Revival

For well over two decades a quiet revolution has been occurring across the American landscape. My friend, Pastor Gregg Harris of Household of Faith Community Church, has called it a stealth revival.

In virtually every state of the union a growing number of Christian families have been opting out of the secular school system and educating their children at home. They do so for a variety of reasons, but the main appeal of home education is the superior results. The benefits include individualized instruction, flexible scheduling, integration of curriculum with daily life, family bonding, and the freedom to pursue areas of special interest. For many, there is also the desire to bring all of life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ in accord with a thoroughly Biblical worldview.

Home education is a picture of academic entrepreneurialism, with mom and dad choosing the curriculum and determining how and when it will be mastered by the kiddos. All over the nation students finish their morning chores and slip into their scholastic routines on the couch or at the kitchen table. No institutional desks. No lining up for lunch. No hallway passes. No social cliques. No bullies or drug dealers.

On average, the cost of parents teaching their own children at home is one-tenth the cost of sending them to a public school. With such dazzling results, why don’t more Christian families teach their own kids at home? The answer in three words: It’s a sacrifice.
Mom works long hours without pay. The kids may not get to play on a sports team or be part of a music ensemble.

Modern Day Puritans
I think homeschoolers are modern day Puritans. The English Puritans were not the witch-burning, black-hatted legalists as caricatured in the public school history books. This is revisionist history for sure. While they were certainly not perfect, the Puritans’ commitment to family, faith and righteous self-government led them to establish the colonies (Jamestown and Plymouth) that would birth our Constitutional Republic. They loved God. They loved freedom. They were devoted to raising hard-working children with a vision of multigenerational, providential dominion. Like today’s homeschoolers. Puritan leader, John Winthrop, called the Massachusetts Bay Colony a “city on a hill,” an example of Christian charity and community for all the world to see.

Christian homeschoolers are making waves by training up God-fearing children who are anchored in the faith, and who are eager to transform the world around them. They are independent minded. They love liberty. They are pro-faith, pro-family, and pro-life. Many intend to have gobs of kids, and homeschool them in the tradition of their own upbringing.

Homeschool families are several million strong and growing. They are entrepreneurial. And they are politically active. It is likely that from their number the next generation of gifted churchmen and statesmen will emerge.

An ancient psalmist was onto something when he wrote, “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments! His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed” (Psalm 112:1-2).