First off, to give a disclaimer to the title, I must say that every kind of person is valuable to God and should be to the local church. The following paragraphs are not meant to promote exclusivity. On the contrary, sharpening your focus on who you are primarily intending to reach could in fact draw more than exclude. Therefore, I believe unapologetically that the most important person your church can reach this year (and frankly every year) is…the young father. Dads, with kids still living at home, are more times than not the gateway to reaching and strengthening women, children and families. A well-known survey revealed that if a child is the first person in the family to accept Christ and join the church, it is a 3.5% chance that the rest of the family will follow. If the mother is the first, that percentage goes to 17%. But if the father is the first to accept Christ and join the church, the rest of his family will follow 93% of the time!
Secondly, there is a great cry from suffering generations to end the fatherless epidemic. The media has targeted the young male audience seemingly from every angle. Worldly pressure has always been to choose self and act irresponsibly to any role that becomes inconvenient. Society is stroking that vibe. However, anthropologist Margaret Meade said, “The supreme test of any civilization is whether it can socialize men by teaching them to be fathers.” There should be no better qualified institution to aggressively offer such training than the church. The body of Christ is the hope for the young family and consequently the culture.
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