JFM Forum Connecting Church and Home Conference 2010: Panel Discussion -- By: Lauren Foster

Journal: Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry
Volume: JDFM 01:1 (Fall 2010)
Article: JFM Forum Connecting Church and Home Conference 2010: Panel Discussion
Author: Lauren Foster


JFM Forum
Connecting Church and Home Conference 2010:
Panel Discussion

Lauren Foster

Editor

David and Sally Michael direct parenting and children’s discipleship at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Randy Stinson has served as Dean of the School of Church ministries at Southern Seminary since August 2006. He is the President of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, as well as the co-editor of the forthcoming Trained in the Fear of God (Kregel).

Jay Strother is Campus and teaching Pastor of the Church at Station Hill. He is the co-author of Perspectives on Family Ministry (B&H Academic).

Steve Wright is Assistant Pastor of Student ministry at Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, and author of reTHiNK: Is Student Ministry Working and ApParent Privilege (inquest).

Ryan Rush is Senior Pastor at Bannockburn Baptist Church. He is the author of Home on Time (21st Century).

Q: How do we train teenagers to embrace their biblical, gender-related roles?

Sally: Well, the first thing I would say is that gender is a very important issue and children are being taught gender by the world as young as preschool. When they pick up a book that says so-and-so has two fathers, they are permeated with the world’s view of gender. The example of gender roles in front of them continually, in all spheres of life, is the world’s view unless we give them something different. I think the church has been lacking in teaching on gender roles, and so children are by and large growing up not knowing what the Bible has to say about gender. Even their parents are somewhat confused about gender and gender roles, and so they are consequently kind of fumbling along trying to figure out what is a Christian man and what is a Christian woman. So we have a job to do, and that is to bring back the biblical teaching on gender roles. I think the main way that children will get that is through two things: One is direct teaching—what does the Bible say about this— and two, through modeling. Unfortunately, the modeling they are getting even in Christian homes is inadequate. Our modeling is inadequate because our understanding is inadequate. We as parents need to first learn what the Bible has to say about gender roles and then we need to model that appropriately to our children.

David: If you wait till a child is a teenager before you start to teach them biblical manhood and womanhood, we have probably waited too late. I know you, Randy, would have a lot to say—that you raise young boys a certain way and you raise young girls a certain way with

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