Often, not everything that could be covered gets covered in our sermons.  A good deal gets left on the cutting room floor, as it were, for time’s sake. Usually, the additional references and points get turned into series, or classes and books. Such certainly is the case with a lesson on Fathers like we had this last Sunday.

One of the details that didn’t get mentioned was a statistic from a LifeWay study that was quite shocking, though, with more thought, makes sense. It is well known that Father’s Day is the lowest church attendance day, beyond even the weekend of Independence Day and Labor Day. Similarly well-known is that Mother’s Day is one of the most attended days, in competition with Easter and Christmas. What’s fascinating about this is the statistics on parents’ actual impact on their children’s church involvement.

According to LifeWay, if a mother is religious and the father is not, around 2% of their kids will regularly attend church as adults. Put another way, only 1 in 50 children in a household with only a religious mother will continue to have anything to do with religion. However, if the father is religious and the mother is not, the result is that 75% of their kids regularly attend church in adulthood. Three in four! Clearly, the father has an outsized influence on the devotion of his household. And while grown children may love their mothers, and appease them on one day a year, long-lasting service to God is most often crafted and cemented through a Father’s love.

You’ve probably heard the advice that sons will naturally desire to become like their fathers and daughters will marry men like their fathers. Most crime is committed by people without good father figures. These give us additional glimpses into their necessity. But we should know this already. This is something that our heavenly Father already lovingly taught us.

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). “My son, do not reject the discipline of YHWH or loathe His reproof, for whom the LORD loves He reproves, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights” (Prov. 3:11-12). “He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently” (Prov. 13:24). Etcetera, etcetera. Why does this matter? Because if you “train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). While there is still hope, like with Timothy through his mom and grandma (2 Tim. 1:5), the clear biblical pattern is that fathers must take charge of their children’s education and upbringing. Especially when it comes to a love for God and His word. The first step is cultivating that love for our heavenly Father in ourselves; like a good son who loves the discipline of his loving Father.

– DMF