I recently was directed to an article about lawn care that suggested we could serve the environment best by allowing our lawns to die.  I immediately shrieked in astonishment, I am convinced that the environment in my neighborhood is enhanced by my green grass.  Never-the-less, it was not the environment aspects of the article that really caught my attention.  Instead, it was a block quote from Laura Vanderkam that said this:

In short, lawns are incredibly inefficient, and not just from an environmental perspective. Maintenance requires time and money, which people usually claim are in short supply. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, the average father of school-aged kids spends 1.6 hours a week on lawn and garden care — more time than he spends on reading, talking, playing or doing educational activities with his kids combined.

Now, as I mentioned, I like my lawn and I enjoy the time spent caring for it when I get to do so.  I”m not too concerned about the use of time, 1.6 hours per week spent outside is probably a healthy release for most busy Americans.  What concerned me the most was her suggestion that the average American father spends less than 1.6 hours per week reading, talking, playing, or doing educational activities with his kids combined.

As a researcher, I traced back Vanderkam’s statistics with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and my numbers don’t match hers.  According to my calculations, the survey shows that fathers spend on average 2.38 hours per week involved in reading, talking, playing, or doing educational activities.  However, if one removes the time spent on play or hobbies, the time is less than 1 hour per week involved in all other things.

What a sad state of affairs to know that dad’s are shirking the privilege and responsibility of fatherhood in such a devastating way.  Children need their fathers and it is the responsibility of Christian fathers to pass on the faith once for all delivered to the saints.  The faith will not be passed on in 2 1/2 hours per week.  Psalm 78 exhorts fathers,

5He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
6 that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
7 so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;

I tasked our new youth and discipleship pastor (Luke Tolbert) with helping me to develop some good stuff we could put into the hands of fathers in our church.  Recently, I’ve been blessed to hear, on several occasions, “I want to lead my family like you talk about, but can you help me understand just how to do that.”  We know that most men are not going to read Kostenberger’s God, Marriage, and Family, and even if they did, they would find it heavy on theory and light on application.  They are fixers and not readers.  Men want short and concise “how to” instructions.  So, basically, we are working on that “how to” guide to put into the hands of our dads.

Though this resource is still in the development stage, Luke compiled a great list of online resources that we will be synthesizing to give to our guys here.  Maybe you can use this list or you might even have something to add.  Feel free to do so.  I’ll be sure to make the finished product available to you as soon as it is to us.

• Ideas for Family Worship from The Resurgence
• Family Worship Guide.net - This is a website that has a worship guide for every day of the week. It is available in a PDF that can be downloaded; I think you can even download the entire month’s devotions. The website also has a good FAQ and resource section for families.
• The Radical Experiment - David Platt’s website has a weekly family worship guide alone with a simple “how-to-manual” that is a little wordy but is a good resource.
• Acts 29 Blog - There are two recent blog entries concerning fathers that I have enjoyed reading. One was on Six Ways Fathers Pursue Christ in their Fatherhood and the other is 10 Practical Pastor Dad Tips which is a good practical guide.
• Pastor-Dad ebook - While we are talking about Acts 29 and Mark Driscoll, he recently wrote a free ebook titled Pastor-Dad. I have not read through it so we should probably not start mass producing them for the congregation right away, but I have heard good things about it and the sections I read so far are pretty good.
• Seeds Family Worship - This is a website that Desiring God recommends as they have put Scripture to music so that kids can memorize it. They also have a list of resources and books that we could look at if we want to purchase some devotional guides to put in the hands of the fathers of our church.
• How I Pastor My Family - This is a practical guide written by an Acts 29 church planter.