Tag Archive - Rodney Clapp

Suburban Spirituality: Church Before Family

May 18, 2009 in Ministry-Theology with 14 Comments

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[image by Pink Sherbert]



I mentioned earlier last week that my wife and I are thinking through where we want to move in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex when our lease is up in August.  And I stated that as we contemplate this move all sorts of questions have arisen in our mind (stewardship, finances, mission, family, vocation, etc.)…put those all in the mix and they will help determine where we want to settle down.

On Thursday I took a look at the issue of financial stewardship as a reason for why people often make a move to the suburbs.  For all the jokes and criticism suburban life gets, there are legit reasons why families move there and often finances is one of the top reasons. That’s one of the reasons why we are possibly thinking about settling down there.

Another reason for why families often make the transition to the suburbs is because of family. They are trying to keep the family life intact, and hoping that life in the suburbs can guarantee that with its good schools, convenient ball fields, central shopping and lots of churches to choose from…family life will remain central.

That seems like a great thing…so you might be surprised to find critiques regarding that value. As a Marriage and Family Therapist, family life is obviously very important to my work, and what I believe as important. That’s why I struggled with my reading through the really great book, Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options by Rodney Clapp.  He says this:

In the postmodern world the market and its ways have swallowed our lives whole, so that living in genuinely Christian family is almost a lost art.  Recovering the purpose of Christian family, on the distinctive terms of the Christian story, requires two declarations–one negative and one positive.

The negative declaration: The famly is not God’s most important institution on earth.  The family is not the social agent that most significantly shapes and forms the character of Christians.  The family is not the primary vehicle of God’s grace and salvation for a waiting, desperate world.

And the positive declaration: The church is God’s most important institution on earth.  The church is the social agent that most significantly shapes and forms the character of Christians.  And the church is the primary vehicle of God’s grace and salvation for a waiting, desperate world.  Putting the church first, of course, runs counter to the interpretation of many evangelical traditionalists.  They put the biological family first.  They emphatically place family at the center of God’s purposes and work on behalf of the world…..

Yet, we cannot put Jesus first and still put family first. (pp. 67-68)

So as my family and I ponder our move, one of the questions we have been asking ourselves is, “Is our desire for a certain way of family life taken the primary importance of God’s mission or call on our lives?

What do you think about what Clapp says?

How do you wrestle between call and family in your own life, and where you choose to live?

Stay at Home Dads: Are You One, And The Changing Of The American Family

June 17, 2008 in Marriage-Family with 2 Comments

I’ve really been interested in the topic of stay at home dads, or fathers who are the primary caregivers, and at the least are co-nurterers. And now that we are in transition to a new state and new jobs, I’ve currently finished up my job and am home full-time so I’ve been thinking about this even more. Last year, when my wife and I had our first baby we had to re-work our work schedules in some drastic ways. We did this for a few reasons:

  • We did not want our baby to be in full-time day care, and if we could help it, we didn’t want her to have to go at all.  We have nothing against day care, but that was the choice we made.
  • We both have to work to sustain a living in Los Angeles, so we didn’t have the option of us quitting our jobs, though my wife went from 5 days a week to 4 days a week.
  • We thought it was important that we both played primary roles in our daughter’s life, and we were excited that I would have so much time with her since some fathers aren’t involved very much in their babies lives, or are unable to be involved.




I’ve been exposed to a lot of things that have really challenged my views on the makeup of the traditional family (i.e. the Bible, M.Div, MFT, marriage, reading, experience, counseling couples, etc.) recently.  One of the books that I have found particularly challenging and helpful is Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional & Modern Options by Rodney Clapp. I’m currently re-reading the book and will be sharing some thoughts with you, as well as hoping to get some feedback. But the Amazon review summarizes it nicely by saying:

“Scant decades ago most Westerners agreed that . . . Lifelong monogamy was ideal . . . Mothers should stay home with children . . . premarital sex was to be discouraged . . . Heterosexuality was the unquestioned norm . . . popular culture should not corrupt children. Today not a single one of these expectations is uncontroversial.” So writes Rodney Clapp in assessing the status of the family in postmodern Western society.In response many evangelicals have been quick to defend the so-called traditional family, assuming that it exemplifies the biblical model. Clapp challenges that assumption, arguing that the “traditional” family is a reflection more of the nineteenth-century middle-class family than of any family one can find in Scripture. At the same time, he recognizes that many modern and postmodern options are not acceptable to Christians. Returning to the biblical story afresh to see what it might say to us in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Clapp articulates a challenge to both sides of a critical debate.A book to help us rethink the significance of the family for the next century.

I know plenty of fathers who are stay at home dads currently. Some are in graduate school, so their wives work full-time. So they pull double duty as student and father and the wife pulls double duty as “breadwinner” and mother. Some fathers I know are married to women who make more money, so they have decided that the father would stay home instead. Others is a conscious decision to divide the caretaking responsibilities between them. Some fathers I know work from home and have flexible schedules, so they stay at home, and raise the children while they work.

I am going to continue this series in the upcoming weeks, but let me ask a question:

Are you a stay at home dad? What went behind that decision?