I was doing some research for something else and wanted to share some anecdotal evidence here…
In a majority of households where the husband/father is a faithful church-goer, the rest of the family tends to attend with him, but in households where the husband is not a faithful church-goer (but the wife is, at least initially), the wife’s attendance drops significantly every five years or so. It’s also the case that the number of homes where the husband is a faithful Christian and the wife is not is a small amount, relatively speaking, but homes where the wife is a faithful church-goer and the husband is not is much more common.
In other words, too many dads are comfortable thinking “going to church” is for the wife and kids to do.
And as long as we’re talking about this sort of thing: Children are extremely likely to attend Bible Class as adults if both parents brought them as kids, but they are far less likely to attend as adults if their father alone was the one who brought them. That number also drops significantly if only the mother brings her kids without her husband. If neither parent attends, and the children rely on someone else to bring them, as you can imagine, they are highly unlikely to attend Bible Class when they are at an age to drive themselves.
Now consider this: In a household where the child first obeys the Gospel, there is only a minuscule chance the rest of the household will follow. If a mother obeys first, the odds only increase slightly for the rest of the family to follow. If the father is the first to obey, the odds that the rest of the family obeys is tremendously greater.
Dads have an incomparable opportunity to convert their families if they would only obey the Gospel!
These facts are observable. You have seen and know of cases where they apply. We all do. The reason for the huge disparity, I think, is clear. Like it or not, there is a clear psychological barrier at work. The pattern of God is that men lead the home. Ideally, it is that godly men lead a godly home. When the patriarch is not godly, it starts a chain reaction that brings instability to the whole rest of the family dynamic. The wife may obey the Gospel instead, but then she will find it challenging to get her husband to listen to her, to undertake the ultimate act of submission (to Jesus), because it is being driven by the teaching of his wife, who, by God’s design, is supposed to be in submission to him.
The solution? Husbands/Fathers need to make church attendance a personal priority. If they do, a faithful family is almost guaranteed to follow.
~ Matthew