Family Shepherds: Calling and Equipping Men to Lead Their Homes [Paperback]

Last week I read through Voddie Baucham's book Family Shepherds. Like his other books (Family Driven Faith and What He Must Be...If He wants to Marry my Daughter), it was a fast read but packed a lot into it.

There are not a lot of books out there that actually call men to be men in a biblical way. It either comes off as calling men to continue to abdicate their God given role and be weak, or to continue to abuse that role through sin. Most books about what God calls men and women to be spend most of their time saying, "This is what submission and leadership are not" but then never really say what it is. On top of this, most men and women who follow Jesus genuinely want to know what the Bible calls them to be. Most men want to lead their families, they are just not sure how.

If that's you, Voddie Baucham's books are a great place to start, particularly this one. The book is broken up into 4 parts: what the Bible calls husbands and fathers (family shepherds is what he calls them) to be, how to disciple your wife and kids, building a foundation in your marriage, and then how to evaluate your life and pace to fulfill what God has called you to.

What is a family shepherd? Baucham said he uses the term for a number of reasons, "It reminds me of the goal of my work. I'm shepherding my children toward Christ. My goal is not to raise children who conform to my hopes, wishes, dreams, or standards; my goal is to raise children who walk in the "discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Eph. 6:4)."

Overall, the book was incredibly helpful for me. While some parts are things he has written on in other places, I especially found the chapters on family worship and discipline to be helpful. Katie and I have been talking through how you parent with the gospel instead of moralism (stop doing this, do that). The chapters on discipline were helpful in this way.

One of the other things that I learned was how important prioritizing your marriage over your children is. While I know this, have preached on it, Baucham added a reason I never thought of. I've said his first 2 reasons in sermons before: your kids will leave one day so they can't be the foundation of your marriage and prioritizing your marriage over your kids brings security to your kids lives. The third reason he gave was important to me, when he pointed out that as parents you are training your kids to be married. While I knew this, it is easy to forget that I am teaching my kids through my marriage to be married.

Here are a few other things that jumped out:

-Discipling our children is not about teaching them to behave in a way that won't embarrass us. We're working toward something much more important than that. We're actually raising our children with a view toward leading them to trust and to follow Christ.
-We must not present the gospel to our children as though it were a fairy tale. They must know that these are truths worthy to be believed. These things are verifiable; they really happened. Moreover, because they really happened, their implications are inescapable.
-We must know the difference between what the gospel requires and what the gospel produces.
-Family shepherds must see the spiritual leadership of their families as their God-given duty. This is not a program! This is the responsibility God has laid at the doorstep of every man who carries the title father. Those who neglect the spiritual welfare of their families are therefore derelict in their duties in the same way a hired hand would be if he were caught sleeping on the job.
-A seismic shift is represented by changing the focus from one that says, "I'm a lawyer, and that defines the way my family is shaped," to one that says, "My wife and I entered a covenant relationship designed to bring forth, train, and launch a generation of godly offspring, and that's going to direct all the rest of my decisions." This isn't to say men should slack off at work. It is, however, to say that they should not slack off at home (something we almost never hear). This is a radical change of perspective.
-There are at least 3 reasons that make prioritizing our children over our marriage both foolish and dangerous. First, our children will eventually leave home - and if they're the foundation of our family, then their departure will mean our family's demise. Second, our marriage forms the cornerstone of our children's security. Finally, one of our primary goals is to prepare our children for marriage.
-The greatest source of security our children have in this world is a God-honoring, Christ-centered marriage between their parents.

Here is an interview Voddie did about the book.
[...]

I highly recommend this book to men who are looking for ways to lead their families or are unsure about how to do it.

Pastor Voddie Baucham is well known for his advocacy of family integrated churches and his good work on topics related to the family such as finding godly qualities in a future husband and raising up godly children. Family Shepherds is his latest book which focuses on equipping husbands and fathers to lead their homes.

The book consists of five parts with three chapters within each part.

Part 1: The Need to Equip Family Shepherds
The first part of the book speaks of the crisis which exists in many churches today: there is a radical age segregation that splits up families on the Lord's Day. Teens are taught and "pastored" by a young, hip youth pastor, who many parents see as the person responsible for their children's spiritual growth, and children are taken out of the service and placed in children's church. Baucham gives a very brief look at a couple of passages in both the OT and NT, emphasizing the familial corporate nature of worship and discipleship both in the church and in the home.

Part 2: Family Discipleship and Evangelism
The second part of the book emphasizes three areas in which parents are to function as prophets and priests in their home: proclaiming the Gospel to their children, catechizing, and conducting family worship (reading the Scriptures, praying, and singing). The chapter on proclaiming the Gospel is very good, and while the topics on catechism and family worship are incredibly important, they seemed too brief.

Part 3: Marriage Enrichment
The third part is a good section on marriage. In this part, Baucham focuses on the purposes of marriage, the nature of marriage, and the need for male leadership in the marriage. Voddie makes a good case for complementarianism, critiquing some of the proponents of egalitarianism.

Part 4: The Training and Discipline of Children
This is perhaps the best section in the book. In this part Baucham draws on the wisdom of Cotton Mather concerning the formative and corrective discipline of children. Baucham helpfully shows that there is a continuum/gradations of how one ought to discipline one's child.

Part 5: Lifestyle Evaluation
In this concluding section, Baucham emphasizes the importance of church membership, honoring the Lord's Day, and living as citizens of God's kingdom while we live here on earth.

Family Shepherds is an alright book. In some ways the flow of the book seems disjointed. The book in some sense seemed more of an anthology on the family, composed of brief vignette-like chapters, too short to really develop his argument or provide fathers with many practical examples. Perhaps what I appreciated most was his drawing from the wisdom of men like George Whitefield (concerning catechism) and Cotton Mather (concerning discipline), which whet my appetite to go read them. The reader will glean many good things from this book but the book would not be my first choice concerning these important topics on male leadership in the home (e.g. excellent work has been written by many of the Puritans).

*Review copy provided courtesy of Crossway Publishers

The subtitle for this book "Calling and Equipping Men to Lead Their Homes" could not be more accurate for what this book is attempting to do. So the ultimate question is: Does this book accomplish its purpose? The answer is a resounding YES!! Voddie Baucham has continued his excellent writings/preaching on the family with this excellent book. The book is broken down into five parts. Part one is an introduction to the book and its purpose, namely, making sure readers have an understanding of a biblical view of the family. Parts two - five are actually a breakdown of what Grace Family Baptist Church goes through in their men's meeting on a yearly basis. The first of these sections is Family Discipleship and Evangelism. The stress in this section is that it is the father's job to be the primary teacher in his children's lives. The chapter on catechizing our kids is a wonderful read and defense for catechizing. The reasons why we do not anymore and the closing quote by BB Warfield are very insightful to our neglect of this wonderful technique on teaching sound doctrine to our kids. Part three is on Marriage Enrichment. This section is good. Much of the material can be found in Voddie's other writings or sermons, but the charge for men to lead is not one that gets old and certainly is worth hearing again. Part four covers Training and Discipline of Children. This section starts with a wonderful chapter on the implications of what we believe have on how we raise our kids and discipline them. The chapter centers on the differences in approach one has based on theology, namely, Augustinianism/Calvinism vs. Pelagianism/Semi-Pelagianism. This chapter is worth the price of the book in my opinion simply because if we have an improper view of self and sin it will ultimately shape the way we train our children. The next chapter on Formative Discipline is worth the price as well. Voddie walks through a book by Cotton Mather titled A Family Well Ordered and the chapter is filled with great advice and wisdom. The last section is on Lifestyle Evaluation and is certainly a good chapter to come back to and examine our lives. Overall this book does a wonderful job of laying out a pattern that would be beneficial to follow. As Paul said to be imitators of him as he was of Christ, we would do well as men to imitate much of what is in this book and to plead with God that the next generation of men would stand on biblical principles in their home.