This post is part of a series entitled, “A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Single Moms“.
There have always been single moms in every culture in the history of humanity. By far the majority of those single moms have been young widows and their children.
But today, in modern America, a revolution never before seen in history has occurred: the number of single moms has exploded to the point where America now leads the world in single mothers.
To be sure, there are single moms in the U.S. who are widowed and have children.
But far surpassing them in numbers are single moms who have never married and have adopted children, single moms who have divorced or been divorced, single moms who have had children out of wedlock, single moms who are actually single grandmothers raising their grandchildren, or even — in one case that I know of — a single great-grandmother raising her two great-grandchildren.
I have explained in a previous post what gave rise to this revolution in how Americans view marriage and family; namely, the acceptance of a materialistic world view with the result that America’s intellectual elite no longer have the categories to understand the true nature and cause of the problem, let alone provide a solution to it that doesn’t make it even worse. Christians call this “walking in darkness.”
From a theistic and Christian world view, the primary cause of this explosion in single mothers is autonomous men who are no longer governed by an inner set of objective moral principles, nor by an external set of generally accepted social norms.
Free to act as they please, men become enslaved to their lusts and can no longer summon the will to live a monogamous lifestyle, instead impregnating women, deserting their children, and acting like the mere animals they believe they are and society tells them they are.
What the presence of so many single moms in our culture tells us, therefore, is that the church in general, and men’s ministry in particular, need to focus on evangelizing and discipling young, single non-Christian men. We simply are not reaching these men in the numbers we need to.
It is the gospel alone that can solve the problem of absent men in marriages and families. It is only when we take on the responsibility to stop the propagation of single mothers by reaching single men that we can truly begin to minister to those who already are.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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One thought on “What the Prevalence of Single Moms in America Says about Men’s Ministry and the Church”
This is, of course, exactly the point that needs to be made today. David Blankenhorn, in his seminal work, Fatherless America: Confronting our Most Urgent Social Problem, said the same thing. Lord help us raise up young men who will become responsible husbands and fathers! Blankenhorn wrote: In short, the key for men is to be fathers. The key for children is to have fathers. The key for society is to create fathers. For society, the primary results of fatherhood are right-doing males and better outcomes for children. Conversely, the primary consequences of fatherlessness are rising male violence and declining child well- being. In the United States at the close of the twentieth century, paternal disinvestment has become the major cause of declining child well- being and the underlying source of our most important social problems, especially those rooted in violence. (p. 26)