Fathers matter. Study after study confirms that dads play a crucial role in shaping their children’s emotional, academic, and spiritual well-being. As Christians, we shouldn’t be surprised. Scripture says fatherhood is a sacred responsibility. Fathers are to model faith, provide for their families, and teach their children the works and words of God (Deut. 6:4–9; Ps. 78:5–8; Eph. 6:4; 1 Tim. 5:8). While sociologists have studied fatherhood for decades, until now the church has lacked reliable data on how Christian men live out their role as spiritual leaders. Are the fathers in our pews thriving, or are they barely treading water? To find out, Manhood Journey surveyed more than 6,000 Christian fathers across the country and compiled the findings in The State of Biblical Fatherhood. The results are both revealing and alarming. Here’s a glimpse: 83 percent only pray regularly with their families at mealtimes, bedtime, and when a need arises 38 percent aren’t serving in their local church 33 percent rarely or never give financially to the church Only 26 percent say they spend intentional time with their children to help them grow in Bible knowledge and spiritual maturity This isn’t merely a fatherhood problem. It’s a discipleship crisis. Fathers’ Spiritual Influence Psalm 78 records God’s command to Israel’s forefathers to teach their children his testimonies so the next generation might place their hope in the Lord and remember his works. It also carries a warning: Failure to do so will result in children who are rebellious and unfaithful. Until now, the church has lacked reliable data on how Christian men actually live out their role as spiritual leaders. According to The State of Biblical Fatherhood, more than 78 percent of Christian dads aren’t reading or discussing Scripture with their children, and more than 42 percent admit they only read the Bible occasionally themselves. If fathers aren’t immersing themselves in the Word, how can they pass it on? Of course, no father can save his child. But dads are responsible for cultivating an environment where faith can take root. Tragically, most fathers feel unequipped for this task. They’re not always disengaged; they’re just overwhelmed and underprepared. Even dads who long to lead often lack the vision, support, and tools to do so with confidence. This is where the church must step in. How to Invest in Fathers Most churches invest heavily in children’s ministry programs, youth groups, and global missions. These are good and necessary. But how many churches invest in fathers? How many view dads not as passive recipients but as frontline disciple-makers? If we want to build stronger families and a more faithful next generation, we must make discipling fathers a priority. Here’s how. 1. Engage dads. In many churches, fatherhood only gets pointed attention once a year on Father’s Day. What if that changed? A church’s ordinary ministry of the Word is discipleship for dads. But regularly engaging dads through specific sermon application, small groups, fatherhood events, and mentoring programs can help them see the importance of coming to church with their families, sitting under biblical preaching, and building biblical friendships. Churches should normalize conversations about fatherhood and invite men into deeper formation. 2. Equip dads. We train volunteers, teachers, and deacons. What about fathers? They’ve been entrusted with shepherding their families, yet many lack guidance. Churches can offer courses on parenting and marriage. They can provide discipleship tools like devotionals for family worship and family Bible reading plans so dads don’t have to guess at how to lead in the home. 3. Encourage dads. Many fathers feel disqualified—too sinful, busy, or far behind. But faithfulness doesn’t require perfection. To these dads, we need to clearly communicate that God’s grace and mercies are new every morning (Lam. 3:22–23). We need to show them that their past doesn’t define their future. By God’s strength, they can embrace greater faithfulness as fathers. For the dads already striving to lead their families well, we should encourage them to keep going and not stop with their own households. These dads can lead small groups and mentor others. Many have seen what God has done in their families. We need to help them imagine what God might do through them in others. Investment Worth Making Through Spirit-empowered encouragement and gospel-centered instruction, churches can raise up fathers who lead with conviction, humility, and love to strengthen their communities. Even dads who long to lead often lack the vision, support, and tools to do so with confidence. The church must step in. The church stands at a crossroads. The crisis in biblical fatherhood is real, but so is the opportunity. Will we continue treating fatherhood as a secondary concern or recognize that investing in it is one of the most strategic moves we can make in the life of the church? Fathers aren’t a side ministry; they’re a central mission field. If the church will respond with compassion and conviction, we can see a generational shift in discipleship and spiritual vitality. When we engage, equip, and empower dads, we’re not just shaping individual men; we’re sowing seeds that will bear fruit in families, churches, and generations to come.

In The Terminator—James Cameron’s 1984 science fiction film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger—the time-traveling robot was sent back from 2029. The machine revolt could start any day now. Maybe. Though time-traveling robots are fictional, it’s worth thinking about the ways technology has changed our lives. We often celebrate technology’s benefits, like the comfort of air conditioning, the extension of life through medicine, and the ease of personal communication via smartphones. Yet there are always trade-offs. Air conditioning encourages social isolation, medicines sometimes cause reactions, and smartphones can overstimulate us. The contributors to Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age wrote to encourage people to wrestle with the effects of technology, especially smartphones. The title is a nod to Neil Postman’s classic Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, which was published 40 years ago, in 1985. The goal of the book is to help Christians think carefully about how technology is changing the way we think, often in subtle ways. Given the book’s title, it’s no surprise that Amusing appears frequently within the notes. But many other books have also influenced the way the contributors think about technology. I asked the contributors to the book for their recommendations of the most important books for understanding how technology has shaped our culture. Joe Carter Lewis Dartnell, The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm (Penguin, 2014) The Knowledge offers an imaginative yet practical exploration of how technology shapes human civilization. Dartnell considers what essential skills and knowledge would be needed to reconstruct society from scratch, prompting readers to reflect on our often unexamined dependence on technology. This engaging book serves as a timely reminder of humanity’s God-given ingenuity—and our self-imposed vulnerability—in an increasingly digital and disconnected age. Collin Hansen Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart (W. W. Norton, 2025) Fake stories get more attention on social media than real ones. Why? Because they’re more surprising. Then, by the time the truth gets out, no one seems to care. Now, consider what happens when machines create the content, choose who sees it, and deliver it. Will they determine that real stories get better results than fake ones? Yikes. Carr explains how social media has turned us into rivals by turning us all into media personalities. He also encourages us to stop playing that destructive game. Samuel James Hartmut Rosa, The Uncontrollability of the World (Polity, 2020) This isn’t, strictly speaking, a book about technology. Rather, it’s a book about how humans orient themselves toward the world. Rosa makes a compelling case that approaching life from a standpoint of optimization and control hinders our experience of transcendent meaning and wonder. What Rosa creates is a paradigm for understanding why digitization, curation, and constant connectivity don’t make us feel the happiness we expect. This is a thoughtful work of accessible and (though not explicitly) Roman Catholic philosophy. Brett McCracken Christine Rosen, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World (W. W. Norton, 2024) In the disembodied digital world, we increasingly swipe, scroll, type, and tap our way through life. Our relationships are ever more through screens, apps, and avatars. Our sense of the world comes increasingly through mediated feeds of virtual realities rather than sensory experience and tangible interaction with the world right in front of us. What’s lost in a world like this? Rosen chronicles the various dimensions of this massive shift from embodied to virtual engagement with the world—and its many consequences for societal, relational, and even spiritual health. Ivan Mesa Maryanne Wolf, Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (Harper, 2018) A researcher of reading and the brain begins to realize how digital life has affected her ability to read, empathize, and reflect. Through a series of letters, she examines what a “good reader” is (e.g., we’re meant not only to download information but to reflect and become wise), why “deep reading” matters (particularly for our young children), and how reading well guards a society from some its basest instincts. The middle chapters (on children, screens, and books) are especially filled with insight. Though written in 2018, before the advent of generative AI, this book still stands up on its own merits. Jen Pollock Michel Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again (Crown, 2023) This popular book records Hari’s experience of a three-month “detox” from his laptop and smartphone. In the early weeks of his experiment, Hari experiences the painful withdrawal symptoms of an addict. Eventually, however, he begins to recover the capacity for sustained attention, and he muses on what’s gained in a life of presence. Patrick Miller Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focus in a Distracted World (Grand Central, 2016) This isn’t a tech book. It’s wisdom literature. But here’s the thing: A doctor who knows only how to diagnose problems isn’t a doctor worth visiting. We must learn the proper treatment for our digital addictions, and Newport’s book on flow states and deep work is precisely that. While this isn’t a Christian book, Newport’s insights run with the grain of reality as God designed it, which is precisely why more Christians must embrace his approach to focused work, prolonged periods of nondistraction, and digital minimalism. Keith Plummer Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (Penguin, 2016) Turkle, best known for her Alone Together, contends that we’re only fooling ourselves by thinking that technologically mediated communication is just as good as or better than face-to-face interaction. After discussing the contributing factors to our flight from conversation, she explains the casualties of such evasion in the spheres of family, friendship, romance, education, work, and public life. Though not written from a Christian perspective, this well-researched and accessible work affirms the goodness of embodiment and its vital part in communication. Andrew Spencer Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (Vintage, 1993) Technopoly is an accessible and vital companion to Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death because it updates his analysis in light of the early internet age. Just as Amusing proved surprisingly prophetic, so Technopoly anticipates the disintegration of social institutions due to the thoughtless adoption of technology. While Amusing focuses on media’s effects, Technopoly explains how technology can silently dominate our culture if we don’t resist it.

The devil doesn’t want you to know this, but the truth is that you can approach the throne of God any time.

More than stripes and stars, the American flag reminds us of sacrifice, freedom, and a nation founded under God.

Parenting is holy, hard, and deeply personal—but it’s never too late to turn things around.