Is your church struggling with declining membership, declining engagement or just in need of revival?
Over the last few decades we have witnessed a significant decrease in church attendance across America. At the same time, we have also witnessed a dramatic shift in family structure, with nuclear, intact families becoming the exception rather than the norm. Today, single parent families are the fastest growing demographic in the U.S., with more than 40 percent of all new babies this year being born to unwed mothers.
While public schools and other secular institutions have observed this trend and adapted, the American Church has not. Even today as the U.S. leads the world in the percentage of families headed by a single parent, fewer than one percent of its churches have any kind of vision or plan for ministering to single parent families. Should we be surprised that church attendance has dropped off so sharply if they are not addressing half the families in their communities? It is estimated that 95% of single parent families today do not attend church, much to the detriment of the Church and these vulnerable families.
This statistic is even more troubling when we look at the next generation of church leadership. We cannot find one Christian college, university or seminary in the U.S. that offers courses dedicated to prepare future leaders to understand and minister to the unique needs of single parent families. In fact, these families are glaringly absent from most descriptions of family ministry. Even the two leading parachurch ministries in America that focus on families only minister to married couple families.
While we believe this oversight stems from a good desire within the Church to uphold God’s design for marriage and family, we also think part of it stems from a failure in the Church to see single parent families as widows and orphans and prioritize them as such. The word widow has almost universally come to mean a woman whose husband has died. But biblically, a woman could be widowed from death, divorce, or desertion. Likewise, many believe the word orphan means a child who has no parents. But the word orphan is derived from the Greek Orphanos, which means fatherless. So, an orphan can be any child who does not have a father but may have a mother. By these definitions, we find that most single mothers and their kids today qualify as true widows and orphans. And even those who do not are still vulnerable and should be treated as Jesus calls His followers to treat “the least of these.”
Caring for widows and the fatherless was never considered optional by God; it is central to the gospel.
Caring for widows and the fatherless was never considered optional by God; it is central to the gospel. Providing for widows was the first ministry of the early church, which was part of what made her so uniquely attractive. When we neglect or outsource this, the Church loses one of her most endearing qualities. God tells us repeatedly in His word to “take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17 NIV) In James 1:27, “Visiting the fatherless and widows in their distress” is what God approves as true religion, evidence of a correct understanding of the gospel. But if you asked a single mom today, she would probably tell you no one from the Church visits her, and they rarely even acknowledge her, let alone plead her case. For the brave few who are in church and persistently pleading their own case, they are often viewed as needy or unable to contribute to the mission of the church.
In the Old and New Testament, God commands us to imitate his care, protection and provision to widows and the fatherless because He knows their distress is acute. Today a total of about 15.7 million children are being raised without a father. Fifty percent of all kids in single mom homes have never even been to their dad’s house. The greatest indicator for childhood abuse is living in a single mom home without a father present for protection and provision. Children living in homes with a single mom and her boyfriend are 11 times more likely to experience physical, emotional or sexual abuse than those living with married biological parents. They are also twice as likely to drop out of school, four times more likely to become pregnant as teenagers, and more than twice as likely to commit suicide. Financially, there is even more distress. At least a third of all single moms live in poverty. Nearly 90% of all homeless families are headed by single mothers. Financial desperation drives other desperate decisions too, including sexual compromises that often lead to more unplanned pregnancies.
Church, this should break our hearts and stir us to repentance and action.
Single Parent Ministries was born when a handful of leaders from around the country came together and felt moved by God to focus on educating and equipping churches instead of just running our own individual ministries to single parent families. We believe that a single parent family’s best chance to thrive and have generational transformation hinges on knowing Jesus and being part of a redemptive church family, but that widespread inclusion of these families will never happen apart from changing church culture. Our goal is to leverage our collective voice and experience to help meet this great need and restore the Church to her intended fullness and beauty through reaching and restoring single parent families, today’s widows and fatherless.
We pray you will join us in this movement.