I want a better future for my sons than I had growing up.
That statement alone is enough to bring up heated discussions amongst some families. When some people hear a statement like that, they begin to make assumptions about the person who makes the suggestion.
I come from, by many people’s standards, a large family. There were six of us children, and I am the youngest. As I have interacted with larger families over the years, I have noticed that siblings do not always have the same outlook on their upbringings. Even if most siblings’ home life was similar, some may have mostly positive outlook on their upbringing, while others have mixed or negative perspective.
I recently had a conversation with Greg, a friend who I know from a small house church I attend. Greg is a retired licensed counselor. During one of our conversations, Greg mentioned that a handful of memories from one’s childhood tend to shape the way we view our past. If the primary memories from our developing years are positive, despite negative events that may have occurred, a person’s outlook is likely to be more positive in nature. However, if the inverse is true, one’s positive experiences will be overshadowed by the prominent negative memories that come to the forefront in their minds.
Recently, two major documentary series have been released. One series, “Shiny Happy People,” explored the Dugger family and their association with Bill Gothard’s Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP). The second series, “The Secrets of Hillsong,” documents the rise and fall of the Hillsong church movement that started in Australia, but spread around the world.
Both series hit close to home at times, as I try to deconstruct the elements of my faith tradition that were unhealthy, and cling to the faith I believe to be genuine. Tricia and I decided to watch both series with our oldest son, Reuel (Ray).
I want a better future for my sons than I had growing up.
I would describe my family of origin as being IBLP adjacent. My parents, and later all six of us children, attended Bill Gothard’s seminars—some on numerous occasions. IBLP, as was discussed in the docuseries, had a homeschooling arm to their ministry called the Advanced Training Institute, or ATI for short. As the series points out, ATI was touted as a catch-all homeschooling program, claiming it was like being homeschooled but also receiving an education that was equivalent to pre-med and pre-law school. After attending several IBLP seminars, my mom was ready to switch our family from homeschooling through Pensacola Christian College’s Abeka home schooling curriculum to Gothard’s ATI. There was one problem. As Gothard would put it, there was a hole in the Lewis umbrella. My father, who was working 50-60 hours a week then and until he retired a decade after I graduated high school, was unavailable and unwilling to be involved to the level Gothard’s plan required. So, ATI did not happen for the Lewises.
As far as churches go, the church I spent the first 21 years of my life associated with was the church that had loaded up busses to send people off to Gothard’s IBLP seminars for years, if not a decade. This same church played a role in stifling my spiritual growth over the first two-plus decades of my life. As was shown in “Shiny Happy People,” obedience was expected amongst proponents of ILBP’s model of Christianity. As a result, when I began to question how teachings of the church lined up with what I read in the Bible during my teen years, I was quickly reminded that questioning one in authority was a sign of a rebellious heart, and such questions would not be welcome at our church. As a result, I stifled questions I had, and put my faith on the back burner as to not upset those in authority at my church.
That type of environment still has an effect on my life today. To this day I often do not trust my own feelings and gut. My upbringing taught me that my feelings were not to be trusted. Instead, I was to trust those that God had put in leadership over me. Turns out, many of those that God “placed” in leadership were less than godly, and should have been viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. Do I want my sons to have faith in and follow Jesus? I do. But I want them to engage their faith with their eyes wide open; not follow blindly out of fear of repercussions.
I want a better future for my sons than I had growing up.
Watching “The Secrets of Hillsong” brought up some of the same issues as “Shiny Happy People.” One such issue was Hillsong’s college program in Australia. This program was touted as being all you need to be effective in ministry, and yet it left graduates underqualified for just about any position, anywhere. While I realize higher education is not feasible for everyone, I am a strong proponent of continuing to learn, not “just to get a job.” Attending a conservative Christian university was one of the better decisions I have made. While I do not agree with many of the school’s positions, at the time I attended the school, they encouraged their students to read outside their comfort zones and to think. In the process of doing so, I began to form my worldview and beliefs. Unfortunately, in the two-plus decades since I graduated with my B.A., the school I attended has shifted in a direction that is more like IBLP—where now compliance and knowing what to think is more important than teaching students how to think.
Starting with their homeschooling, and now as some transition to attending public school, my wife and I have encouraged our boys all along to ask questions, to use discernment when encountering teachings. Unfortunately, this is something I wasn’t encouraged to do while I was their age. The world I was raised in was binary: good or evil, right or wrong. While I still believe in good and evil, right and wrong, I believe there are many shades of gray that we need to work through as we walk through our lives. I hope my boys are better equipped to walk these paths than I was equipped to when I moved into adulthood.
I want a better future for my sons than I had growing up.
Hillsong was similar to IBLP in that the person at the top, Brian Houston, was the ultimate authority. Upset him and things would not go well for you. As the series documented, Houston could, and would, use his power and voice to ruin those that he felt to be a threat.
While I never experienced abuse of power to the level that Gothard and Houston modeled, I too have experienced abuse of power in the church. The church I attended for a long time had a policy that the pastoral team was not to know how much people in the church were giving financially. That policy was likely put into place so that the pastors wouldn’t use that information to cater to the big donors, or use that information for selfish gain. Then one pastor said they needed access to that information. I don’t recall exactly what was said, but it was under the guise of seeing who was being faithful to the Lord in their giving. It did not take long for this pastor to start calling out people from the pulpit, accusing them of trying to bring down his ministry. Then it was discovered that he did not have an earned degree, as he said he did and was paid accordingly, but instead had gotten his “degree” for a small fee online. Once he realized he had lost his ultimate authority, he split, but not before splitting the church.
Another person in a church I was involved with that wielded an unhealthy amount of authority was not a pastor, but a member of the church. I was on the pastoral team at the time, and it did not take long for me to realize that this person held more sway than any member of the leadership team. But unlike those on the leadership team, this person had ties to previous church leaders. So, any decision that challenged the status quo was a challenge to the structures their family had put into play.
Two decades earlier, I was able to see the abuse of power on display and I left the church seeking a healthier community. But this time I was worn down, and did not recognize the abuse of power until several years after I left the pastorate, the church, and was well into my third bout of deconstruction. I wonder if I had been healthier--mentally, physically and spiritually--how I would have handled things.
I want a better future for my sons than I had growing up.
I wish I had believed in seeking mental health sooner. Earlier in life, I was taught that mental health issues were spiritual issues. If unresolved sin issues in one’s life were dealt with, mental health issues a person faced would be resolved. I hope my sons realize that everyone can benefit from mental health help, and that one can have mental health issues even without having unresolved sin in their lives. Maybe they will not wait until they are in their 40’s to seek help.
I want a better future for my sons than I had growing up.
Growing up, I thought the adults around me had things figured out in life. They sure looked like they did. On the rare occasion I, through courage or stupidity, asked difficult questions--the kind not really approved of in IBLP circles--the questions were rarely answered, and more furrowed brows, tisk tisk tisking, and disapproving looks followed. As time went on, I stifled my questions, and along with it my faith, and went along playing “church” to not ruffle any feathers.
In our home my wife and I have open conversations with our boys about difficult issues. That is why my wife and I made the decision to watch both series with our oldest son. This is part of our dialoguing with our sons about difficult discussions regarding faith, politics, race, sexuality, and so forth. At almost 15, my son has a healthier view of some of the issues in the series that still are triggering for me. He can see some of the unhealthy things for what they are—unhealthy. I, on the other hand, am still trying to peel back the layers of the indoctrination I received over the first 30-40 years of my life that have me questioning my own understanding of some of these topics.
I want a better future for my sons than I had growing up.
As I look back at my childhood, I believe my parents were doing what they believed to be best in how they raised me and my sisters. There are many positives I have taken away from my upbringing. As I walk alongside my sons during these formative years, I have incorporated into my parenting. But I don’t want to be clones of my parents’ approach to parenting. I want to hold on to the good, and improve in other areas. I want to let go of the parts that aren’t helpful, and be flexible enough to not allow these changes to make me lose focus of the task at hand. And you know what? If my sons become fathers in the future, I hope they do not parent the same way I do. I know I make mistakes. I know I could have and should have done better in numerous areas. My desire is that my sons will see my attempts to parent them as best I knew how as exactly that: my attempts to parent them as best I knew how. I want a better future, not only for my sons, but also for their children and their children’s children.
