FAMILY HERITAGE

Over the years a distinctive feature of Greyfriars Presbyterian Church has been its heritage of family life. Two previous ministers notably emphasised this: Rev. Dr. John A. Allan (1936-1937), later principal of the Presbyterian Church's Theological Hall, and Rev. G. Morrison Yule (1975-1981), father of the present minister. Minister Rob Yule drew attention to this heritage on 2 March 2003, at a service marking his parents' 60th wedding anniversary.

A Tale of Two Ministers

Today we are privileged to share with the Yule family in the celebration of my parents, Morris and Marion Yule's 60th wedding anniversary. Dad was minister of Greyfriars for 5 1/2 years, from July 1975 till his retirement in January 1981. He and Mum came to Greyfriars with four of our family-Phil (briefly), Ollie, Penny, and Simon. The rest of us had left home before they came to Greyfriars.

We congratulate you on reaching this milestone. We also honour your lifetime of service to the Presbyterian Church, in Ranfurly, Central Otago ; in Edendale, Southland ; at St. Stephens, Ponsonby ; and lastly here in Greyfriars.

Your ministry here was notable for your systematic expository preaching of the Bible, your family values, and your support for missions. In 1976 you founded the New Zealand committee of the Africa Inland Mission, to support Greyfriars' missionaries Ben and Winsome Webster. You continued as chairman of AIM for 17 years. In 1977 you helped establish Greyfriars' Training and Service Fund to provide financial support for Greyfriars' members who were training to be ministers or missionaries.

I have a little booklet entitled Christianity and the Family. It was written by another minister of Greyfriars - briefly in 1936-37 - before he was appointed Professor of New Testament at the Theological Hall, Knox College, Dunedin. Professor John Allan, Dad, was one of your teachers, affectionately known by your contemporaries as 'wee John'. The booklet is undated, but the author is described as Principal of the Theological Hall, which puts it between 1946 when he became Principal and 1962 when he retired.

John Allan was writing about family life fifty years ago - in the nineteen-fifties. He expresses concern at the aging of the population and the failure to reproduce at a rate necessary to sustain a replacement population. 'In New Zealand today the family is so far failing to maintain and if necessary increase the population... that we may have to import population - population produced by races more vital than we.' With their family of 8 children, 25 grandchildren, and 8 great-grandchildren, Morris and Marion Yule have done their bit to withstand this trend. But the aging of the population that John Allan warned about fifty years ago is now an urgent issue, affecting the sustainability of National Superannuation and retirement incomes in New Zealand.

A Trail of Four Influences

John Allan was an early voice drawing attention to the serious consequences of neglecting family life in New Zealand. He felt that modern social trends, promoted by the state, were diminishing the role of the family. Drawing from his booklet, and from our experience as a family, I would like to talk about four key influences the family has:

1. Emotional Maturity

The first influence is in creating emotional maturity. One of the major factors undermining marriage and family today is the notion that life is easy, that life is a pushover. We expect everything to be pleasurable, we demand instant solutions and panaceas for all life's ills. Consequently, when we experience hard times, when relationships aren't easy, we opt out instead of working matters through. Today this is producing an epidemic of emotionally hurt, vulnerable, and immature people.

This week a Canterbury University study was published, which found that girls who grow up without their fathers are more at risk of teenage pregnancy. Psychologist Bruce Ellis found that rates of teenage pregnancy increased from 1 in 30 among girls who grew up with their fathers to 1 in 4 among girls whose fathers were absent in early life. This parallels a 1999 study by the Maxim Institute that 65 % of youth offending was committed by children without fathers at home.

John Allan writes, 'Life is not meant for ease or pleasure; nor is it meant for the acquiring of wealth. Life is meant for living to the glory of God.' The biblical view of life is robust. Modern urban people too easily assume that society owes them a living. Someone has said, 'It's good to grow up at the end of a gravel road. You learn early on that life is going to have a lot of potholes!'

Stable two-parent families impart emotional stability to children. 'Parenthood,' Allan says, 'with all its inevitable limitations of our personal freedom, is not a disagreeable and regrettable burden, but a privilege and a blessing.' Family life gives experience of the give-and-take which is the secret of character building and learning to live in community with other people. It's a training ground in cooperation, self-denial, and emotional maturity.

2. Economic Stability

Early in life I learnt that a family is an economic unit. Reflecting war-time austerity, Dad made my first wardrobe out of butter-boxes. When I was a boy my parents would pay me two shillings and six pence for a bag of pine cones. They kept a garden to support our family and reduce our cost of living. They modelled care for the elderly by inviting my grandmother to live in our home in her last years.

Nowadays, John Allan lamented in the fifties, 'The economic functions of the family have largely vanished. In the old days before machine production, domestic arts, trades and manufactures were common ; the family was an economic unit ; the family farm [ or family business ] was once the typical unit of society. '

Today we pride ourselves on being business-savvy and worldly-wise. But by ignoring the economic role of the family we're often foolish and short-sighted. How often does a husband or wife who goes off with another partner count the economic cost of marriage break-up? 'The grass might look greener on the other side of the fence,' says James Dobson, 'but just remember you have to mow it!' How many think of the economic cost of managing on half the income, supporting two homes, paying what the Americans call 'alimony' - on top of all the emotional hurt of a marriage break-up?

Most couples who break up think only of their personal present, not their family future. They don't weigh the benefits that would result from investing in their marriage, and forget their family heritage - what their family could become over several generations. They focus on their present difficulties, not their future legacy; on their present problems, not their future prospects; on their deteriorating relationships, rather than their accumulating rewards.

The Bible says that 'Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from him' (Psalm 127: 3). This heritage stretches into future generations - to our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren - and is promised as a reward to those who make the necessary sacrifices now.

3. Educational Opportunity

Family life is the hearth of learning and creativity, the place where we acquire moral values and develop creative skills. John Allan lamented in his booklet that 'Children are being taken over by educational institutions at an ever-lower age and being kept by them for an ever-lengthening period.' 'The advantages seem obvious, but the effect is that in proportion the home counts for less and less in the child's life.'

The family used to be the centre of creativity and recreation, training children in how to use their time, explore their world and develop their abilities. Now the role of the family is increasingly taken over by ready-made sources of entertainment, with stereotyped celebrities to emulate as role models. John Allan wrote before television, which many parents have allowed to become a substitute - sub-standard - child-minder.

The family is where children learn to discriminate and make judgements for themselves. Parents can open a whole world of creativity by reading to their children, doing things together, watching programmes with them. Parents should take a lead in what a child reads, views, admires, emulates. 'Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things' (Philippians 4: 8, NIV).

4. Everyday Priority

Finally, though Christianity calls us to honour family life, it also reminds us, in John Allan's words, that 'that there are claims above the claims of home, family and marriage.' The call of God exerts a higher claim than family, and keeps families from becoming introverted and selfish. While the Bible expects us to honour our earthly parents, because they nurtured us (Exodus 20: 12), it recognises that our heavenly Father has a higher claim on our lives, because he created us (Ephesians 3: 14-15).

Parents need to remember that family worship and instruction should be the main context of Christian nurture, not Sunday School or youth group. John Allan remarks, 'In the day when the family was strong and the Church vigorous, there were no youth organisations as we know them.' The Bible shows that the family is God's intended context for learning about God's ways. 'These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home.... Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.' (Deuteronomy 6: 6-9).

Our family owes a lot to family devotions. Dad and Mum would read the Bible and pray for all of us at the breakfast table every morning. Today very few families pray, or have family worship. With the busyness of modern life and family members pulled in different directions, it's not easy to secure common time for family devotions.

It's most important that parents relate their faith in God to their children as issues arise naturally in the course of everyday life. 'Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk [or drive] along the road' (Deuteronomy 6: 7). As parents we can help our children relate their faith to their school work, hobbies and daily life. John Allan suggests that the home is the best place to bring a sense of reality in prayer and worship, 'just because the home is a natural and real community.' Modern secular society tries to make us privatise our faith. But God wants us to serve him in the whole of life.

Rob Yule, 2 March 2003

© 2003, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church