Has the loss of family discipleship negatively impacted the church and its mission to make disciples?

Robert Bosley notes a shift in the pattern of discipleship, especially in the United States, tracing back to the Industrial Revolution and the Great Awakenings. The cultural revolution that systematized schooling and church programs, replacing home-based discipleship, has failed the church. Despite having more discipleship resources than ever before, the church has been unsuccessful in producing true disciples. This is largely because the responsibility of discipleship has been lifted from fathers and placed on the so-called 'experts' in the church.

The failure extends further as these assigned individuals, often unqualified, use readily available resources without truly understanding their roles as ministers of the gospel. The result is a glaring gap in the home and in the church, as the discipleship process has been reduced to a programmatic approach, losing its essence and effectiveness. Fathers need to reclaim their biblical roles as the spiritual leaders in their homes, discipling their children and leading them in the ways of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4 (NKJV): 'And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.'

It seems to me that a lot of discipleship, particularly in the United States, really fell off as you get through the Industrial Revolution, you get through then the Great Awakenings, following that particular Second Great Awakening, everything becomes so programmatic. You had a whole revolution in culture where schooling is now systematized and regulated. The church adopts that model, and you have the development of Sunday schools, you've got the development of all these different programmatic approaches to everything, education, as well as the church, and that's really been a bad thing for the church as a whole. It's really failed as a model for the church in particular because we've never had more discipleship resources and yet we've completely failed to actually make disciples. It just it hasn't worked because we've taken the the emphasis in many cases removed it from the home entirely like the fathers are not discipling their children.

It's turned into oh well I'm gonna let the experts in the church take care of that. And that has completely failed in the home. And then often in the church, you have these men who are oftentimes not even qualified, using resources that are just handed to them as if they're a high school teacher and not a minister of the gospel. And so it's just a complete failure all around.