February 17, 2003
Families feel like hair's on fire, Waco preacher says
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___AUSTIN--Few families set out looking for trouble, but most eventually land in it, according to a Waco pastor.
___Even ministers' families, confided Julie Pennington-Russell.
___The pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco told participants in the Texas Christian Life Commission's annual seminar about a recent morning when her 7-year-old daughter's hair caught fire from a candle on the breakfast table. Although Pennington-Russell used her robe to extinguish the blaze before it reached her daughter's scalp, the permeating smell of the singed hair caused her 12-year-son to vomit. That, in turn, brought the family dogs running for clean-up duty. And that prompted a neighbor girl who was waiting for a ride to school to lose her breakfast as well.
Julie Pennington-Russell
___The normally calm pastor said she stood in her dining room holding her smoky robe, looked at the chaos around her and wondered how things got so out of hand before 7 a.m.
___Yet in the situation, she saw a metaphor for all families.
___No one expected things to turn out this way, but they did, she said. "Most of us who live in families feel like our hair is on fire most of the time."
___Most people live with the delusion that real life will be like the fairy tales where everyone lives "happily ever after," Pennington-Russell said.
___In time, though, the fairy tale often gives way to a harsher reality.
___"The prince doesn't know how to cope when the princess turns out to be depressed and controlling. The princess doesn't know how to cope when the prince turns out to be ... a couch potato."
___Few churches or ministers are prepared to address such family problems, the pastor confessed. "Most of us have barely a clue."
___And turning to the Bible won't provide a quick fix either, she added, noting that the Bible "is not replete with examples of healthy, harmonious families."
___Jesus himself offered harsh words about families, including admonitions that those who would follow him must leave behind mother and father, she added. "Not the kind of stuff you want to cross-stitch and put on a pillow. Jesus said not a single word on family love that Hallmark could put on a Mother's Day card."
___That doesn't mean the church should be silent on family ministry, though, Pennington-Russell said.
___What churches need to preach and teach is the truth, she explained, declaring that no family lives a fairy-tale life.
___Marriage constitutes one of life's greatest gifts and hardest tasks and is both exhilarating and exasperating, she said.
___Churches also should tell the truth about the real source of power to heal marriages and families, which is found in God, she added. "To families in peril who are under the mistaken notion that they can fix themselves, we have to tell the truth."
___Finally, churches must tell the truth that marriage is a communal concern rather than an isolated experience, Pennington-Russell declared.
___Too often, churches give the impression that marital troubles are off-limits for discussion, she said, explaining, "I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard a married couple say (as a prayer request), 'Our marriage needs healing.'"
___Churches promote "an unwritten rule that we don't talk about things like that," she lamented.
___But pushing struggling families into further isolation guarantees failure, the pastor predicted.
___At the same time, she said, churches should promote a high standard of accountability. "If my church doesn't really care that I'm faithful, then I'm more vulnerable to one day pitching it all away."
___Family ministry was the theme of this year's CLC conference, held at First Baptist Church of Austin.
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