Straightening the Bend: An Interview with FamilyLife's Dennis Rainey

JBMW: Dennis, can you give us some background on how Campus Crusade for Christ's statement on marriage and the family came about?

DR: A year ago I watched as the media pounded the Southern Baptist Convention for taking a biblical stand on the family. So I decided to do what I could to support them in their courageous stand. I was able to secure more than 175 Christian leaders and their spouses and together we said to the Southern Baptists, "We agree with you." To show our support we took out a full-page ad in USA Today. As I continued to reflect on the stance of the Southern Baptists, I became convinced that Campus Crusade for Christ needed to join them by making a similar statement. Now I want to emphasize that we did this for the health of our own marriages and families. Campus Crusade has never made a statement like this in its 48-year history. This shows the high degree of importance we place on the marriages and families of those in our movement. Bill and Vonette Bright have correctly seen that the health of our families will determine the strength of our organization. So we did it first and foremost for the future of our own movement. But we also made this statement to step up and join the Southern Baptists in affirming what is biblically accurate and true and right about marriage and the family in a time of unprecedented marital and family crisis.

JBMW: Some people have spoken of this as a kairos moment for the family in America. Why did Crusade decide to make this statement at this crucial moment in history?

DR: It's clear we live in a time where a lot of Christians do not know what they believe about the very fundamentals of the family. We did this to state clearly for our present and future families what we believe are the basic tenets of Scripture concerning marriage and family. By doing so we have given this and future generations a compass to continue on the journey. The college campus has been the number one place where feminists have been teaching and brainwashing our students for the past two or three decades. And that's where churches, seminaries and parachurch organizations like our own recruit their staff members and students. As a result the evangelical church has bent to the cultural winds and what Campus Crusade for Christ is doing is trying to straighten the bend. We are pulling truth out of the dust. Isaiah 59 says that truth has stumbled in the streets and the need today is for the church to hold up the truth without apology so that it stands tall and firm.

JBMW: Is it your hope that other evangelical organizations will follow your lead and the lead of the Southern Baptists?

DR: It would be my hope that other organizations would take a look at their family structure and realize that now is the moment to call marriages and families back to the biblical blueprints for establishing godly homes. The statement that the Southern Baptists signed and that Campus Crusade has adopted is, in my opinion, almost beyond debate. Even as I say that, I chuckle, because I know there will be those who will debate certain points of it and who have debated certain points of it. But it is all so clearly taught in Scripture. Otherwise I would not have been able to get those 175 names of Christian leaders and their spouses so easily. I didn't twist anybody's arm. As I was getting those signatures something was really puzzling me. If people are so eager to sign on to this statement then why have so few organizations and denominations ever taken a stand of this magnitude on behalf of the family? I think this is what needs to happen. Denominations and organizations need to define what the Scriptures teach about the marriage covenant, about the responsibility of a husband and wife, about the importance of children. And in doing this we could see a family reformation.

JBMW: What you're saying is that the family is a confessional issue. When Christians confess and affirm that all people are sinners, that salvation is found only through Christ, we are saying that this is what the Scriptures teach. And just as we have done this for other doctrines so we must do this for the doctrine of the family. Is that correct?

DR: Well I believe family is a confessional issue. In fact I find it absolutely fascinating that in the historic Christian faith we have doctrines of angelology, of soteriology, of ecclesiology, but there is no theology of family. I believe one of the great needs today is for a group of scholars to join together and craft what would be the first theology of the family in the history of the church. I was once interviewing Dr. John Hannah, professor of historical theology at Dallas Theological Seminary, and I asked him how and why the church has developed its beliefs. He said it was related to one of two things. The church throughout it's history has defined what it believed either because of a controversy or a time of great need. And I think we have both with the family today. We have an unprecedented epidemic of divorce. The marriage covenant is virtually meaningless today and we have a whole generation which has come out of that. If the Christian community does not clarify where it stands and what it believes about marriage and family, in my opinion, it will have lost an incredibly important opportunity to be salt and light to the world, to offer hope to a lost world. I think this issue represents not only the opportunity to define what we believe but also a tremendous opportunity for evangelism. People are experiencing hopelessness in their relationships and they want to know how do you make them work. If the Christian community does not know where it stands and does not have strong marriages and families, it doesn't have much to share with the culture at that point.

JBMW: What are some of the major difficulties facing marriages today and how are you trying to address those?

DR: Personally I think the number one need is to have couples revisit what they promised on their wedding day. I believe we could be on the verge of seeing a Promise Keepers-type movement around the marriage covenant. Now God has to breathe the life into that, but back in February of this year more than 25 organizations and denominations joined together to form the Marriage Covenant Movement. What is it that sets the marriage relationship apart from all other human relationships? It is covenant. Marriage is a covenant relationship for a lifetime between a man and a woman that creates a family. The marriage covenant is the ultimate headwaters from which the stream of family flows and if the covenant is weak, the family will be weak. The Marriage Covenant Movement now includes more than 31 organizations and denominations and over the past summer we held three events called "I Still Do". These were one-day events to celebrate the marriage covenant and 24,000 people attended. All these signs are very encouraging.

College students today are products of our culture of divorce and as a result they desperately want to experience meaningful and close relationships. They want to experience family. They want to experience commitment. But they don't know how; they've not seen it. One challenge for Christians today is to show them what a marriage and family based on the Scriptures looks like. This will be a compelling apologetic for the younger generation and could lead many to embrace Christ and the Scriptures. Strong families are an important evangelistic tool.

JBMW: Let's switch gears a little bit. Would you talk about your own personal background?

DR: I came to faith as a young lad in a Southern Baptist church in southwest Missouri. When I was in second grade I was asked what I wanted to do when I grew up and I drew a picture of a preacher. Even at that time, I think God was preparing me, even though there were years where I sojourned into Egypt and didn't obey the Lord. But in my junior year in college I got back on track and later joined Crusade staff after graduation. I met Barbara in college and we dated after college, got married and had six children.

JBMW: How have you taught your sons about biblical manhood and how to have courage?

DR: Hopefully I've modeled a little of it. Secondly, I've done a lot of what I call sand-box theology. It is kind of getting down on the child's level and talking to them about what is a man and how does he operate in the market-place. We've had Bible studies together. Proverbs is a wonderful book to use to talk to a young man about the essentials of manhood, about where life is and where foolishness is. I've done that with my sons.

JBMW: Specifically, what activities have you done with your sons?

DR: We've done a lot of hunting and fishing. Sometimes there'll be a 30-minute conversation in the midst of a four-day hunting trip where you talk about what a real man is and what a real man does. Young men need that today. We've had some transitional ceremonies too, when they've graduated from high school. We've gotten some other men around them to charge them and pray over them and those have been very important moments. Even this past week, I've been talking to my son about his first job. I gave him some basic instruction about what God expects from him in the workplace. As a dad, I could've done more, but I feel good about what I have done.

JBMW: Talk about the beginnings of FamilyLife and how that came about and where you're at today.

DR: FamilyLife actually came out of Campus Crusade for Christ seeing a need to strengthen marriages in its own staff members, especially in the area of pre-marital preparation. So in 1976 a group of us began what later came to be called FamilyLife. In the beginning it was primarily a marriage preparation ministry just to equip Crusade staff members who were getting married. Campus Crusade for Christ used to recruit 600-700 college students every year onto its staff, and it became a kind of happy hunting grounds for getting a marriage partner. These young couples needed direction, they needed biblical blueprints for their marriage and they received that at our marriage conferences. Initially the conference was only for single or engaged people. But after they got married, many wanted to come back and we wouldn't let them. Finally they beat down the door and today about 10% of our audience is engaged and the rest are married. This year we'll have around 150 conferences with about 100,000 people attending. Actually what we give them at the conference, though they don't realize it, is a theology of marriage for laymen. It is typically a powerful weekend where a lot of life-change occurs because we give them the blueprints and then we give them time to sort it through and apply it to their own marriage and family. We've also developed a series of Bible studies called HomeBuilders for use in Sunday School classes and small groups and these have now sold more than a million copies. We started our radio broadcast in 1992 and that has greatly expanded our ministry. This past year has marked another transition of FamilyLife as we have sought to reach out to a broader audience with the marriage covenant events called "I Still Do." We're getting incredible feed-back from people as they have found someone to give them hope.

JBMW: Could you talk a bit about the conference next March that you're cosponsoring with CBMW?

DR: It is a great privilege to hook up with an organization that has stood firm on behalf of the Scriptures and the truths of biblical manhood and womanhood. I believe we've assembled some of the finest communicators, theologians and leaders available in the Christian community to speak to the church about how to build strong marriages and families for the future. The conference is going to be a slam-dunk. I've already passed out brochures to some of my pastor friends and as they look over the speakers and workshops their mouths drop wide-open. We not only have strong plenary speakers, but, frankly, the work-shop leaders are every bit as strong in terms of content, appeal and draw. It is my prayer and hope that this conference will be used by the Spirit of God to give pastors and lay leaders of the church the courage to set their families in the right direction.