Pastor's Circle - Jeffrey Klick

Jeffrey Klick is the Senior Pastor of Hope Family Fellowship. He joined the Pastor's Circle to discuss his book Courage to Flee. Below are the "CliffsNotes" of his segment.

You talk in your book about "living a moral life in an immoral world." What is a moral life?

The motive for writing this book came from looking around and seeing immorality in the moral authority. There are so many pastors committing sexual sin.

When I'm talking about a moral life, it's specifically in the area of sexual purity.

Is there more of that going on today than there was 50 years ago?

I think we know more about it. It's always been a struggle.

If you're even remotely familiar with the Old Testament, you can see sexual sin all throughout it.

I think the standards of society are much more loose now.

It's much more acceptable today. But it's always been there.

The thing about sexual sin is that it's never just about you.

Sin will always take you further than you want to go, and cost you more than you could possibly imagine.

That's certainly illustrated in [the story of David].

The word of God is true. The wages of sin is death.

When you cross the lines, you're unleashing death.

What we do impacts generations.

Your first chapter is about compromise. You say the words "I would never do that" send a chill up your spine. Why?

I think it's naivety, for one thing. If you think you're above the ability to sin, it's setting you up to fall.

If someone says, "I could never do that," it's a good bet that they will.

We're all one or two bad decisions away from a lot of trouble.

What does it mean to "flee"?

Most people know when they've crossed into an improper relationship.

The Scripture's pretty clear that we need to look at our thoughts and take them captive.

If you're serious about getting free in this situation, you're going to have to take some radical steps.

Pastor's Circle - Jeffrey Klick

Jeffrey Klick, pastor of Hope Family Fellowship, talked to us today about disciplining children.


I'd love for you to tell what some of the world's child training philosophies are.

The world, of course, isn't talking about the cosmos or physical world; it's talking ab out the mentality out there.

In the olden days, you had more of a father's firm hand.

Children were expected to behave in a certain way.

When Doctor Spock came on the scene...he was more of a we shouldn't damage our children because of our approach.

There's this inverse philosophy that's not in the scripture.

The child now has the authority to make all of the choices. And the parents are just supposed to help and come alongside.

Some people will suggest that if you discipline to quickly, you're squashing your child's potential.

The Bible is  very clear about the philosophy of the parents.

A child's personality can't develop when he runs the family. That's chaos.

You're not suppressing anything; you're enhancing it.

When did this change happen? Was it Dr. Spock? Was it the baby boom generation? And why did the change come about?

I believe a lot of it did happen in the 60's and 70's...where Dr. Spock and that mindset came in where we know more than scripture and we know more than the Lord.

I believe it came about because we have an enemy who hates us.

We don't war against flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities.

The "why" is that we have an enemy who hates the family and wants to destroy them.

There's been a general philosophical bent away from scripture for a while now.

Have you noticed how few pastoral families have their act together in disciplining their children?

Scripture is very clear about qualifications for families.

We've just quit following the biblical teaching there.

One of the things you say is that the primary battle is a battle of wills.

In any situation, especially with our children, it comes down to a battle of wills.

Don't touch this. Don't eat that. Turn the computer off.

It's that way in our relationship with God.

The family is where we learn how we're going to respond to authority for the rest of our lives.

I like to say submission is a wonderful concept, but it's hard to live out.

When I as a parent instruct my child to do something, and my child decides she's not going to do it, we've come to a battle of wills.

When the (child) wins we have anarchy.

When does the battle of wills start for a young child?

I think parents need to start listening and discerning in their children when this battle of wills is starting.

That will vary from child to child. It's in all of our hearts. Obviously, it started in the garden. Every child comes equipped with a rebellious attitude.

"Once the home is put back together, then have ministry come out of that"

dDr. Jeffrey Klick is pastor of Hope Family Fellowship in Kansas City. Klick has authored several books, including Generational Impact, which was the subject of today's interview.

It sounds like your church takes seriously the family. Give us an overarching view of what y'all are doing.

We've taken a different approach to ministry.

My first 11 years I was a pastor, I spent in a traditional manner.

I watched the parade of young people walking away.

This was really frustrating to me, because we were spending millions and millions of dollars.

Once the home is put back together, then have ministry come out of that.

We encourage families to get their act together at home, then minister together.

There's all kinds of things going...and explosion of ministry that isn't regulated or done by the church per se.

How are you training families to do this?

Well we have a vision statement...of what we're trying to accomplish with this church.

If your Christianity isn't working in your home, don't export it.

Since we're not an activity-oriented church, there's more time for me...to invest in people's lives.

Let's make disciples and start with the people under our own roof.

I look at every Sunday's sermon as 52 counseling sessions with my congregation.

How do you minister to singles?

We have a lot of single people.

The scripture says that God places lonely people in families.

Isolating the singles often to their own little world isn't a real environment.

So we encourage our older singles to integrate into what the church is doing and what it's about.

We don't isolate anyone. You lose a lot of cross-generational pollenization...when you isolate people.

We encourage them to serve, not just at our body, but there are parachurch organizations around the world.

Do you teach these families how to have devotions together, how to discipline?

Certainly. And we'll do a variety of things.

There's an awful lot of relationship building going on.

There's a tremendous amount of teaching and role modeling going on.

You write in your book about "generational warfare." What do you mean by that?

The Bible is very clear that we have an enemy who wants to destroy.

If I were the devil, the first thing I would try to do is destroy the family.

If we're unaware...that the enemy wants to destroy the family, we won't be prepared.

We're in a battle, we're in a war.

Dating or courtship. What's the difference?

Dating is what most of us grew up with.

You try somebody out...and when you break up, you must move on.

We tend to favor the other model which is don't get involved with someone until you're ready for marriage.

How do you find that girl of yours a man?

You won't. God is sovereign.

If you have a daughter, there are going to be some young men who are interested in your daughter.

Ideally, they would come talk to you.

God is the one who puts relationships together.