The Family Bible Revolution: An End-Time Message for His Generational Blessing

By Jim Langlois

Reaching the World for Jesus

Who is the world's greatest evangelist? How did they reach so many people for Christ? How can we effectively continue to evangelize this ever changing world? Would a flash flood of the Word be as effective as an underground watering system at the roots? Who would be the first we should target?
Is there a way to have such a thing as systemic sustainable evangelism? If so, how could we accomplish it and how much money and resources would we need to bring it to pass? How much technology will we need? Should we be concerned with both salvation and discipleship? Is it possible to accomplish both at the same time? How many systems, buildings, transportation, and personnel will we need bring it to pass? Can it be done through a volunteer system or will we need to hire staff?
These are all great questions and although all types of evangelism are necessary and effective, the approach within this book can be accomplished without any of the above. It can also have tremendous value for the success of marriages and families. One truth, five principles, and six steps. It's The Family Bible Revolution and step six is where the rubber meets the road!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483570761

Book preview

AUTHOR

PREFACE

As a volunteer chaplain for the Hanover, Virginia Sheriff’s Department, on Thursday, March 10th, 2016, I attended a leadership seminar entitled Navigating the Leadership Challenge. It was presented by the Virginia Center for Policing Innovation (VCPI). During that meeting I was given a coin with the inscription of a quote called The Leadership Test. It is why I have written this book, and so, with this quote (and motivation), I present this book to you:

The Leadership Test

Am I doing the right thing,

At the right time,

In the right way,

And for the right reason?

INTRODUCTION

And as Isaiah said before: "Unless the LORD of Sabaoth had left us a seed, We would have become like Sodom, And we would have been made like Gomorrah."

Romans 9:29

One Simple Truth: Family Worship

Five Essential Principles: The Family Bible Revolution

Six Easy Steps: Now You’re Trained - Go Do It!

This book is based upon one simple truth, five essential principles, and six easy steps to bring what I call The Family Bible Revolution. You will find much reiteration within since repetition is the mother of all learning. I ask that you consider the benefits of hearing again and again what the repetition longs to birth!

Don’t let the simplicity fool you, for the truth is great. I believe "simple is deep."

But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

2 Corinthians 11:3

God’s Word is so simple, many miss its depth and overlook its truth. This book is about a revolution.

The living, the living man, he shall praise You, As I do this day; The father shall make known Your truth to the children.

Isaiah 38:19

I pray this changes your marriage, your family, and your generations to come. It’s simple, it’s essential, and it’s easy.

Unless otherwise noted, all scripture references quoted are The New King James Version (NKJV).

CHAPTER ONE

MY JOURNEY

Not long from now. I will be 63 years old. I grew up as a musician - a drummer. I fell into a life of music, drugs, alcohol, and women, and could not find myself. I loved music, but the drugs, alcohol, and women became terrible false hopes and false prophecies for a life with happiness and true meaning.

In my quest for happiness, I sought help through a lady who performed automatic handwriting. In her process, she contacted the spirits of the dead while holding a pen over writing paper. Supposedly, as different spirits entered and left, they wrote messages to me through her hand. As one spirit left and another entered, the handwriting completely changed. In any session, there would be three to five different spirits and therefore, three to five messages. Only she could read the handwriting. These messages prophesied my future including a move to New York, a marriage, and a spirit, who called himself Funky Guide, who vowed to help me be a better drummer.

Over the next several years, for some reason the prophecies never came true, and I could never sense the assistance of any spirit helping me play. I discontinued my endeavor with automatic handwriting and sought after another avenue.

I then gave a faithful and dedicated attempt to find myself through Transcendental Meditation. After paying $125.00 and receiving my mantra and instructions through the guru, I religiously meditated twice a day, twenty minutes each time, in the meditation seated pose chanting my mantra as instructed for an entire year. For some reason, no matter how faithful I was, in-between my meditations I was still the same old person I was before, with no more joy, peace, or purpose in life. Happiness continued to elude me.

The Five Words

While taking a walk on the beach in Panama City, Florida with a friend (Gene Johnson), I shared my desire for something that was real. He said five words that forever changed my life: What you need is Jesus!

This now makes it important for us to go back into my childhood…

I grew up in a loving family; however, not in a religious home. We attended Catholic Mass on Christmas and Easter, and they sent me to the Catholic Catechism Class after school on Thursdays. I began to do poorly in school, so they sent me to a Catholic private school for the 7th and 8th grades. This helped me improve my grades; however, whatever I learned about Jesus during the Catechism classes and two years in a private Catholic school did not seem to connect. Now, back to the five words…What you need is Jesus!

You see, I knew His name, I knew He died on the cross and rose again, but beyond that, I had no understanding as to who He was. I am not sure if my instruction was poor, or if I just never listened, but I had no comprehension as to who Jesus was. I knew nothing of His life, nothing of the Word of God, or anything that Jesus did.

I did recite the Our Father and Hail Mary prayers, but those were the only prayers I could remember. When Gene said, What you need is Jesus! my heart jumped and I knew I had found exactly what I was looking for. Somehow, I just knew it!

Although I had found my answer, having no facts or guidance, I did not know what to do. That summer, while playing in a lounge band in Panama City, Florida, someone gave me a witnessing tract entitled Four Spiritual Laws by Dr. Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ.¹ I remember reading that tract over and over, day after day, while sitting in my hotel room and walking the beautiful pure white sandy beach!

My Salvation

I don’t remember the exact timing, but to the best of my recollection, my Panama City experience was the summer of 1978. Fast forward to Sunday, February 11th, 1979: Gene and a few of my friends went to Rock Church in Virginia Beach and I went forward to the altar and gave my heart to Jesus!

I don’t remember what I said, but I was born again and my life was changed forever! Now, 36 years later, I am still saved and loving life - actually, more and more every day! I truly had found inner happiness and joy. It was the answer to what I was looking for!

What happened after that day in February? I joined a brand new start-up church on Easter Sunday in April of 1980. It was called Faith Landmarks Ministries, pastored by Randy and Cherie Gilbert. I attended that church for 23 years. During my time there, I was married, taught the Word, mentored, hired, and served in many positions. These positions included Children’s Minister (first as Chef Langlois & His Famous Faith Food and then Captain Charismatic), Administrator, Assistant Pastor, Praise Band Drummer, Bible School Teacher, Helps Ministry Director, Video Department Director, Richmond Outreach Director, and whatever else was necessary. It was the experience of a lifetime!

The Call to Go

Then, in January of 2003, I felt the call to leave and begin my own ministry doing family children’s crusades and children’s workers seminars. In September of that year, while traveling, the Lord instructed me to pioneer a church called The Master’s House, and on January 11th, 2004, we held our first service in Ashland, Virginia.

In 2006, in the month of my 25th anniversary, my wife said she no longer loved me and was leaving. Her main complaint was that I was married more to the ministry than I was to her. Wow! I was caught completely off guard. I did not see it coming. How would I save my marriage? What about the kids? What about the church? What about my future?

Without getting into any of the details, I was unable to save the marriage and we were divorced. Somehow, the church remained intact, my Advisory Team and Board of Trustees encouraged me to continue to pastor the church, and it is now almost ten years since that tragedy took place.

In the summer of 2012, the church had a very difficult time with some strife and division. When all was said and done, a large group had left the church and we ended up in a very small building with the core of the church still intact. Due to the size of the building and certain people who left, we were without a children’s ministry and a youth ministry. We all had to adjust to meeting in the same room with the parents, kids, and youth all together. This was very difficult for me having been a lifetime children’s minister for so many years; however, it was all we could do at the time.

I remember crying out to the Lord for help. How could we have a church without children’s and youth ministries? Within a week, a family attending the church brought me a DVD called Divided² and recommended I watch it. Oh my! My life was turned around again! The producer was a pastor named Scott Brown, from Hope Baptist Church in Wake Forest, North Carolina and he had written a book titled A Weed in the Church.³

This was a Pastor and church that did not have any children’s or youth ministry, and yet, were growing, healthy, happy, and successful. The movie is an excellent documentary on why evangelical churches have lost anywhere from forty to eighty percent of its young people when they reach college age-never to return! Why, after so many years of children’s and youth ministries, and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, are we losing so many? Both the documentary film and book were about How a culture of age segregation is destroying the younger generation, fragmenting the family, and dividing the church. I had watched the movie and read the book, but I still needed more information!

The Meeting

On Monday, September 3rd, 2012, I called Hope Baptist Church in North Carolina and left a message to see if I could talk with someone. I gave a short explanation as to who I was and why I was calling. To my surprise, the next morning I had a text message from Scott Brown and he asked me to call him. I did and he just happened to be in Fredericksburg, Virginia (about 30 minutes away) with a group from his church. He asked me if I could meet him the next morning for breakfast! I did and I brought my questions with me:

Me: Do you have any children’s ministry on Sunday morning?

Scott: No.

Me: Do you have any nursery?

Scott: No.

Me: Do you have any youth ministry?

Scott: No.

Me: Do you have any separate youth or children’s meetings or events?

Scott: No, we do everything together.

Me: What do you do if you have any trouble with children or youth?

Scott: That is the parents’ responsibility.

Me: That is profound! What about babies making noise in the service?

Scott: It doesn’t make for a good television ministry, but we don’t have our services televised. The noise doesn’t bother us. We like children and youth.

Me: Do you have Sunday school?

Scott: No.

Me: How long are your services?

Scott: Two hours.

Me: How many attend your church?

Scott: About 200.

Me: It seems that there is more to just attending service together as a family- that there is something happening in the homes of your families.

Scott: Now you’re beginning to see what is really happening!

Me: How do you train your men to be the heads of their homes?

Now there were three other men that were with Scott, and one spoke up to answer that question. He stated:

You know I have 10 children, and that’s the exact question I asked Scott when I came to the church, and I can tell you exactly how he answered it:

1. Open the Bible.

2. Read it to your family.

3. Discuss it for how it should change your thinking and living.

4. Pray for one another, the saints and the lost.

5. Do it at the beginning and the end of the day.

6. Now you are trained, go do it!

I was stunned…almost speechless…I thought for a moment…

Me: You’re kidding! That could change the world!

I realized then, as a minister of the Gospel for 32 years, I had never done that. I did teach my children the Word of God at church, but I never led Family Worship at home. I wondered…if I did that, could I still be married?

Me: This could have tremendous ramifications in marriage. How many people do you have in your church that have been divorced?

Scott: None.

Oh my! I left that meeting stunned, bewildered, concerned, and ashamed because I had never managed Family Worship in my home. However, at the same time, I was fired up with a new hope and vision. This stirred up a new vision for family! I wondered if I could begin this model in my church.

The Change

I met with the group of children and youth that we had and asked them what they thought in regards to doing everything together, even attending church together with their parents. Unanimously, they all loved the idea and stated that they would have no problem listening to me teach every Sunday morning and that they would love to attend church with their parents! I took a Sunday morning and presented the movie Divided⁴ and everyone was agreeable to the change in our services and the format for all our events and meetings.

So, in the fall of 2012, we began our Family-Integrated vision. It has not been easy, especially in a geographical area where children’s and youth ministry are so prominent, but the potential definitely outweighed the challenges. Another challenge for me as a pastor, was how to lead the married couples in my church having failed in my own marriage.

When my marriage began to fall apart, I decided to go to professional Christian counseling. I remember the counselor (Mike Flynn from Christian Counseling and Associates) gave me some statistics of divorce and remarriage.

■For first marriages, the current divorce rate is approximately 50%.

■For second marriages, the failure rate jumps to 70%.

■For third marriages, it jumps to 85%.

After showing me these statistics, Mike asked me three questions that resonated with me. If only 30% of second marriages do not end in divorce, how many do you think are actually happy? Do you think half, equaling 15%, of second marriages are actually happy? Would you get on an airplane and fly if the pilot said you only had a 15% chance of landing safely. My answer to all of these questions was absolutely not!

He continued on, stating that other statistics for success after divorce say to wait three years to date and two more years before you re-marry; otherwise, you will most likely marry the same type of person all over again. The reason for this is you naturally attract a certain type of person. It takes time and work to grow and mature or you’ll repeat the same mistakes. In addition to time between marriages, it takes education and learning about marriage relationships to be successful.

Great advice! Statistics do not lie. Do we really think we are better than the odds? I took Mike’s word to heart. I prayed and asked the Lord to help me re-educate myself for two reasons, to help those in my church, and if I were to ever re-marry, not to have a second failure.

What have I done? I’ve listened to Marriage on the Rock by Jimmy Evans multiple times (highly recommended), and I am now studying on the vision of family-integration for Family Worship, and how to balance out home and church life, or for me…home and ministry life.

I see now, that I lived twenty-four seven for the church, thinking that was best for my family. I thought the church was the cake and the home was the icing. Now, I see it as the home is the cake and the church is the icing. Big difference!

Why Write?

This book is written as my personal journey. I do not intend it to be a destination. I am also writing it to help myself. It may be a little selfish, but it is honest. So I humbly write out of failure, while believing for success. Whatever I write here is not the answer or end of all wisdom, but hopefully it will be a good start and a much better journey.

We have spent so much time, money, and energy on children’s and youth ministries on Sunday School over the past 30 years! Why are so many leaving the church and changing their beliefs when they reach their college years? Why is it that we have so much divorce within the church? Why is it so many of our young people have little to no relationship with their fathers, mothers, and/or grandparents? Why are they denying that Jesus is the only way and rejecting sexual purity as defined in the Bible as truth?

Here are some alarming dropout statistics from Scott Brown’s book entitled A Weed in the Church:

The American church is in decline, and attendance at public worship has dropped precipitously across denominational lines. Studies and statistics show that large numbers of the rising generation are leaving the church and living in apostasy. Some say the number is somewhere between 70 to 88% of the youth raised in our churches have abandoned the faith of their parents. Others say it is around 40%.

If the 40% estimation is correct, does this somehow lessen the emergency from code red to yellow? How many children make up 40% of your family or your church? Whether it is 88% or 40%, these percentages should take our breath away.

Startling new research published by Ken Ham and Britt Beemer reveals that young people active in the Sunday schools and youth groups of the most conservative, Bible-believing churches across America are lost while still in the fold. Ham and Beemer explained how those who are part of typical youth outreach programs during their teenage years are more apt to be already gone from the church in their hearts than those who are not part of these programs. They simply have yet to bolt: they were disengaging while they were still in the pews. They were preparing their exit while attending youth groups and Sunday schools.

One of the disturbing conclusions they reached is that attending Sunday school is actually more detrimental to the spiritual and moral health of our children than keeping them out. Not only are those who attend Sunday schools and youth groups more likely to abandon the church upon reaching adulthood, but they are also more likely to embrace the wrong worldview.

Ham and Beemer note: Compared to the 39% who do not go to Sunday school, contrary to what many of you may believe, the research showed that students who regularly attend Sunday school are actually:

•more likely NOT to believe that all the accounts/stories in the Bible are true/accurate…

•more likely to defend premarital sex.

•more likely to accept that gay marriage and abortion should be legal.

•much more likely to believe that God used evolution to change one kind of animal into another…

•more likely to view the church as hypocritical.

•[and] much more likely to have become anti-church through the years.

Is it possible that this new, popular brand of age-segregated Christianity is one of the forces destroying the family and thereby neutralizing the church in the next generation?⁴

Maybe you are like me and you’re concerned with the generation of young people who are leaving the church and rejecting foundational biblical moral principles that deal with our very salvation. Maybe you are like me and have been a children’s minister for over 30 years and you’re seeing results that confirm these alarming statistics. Maybe you are like me and have failed in a marriage also. Or maybe you are successful, but still want to improve. Whatever your journey may be, I pray this book makes a difference…for you, your family, your church, and your life with God.

Lord, teach us how to be family.

CHAPTER TWO

THE FIVE ESSENTIALS

One Simple Truth: Family Worship

Five Essential Principles: The Family Bible Revolution

Six Easy Steps: Now You’re Trained - Go Do It!

I find there are five essential principles to a successful biblical family. They are: Family Worship, Authority, Appointed and Anointed, Generational, and Church Worship. Each essential depends on the other and they all work together as a team. They support, encourage, add strength, and even correct each other as necessary. If one essential is missing, the end result will not be the same. If one essential is weak, the end result will be weak.

Family Worship is the focus of God’s Word being presented and discussed in the household on a regular basis. Authority establishes the responsibility, and the respect and honor to fulfill that position. Appointed and Anointed speaks of the calling, gifting, and the God-given ability to fulfill that call. Generational speaks of the strength and energy of the young and the wisdom and fortitude of the old - together. And finally, Church Worship speaks of the importance of the Sabbath and our gathering unto Him in the Beauty of Holiness. Each one of these essentials brings an array of life, freedom, joy, and peace. They are not difficult; on the contrary, they are so simple and easy, many overlook their importance and their purpose. Without a vision, people perish (Proverbs 29:18). Many have never been taught these five essentials as children; therefore, they are clueless to their operation and potential. We live in a society that is so busy trying to make a living, they really do not have a living! How many times have we heard or even said ourselves; I can’t do that because I’m so busy. I just don’t have the time?

It’s not just who, what, when, and where. It’s mainly the why! To know how to do something is one thing, but to have the vision of why gives us the motivation, the purpose, and the direction. We have to be able to see the future in order to begin to do what we need to do now. Who? You! What? This! When? Now! Where? Here! Why? That’s why I am writing this book. Oh yes, we will discuss the details of who, what, when, and where, but the real purpose is to give the vision - so that we might see into the future - so that we might know why - so that we stay motivated - so that we continue to walk with the eyes of our faith even though we may not see the answers and changes happening overnight:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

Some people know the what, but they don’t have the vision - the why. But in all actuality, many don’t even have the what. How would we ever have the vision if we don’t even know what it