Pastor, Why Support The Gang Of Dads?
Please Join us on Monday, June 3rd.
Dear Pastor,
You should have received my mass mailing about the Gang of Dads Interest Meeting that I sent out yesterday.
Today, I wanted to specifically address
pastors. Unless your church is different than most, you've probably
found that men are the harder of the two genders to get involved in
church and service related activities.
And yet, when we had a young man without a
dad who uncharacteristically got into some serious trouble with the
law, the men of my church rose up with a desire to make themselves
available to be part of a solution to the issue of boys without dads.
The picture above shows just some of the men who said, "count me in!" I
was encouraged by their enthusiasm and willingness to get involved.
Since that time I have sought to formalize
the process and obtain some formal training for the men to allay the
natural fear and insecurities that many men suffer from that would tend
to keep them from being involved as mentors.
We're going to start with a program for boys in need of fatherly input, but hope to expand to include girls with the same need.
The New Haven Family Alliance has stepped
to the plate to provide us with screening, training (initial and
ongoing) as well as results tracking. By sending men from your church to
the training and encouraging them to participate, we will
effectively raise up an army of Dads for the boys in need within each of
our own congregations and for the boys who are involved in the minor
criminal cases handled by the city's Juvenile Review Board.
Here is why this program is crucial:
1. Nearly 75 percent of fatherless American children will experience poverty before the age of eleven.
2. Fatherlessness
is the number one cause of poverty in America, (we could debate this
one, but don't let that debate distract us from the indisputable realty
that the role of fathers is crucial!).
3. Children living in homes where fathers are absent are more likely to be expelled from school.
4.
They are more likely to drop out of school, develop emotional or
behavioral problems, commit suicide, and fall victim to child abuse or
neglect.
5. Fatherless
males are far more likely to become violent criminals (fatherless males
represent 70 percent of the prison population serving long-term
sentences).
My request:
Please plan to attend or send a representative to the interest meeting scheduled for:
Date: Monday, June 3, 2013
Time: 6PM-7PM
Place: The Wells Fargo Community Room of United Way, 370 James Street.
Please RSVP
that you or a representative will be there. If you're sending someone,
please provide their name and contact information. Of course, I hope to
see you rather than a representative......but I'd rather see a
representative than no one at all! Thanks!
I still
live under the conviction that we can be a lot more influential in the
community together than we can as islands unto ourselves.
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