Pastor's Perspective - More Dads Needed

I’m grateful that I had a Dad.

Some might be saying, “Dufus, we all had a dad.” Of which my response is, “No we didn’t. We all had a father, but we all didn’t have dads. There’s a vast difference. And, it’s ‘Pastor Dufus’ to you!”

A father is someone who paid a minimal genetic cover charge to receive that title. Or, is someone who paid the cover, demands respect, and yet continues to pay the minimum when it comes to leading his family. Fathers are well-acquainted with terms like busyness, absence, disconnection and indifference. Sadly and tragically, the father population is rising and is at an all-time high, catalyzing most of the glaring breakdowns we see all around us. Although the economy and government are easy scapegoats for all that’s wrong, the biggest and truest culprit is the absentee Dad. More ominous than the swine flu is the pandemic of too many fathers and too few of what God intended – men being men.

In contrast, a dad is something very special and unique. He is God’s blueprint creation for the human family and society. As a matter of fact, when His creature called ‘Dad’ is actively embracing, endorsed and executing his divine role within his family and town, wives have authentic wellbeing, kids feel secure physically and in identity, neighborhoods are strong, communities flourish, society is undergirded and the world becomes a better place to live.

My Dad came to this country when he was just a teenager. During his childhood and early teen years he lived in war-torn Germany. He remembers spending long days and nights with his mother and young sisters in crowded bunkers and shelters while his father fought. He would soothe his sisters to sleep with his harmonica playing while bombs fell overhead. After the war, my grandfather moved his young family to the country of the winning side – no small humble task – especially for a thick accented former enemy with the first name ‘Adolf’! By way of ship and Canada, my Dad started life in a brand-new land with a brand-new language. His advanced age but lack of formal education landed him in the class with the youngest students. He was a bit of a sideshow, a humiliated blonde-haired, blue-eyed teenager who rolled his ‘r’s’ scrunched into a miniscule grammar school desk. To make it in the new country and to help his family, he left school and worked hard relentless hours with his hands as an apprentice wood fixture maker – the same occupation in which he would retire fifty years later.

With many societal strikes against him, Klaus Adolf Kiefer, immigrant, made it his objective to be a great dad and family man. Independent of high literacy, high salaries, and even higher social benchmarks, Dad was magnificent in his simplicity. He loved his wife, loved his three kids, was a stellar neighbor, laughed openly and frequently, served his church, paid his taxes, maintained beautiful yet modest homes, helped coach his kids sports teams, spanked when necessary, hugged us, kissed us and told us he loved us every day, enjoyed a “cold one” and a bratwurst when he could, called all dogs “flea hounds” but really liked them, led wonderful family vacations, yelled at the TV screen on Sundays when his beloved Buccaneers ran bad plays (Yes, he yelled a lot!), had a contagious wry “every guy” sense of humor, hunted and fished, ignored food labels, earned promotions regularly, smooched Mom in front of us, loved ‘old skool’ country & western music (the twangy nasally kind), read only the sports page, loved any movie with a good car chase, never fretted a ‘beer belly’, was dependable as tomorrow morning, taught us the true cost of a dollar and what a full day’s work should look like, celebrated our smallest achievements with big proud unashamed tears, and most memorably for me, would work eleven hot hours on a table saw then come home and throw backyard pass routes to his boys, with his bushy moustache still white with sawdust.

Yep, I’m grateful that I had a Dad.

Lord, help me to be one.

The world needs a whole lot more of them.