Focus on the Family?

Commenting on Nehemiah's reforms, J. I. Packer :

Thoughtful pastoral leaders, like Nehemiah, always focus on families and family life, for the family is the first and most basic form of human community. Family nurture, for better or for worse, goes deeper into children than any form of nurture from elsewhere, and the biblical ideal is that families should be the composite units out of which each church is built. Godliness is to be modeled in the family, and faith passed on there. Everywhere in today's Western world, and to some extent in urban communities everywhere on the face of the globe, family life is being weakened and undermined by pressure of various sorts, and this is likely to get worse. So the need to work as Nehemiah worked to keep family life strong, godly, and wholesome is great, and all who strategize and minister to spread God's kingdom today and tomorrow must make families and home life a matter of prime concern.

—J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness: Wisdom from the Book of Nehemiah (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 1995), 194.