As men have embraced the challenges of home education they have come to discover that they are needed in the home. Usually it begins with a realization that they must be more than figureheads in the homeschool; they must actually help their wives with the process of teaching the children. In time Dad comes to see that his role is vital if his kids are going to be discipled to the full. He needs to take his role of biblical leadership in the family and allow his wife to move from being leader to helper (Gen. 2:18).

Then it hits him: "I can only be so effective with my family if I am gone all day long." And indeed there is a real practical limit to the amount of influence a man can have in his home if in fact he is not around the family most waking hours of every day. This is the process that leads many men to dream of having a home business.

Home business may mean different things to different men, but essentially there are two elements. First, a home business is a financial enterprise that is based in the home or on the homestead. Dad no longer has to go off to work. Work is right here. It could involve a service or product which would take him out in the community, but the job is based at home. What any man who wants a home business is after is more proximity to his family.

Second, a home business means a man is working for himself. He is his own boss, to use the familiar phrase (though under the Lord!). He is not the employee of another man and subject to another’s direction. He is free to set his own schedule and arrange his own priorities day by day.

Of course it is possible to work at home as an employee. An increasing number of men are able to "telecommute" by working for a company from their home using computers, modems, and telephones, with periodic visits to the office. This gains some of the advantages of a home business (a man is obviously closer to his family this way) but it will have limitations since he still is working for someone else.

On the other hand, it is possible for a man to work a home business only to find he is in more bondage than when he reported to work for someone else. If a father is selling a product or providing a service that has him out in the community 12 hours a day he is hardly better off than when he worked for another man. At least the employee-father gets to be at home in the evenings!

Some might object that Mother’s role is in the home and Father’s role is outside the home, and that we are feminizing men by trying to bring them home. We have touched on this issue before in these pages. Suffice it to say here that while a man does have an outward-oriented dominion task in this world, his first responsibility is to his family. His goal ought to be to fulfill his vocation in a way that simultaneously maximizes his influence on his wife and children.

As we consider this issue we should recognize that our thinking has been clouded by the process of industrialization. We have come to think of it as the norm that a father is away from the home most of the time. But this is not the case in most cultures through most of history. Nor is it a healthy situation. We should aim to reverse this trend in our own homes and those of our children, and we should together seek new social models that will reverse the most egregious family-fragmenting effects of industrialism.

But enough of that. We aren’t going to change the world in the next year or two. So for now let’s ask: What about you? Should you think about home business? If so, why?

The best reason to do so is the one suggested implicitly by Jesus in John 5:19,20:

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and show Him all things that He Himself is doing.

The perfect father-son relationship is described here for all fathers to see. It is of a piece with the language of Jesus throughout the gospel of John. Last time I read this book I counted scores of references to the relationship of Jesus and His Father. Check it out for yourself.

Notice the key elements of the relationship as revealed in the verses above. First, it is what we might call an apprenticeship relationship. The Son watches the Father work and then copies His work. He does not set out on His own to define His work; He gets His direction from His Father and learns from Him.

Remember we’re talking here about the second person of the Trinity! Jesus, who was God in the flesh, looked to His Father for direction in His work. Why would the Son be so fixed on His Father in this way?

The obvious answer is simply that such is the relationship between the Father and the Son. That’s just the way it is. But then this is profound! The apprenticeship relationship is so built into the fabric of things that it characterizes the relationship of the Messiah to His Father.

We might have expected that the Father would simply give the Son a quick run-down on His task and then let him go off on His own to carry it out. Or we might have expected the Father to let the Son figure it out on His own. But this constant looking of the Son to the Father takes us by surprise. After all, doesn’t the Father respect the Son’s intelligence and ingenuity? The Son can do nothing of Himself. Doesn’t the Son think it a bit below His dignity to be constantly looking for direction. Whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

This relationship surprises us because we don’t truly understand what it means to be a father, or a son. But here is the perfect model, the original father-son relationship. This is what every father should strive for with his children (and with his sons in particular).

One major reason a father would do well to consider home business is to reclaim the role of trainer of his sons (and in a different way, his daughters). This apprenticeship relationship has been destroyed by the twin forces of industrialism and mass education.

Read what Norman Ryder has written about schooling ("Fertility and Family Structure," Populations Bulletin of the United Nations 15).

Education of the junior generation is a subversive influence. Boys who go to school distinguish between what they learn there and what their father can teach them..... The reinforcement of the [family] control structure is undermined when the young are trained outside the family for specialized roles in which the father has no competence.

Parents used to teach their own at home and fathers used to apprentice their sons in a trade (or otherwise take charge of their vocational preparation). Now a father’s work is usually divorced from the home completely and the children are usually trained by others in schools. No wonder fathers have lost their influence! It’s not that children have not been given direction, they have just received it from others.

Home education is a first step in reclaiming parental authority over the raising of children for the glory of God. But is it enough? That is the question many men are asking. Home business would seem to be another logical step in rebuilding the bond between fathers and their children since it would open up opportunities for an apprenticeship type of relationship. And this has power to shape the next generation for God.

The second thing we notice about the relationship of Jesus to His Father in our passage is that it is a relationship motivated by love. The Father loves the Son and this is the basis upon which He shows the Son all he is doing. No bare professional working relationship here, but a heart bond that leads to a shared mission. This is what fathers are supposed to have with their children.

Now let me ask: How many father-son relationships could be characterized this way? How many fathers have a loving relationship with their sons that leads to sharing their work with them? That’s right, not many. But can you see the power in this?

Malachi 4:6 and Luke 1:17 speak of fathers turning their hearts to their children and children to their fathers. What better way for this to take place than for a father to work alongside his children, demonstrating his love for them by sharing his skills and his sense of life purpose? Yet how difficult it becomes to maintain a relationship like this if the father is away at work all day.

A man’s work is not just to put the proverbial bread on the table, though it has been reduced to those dimensions by industrialism. Work is something God meant fathers to share with their families so that their hearts could be bond together and the father’s vision could become the vision of his children

The job of a father is the shape the lives of his children, and to do it out of love. This is not exactly politically correct, but it is God’s will. A man should prepare his children, and particularly his sons, vocationally. He should give them direction, telling them what to do; but if at all possible he should also show them what to do and do it with them. Each step increases the opportunities for influence.

One of the very best reasons to consider a home business is because it introduces the possibility of forming a loving/working relationship with your children by which you can win their hearts while you equip them with skills and vision for a lifetime.