Refocused

As marriage crumbles, says Focus on the Family’s Jim Daly, Christians can try to uphold the biblical family as a model to the world | Marvin Olasky

Andy Cross/The Denver Post

Here are edited excerpts of my interview with Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, and the author of Stronger (David C. Cook, 2010). Daly became the organization's president in 2005 after 16 years with the ministry, succeeding founder James Dobson.

The reputation of Focus on the Family seems to be changing. For a while journalists made it seem to be an essentially political organization. Our budget has always been roughly 90 percent toward the bread and butter, marriage and parenting issues, and 10 percent toward policy. That really hasn't changed. What has changed is how we address the issues in terms of tone. . . . Everything I'm trying to do at Focus on the Family is to win the culture. I'm most concerned about our expression of the gospel preventing somebody from coming to the conclusion that Christ is who He said He was. I'm not saying that was the case before, but I am saying that as a Christian I want to make sure that my words, my rhetoric, my fervor for truth are balanced with God's grace.