Every family's heritage reaches back many centuries and includes various branches. The Christian family is much like this, contend Phillips and Okholm, as they examine the "evangelical branch" of the church. This introduction is divided into three sections: part one develops the concept of control beliefs as they relate to worldviews; part two explores the framework of the biblical revelation, that is the Christian worldview; and part three, the largest section, provides an overview of church history, emphasizing the various ways the church has related the Christian worldview to the culture in which it exists.

Previously published as Welcome to the Family, this textbook now includes sidebars, charts, a lexicon of key terms, reflection questions, bibliographies, a substantive discussion of postmodernism, and primary source appendices.