Tuesday/Thursday Book Club:
Perspectives on
Family Ministry
The Family Integrated Church, chapters 5-6
Paul Renfro, Minister of Discipleship at Grace Family Baptist Church, writes as an advocate for the family-integrated model. He quotes his pastor, Dr. Voddie Baucham, Jr., when defining the FIC movement:
The family-integrated church movement is easily distinguishable in its insistence on integration as an ecclesiological principle. … Our church has no youth ministers, children’s ministers, or nursery. We do not divide families into component parts. We do not separate the mature women from the young teenage girls who need their guidance. We do not separate the toddler from his parents during worship. In fact, we don’t even do it in Bible study. We see the church as a family of families (Family Driven Faith, 191-95).
Rather than gathering arond age-directed meetings, Renfro describes the FIC gathering weekly for integrated worship and a family meal. At Grace Church, the structures are kept simple to allow families time to practice hospitality during the week–along with the integrated services there are weekly integrated small group studies and a monthly men’s meeting (for men ages 12 & up).
Three distinctives unite all family integrated churches: (1) a commitment to age-integrated ministry, (2) a commitment to evangelism and discipleship through the home, and (3) a commitment to calling church leaders who meet the biblical qualification of managing their home in a godly way.
What are the advantages of the family-integrated model?
The model avoids the dangers of perpetuating immaturity and prolonging adolescence that often haunt more traditional “youth group” models. In addition danger of accentuating a generation gap in the church is also avoided. Church leaders rely heavily on families (and particularly fathers) to be the primary disciplers of their children. Moreover, the FIC does “simple church” at its finest. What a blessing to free one’s people to grow as families and do relational neighborhood evangelism.
What are the disadvantages?
Renfro admits that one of the great difficulties of FIC is transitioning a church to this model. But those who criticize this model wonder whether or not the difficulty of transitioning could be due to poor ecclesiology. A church is not a “family of families” but in reality the “family of God.” Moreover, it seems that the FIC model blunts gospel-centered missional ministry to those steeped in contemporary youth culture. The abundance of home-schooled families attracted to the model testify to its inherently separatistic bent. What is missed is that every church “contextualizes” and even “segregates” (Grace Church’s men’s only meeting), but the gospel calls us to a more flexible missional posture.
So, what do you think? What are your opinions of the FIC?
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I’m still mulling over all these things in my mind, so feel free to pick apart anything I say below. But here are a few initial thoughts:
-I like a lot (or maybe I should say A LOT as you’ll see from the points below) of the ideas behind FIC, specifically taking the modern church model of complete child segregation of to integration. While I’m not sure to what extent that could be best accomplished, I like that there are times when kids are actually WITH their parents.
-I also like that it leans heavily toward fathers discipling children. I still think that’s hard to emphasize when I give my kids to others to teach them the Bible.
-I like that it removes the inherent disconnect between kids and parents in more “traditional” models (i.e. kid sermons vs. adult sermons, kid songs vs. adult songs)
-I also like the structural simplicity of it
-I’m not bothered by the idea of a “family of families” existing within the overarching structure of the family of God. I don’t think it has to be either/or. And I think Voddie Baucham has dealt with it nicely on his blog. It seems to me that when we call parents (and especially dads) the primary disciplers of our children, then w–in some sense or another–set the structure of the church to be the “church” discipling parents who then disciple their children, or, to say it differently, a family of God made up of families. Some say “pop” and others say “soda,” but they’re still talking about the same thing
-I’m not sure how this model would interact with certain groups: parents with unruly children, orphans, unbelieving parents with believing children, etc. It doesn’t seem like FIC is adequately set up for these groups.
-I’m not sure it’s fair to say that the model has a “separtistic bent” just because it draws homeschool families. As a (proto-)homeschool family, I like it simply because it organizationally supports in the church what I’m already doing at home. And it’s probably why, as a (proto-)homeschooling family, I find the idea of sending my kids to be taught by others on Sundays or Wednesdays or whenever when my wife and I do the rest of their instruction throughout the week to be an odd idea.
-I wonder what we know about the first century church and their view toward children, especially during gatherings. Did they segregate children out? I honestly don’t have a clue about historical research on this point.
-I fully agree that the approach would look very weird to unbelieving families–partly because age-segregation is built into our culture and partly because “everybody” knows that churches have Sunday Schools and nurseries and the such.
-Based on the previous point, I certainly feel the tension between what I would like for my kids (to be with me most of the time) and a missional perspective (which sees no age segregation as odd). And I have NO good answers for that one.
-I don’t AT ALL think that switching to the FIC model would in and of itself fix all the problems we have of youth leaving the church or a huge gap in spirituality/maturity between kids and adults or parental abdication in discipling their children. It concerns me that FIC advocates (or at least, Voddie Baucham, who’s the only one I’ve really read on the topic) might be confusing the means and the message. It’s certainly conceivable that a church could switch to the FIC model and still completely miss what the goal of the model is. It’s also certainly conceivable that a church could keep a “traditional” model while properly affirming and supporting the ministry of parents to their own children. For example, just because I start using the Getting Things Done method doesn’t mean that I’ll actually be organized (for the first time in my life) or that I have to switch to GTD to become organized. And it’s not like the model of any church could excuse me from the responsibility to raise my children in the instruction of the Lord by pointing constantly to the cross.
Well, you know my view on “family of familes.” I’ve seen Voddie’s response on his blog, but I still don’t think he has fully answered the objections. I don’t think that saying dads should pastor homes like pastors shepherd churches means that the church and home should always be equated or merged structurally in the way that Voddie suggests. In my view FIC is one good model among many good models, but it is a model that values family over mission, and that gives me pause. The family ministry model that a church chooses should not be a close-handed issue. This is not a gospel principle but a methodological matter. Sojourn has chosen to segregate the majority of events as a matter of contextualization–though we would love to implement more events like our integrated member meals in the future–maybe a Wednesday night meal with a family service before classes. Do you want to organize it
? Sister churches (like Soma in Tacoma) have integrated community groups and segregated large gatherings. This is one very balanced way to answer these questions. I do think that some FIC advocates are separatistic. Voddie advocates pulling all Christian kids out of public schools, and he makes this a close handed issue rather than a matter of conscience. As I’ve written before, this raises major red flags for me. Should our theology of the family drive our faith? No. The gospel mission (our faith) should drive our ministry to families.
Regarding the first century context, the FIC has a strong argument. Paul assumed children would be present in services where his letters were read publicly (e.g. Ephesians 6:1). But, like in the synagogue, mothers and children probably sat in a separate section (in the back) segregated from the men (in the front). It’s funny that no one is advocating that today.