The service was surprisingly free of distractions considering how many children were seated in the congregation.

Babies, toddlers, grade-schoolers, and teenagers sat with their parents. Some were listening, some doodling, but all being politely quiet and relatively still. And their parents, members of Providence Baptist Church, wouldn’t have it any other way. Providence, an SBTC-affiliated church, is just one of at least 600 congregations nationwide identified by Vision Forum Ministries as a family-integrated church.

There is no hard-and-fast definition for a family-integrated church, but similarities in the structure are what bind them together as well as the families that make up their membership.

As the preaching pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring, a flagship FIC congregation, Voddie Baucham identified four distinctives in his book “Family-Driven Faith:
1) Families worship together,
2) there is no systematic segregation of ages,
3) evangelism and discipleship are accomplished in and through homes, and
4) education is emphasized as a key component of discipleship often through homeschooling.

Another valued element common to any self-respecting Southern Baptist church, is a pot-luck dinner, most often held following Sunday morning services in FIC churches. Members of Providence Baptist Church meet in the gym/fellowship hall of Trinity Church in Pasadena. Roll-away partitions divide the kitchen and dining area from the worship center. Families gathered around the tables to enjoy homemade offerings and talk about why a FIC is important to them.

The Hardcastle family had been members of another Southern Baptist church but found they were being divided as a family on the very day they believed most important to be together.

“We felt like when we went to church we put one child here, one there. There was no worship together,” said Kelli Hardcastle. She and her husband, Lance, have eight children with number nine due in May. Kelli said her complaint was not directed at the church itself, recognizing the organization of many SBC churches results in family separation each Sunday morning, at least during the Bible study hour. But the Hardcastles began to long for something different and their search led them to Providence Baptist Church along with other like-minded families.

“We just wanted to get back to worshipping the Lord. And the fact that the kids are with us in the service, that was a big bonus,” said Raul Galvan, father of eight with his wife, Petra, expecting their ninth in March. The Galvan family had also been members of an SBTC church–a large congregation with a wide variety of ministries and Bible studies. The worship services were contemporary and professionally presented but the Galvans began desiring a simpler form of worship for themselves and their children.

Christina Haarhoff believes it is important for children to be in the worship services with their parents.

“I like the fact that they are learning to worship. Our children know the hymns,” she said. Her brother, Jeremy, also a Providence member, said his 4-year-old niece, Anneka, knows 40 hymns. Christina and Damian Haarhoff are the parents of four children ages five months through 6 years old.

Christina said she and Damian were looking for a Reformed church when they moved to the area from Dallas. The theology of Providence Baptist Church brought the couple in, but the family-oriented nature of the church is what made them stay.

“There is a strong sense of family. We hardly have a church gathering that isn’t family welcoming.”
She harkens back to references in the Old Testament to support the idea for families being in worship together. Men, women, children, and nursing babies, Christina said, Were all gathered to hear the word of God proclaimed. When did it become strange, she asked, for parents to bring their children into the worship service?

In an effort to honor the scriptural mandate for parents, in particular the fathers, to be the spiritual leaders in the home, Christina and Damian choose to keep their children with them during Pastor Tommy Dahn’s Bible study following the worship service while other parents send their children off to age-graded Bible study. Such choices are a hallmark of a family-integrated church.

The Galvan and Hardcastle families choose to have their children attend the graded Sunday School after they have spent the worship service together. Having those classes, Petra Galvan said, is just “a bonus,” a supplemental tool she and her husband can use in their role as spiritual leaders for their children.

The role a church can or should play in the lives of its members’ children is central to the discussion of family-integrated churches. The influence–for better or worse–of youth ministries and “systematic age-segregated” Bible study, as Baucham labels traditional Sunday School, is a point of debate for some.

Jim Hamilton, an assistant professor of biblical studies at the Houston campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, explains: “Different people are going to come to different conclusions on this, and I think this is an area of Christian freedom–as long as the fact that parents are responsible for their children is recognized and embraced.” Having previously served as a youth minister, Hamilton acknowledged, “Youth ministries can be a huge blessing, but even youth ministers will tell you that the kids most likely to keep the faith are those whose parents are training them in the faith. For these kids, the youth ministry is a supplemental help, not the whole show.”

Hamilton is the preaching elder at Baptist Church of the Redeemer, an FIC in Stafford.

“I would define family-integrated church as a church that is committed to keeping families together and not breaking them up at an institutional level. Within this broad definition, there is, of course a spectrum,” Hamilton said. “At the strictest end of the spectrum would be a church whose mission statement would be along the lines of ‘discipling dads to disciple families.’ Such a church might not have Sunday School classes divided by ages. So the children and the teens and the adults might all be in the same Sunday School class together. Churches on this stricter end might lean toward having fathers leading their own families in taking communion as families.”

What is foundational to all the family-integrated churches contacted by the Texan is the member’s emphasis on the role of fathers as spiritual leaders in the home. Doug Helms, pastor of Rock Creek Baptist Church, Crowley, said the goal of a family-integrated church is to make the parents the primary instrument for instruction and in doing so override the influences of the world that would draw children away from God once they leave home.

Although they offer age-graded Bible study, Helms said it is in no way a means by which parents can abdicate that role.

Hamilton explained further: “At the looser end of the spectrum (of FICs) are those who would say that the mission of the church is not simply to ‘disciple dads’ but to “make disciples.” These churches would probably have ‘age-appropriate’ instruction, and they would probably take communion as a whole church and avoid breaking the church up into family units at communion. Those who are much more family integrated might not regard these “looser” groups as being family integrated at all, but what would put them on the spectrum would be that they are much more intentional about encouraging fathers to lead their families in family worship and disciple their children, much more intentional about protecting and cultivating biblical gender roles and there will be a more ‘family-friendly’ culture at such churches.”

Many of the families involved in FICs homeschool their children. Asked if a family with children enrolled in public schools would feel uncomfortable in such a setting, Helms said he is aware of that possibility and works to make all visitors feel welcome.

Christina Haarhoff said she believes anyone would feel welcome in their church which has one-half to three-fourths of its members involved in homeschooling. Again, she added, it comes back to what a family is looking for in a church and if they share the same ideals with regard to children and their spiritual upbringing. Petra Galvan added, Pastor Dahn has had his children in home school, public and private school and does not preach one over the other from the pulpit.

The families of Providence Baptist Church, like many others who have joined family-integrated churches, are wondering when it became vogue to segregate according to age. Baucham explained in the book why the now-common approach has become so attractive.

“One day you visit a church, your teen goes off to the youth service, your little one goes off to children’s church, the baby goes to the nursery, and you and your spouse get a great seat, in a plush auditorium with first-class music, professional drama, a relevant, encouraging, application-oriented, non-threatening talk, and you get it all in just under an hour,” he wrote.

“While I believe the vast majority of those who shepherd segregated portions of congregations are well meaning and would never presume to replace parents in their biblical role, I believe the modern American practice of systematic age segregation goes beyond the biblical mandate. I believe it is a product of the American educational system, and in some instances it actually works against families as opposed to helping them pursue multigenerational faithfulness. I believe the church’s emphasis ought to be on equipping parents to disciple their children instead of doing it on their behalf.”

“A family will drive to church and never see each other again until they get back in the car,” said Brad Bunting, SBTC associate director of student evangelism. He thinks SBC youth ministers are becoming more aware to the role they must play in the lives of the teenagers they lead. That role, Bunting said, is becoming more family friendly.

Once they decided to leave their former church, Lance and Kelli Hardcastle drove around searching for a new congregation, not quite sure where God was leading. Then they found Providence—a church home where large families are not given a second glance, children and babies are not discouraged from attending the Sunday morning services but instead parents spending worship time with their children is encouraged.
A two-day conference to equip family-integrated churches will be held Oct. 26-27 in Houston with details available at gracefamilybaptist.org.

Did your family practice family worship as you were growing up?

That’s the question Donald Whitney posed last fall to the 115 seminary students in his Personal Spiritual Disciplines classes.

Though a large percentage of the students had grown up in ministers’ homes, only seven came from families that practiced family worship. Of the remaining 108 students, not even one had ever had an opportunity to see family worship in practice.

Whitney, who serves as professor of biblical spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., worries that those students are not alone. He said they illustrate a larger trend of Christians ignoring the Bible’s command to practice worship in their homes.

“I’m preaching in a different church just about every week,” he said. “And I’m convinced that in most of our best churches most of the best men in those churches aren’t even praying with their wives, and children if they have them, much less spending 10 minutes in family worship.”

Whitney has authored the book “Family Worship: In the Bible, in History & in Your Home” and says a time of family worship takes no preparation, lasts only 10 minutes and, most importantly, reaps eternal benefits.

Jim Richards, executive director of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, agrees with Whitney’s assessment and attributes the lack of family worship in Christian homes to scheduling difficulties and spiritual lethargy.

“We rush through our lives doing good things and leaving out the best,” Richards said. “Another challenge is that families are pulled in different directions. The dad may travel. The mom works outside the home. The kids are in soccer, ballet, music lessons and school activities. But rising above all other reasons (for neglecting family worship) is that adults fail to lead when they know it is the right thing to do.”

So how do you do family worship? According to Whitney, it’s a matter of reading the Bible, praying, and singing.

For Bible readings, families should consider working through books of the Bible chapter-by-chapter, Whitney said, adding that parents may need to explain the meaning of a passage to their children and that narrative passages often work best for small children.

Prayer in family worship can include either the father praying or some member of the family he designates. The specific content of prayers will vary, with some families taking requests and others praying through Psalms, Whitney said.

Singing can be as simple as getting hymnals and selecting a hymn to sing together. Men who do not feel comfortable singing do not have to lead the hymns, but no one should feel embarrassed to sing with his family, Whitney said. He noted that almost everyone’s family has heard him sing around the house or in the shower.

Malcolm Yarnell, assistant dean of theological studies and associate professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, said his family finds ways to keep the Bible on their minds throughout the day but makes it a point to keep a regular appointment for family worship every night.

“We usually begin with a Bible reading, focusing on pericopes or thought segments of several verses rather than chapters. Following this, we will have some discussion of the text from Dad and then dialogue over the text among all of us, being careful to pull each of the children into the discussion,” Yarnell explained.

“After this, we will pray, beginning by asking the children to thank God for various things and then asking for prayer requests. Finally, Mom will lead us in a song, usually one verse that the children learn to repeat,” he said.

For Yarnell, spending 15-20 minutes in family worship is well worth the small time commitment it requires.

“We want to live out the Word of God, recognizing that it is living and active,” he said. “The Bible is God’s sufficient instrument in speaking to us all that we need. We believe that God calls to us from the text and invites us to live out of the text.”

Some families may object that they cannot practice family worship because of their unusual circumstances. But there is no such thing as a family in which there is no way to worship together, Whitney said.

If there is no father at home, Scripture gives the mother the responsibility to lead her children in worship, he said. If the father is at home but is not a Christian, inviting him to read the Bible with the family might be a great way to introduce him to the gospel, Whitney added.

If the children are very young, Whitney urged parents to be patient and remember that an important part of the discipline may be simply teaching children to sit in one place for a few minutes.

“Just remember that there is no family worship situation that has not been addressed by Christians for centuries,” Whitney writes in “Family Worship.” “You are not alone in the circumstances that make family worship difficult.”

Richards noted that the travel demands of his current job at times make it impossible for him to join his family for their daily time of worship. But his wife has demonstrated that it is possible to continue family worship and even to thrive in family worship on occasions when the father is not present, he said.

“My wife and I have had two families,” Richards said. “Our girls grew up in a pastor’s home. Our son has grown up in the home of a denominational worker. I was with the girls to provide leadership. My wife provided the stability many nights when I was traveling for the convention. She stayed consistent through my absence.”

Believers who are thinking about beginning a regular time of family worship should realize that almost all of our heroes from church history made family worship a priority, Whitney said. Believers in the patristic era, Martin Luther, the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Piper all stressed the discipline, he said.

But above all, Whitney urges those thinking about beginning family worship to ask themselves a series of questions:
?What better way exists to evangelize your children daily?
?What better way to provide an opportunity for children to ask about the things of God in a natural context?
?What better way for you to transmit your core beliefs to your children?
?What better way for your children to see the ongoing spiritual example of their parents?
?What better way to provide reproducible examples to your children of how to have a Christian home?
?Isn’t this what you really want to do?

After considering these questions, Whitney said, a man who wants to begin family worship should say to his wife: “I’ve come to believe that the Bible teaches that I should be leading us in family worship and I want to start today. I have a lot to learn about it, but I want to do what’s right. Will you join me?”

Yarnell, Richards and Whitney agree that men who take that step will produce fruit of eternal significance.

AMARILLO?During their first-ever Wild Game Expo and Dinner on Sept. 29, The Church at Quail Creek in Amarillo found out what happens when you combine Texans’ love of the outdoors with focused prayer, advance planning and an appealing purpose.

Executive Pastor Michael Pinkston said more than 5,000 people from the Panhandle region turned out for the expo during the day, and more than 420 men, most unchurched, attended a wild game dinner that evening to hear the gospel presented by evangelist Jay Lowder of Harvest Ministries based in Wichita Falls. Pinkston, following the vision cast by Senior Pastor Stan Coffey, oversaw and directed the events.

Best of all, Pinkston said, 176 people accepted Christ that weekend; 95 of them were saved at the dinner.

“We had the Wild Game Expo from 10 to 4 on Saturday,” Pinkston said. “Then what we did was we sold and/or gave away tickets to the steak and wild game dinner that night … It was the largest number of individuals at a men’s event in the church’s history.”

Prayer was a key part of the planning process. Church members had a seven-day prayer guide that led them to pray every week for different aspects. There was a church-wide prayer gathering the week
before the event.

“Prayer was huge,” Pinkston said.

The event also launched Care 4 Kids, a new foundation established by The Church at Quail Creek.
Care 4 Kids will minister to underprivileged children in the Amarillo area by providing school supplies, college scholarships, and other financial assistance administered by the church through the foundation.

The expo took more than a year in planning. The church sponsored ads in the local newspaper, distributed flyers, hung posters, put out signage, and generally talked up the event whenever they could.

But Pinkston said the Care 4 Kids foundation really appealed to local merchants, the media and civic officials and generated free publicity. He said the local newspaper ran advance stories promoting the expo, local television network affiliates featured it on their news shows, and the school district distributed flyers announcing the expo to every child in the public schools.

“We had great community support,” Pinkston said. “We just had incredible people in the church working on public relations and the promotional parts of it ? Church members were serving their hearts out.”

At the expo, Quail Creek church members manned 15 food booths, 15 Kids’ Zone games, and organized up to 12 kids fishing at any one time in a catfish tank sponsored by Mel Phillips’ Southwest Outdoors talk radio show. Their volunteer efforts helped the new Care 4 Kids foundation benefit from the sale of souvenirs and tickets purchased for door prizes awarded at the dinner.

A 240-item silent auction included a pair of custom-made boots in a choice of elephant or ostrich leather; a gun safe that retailed for $1,500; a new fishing boat; and four signed prints contributed by artist Larry Dyke of Friendswood. All the funds raised went to the Care 4 Kids foundation.

The expo also had a live stage. Throughout the day there was music, an Old West fast-draw demonstration, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission show called “Bob and the Texas Critters,” a Wildcat Bluff animal show, cowboy poets, Bunkhouse Boys, bluegrass music, and an alligator ranch show.

“From 9:30 in the morning to 4:15 in the afternoon that live stage was just hopping, beating out music,” Pinkston said.

Child Evangelism Fellowship had a tent for children in the Kids’ Zone.

“We saw the gospel presented in that tent to 132 people that day and 11 kids and parents got saved in that tent that day,” Pinkston said.

Hank Hough’s Kingdom Dog Ministries set up in the church auditorium and an estimated 150-200 people at a time watched him present the gospel using his trained dogs. Based out of Spring, near Houston, Kingdom Dog Ministries uses prize-winning, obedience-trained Labrador retrievers to teach biblical truths to unbelievers about the gospel of salvation and to demonstrate to believers their need to submit their lives to God’s will.

“It was awesome,” Pinkston said of Hough’s birddog show. “It really set the stage for people getting saved that night. So many people got the gospel really clearly explained.”

As much as possible, Pinkston said they wanted to get men to come to the wild game banquet after the expo on Saturday evening. Church members who bought tickets to the dinner had to buy a ticket to bring at least one unchurched friend. Tickets were given to the expo exhibitors as a value-added bonus for buying booth space.

The dinner was designed for men, but some brought their wives. The church planned to seat 420 for dinner; every seat was taken and some church members ate standing up in the back of the banquet room. Evangelist Lowder presented the dinner message.

“Out of the 95 that were saved at the dinner there were eight ladies saved that night,” Pinkston said. On Sunday, Pinkston said there were 26 families enrolled in the church’s four-week discipleship course titled “Fast Track to Success in Life,” all as a result of the wild game outreach.

He said the church built many positive relationships in the community in promoting and planning the event. The excitement of the outdoors theme combined with the good works of the Care 4 Kids foundation made for “healthy, constructive relationships within the community,” Pinkston said.

Pinkston said the whole church is particularly excited about the lives changed and the great number of men won to faith in Christ.

“Their first introduction to the church was masculine,” he said about the men who attended the expo and dinner. “It was a great introduction for a guy who might think, ‘Hey, I might want to go to church here.’ It was hugely effective towards men.”

Pinkston said the church has already started planning toward a second wild game expo and dinner next year. He thinks other churches around the state could successfully do this kind of outreach. His advice is simple: “Pray hard, work hard, and you can’t start planning and organizing too early.”

In an interview last summer, marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher was asked why marriage mattered. She answered, “Marriage protects children.” I was struck by the reductionism of her perspective.

At the same time Mrs. Gallagher’s response is an easy sell. People will contort themselves in astounding ways if someone asserts that it’s good for the children. That’s why car companies, pharmaceutical companies and even junk food conglomerates will try to present us all with the choice of buying their product or leaving our children less safe or happy. It works because we love our kids.

But you know, no lofty claim should be above scrutiny. Is marriage as an institution less than significant if there are no children in the house? That might imply that most wedding dresses should be sized for pregnant women or that empty nesters are free to follow whatever irresponsible whim they like. If there are no children to protect, such behavior is value neutral.

More to the point, can marriage focused primarily on the kids even protect them? In my experience people who divorce overwhelmingly love their kids. It’s a paradox, though. The kids hold the marriage together for a while until Mom decides that the environment could only be improved by divorce. The ensuing legal snarl is focused mainly on financial provision for the children. And ultimately the divorced couple spars and grumbles at one another for years as they are shackled together ? by the kids. And every step along the way is another level of Hell for the kids.

When rain drips through your ceiling your first instinct is to put buckets down so the carpet doesn’t ruin. The answer though is to focus on the integrity of the roof. I think the marriage is the roof and the kids are the carpet.

And carpet is not the only thing under the roof. So let me offer some other significanct points for the institution God created first.

Marriage is the acceptable and positive outlet for human sexual behavior?Paul said that it’s better to marry than burn (1 Corinthians 7:9). We also have ample reason to believe that free- form sexual
behavior causes all kinds of turmoil.

Marriage provides stability and security for individuals?It’s beneficial for all around us that we have someone who keeps us rooted in reality?a trusted one who tells us the truth. We are also safer because there is someone who has committed to watch over us.

Marriage is a source of comfort and nurture for individuals?I’m a better employee and citizen and church member because my wife has committed to be the one who is nice to me. It changes my whole outlook. We also benefit from the fact that someone has committed to make us take our pills and wear socks. “Also, if two lie down together, they can keep warm” (Ecclesiastes 4:11).

Marriage is the stable foundation of communities?While families are the basic unit of our society, I’d say that applies more specifically to married couples. Married people have found something most people look for and are thus more rooted in jobs and communities than when they were single.

Marriage is the essential institution for producing and raising children?This matters a lot and Maggie Gallagher is correct that marriage protects children. This role is important to society as well as to the kids themselves. And traditional, one-man and one-woman-for-life marriages fulfill this role like no other institution can.

It is in the best interest of our nation and of our communities that marriages do the things listed above. No institution can fulfill these roles as well, although we are sometimes forced to put some other entity in the gap. Our society needs strong marriages for reasons we often only see when they fail. The best answer is not to change our expectations or even to shore up stop-gap measures; it is to do no harm to the institution of marriage in our laws, perhaps even to provide positive support.

An example of harmful, though well-intended legislative efforts is no-fault divorce whereby one partner can dissolve the relationship without any meaningful reason or the consent of the other partner. Beginning in the 1970s, no-fault divorce became the law in nearly every state since that time. Intended to allow an escape for women in abusive relationships, no-fault divorce has moved way beyond that goal and devalued the institution.

Think of the statement a society makes when the law says that petty annoyance, boredom, and lustful longing are adequate reasons to dissolve a contractual relationship essential to our communities. We may generally want the benefits of stable marriages but we’re unwilling to say so legally. The last 30 years have seen a rise in the divorce rate, the rate of unwed births, and the rate of unmarried cohabitation. Maybe these trends are a coincidence but it’s hard to argue that no-fault divorce has worked.

It’s time to turn back the clock on this law. Advocates for the status quo claim that abuse and suicide rates will go up if we reinstitute “fault” divorce, which allows one partner to contest the divorce and requires a reason to end the marriage. Spousal abuse is already illegal. Increasing divorce rates have (and this is not speculation) increased the legal abuse of children that occurs when Mom and Dad pull them in different directions. No-fault divorce is a response to problem marriages that has too many unintended consequences. Compare it with abortion on demand as an answer to the tiny number of pregnancies that result from rape and incest.

One positive thing states can do is to not only pass but promote covenant marriage laws. These provisions encourage a couple to agree to pre-marital counseling and agree that they will not pursue divorce without actively seeking reconciliation.

The provision in Texas that was signed into law during the last session gives couples that submit to premarital counseling a waiver of the $60 marriage license fee. By highlighting the seriousness of the decision and by asking a couple to agree that their marriage will be more or less insoluble, a state can at least make a more serious claim to believe that marriage is significant.

Yes, divorce devastates children and this is a particularly poignant outcome. Some professionals took too long to understand that children are harmed when their families blow up. Some day we’ll start to realize that a host of other problems also follow when we view marriage as just a piece of paper.

Churches also have an interest in encouraging marriage and discouraging divorce. This statement is not the no-brainer you might suppose. Our churches sometimes walk on eggshells to avoid offending single, divorced, remarried, and never married parents in the community. Let’s face it, we shrink from accusations that “we’re only known for what we’re against” and it stifles our prophetic voice in the face of the ministry murder we call divorce.

God hates divorce and I guess that would make it a sin. It’s not the unforgiveable sin but it’s not the inconsequential sin either. If we’re going to preach against other sins that devastate lives and offend our God, add this one to the list without apology. Few sins, except unbelief, are cutting a wider swath through our churches.

Taking a more positive tact, we can uplift marriage by expecting one another in the fellowship of our local church to keep our marriage vows, in detail. That means neglect, indifference, harshness, abandonment, and other quiet sins that erode a relationship over time will be seen as assaults on the family, and thus the local fellowship of believers, we can address before it’s too late. Churches that uplift and expect us to honor the covenant of marriage will always have more impact than the state enforcing the merely legal aspect of the marriage contract.

I’m a big fan of kids, mine and other people’s. Raising kids is