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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.
