I recently read a book entitled Family Driven Faith by Voddie Baucham, Jr. Baucham spends the first eight chapters discussing a Biblical view of the family and the obligation of mothers and fathers to disciple their children. In the last two chapters of the book, Baucham offers several suggestions to churches — suggestions that he believes grow out of a Biblical view of the church and the family. He demonstrates that their is clearly a problem with the way that children are being spiritually guided, since an overwhelming majority abandon their faith after leaving their parents’ keeping. Baucham’s thesis is that the family is the primary institution in which faith is passed from generation to generation, and the church should do everything in its power to encourage the family’s transmission of faith.
This book, and the “family integrated church” movement of which it is a part, has stirred up a good deal of controversy in the Christian community. If you look the book up on Amazon.com, you will find several reviewers who find Baucham and his suggestions unwise, impractical, and even cultic. The primary controvery surrounds the idea of minimizing age-specific programming (read: young children’s ministry, jr. high youth group, high school youth group, college and career group, young married group, etc.) and maximizing the amount of teaching that the entire family is exposed to. The family, says Baucham, should (ideally) go to the same church, be exposed to the same teaching, and discuss the message among themselves afterward to ensure that the children understand. It is not the duty of an age-specialized pastor to contextualize God’s Word to make it relevent the the age group in question.
Imagine a “family-integrated” church that meets for a majority of the day every Sunday. There is a sermon, several times of prayer, catechism, a shared meal, and discipleship that takes place in a small group of perhaps two or three families. I wonder why many of us would look at a church like that and immediately label it cultic — or just plain weird. I cannot find anything in Scripture that would indicate that this is a bad way to “do church.” In fact, I believe that this model is closer to the New Testament model than is a highly programmed and smoothly professional church.
The question: Does the Scriptural view of the church exalt family integration over programming (or vice-versa), or are both family integration and age-specific programming viable options? I would like to see a little dialogue because, honestly, this is an issue that I have been thinking a lot about recently and have not landed on yet. So please, share your thoughts!
