PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The Family-Integrated Church Movement (FICM) presents many practical considerations and problems for the American Church.[1] The FICM is right in pointing out the problem of dropout young people and the breakdown of families. They are correct in emphasizing the role of fathers in the spiritual development of their children. Many fathers have neglected their role as head of homes and spiritual leaders in their homes. Many children are not holding onto their parent’s faith. Families need to take their responsibility seriously. The FICM says a lot that is right and needs to be heard, but there are several practical considerations that rise from this thesis.
The first practical consideration is the need for the FICM to take more care in their writing and their theological work. It is possible that many proponents will say that the author has not analyzed the movement properly here or there and say, “I did not mean that to be taken like that.” It is possible that the author may have misinterpreted much of what the FICM’s proponents have said, but the defense is simply this: Then what they have said is unclear.
The FICM states that the God-ordained building blocks of the church are families. The proponents of this view need to say precisely what they mean and what they do not mean. The building block metaphor is used sparingly in the Bible and it never refers to families, so either they mean it in a different, unspecified way, or they are contradicting the Word of God. They take the Word of God seriously; so one has a difficult time imagining that they mean what they are saying. Are they saying in un-equivocating terms that families, and not individuals, are the building blocks of churches? They do not refer to individuals, and so what other conclusion can a person draw?
Another area of clarification is this: Is the FICM saying that people stay in the New Covenant through covenant keeping? This is a popular idea for some with many of the same ideas, but this concept is foreign to the gospel of Jesus Christ provided in the New Covenant. We are kept in the New Covenant through God’s grace. We cannot break the covenant because God provides all the obedience in Jesus Christ, and the new heart necessary to stay faithful. Covenant keeping is only another way to say obedience. Do they really mean children need to learn to obey to stay in covenant with God? What then of the need for regeneration and repentance? They speak of evangelizing children, but treat them as covenant members who need to obey the covenant stipulations or lose their place as God’s covenant people. The FICM needs to clarify their stance on covenant theology. They need show how their ecclesiology fits into Biblical covenant theology.[2]
Another practical application of this study should be that the Church of Christ should take families seriously. There is an anti-family, anti-children mentality rampant in our culture. This mentality is damaging to all who embrace it and is damaging to the church. The FICM is absolutely correct in its disdain for programs for programs sake, and for programs that constantly tear the family apart. The self-aggrandizement of the church over the family to the destruction of the family must stop. The Church is more important than the family. Christ died for the Church and loves the Church, but the Church is called to be like Her Lord who heals and binds up. The Church should be a redemptive unifying force in family life with the basic understanding that the gospel will divide families. Let the gospel divide families, but there is no need for churches to have a dozen programs and events that leave Christian families running ragged. God wants His Children busy with His work, not torn and flayed by the shepherds. Much of God’s work for moms and dads is sitting and walking and lying down with their children telling them God’s Word. If a church’s programs are taking this opportunity away from the family, then it has gone too far.
On the other side those sympathetic to the FICM need to guard their attitudes toward the Church. In the end there will not be families. There will only be God’s family, the Church of God. Christ died for the Church, not for families or households. Voddie Baucham was mistaken when he said “the family is the institution for which all other institutions exist, including the church.” Paul writes, “Christ is the head of all things for the Church.” Baucham’s attitude dishonors the institution that Christ died for, and dishonors God’s intentions for the world. His plan is to fill the earth with His family. Our families are temporary blessings and will not last the judgment. The FICM in their zeal for family, have not guarded their words about the Church. To call church buildings “catacombs” and “sterile” is unnecessary and careless. It is a sweeping generality to say that all churches are barren and lifeless places. This is to denigrate the countless churches that are seeking to balance all of the priorities of God’s Word, and seeking not self-aggrandizement, but the holiness of its members.
Therefore, there is a great need for balance. Balance is something that fallible humans have trouble achieving. The FICM has elevated the family too high as a principle in the organization and ministry of Church. This is reflected in their family of families mentality and their general disdain for all age-segregated activities. The Bible does indeed present the importance of families. The Bible presents the importance of fathers discipling their children as well, but it also gives the responsibility of discipling the world to the Church, and this includes all the little households in the world. This responsibility and authority necessarily means that the church is a separate entity, and is over the family in this regard. The Church has the care of all people everywhere. From little children to hardened criminals in prison, the Church is responsible for all, and so should have a discipling ministry to all.
Because Christ has given the responsibility to hold the truth up and to minister the Word of God to the whole world, the church has the authority to fulfill this responsibility. This means that the Church has the right to disciple in ways that it considers prudent and in accord with God’s Word. There is no rule against dividing up children once or twice a week to teach them in age appropriate ways. This ministry does not take away from the parent’s responsibility or prerogative. It is a means of fulfilling the Great Commission. There are general principles that should guide the church’s entire ministry, but there is great latitude in the everyday practical outworking of ministry. Sunday Schools are neither sacrosanct, nor are they wrong.[3]
What this principle implies is that age-segregated meetings of a church are proper so long as they serve the ministry of the church. These meetings should be controlled and guided, but to say that they divide families and crush the spiritual life of children is only true when they have actually done so. This is where the logic of the FICM breaks down and shows its reductionism. The reason that the FICM pushes for a family of family ecclesiology is that the age-segregated programs of churches have destroyed the family and the church. Children are abandoning the faith and the FICM puts the blame on the doorstep of the Church for usurping the family’s place with its programs.
Is the above assertion true? Perhaps it is partly true for some, but the abandonment of Christianity and breakdown of families is a complicated phenomenon. It is too complicated to be attributed to one single cause. Even if a person were to say that the Church’s usurpation of the family’s role is the cause behind the thousands of secondary causes, which would be difficult to prove as well. Parents have not abandoned their children to the Church because the Church somehow forced them or cunningly usurped their authority. The phenomenon is better explained by examining the spiritual condition of the parent’s themselves and children themselves. The better, more comprehensive answer is that there is a growing coldness and unbelief in the hearts of most people. The love of this world has pulled away those who were in the church, nominally, and seemed to be good church members for generations. There is no room in their hearts for God anymore, if there was a love there to begin with.
The need then is not a family-centered revival, but a God-centered, Christ-centered revival. The FICM has simplified the answer and missed the true problem. In their self-proclaimed revival, they have missed the true revival so desperately needed. What families need is not to be exalted in importance, but for Christ to be once again exalted in importance. Families need to find their secondary place in the periphery of a Christ-exalting revival. Only when a Holy Spirit inspired revival takes place in the Church is there a hope for families and for the American Church. The basic problem then is not age-segregated churches, but a lack of love for Christ. The only thing that can renew that love is for the Holy Spirit to come down and in power warm the hearts of people.
CONCLUSION
The simplest conclusion that can be drawn from this thesis is that more work is necessary in understanding and evaluating the Family-Integrated Church Movement (FICM). It is still an unfolding event, and in many ways is still seeking to understand itself. What also seems to be clear is that there is a firm wall of Biblical truth that the FICM needs to come to terms with- simply that the church in its local or universal manifestations cannot be understood as a family of families. The Biblical evidence is simply negligible for this assertion. Perhaps in a general, superficial way this ecclesiology can be held, but they are talking in more than superficial, general terms.
In particular, however, the family of families ecclesiology is wrong for several reasons. It misunderstands the basis for ecclesiology. It has as its basis some sort of conjunction of Old and New Covenants with an emphasis on the organic principle that is present in the Old Covenant alone. They come to this conclusion through what apparently is a lack of consideration for the clear words and guidelines of the New Covenant found in Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8. The New Covenant specifies who is in the covenant and what characterizes the covenant members. The New Covenant does not allow for an organic principle to work, because it defines its members as the redeemed and regenerated of God. Redemption and regeneration is not hereditary, and therefore not familial.
The FICM also flattens out the role of the Church. The FICM does not see the wide role that God has given to the church in discipling the world and proclaiming the truth to all creatures. It confuses the authority of the church and the family. The Church is a separate authority and also has a wider sphere of spiritual influence than the family does. The Church’s authority includes all the family members, and not just the fathers. The FICM’s limitation of the churches’ authority reduces its role in the family. This reduced role necessitates the family-integrated model of ministry. But when the Church is given its proper due, then it has the authority and right to prudently disciple those under its care, including using age-segregated means. The family structure cannot constrain the Church’s ministry, given that the Church is of a different sphere than the family.
The history of the FICM is at best fuzzy, and at worse misguided and misguiding. The Church has never seen itself as being constrained by the family structure. The Church has never defined itself as a family of families, and has never seen its role as poured into the same mold as the family. The FICM often sees the Puritans as pursuing family-integrated churches, but to look at what they actually say is to see that they were not family-integrated theologians. They did not hold to this ecclesiology, nor did they practice this philosophy of ministry. They saw the importance of families, but they did not combine the church and family. They held them as two separate entities with different authorities and powers.
The only conclusion that can be drawn from the research is that the Family-Integrated Church Movement needs to rework their ecclesiology. They need to clarify their positions and their priorities in light of Scripture. Their ecclesiology does not bear up to the scrutiny of the Word of God; neither does their elevation of the family as a guiding structure for the Church. Christ is building His Church. The FICM needs to make sure they are not building with wood, hay, and straw.
Jason Webb
Jason is a graduate of the Reformed Theological Seminary and a member of Grace Fellowship Church
[1] The word problem is not used negatively, necessarily, as will be seen from what follows.
[2] This is said especially to those who hold the 1689 confession, who are professed reformed Baptist. Their ecclesiology and their stance that the organic principle is still active in the New Covenant is the very argument that paedobaptists use for their ecclesiology and sacramental theology.
[3] The matter of nurseries could be brought up here, but space prohibits it. When they say nurseries are wrong, they are simply taking a principle of family togetherness to unwarranted extremes. The matter of having babies in the public worship of God seems to have pros and cons, and is best answered with prudence. I think the prudent answer is that the cons of having babies in the public worship outweigh the supposed benefits to the baby.
