Church for the whole Family

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VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 16 WIDTH="119"><div> <A HREF="comments.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Us"><U><B>Comments</B></U></A></div> </tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP WIDTH="13"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="16" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="13" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=400 BGCOLOR="#000033" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <I>Church for the whole Family</I></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="0d44d0c0.gif" border=0 width="589" height="12" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <U>Church for the Whole Family</U></div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly. Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast.</B></I><B> —Joel 2:15,16</B></div> <div> <B>Well, all I can say is Joel's church would never make in America in the '90s. What does he mean by calling for the little babies to be right there i</B><B>n the sacred assembly? Didn't he ever hear of a nursery? And about those children he wants gathered—aren't they supposed to be in Children's Church? Surely this prophet of God knows that children do not belong in adult functions like worship and holy fasts. No, Joel, you've got it all wrong.</B></div> <div> <B>Or maybe we have it wrong, we modern Christians who have become so sophisticated that we segregate the children from the adults, not only in worship but in training, ministry, and just about everything else in the church. Maybe we did not get that idea from the Bible. Maybe we got t</B><B>hat idea from the world.</B></div> <div> <B>Sure enough! Look for yourself. Find one passage in Scripture that suggests that we separate children from the rest of the believing community when it gathers. It's not there. No, the fairly recent and historically novel idea that children need to receive special attention based upon their age comes straight from the world. Until the humanists shaped public education around their false evolutionary notions of developmental stages in children it had never occurred to the church to practice age segregation and isolate children from adults.</B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Children: Part of the Congregation</B></div> <div> <B>More on that history another time. For now lets deal with the fractured-family syndrome so common in churches by a simple expedient: let's eliminate all activities and programs that involve children gathering separately from adults for the essential elements of Christian communal life: worship, training, fellowship, and ministry.</B></div> <div> <B>Sound radical? It sure is—in the original meaning of "radical": getting back to the root, the beginning, the way things used to be. And, sure, it's radical also in the sense of being a major shift in practice. But it has this going for it: it conforms to biblical patterns, and it works better.</B></div> <div> <B>Our experience has borne this out. We started a church in September 1990 with the intent of discovering a whole-family model of church life, and while we have a lot yet to learn and are far from perfection we can attest to the wonderful benefits of this "new" way of being a church.</B></div> <div> <B>We have never had a Sunday School nor Children's Church. Though there is a nursery room available in the building we use, no one uses it. Youth groups and children's clubs have never been a part of our church life.</B></div> <div> <B>Our families worship as families, whole families, with even the littlest members of the community present. The children are with the adults when we pray, when we study, when we encourage one another, when we share a meal, when we gather for service projects. We consider the children part of us.</B></div> <div> <B>Specifically, we meet at 1:30 PM for worship on Sundays (the late start allows a quiet morning at home as families before we gather as a church body). We sing, pray, hear God's Word from some of the men, and share the Lord's Supper. After a short break, we regather for "the apostles' doctrine," teaching from the Scriptures. After a longer break with coffee, the men and women gather separately for study, prayer, and encouragement; the boys go with the men, the girls with the women. We conclude our day with a leisurely meal and visiting that may last until 8:00 or 9:00 PM.</B></div> <div> <B>We have found that children can be trained to sit and be quiet far beyond the limits most adults today think possible. At the same time we are understanding of the limitations of the little ones. Some of the young ones sleep on blankets at their parents' feet, and as the day moves on, many of the younger children will be found on the floor with books or quiet activities. We also accept the fact that babies sometimes make noise and consider it a joyful burden when we occasionally have to work at concentrating on whoever is speaking.</B></div> <div> <B>Besides keeping families together on the Lord's Day, we work to avoid disrupting family life through the week. We have no regular weekly activities apart from the long Sunday meeting. God has given his people the Christian Sabbath—the whole day—to luxuriate in worship and fellowship together. Beyond that we do not multiply meetings and activities through the week to run the families ragged. For most families the evenings after Dad finishes work are precious times which should be guarded jealously from family-fragmenting activities.</B></div> <div> <B>We encourage our families to get together through the week in their homes on an informal basis and do occasionally have a special study series in a home on a weeknight. The men of the church meet once a month in a Fathers Council for important discussions and prayer pertaining to the church and its direction. Occasionally the men have a Saturday prayer breakfast or the women an open house. But our main focus is the extended Sunday meeting, and that is a whole-family event from start to finish.</B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>The Advantages of Simplicity</B></div> <div> <B>There are distinct advantages to the whole-family model of church life. First, </B><I><B>it is so refreshingly simple</B></I><B>. We don't have all the hassle and the hectic atmosphere that comes with programming aimed at age groupings. No fretting over who is substituting in Mrs. Walters' Beginners class; no worry over whether the new lady in the nursery knows that Junior is allergic to Cheerios; no recruiting teachers and workers for the Sunday School, the Children's Church, the kids' clubs; no tension about how to discipline someone else's child who is in your group.</B></div> <div> <B>I almost feel guilty leading a church that requires so little administrative oversight. Sundays are actually peaceful for our fellowship. I'll never go back to the relentless busyness of the traditional church structure.</B></div> <div> <B>Second, </B><I><B>the whole-family model maximizes spiritual growth in the children</B></I><B>. Instead of being placed with their immature peers to breed immaturity, the children come to copy the behavior of the adults in the congregation. What peer pressure exists is positive in that it is pressure to conform to the high (adult) standards of the community. Kids are anxious to participate in worship, to listen intently to the adults discuss doctrine, to be able to join in prayer and sharing of joys and trials. They like to help set up for the meal and join in cleaning up afterward.</B></div> <div> <B>In short, since they are taken seriously as part of the community and have the privilege of participating with their parents in its life, they are motivated to learn and grow so that they can take their place as mature members of that community.</B></div> <div> <B>Third, </B><I><B>the whole-family model maximizes spiritual growth in the adults</B></I><B>. When your children's eyes are always on you, you stay on your toes. Having them with you all the time means that you are constantly having to model godliness as you worship, pray, study, and visit. You also must always be alert to the needs of your children, ready to discipline, to explain, to help them to participate more fully.</B></div> <div> <B>Being ever in the position of teacher and model is the greatest impetus possible to spiritual growth. This is what God intends for parents, and the whole-family way of church life makes it happen. The fathers' hearts are drawn to their children and the children's hearts, in turn, are drawn to their fathers.</B></div> <div> <B>So maybe Joel knew what he was talking about when he called for those nursing babies to take their place right alongside the elders in the assembly. Set the right patterns from the very beginning and you don't have to backtrack later.</B></div> <div> <B>God was not mistaken when he designed the age-integrated family and the family-like local church. Why try to improve on his design?</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Sign up for Patriarch Magazine</B></div> <div> <B>Suggested Donation: $25* per year.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Patriarch </B></div> <div> <B>PO Box 50 </B></div> <div> <B>Willis, VA 24380</B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://Patriarch.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://Patriarch.com"><U><B><U>http://Patriarch.com</U></B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="0d44d0c0.gif" border=0 width="589" height="12" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0099FF" FACE="Papyrus" ><B>  </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Papyrus" ><B>Back to Article Home Page</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000099" FACE="Papyrus" ><B>-</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#0099FF" FACE="Papyrus" ><B> </B></FONT><A HREF="articles.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Offensive Articles"><U><B>Offensive Articles</B></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>