By Shawn Mathis
Imagine in the not-too-distant future:
- That almost every family homeschooled.
- That every church discontinued its Sunday schools and youth groups.
- That every family practiced daily Bible reading and prayer.
- That every father led his household.
- That every child said ‘yes sir’ and ‘thank you.’
- That the churches were full every Sunday—full of dead man’s bones.
The current efforts at uniting church and family upon a method instead of the Gospel can easily lead to this danger. This is especially the case in today’s climate of weak and confused Christians.
The Gospel First
57% of confessing Evangelicals deny that Christ is the only way to heaven. Barna numbers suggest that being a homeschooler is no sure defense either: half of those polled believe that salvation is not by faith alone. And anecdotal evidence could be multiplied until the Second Coming.
The American family today certainly needs instruction in the basics of family life: fatherly leadership, motherly responsibility, parental discernment and the like. But they need more. They need to understand the sinfulness of sin. That the Good News must first have bad news to make sense. That all their obedience, Bible reading and church attendance will not eradicate their wickedness before God.
And while their hearts are pricked, they should be offered the Balm of Gilead. Not just any generic, Evangelical, warmed-over Deistic moralism, but the good-old fashioned, man-humbling and Christ-exalting Gospel.
Or as Spurgeon proclaimed:
I have my own opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else.
Uniting the church and family begins foremost with the Gospel. How can it be otherwise?
Church
Because the Gospel message is entrusted to the Church and not to the family, any Christian praying for revival and reformation must pray for the Church to be faithful.
It is to the Church that God has given teaching, sacraments, prayer and discipline for the sanctification of the saints. It is to the Church, and the pastor in particular, that the ministry of reconciliation is given. This means the Church of God, the Bride of Christ, is the mother of all Christian families…and orphans, widows and singles (Gal. 4:26).
The deacons should help take care of the poor and helpless. The ruling elders should govern in righteousness and humility. And the minister should faithfully preach and teach the whole counsel of God, especially the Gospel.
The Church must be governed by Jesus Christ, through His Spirit and Word. The activities of the Church must be within the parameters of the Law of Christ. Public worship must be jealously guarded and carefully in line with the positive warrant of the Bible. All other activities—fellowship and teaching opportunities—must be exercised within the boundaries of glorious freedom found in Christ (Rom. 14:10).
Family
Even so, the family has its own sphere of responsibility. First and foremost, the head of the home needs to unite his family with a faithful church. Period.
The parents must also unite in purpose: will the Gospel be the distinguishing truth in their family or some method? The children must see the parents take Christ’s message seriously. They must see the parents love the church of God. The whole family must faithfully attend the public means of grace, especially preaching.
The parents must unite in practice: daily family worship is a must; catechetical instruction is important; loving discipline is necessary; parental involvement is demanded. And practical expressions of love and obedience should be the order of the day.
This means prioritizing time and talents. The Christian Sabbath should order family time during the week. Tithing should order the finances. The time and money remaining should be used in order of importance with sports, clubs and the like at the bottom of the list—or eliminated if they crowd out the ever-important spiritual nurture required day in and day out (Deut. 6:7).
United families
The unity of church and family begins with the Gospel. But it does not end there. It is a unity of a family, where those who do the will of God are brother, sister and mother (Mk. 3:25). Biological ties may be severed by the Gospel (Mat. 10:34), yet those spiritually united to Christ will still have the Church as “the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).
This should not be a pie-in-the-sky idea but a truth with practical consequences. For instance, in 1 Timothy 5:1, Paul commands Timothy not to rebuke the older men and women of the Church but to come alongside and entreat or exhort (parakalei) them as members of the family–even the younger among them.
Likewise, in Titus 2:3-4 Paul commends the older women to be “teachers of good things” and to train and admonish the young women of the Church—whether married or not. If this is true for women, it is true for men (cp. Paul’s mentoring of Timothy). And if this is true for ad hoc situations, then it is true for more structured situations (cp. LCQ 99).
The children of the Church, by virtue of their baptism, must be instructed by the Church (Mat. 28:20). The content is the entire Word of God. The goal is for God’s glory and the salvation of their souls. And the method–whatever details may be employed—must include someone mature because instruction is not only taught but caught.
Naturally, this does not mean supplanting parental responsibility but supplementing their work and exercising the Church’s own responsibility toward her covenant members.
Ideally, parents would feel comfortable with a trusted, godly brother or sister instructing their child. In practice, the older men may meet at a restaurant to talk about life while the younger men listen and learn. Those mothers strong in English could instruct a group of children in the fine points of grammar. Such variations are neigh endless.
The members of the family of God must never lose sight of how much they can influence the covenant child by their example alone: do they show love to each other? are they ready to restore the weak? are they quick to acknowledge sin? The covenant child should know that whatever adult he is in contact with has the same expectations as his parents.
What it all means
Families are hurting. And many churches are not helping. Yet a true union—even revival—of the church and family cannot exist without the fundamentals of the Gospel. As an 1809 report of the General Assembly summarized the matter:
“In those parts of the church, without exception, in which vital religion has flourished, in the course of the last year, the fundamental doctrines of the gospel; viz. the total depravity of human nature, the divinity and atonement of Jesus Christ, justification by his imputed righteousness, the sovereignty and freeness of divine grace, and the special influences of the Holy Spirit in the regeneration and sanctification of sinners have been decidedly received and honoured.”
[More about the current movement to unite church and family here and here. A review of a new book about this unity here.]
Tags: Catechesis, Church, Family, Gospel
[...] those strongly in favor of this movement may find much common ground with the first article: 1. Uniting Church and Family (weswhite.net) 2. A Weed in the Church: A Review (this is a short book review of Mr. Brown's new [...]
The last time I checked, the gospel of reconciliation is contained prominently within the pages of Holy Scripture. So it’s hard to make the case that Bible-reading church could be a valley of dry bones. Also, the gospel has been given to families as well as to the church, each according to its station.
Exodus 12:26 And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? 12:27 That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. (KJV – sent from CadreBible)
Riley, The gospel is in the Holy Writ but only applied by faith alone in Christ alone. I never described this hypothetical church as having faith alone. The Jewish church and families had the Bible and the prophets but Christ said they were full of dead men’s bones.
Perhaps you prefer a different way of describing a dead, legalistic church. But that is what I am describing.
Shawn, let’s not unite church and family. Let’s let the Church be the Church and let families be families, both supporting each other. That’s the implication of Exodus 12:26.
I looked at the 1809 report you cite, and then looked around the publication that contained the report, and noticed various items of interest. There was the announcement of Lyman Beecher assumed the position of pastor of the ecclesiastical society at Litchfield. All was not well in 1809 it seems.
Also there was at report about the New York seminary. The students are listed and one of them, a Tuenis Van Vechten, is a distant relative of mine. They were an early New Amsterdam family and it was a Van Vechten who was in charge of cutting the thousands of trees to build the wall where Wall Street now stands in order to protect against attacks from nasty Puritans and indians.
But this put me in mind of things I had been observing in the course of some recent genealogical investigations among those same Puritans. They didn’t go to church and churches were not full. Rather, they, the believers, were the church. The place they went to was a meeting house. The organization that functioned there and called pastors was an ecclesiastical society. They were careful about the terms they used and keeping the distinctions clear.
Isn’t it a bit odd to be quoting publications from those times, why talking with the contemporary mentality where is church is something you attend and where a professional clergyman presides, and do that everyone’s thinking about these matters is unbiblical and confused?
Tim,
I am not sure what is your point. Your last sentence is a bit disjointed. What I quoted was a magazine that quoted the Assembly (not an uncommon thing back then or today).
Randall,
I clearly did not mix the two institutions. The unity section spoke of the church as organic not institutional, although I did not use those terms.
One can speak of “unity” in a certain sense (social, spiritual, etc) without having to confuse jurisdictions. Unity does not mean identity.
Tim Wilder wrote: “The place they went to was a meeting house. The organization that functioned there and called pastors was an ecclesiastical society. They were careful about the terms they used and keeping the distinctions clear. ”
Tim, you are most certainly correct that the Puritans were careful about the terms they used. Surely you are aware that the “society” was not the “church,” but rather the legal organization which was responsible for maintaining and owning the meetinghouse? Older churches were routinely known as the “First Congregational Church and Society of _____” (insert name of town).
The concept was that only personally converted people could make a profession of faith and become communicant members of the church, but following the older English parish church system, all baptized males were members of the society — and taxed for the support of the parish ministry — unless they were granted permission to sign off the parish rolls for reasons such as joining a church which was on the short list of non-Congregational churches tolerated by the civil government (basically Scots Presbyterians, plus a few Baptist churches in the early days whose numbers slowly grew with time, and a few Anglican churches near Boston).
This was the flashpoint of controversy during the Unitarian Schism — it was not unusual for the majority of the church membership to be orthodox but to have a society where a substantial percentage made no profession of faith and were quite happy to use the society to take control of the meetinghouse away from the orthodox. In one such case, a grand total of two communicant members of the church wanted to be Unitarian, but the majority of the society wanted to get rid of their minister, so they first voted to ask the minister to invite a Unitarian to fill the pulpit, and when he refused, barred him preaching in the meetinghouse, forcing him to lead worship for virtually the entire church in his own home until the vast majority of the church agreed to surrender their legal claim to the meetinghouse.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with paedocommunion other than to show how important profession of personal conversion was to the Puritans (apart from the Halfway Covenant people) before allowing people voting rights as communicant church members.
Sorry for the paedocommunion reference. I was reading two threads recently and wrongly thought I was respnding on the paedocommunion thread. My bad…
Darrell, I understand your mistake. After, what 100 comments on that thread, who can keep it all straight?
Shawn, I guess I’m confused. On the one hand, the Family Integrationists are obsessed with method. That’s not good. Yet the general church culture of many PCA churches doesn’t seem different from the rest of Evangelicalism. So we need an alternative to both.
Except for Sabbath-keeping, which is almost extinct in the PCA, much of what you say there is commonplace.
For example, everybody talks about building up men as leaders and heads of households. Yet our churches build up a culture when men, especially singles, have no purpose unless they are in leadership. Our churches are designed to attract women who drag their husbands to worship. Even anti-feminists seem to target the female demographic. It doesn’t help that the PCA’s idea of masculine leadership is Tim Keller.
Further, why are you so insistent about tithing? Our Westminster Standards say nary one word about it. The PCA added this teaching to the BCO in 1975. 1975!
Great post, Shawn. Filial piety, while socially useful, is not the Gospel, and it makes a poor replacement for it.
Shawn,
The Jewish church to which Jesus is referring had added manmade tradition on top of Scripture, and focused their teaching on law-keeping, not a reading of God’s gracious acts in Genesis, Exodus, and the prophetic promises intended to make them look forward to the Messiah. Plus, they did not have the Scriptures in the common language (except perhaps in the Targum, which is a loose paraphrase.
The word of God is powerful. It demands a response. I just can’t imagine a church full of families reading the Scriptures daily which is not trusting in Christ alone for salvation as the Scriptures teach. Either the dead bones will come alive through the receiving and believing of the word and in Christ who is there presented, or, they will grow tired of the daily Bible reading and stop it. Or they will add manmade tradition on top of the Bible to obscure the way of salvation taught therein.
There’s a lot of good in this article–so far as it sticks to encouraging things that the Bible says families and churches are to do, and how each reinforces the others. Your crusade for the maintenance of age-segregation, however, is rather misguided. It’s not only a non-biblical form; it’s a failed form. So it fails both upon the standard of wisdom, and upon the following analysis of your article.
“Imagine the most biblical external forms, disjointed from dependence upon and the active work of the Holy Spirit, personally applying union of Christ to people through the means of grace.” …
i.e. Imagine an article that totally side-skirts the issue of what the most biblical forms are, by pointing out that anything can be turned into an empty sacerdotalism–even the most biblical of forms.
(1) Duh.
(1a) But we still need to hear it, because we’re just such foolish creatures that need to be reminded of things that deserve a “duh.”
(2) The issue of what forms are most Biblical is all the more important if we genuinely depend upon God alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
(2a) It is a foolish and even disingenuous argument to say “what we really need to do is depend upon God alone, so we’ll just go ahead and do church as we think best, and family as we think best.”
(2b) The proper correlation would be, “what we really need to do is depend upon God alone, so let us make sure that as we do so we devote ourselves to those things alone through which He says that He will work.”
–
I would have been glad for you to write an article that sticks to things that the F.I. movement actually gets wrong, things like:
* daily means of grace in the home being emphasized over against corporate means of grace on the Lord’s Day
* the father/husband acting as some kind of mediator within the congregational assemblies
* the father/husband being the administrator of the sacraments
* a resistance to elders’ teaching the children of others
* a resistance to elders’ exercising direct authority and discipline with a wife, or with children
These are gaping areas of anti-biblical weakness among many in the F.I. movement. In each case, they arrogate to the family, and especially to the father, things that belong only to Christ (!) and properly to Christ’s elders.
But Shawn Mathis is no longer the person who can address them publicly. It would have been much more helpful to you if Wes had said, “I know some level-headed F.I. folks that could peer review your ideas for you.” Then, perhaps, you could have stayed out of some of the places where you leap from biblical reasoning to defending that which out to be corrected or condemned.
As it has now been done, by publishing several mixtures of both lines of thought, you have written articles that defend failed man-made institutions. This has weakened your ability to give correction that would be heard by these folks. Wes’s blog is widely enough read that probably the damage has been done…
James,
“Your crusade for the maintenance of age-segregation, however, is rather misguided. It’s not only a non-biblical form; it’s a failed form.”
Interesting. Do you believe (and you may written it but I forgot) that any and all age-segregation is wrong?
I think you may find some helpful common ground of how close I am to Mr. Phillips here.
thanks,
James, You wrote: “I would have been glad for you to write an article that sticks to things that the F.I. movement actually gets wrong, things like…
But I cannot write of these things since some of them are wrong as far as the NCFIC confession itself is concerned and Mr. Brown’s new book. They may be things you have observed but they are not part of the confession that I can find. In particular, elders are allowed to teach the children of others (see Brown’s book, here.
If these other things are practiced in Mr. Phillips or Brown’s church, I would greatly appreciate the evidence as people ought to know how the men who wrote this confession practice it.
I wrote this because people asked for a positive presentation of what I believed. I obviously tied in the issue of the Gospel because the NCFIC does not make that the number one unity of the church and family. So it is a back-handed critique in that sense. The rest of the paper clearly mentions the means of grace and the importance of the church, as I believe you agree with me.
thanks,
A response to some of James’s points:
* daily means of grace in the home being emphasized over against corporate means of grace on the Lord’s Day
– ‘Over and against’ is obviously wrong. But certainly there is some excuse for, in today’s climate, emphasizing the worship that is supposed to happen on six days, that is usually ignored, over the worship that happens on the seventh, that is much more universally followed.
* the father/husband acting as some kind of mediator within the congregational assemblies
– Except that this is, at least to an extent, commanded: I Cor 14:33-35.
* the father/husband being the administrator of the sacraments
– If this is exclusive, it is, of course, wrong. But where is it forbidden? Are not all Christians required to obey the Biblical command to ‘go into all the world and preach the gospel… baptizing them…’? Is communion forbidden to be given outside of an ordained elder?
* a resistance to elders’ teaching the children of others
– Directly teaching, apart from their father and the rest of their family? That is indeed the question that FI addresses… age segregation and denigration of the father’s authority.
* a resistance to elders’ exercising direct authority and discipline with a wife, or with children
– Since the wife and children are to obey their parent ‘in everything’, that is indeed problematic. Do you have Scripture that shows this happening? I can think of a (recent) widow that was disciplined by the church, but I am missing any references, right off the top of my head, where the elders call in a wife or children (in the presence or abscence of their husband/father?) and excercise direct authority or discipline. The Biblically typical pattern is for ‘as for me and my house…” or, especially in the OT, to destroy the man and his house. Indeed, the destruction of wives and children is often seen as a punishment of the father (Levi, for example)!
James,
“if Wes had said, “I know some level-headed F.I. folks that could peer review your ideas for you.” Then, perhaps, you could have stayed out of some of the places where you leap from biblical reasoning to defending that which out to be corrected or condemned.”
1. Wes lives in a small town. He only discovered this issue through me. I have not found a “level-headed FI folk”–if you find one, please tell me and we can have an adult conversation. Thus far, two of their leaders know about my works but have decided not to have a public discussion with me. You, however, have the strength of your convictions. That I applaud.
2. Where have I “defended that which out [ought] to be corrected or condemned.”? Is it age-segregation? Well, Mr. Brown of the NCFIC says that there are times to have age-segregation (p.232) [Mr. Phillips makes the same claim in his History of SS lecture].
So, the difference would be I think such times can be done one hour ( .6%) of a 168 hour week and they may say “Nay! That is vile! it should be .06% at most.
Is that the big debate they are starting? I hope not.
The NCFIC (Scott Brown) is behind and promoting a new DVD/film called “DIVIDED” (do an internet search). It has not been released yet but I am sure it will have plenty of “integrated” philosophy to analyse. I find it interesting that you can use Barna numbers & the new books by Ken Ham “Already Gone” and “Compromised” with their statistics to validate your particular view. From my small perspective what is being “divided” is in fact the Church but not because of its use of S.S. or youth ministry. There is a very divisive element within the F.I. movement that says “you” (the local church) needs to change on this particular issue or “we” need to start an F.I. church.
Mr. Smith,
I recently watched the film, Divided. I should have a review shortly at examiner.com here
As for its divisiveness, the leaders eschew that publicly and in writing. However, they also encourage the creation of FIC too–not Reformed, Calvinistic, old-school churches that happen to be FIC but FIC first and foremost.
I had to chuckle when I looked up the Divided link, and saw “Age Range: 6 Years and Older”. Isn’t that age-segragation?
I also liked how the first man in ministry really took a stand for his beliefs–by being silhouetted and having his voice altered. He must like his job more than his convictions!
More seriously, without viewing the whole DVD, don’t they miss the mark by quoting stats about how many people who attend Sunday School leave the faith/have false beliefs? Isn’t that a logical fallacy to presume one causes the other. Instead, wouldn’t they better serve the church by focusing on better Sunday School curriculum and training for teachers in the Gospel rather than throwing out that method?
Also, how Mr. Brown states, “The house of God has been torn down. …” So, his solution is to continue to tear it down through creating new churches emphasizing FI rather than the gospel? How about picking up some bricks and mortar to help rebuild (like Nehemiah) and putting down that axe that you’re grinding?
From the clip, Doug Phillips: “Every generation in the history of the church has had its defining issue. In our generation, the issue that’s facing the church is whether parents will be able to raise up a new generation for the future.”
I can definitely answer that: NO! In NO generation in the history of the church have parents been able to raise up a new generation for the future of the church. Only Christ can do that (i.e., the gospel!). As parents, we must train our children in the way of the Lord, but our hope is in the gospel–not my methods. If it were so, how I would despair, as I fail so often.
Interesting to say this is our generation’s defining issue. Not staying true to the gospel, not countering the world’s humanistic philosophies of postmodernism that is invading the church, not countering the world’s attacks on the infallibility of the Bible/the truth of creation, not countering the lies of the devil that homosexuality is okay with God, etc.
No, Mr. Phillips, while I know that your statement will help your DVD sales, the truth is that the defining issue for EVERY generation of the church is staying true to the simplicity of the gracious gospel as revealed in the Bible. That is a continual struggle, and I pray our churches will focus on the gospel, and that as parents, we can focus on the gospel in our own lives and the lives of the children He blesses us with.
Preach it, Cricket!
The video’s position is indeed a logical fallacy, conflating correlation with causation. When ice cream consumption increases, incidents of drowning go up, but eating ice cream doesn’t cause drowning. There’s a third variable. We call it summertime.
Sunday school doesn’t cause apostasy; that’s like saying ice cream causes drowning. Sunday school is a practice that’s more than a century old…apparently it’s only recently having this deleterious effect. There’re lots of other variables in our society that encourage apostacy, as you’ve so ably pointed out.
This age segregation fixation is like screaming that there’s a lady bug on the carpet when you’ve got a yellow jacket in your hair.
Yes, sister Kassandra, but what happens when we have ice cream in Sunday School?
… especially when we have yellow jackets in our hair!
My review of Divided is up, here
Cricket, Kassandra,
I liken the fallacy to someone discovering that whenever people get together and form an organization there is sin. And then they discover that organizations amplify sin! Therefore, so goes the false reasoning, human organizations must be abolished!
The position is that naive.
I do not know how broad of a group that this blog reaches. For those who are directly involved in Church leadership, elders etc. there is a danger/blessing involved with those in your Church who become or are influenced by the teaching coming out of the F.I.C. The danger is that it WILL cause a divisive spirit over what I would view as something of a secondary or third or ???? importance, the first is that of the Gospel (1 Cor. 15:3). The blessing is that it can cause parents to see the importance of their responsiblity to train up their children (Prov. 22:6). As Church leaders it is important to Biblically and lovingly confront these people, but not with a
club (Eph. 4). There are many families who have jumped ship from their local Church over this issue who are now “floating” around out there in search of the “perfect” Church.
Statements like this….”The answer is simple. The time is now. We will either win the culture one family at a time or will continue to lose the culture one family at a time. Either way the family is the key.” taken from p.214 Family Driven Faith by Voddie Bauchman 2007….are what you are up against. That is a very powerful statement from a very influential figure within the FIC movement. If you notice it does lack something very important but if you are caught up in the message you/many will and do miss it, notice it? Same can be said for all the rhetoric in the Divided movie.
The FIC movement philosophy hangs their hat on the interpretation of Mal. 4:5,6 & Luke 1:17 that the cause of the culture problems we see are a result of the fathers hearts not being turned to their children and the solution is to turn the fathers hearts via. homeschooling, family integrated church, multigenerational vision, etc. “lest I smit the land with a curse”.
How do you interpret those verses?
Mr. Smith, It seems you’ve run into this FIC problem in person. Please take the various article on Wes’s sight (follow the tags) and pass them around! There are virtually no voices against this movement. If my articles are read carefully, I do commend the emphasis on the family but not to the detriment of the Gospel!
Here is the original FIC article What is a Family Integrated Church?
Here is the follow up Rejoinder to recent…comments
And here is a review of Mr. Brown’s new book on age-segregation A Weed in the Church
And a summary of Mr. Phillips’ position A Weed in the Church
The fact that this movement is basically non-denominational in its emphasis…building strong families…and who does not want strong families (in the right context) may be why there is not alot of material opposing them. In 2003 a group called the FBFI (fundamental baptist fellowship international) published a statement in their “resolutions” condemming the movement. The NCFIC was formerly referred to as “institute for uniting church and home” and the FBFI refers to the movement as “ICM” integrated church movement. In 2006 there were some sparks that flew between them (FBFI) and Vision Forum on the internet and a few blogs. There are some major theological, soteriological & ecclesiastical differences between the FBFI folks and Reformed folks. There is some information on the FBFI website (do a search)about the “ICM” movement and some of their (FBFI) problems are areas where we would say “I don’t think so” but if you get past that you will find the devisiveness that the movement has caused in their churches, no S.S., no youth ministry, patriarchy, etc.
Mr. Smith,
Here is my evaluation of the FIC on Malachi, Malachi 4:6 & the Revival of Homeschooling
And I have a response to their spurious claims of revival, The Revival of Homeschooling
Mr. Smith, I am aware of the FBFI statement.
I think the best way to counter-act their influence is to open people’s eyes to their spurious “research” (the movie Divided actually called Mr. Phillips an historian!) and biblical “scholarship.” And to stop inviting them to homeschooling conferences.
I do not think keeping “them” out of homeschool conferences will work because I think much of the movement has come from and out of the Homeschooling movement (if I can use that term) and I am not against homeschooling either. It is an outworking of it. For example many of the speakers at your recent Colorado H.S. conference are leaders in the FIC (both main speakers). Here is how I think it goes… 1. In the beginning I choose to educate my children at home 2. I can do as good of a job if not in most cases a better job than the professionals in the school system, public or private 3. Since I am christian and strive to have a biblical reason for all I do (Deut. 6:7) it would be sin for me to have anyone else educate my children. 4. I can not comprehend how my Pastor or my Church can Biblically send their children to someone else to be educated. 5. My Church is also trying to educate my children for me and they have all those programs that seek to divide my family. 6. I must do something and there are others who have the same ideas as I do. Even some dynamic leaders who will help to lead us out of this mess or help us to “fix” it. 7. If we can do a better job educating or children than the professionals we surely can also do a better job of “doing” church than the “professional” clergy. 8. Want to come start a Church with us?
the unBiblical practice of infant baptism causes a great deal of confusion here as it implies that a child becomes part of the church (and hence part of the people of God and hence saved) simply by biological ties. That’s not only contrary to the gospel but leads to the false idea that the church is “a family of families”.
Dear John,
The irony is that Baptists caused a “great deal of confusion here” since the leaders of the FIC movement are Baptists. But I never highlight that point since any type of church could have this problem for various reasons.
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