Over the past 20 years, there has been a significant movement against the church's radical age segregation. Churches worldwide have changed how they function with children's church, youth groups, and children welcomed in the main Sunday morning services. In this broadcast, we are discussing the ins and outs of the challenge of age-integrated churches.

Hey, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Let me tell you a couple of things real quick before we get going. Hope you can come to our Theology of the Family Conference at Richcrest, North Carolina, May 20 through 23. Just Before that, a singles conference called Holiness to the Lord, May 19 and 20. Also go to our website.

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Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. I'm Scott Brown and Church and Family Life is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture. And Jason, it's great to do this again. Hey, here we go. Hi, thanks so much for having me again.

Yeah, so we're here to talk about family integrated churches and we wanna do that with one of our co-laborers here, Carlton McLeod. Hey Carlton. How you doing Scott? Good to see you Jason. Hey, yeah welcome.

So Carlton is a pastor at Calvary Reformation Church in Chesapeake, Virginia, just right up the road And we've been trying to return to the sufficiency of scripture for the way that the church gathers, and that includes making it a generational gathering. So that's what we're here to discuss today. So we've been dealing with this issue for 20 years. You and I have 20 years and, it's the issue of a family integrated church or maybe more carefully put an age integrated church. And you know, we've thought that the fragmentation of the church generationally is really contrary to the patterns of scripture and So we started a church like this about 20 years ago right here in Wake Forest, North Carolina Boy, I'm so glad we did the Lord's really blessed it Man.

And then I wrote a book called A Weed in the Church, How a Culture of Age Segregation is Harming the Younger Generation, Fragmenting the Family, and Dividing the Church. So those were fighting words, especially at the time that you wrote it. This book just catapulted me to fame and appreciation. And they catapulted you. Catapult, that's right.

So anyway, it was kind of contrary to what most people thought, and we had pretty firm convictions about it. We thought it was right, so we planted a church. So we're just here to talk about why an age-integrated church. So there's so many questions that people have in their minds. When we first started this, the big question was, hey, this is a new model of doing church.

There were some people who thought this was so cool, you know, because it was a new model. Well, that was a problem. I mean, because we said, we don't think this is a new model. We think this is an old model. Now that's what caused the problem.

Like if we had just said, this is a new model, whoa, man, we could have become popular, you know? But we weren't saying it was a new model. We were saying it's biblical. That was the problem. Here's a verse that I think we've been hanging our hats on.

Among others, there are a number of texts, but here's one that we've been hanging our hat on for these 20 years, and it's 1 Timothy 3.15. It's a really shaping verse if you get a hold of what's being said. Paul says to Timothy, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the Church of the Living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." So he introduces this thought that there's a way that we ought to act in the house of God. So you can argue about whether certain things pass the test or not, but Paul is introducing there is a test. There are ways that you ought to act in the house of God and ways that you shouldn't act in the house of God.

And of course, we believe the Word of God speaks to that and shapes that. Yeah, and I think a lot of pastors grew up, I was one of them, where there were voices out there that were saying, there's really no biblical pattern for the church. You can kind of do whatever works in the culture. You know, Charles Finney said that basically. And you know, his disciples kind of did what worked.

And That's how most of us started thinking that way. Well, certainly how I started. Good to be with you, brothers. I started in 1997 reading the popular books of the day. And trust me, they weren't about age integration.

They certainly weren't about 1 Timothy 3.15, this whole idea of there's a way to behave, which presupposes, of course, that there's a way not to behave or several ways not to behave. And one of the things I have appreciated about learning about not just age integration, but about the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is that the precepts, the principles, the patterns that God has laid out for the church, they're beautiful. They're absolutely wonderful and when we embrace them and with the Holy Spirit's help they bear wonderful, wonderful fruit. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the Scriptures.

Let's talk about the beauty that's there. What comes to mind? So I think we're talking about two jurisdictions and how they relate to each other, which is the introduction of another helpful concept that it's not one jurisdiction that we're talking about, it's two. It's the family, which is a God-ordained, God-created jurisdiction, and the church, which is also God-created and God-ordained, and he meant them to work together, and he set the boundaries. So families are supposed to do certain things for the blessing and the help and the evangelization and the disciple-making of its members, but the church is also.

So those two God-ordained jurisdictions have to figure out where God has drawn the lines so that the family's not trying to do the work that was given to the church, and the church is not trying to do the work that was given to the family. Yeah. And of course the church has given wonderful directions for what she should do. She does wonderful things. You know, she gathers together to love one another, to encourage one another.

She gathers together to sing. She gathers together to take the Lord's Supper. She gathers together to baptize. She gathers people together to fellowship and break bread, you know, with rejoicing in their hearts. And the question is, who's supposed to be there?

Yeah, and when we look in scripture, I mean, everything that you just said, Scott, are needful things and beautiful things. I mean, We all need to hear preaching and teaching, the ordinances, our picture of the gospel, and they demonstrate the wonder of our Lord Jesus Christ. But when we look in the scriptures, we see that everybody is there. Now, from the Old Testament to the New, the pattern that we see is when the people of God gather together to read the scriptures or hear God's Word, all from the Old Testament into the New Testament, the pattern that we, by His grace, came upon was that fathers and mothers and children and older people and younger people and people that look different than other people were all in there together and we just we call that age integration. You know where did the idea come from that children shouldn't be a part of those kind of things that the church does?

Somewhere along the line that happened where people started thinking, well, no, this is not really for kids. Yeah, I think one of the things we've found over the last couple of decades is is how much children and even really young children, how much they actually get from being there. I think one of the pervasive thoughts is, well, it's a way you can bring the little kids in if you want to, but it's a waste of time for them. That is not true. I bet all of us have been shocked in our discussions with little kids in our congregation on Sunday afternoons at things they've retained that you didn't think that was going to be on their radar at all, and yet they ask you questions about it, or they bring it up to the lunch table or whatever.

You know I've had even in my own family times where I've been absolutely astounded at what my son or daughter picked up from something that I said or one of the other pastors said in our church and you know I got to a point while I'm thinking to myself I wonder if we're selling them short. I wonder if, you know, all the balloons and clowns and I wonder if we're underestimating just how much they can not only retain, but also understand. And you know, We're talking about the biblical patterns and the understanding of what's going on. And I'm just going to run really quickly through some Old and New Testament texts. In Deuteronomy 12, you know, verses 6 through 12, Moses commands the parents to bring their whole families to celebrate before the Lord and he and he mentions you know specifically you your sons and your daughters and your male servants and the Levite within your gates and You know bring them in in Deuteronomy 29.

You've got whole households gathering together to listen to Moses' speech before he dies. And he brings, bring your little ones and your wives and the stranger. And you have that pattern all over the Old Testament. It's the only pattern that you see in the gatherings for discipleship and worship in the Old Testament. And There are many, many places that speak of that.

We see the Lord Jesus doing the same thing. He's not banishing the infants. He wants to bring them in. In the book of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul is addressing the children in the meeting of the church. He's assuming the children are there.

You know, there are just many, many places where it's very clear the children are there. When the Apostle Paul, you know, meets with a group of the saints on the beach to pray, the little children are there in that prayer meeting. So what's that all about? You know, where's the nursery? There isn't a nursery because in the old and in the early church, the children were there.

They hadn't developed, you know, such wise practices, you know, in their day. And so they didn't do them. But what did they do? Well, they had, they had the children there. Our argument basically is the only thing you really see in the Bible is a generational community that worships and prays and is involved in discipleship together.

You don't find any other kind of pattern in the Bible. So I think we want to do that because that's what we see there in the Bible. And as we have taught and learned and seen in scripture that when God lays out consistent patterns like that, those things come from his heart. This is the heart of God. The Word of God gives us the heart of God, and there's a reason then why He asks his people to gather together, as you said, as a generational community.

And one of the things that when our church made the transition, 2010, 2011, into an age integrated environment, one of the things that was kind of bubbling up in my heart at the time, is that Lord, I see what you have said. I'm looking forward to learning the why. I'm looking forward to seeing the fruit bear because we're gonna, we trust you, we trust what you've said, but I don't understand it all. And as we have progressed over the last 10 years or so, some of the things that I have seen in families have been a great testimony as to why God laid this beautiful pattern in the church, and I'm sure you have as well. I bet within the last 12 months, all of us have encountered the, how does that even work?

You explain what you're doing to someone who hasn't been in the environment and hasn't seen it in practice, and they're thinking, oh my word, you know, they have all these young children in there. Their worship services must be a zoo. But actually, when you come into a church that's been at this for a while, and the parents have been practicing, and they've been instructed, and they've been making progress, When you sort of see this in a mature state, you'd never be able to get your friends who haven't seen it to believe it. The kids actually can sit there and pay attention and not disrupt what's happening. And I think we sort of have suffered from low expectations, and our low expectations have been met.

Well, actually, when you raise the expectations, the higher expectations can be met too, and you don't have a disorderly worship service. I think the thought is this is gonna ruin it for everyone. Not at all. Mm-hmm. And it can be difficult.

I mean it's hard for parents if you have a bunch of kids. We're not saying this is easy. We're saying that parents parents have to navigate it. But the fruits are great. You know, I've I've been holding in our our worship services during the same time before I go up to preach one of my little granddaughters and I'm holding there.

And so she, she's been starting to vocalize the tune. She doesn't know the words, you know, she knows a few words, we just know very many words, but I, I just was so delighted yesterday when I was holding her and, you know, she was not humming, but she was, she was vocalizing the contours of the, of the melody in the song. And she didn't know what, she doesn't know what all those words mean, but guess what? Something's going in there. And you know, someday she'll know those songs.

She'll know all the work. She'll know all the words to them and they'll be so familiar. She won't even know that she learned them because it just happens so slowly like that. But it happens slowly. They get a little bit, and then they get a little bit more, and then they get a little bit more.

I think one of the things that we've found over the passing of time is that, you know, we've not been faithful practitioners of what we've preached in ways that we didn't even discern until a point in time. In other words, over the last couple of decades, there are things that we were doing that we stopped doing because we thought, whoa, this isn't consistent with what we're preaching. We don't have a warrant in the Scripture for doing this. And then there are things that we do now that we weren't doing earlier in the progression. And so we've stopped doing things and we've started doing things all out of what Paul is saying.

There is a way in which you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God. Sometimes it means stop doing that. There's no warrant in the scripture. And sometimes it means you're ignoring things that have actually been given to the people of God and you're not doing them. Right.

Hey, I want to pause on this because it's, it's something that I've encountered over the years in terms of an argument against what we're advocating. And, and it goes like this, you're arguing from silence. You're saying that it didn't exist. And my response is no, we're not arguing from silence at all we're arguing from what is there And the only thing that is there is this generational discipleship program. So it's not, it's not right to say that it's an argument from silence.

It's an argument from things that are there all over the Bible. So let's let's talk about the problem of having, you know, children with you. It's, it's difficult, you know, you know, anybody who's a pastor of a church like this has heard this line from a mother of four children. I haven't heard a sermon in three weeks and three, you know, three Sundays or I only, I'm only hearing a half of the sermon. So how do you deal with that?

Well, lots of grace, lots of encouragement, lots of understanding, putting forward the truth that this is seasonal, it'll pass, the work that you're doing is precious work, it's beautiful work, and by God's grace, it'll last your children their entire lives as you teach them about the beauty of God's house and how to conduct themselves while the worship of God is going on. At our church there are times where we encourage parents who are in that process of training their children to be quiet and sit still and some of those things to kind of take turns. We don't like a lot of moving around, but to take turns. We also have a group of ladies in our church that will come and kind of help with the baby, if you will, or help with the children so that mom and dad can have a moment or two while they're continuing on in their training. And so lots of encouragement, but also a couple of practical things in keeping with the beauty of this practice.

Yeah. And I would say In our church, I frequently encourage fathers to participate in what's going on with his children. In other words, wives don't exist to make the worship experience of a husband pristine. The husband needs to wade into these waters, too, and participate in that. And also, older children, particularly older young ladies in the church, I think when families view themselves as a silo, that's not necessarily the right way forward.

And often there are young ladies in the church who can help a mother who has only young children, and a lot of young children can help the service happen in a way that the mother can actually participate in. Right, and parents need to recognize that when they're raising children, they're raising eternal souls, and It takes skill and work and focus to do that. And part of that is to teach their children to love the songs, love the preaching, and to be attentive as best as they can. And so they might not hear everything, but they're helping the next generation to hear as much as they can. That's, that's a very wonderful, it's a noble task.

It's a critical task. And, you know, is it, is it worth it? Not hearing everything at the moment? Well, I think that's a, that's another discussion. I mean, sermons can be heard.

They're recorded as well. You know, there, There can be other ways, but that moment is so sacred in the worship of God to help, for parents to mobilize themselves, to help their children to squeeze as much out of it as they can. It's a very, very important thing that they learn how to do. And they're training their children, so it's very important. So let's talk about some of the the things that that we have encountered and had questions about What about single parents?

How does a single parent, you know go through this experience? Well, one of the things I like to do is just try to make sure that, you know, there's some bad theology out there on single parents and some kind of, and sometimes just by the nature of ministry, there's an unfortunate focus on marriage to, you know, to the lessening of the focus on helping out the unmarrieds and the younger ones. And so I just like to encourage the singles if they're just as much as part of the church as anybody else. And kind of outrunning joke as I talk about marriage so much because these married people need help. Just stay together.

Oh my goodness. But just I find that single moms, single dads can function in really well in an age integrated environment if they have the right kinds of encouragement, if they are not made to feel like they're less than or something like that. But hey, this is the task that God has given you. We're here with you with all those other things that we mentioned, those who walk alongside you to help you. But a lot of the discouragement that I've found is not just exhaustion with children, it's this feeling that because I don't fit the two parent mold right now with my children, that maybe I'm unwelcome.

And if we can help families get past, help those folks get past that, then the rest of it, There are measures in place, as Jason outlined in a couple things that I said there, to help them in the worship of God. You know, we have an example of a single mother. As far as we know, she's single. Timothy's mother, from all that we know, Timothy's father was a Gentile and he wasn't part of things. And, his mother and his grandmother played a tremendous role.

So I think we can encourage single parents and particularly single mothers, that they're just like, they're just like, Timothy's mom and there's a lot they can do. Well, you know, many, many people grow up without a father or a mother, and the Church of Jesus is the perfect place for them to grow up. I think we find when you de-institutionalize demographics, okay, so single parents is a demographic, okay? So when you say, well, we're not going to institutionalize for that, It does put pressure on families in the church to step up and take that place that would have been institutionalized in a quote-unquote normal church. You better be able to informally come alongside and help and bless somebody who has a set of challenges that your family doesn't have.

Well, the fact that your family doesn't have that set of challenges should give you some bandwidth to be alongside a single mother and to, for lack of a better term, adopt them, offer them hospitality more often than you might offer other families in the church and just have them be part of things, not institutionally, but informally in a way that helps them. I think that's one of the great benefits and one of the great fruits that we see too is families serving each other in ways that had we kind of set up a system for them, they probably would not have. Let's also talk about another problem. If you want to call it a problem, children who don't have parents in the church, how, how do those kids thrive where they're, where they don't, they don't have a family in their church. Well, they do when they get to ours.

You know, they're adopted. I mean, Again, as Jason said, for lack of a better term, the nature of an H-integrated church and the nature of this whole idea of scripture being sufficient, there are other things that are going to be going on as well. There's going to be a focus on hospitality. There's going to be a focus on fellowship. There's going to be a focus on spending time together and building relationships that don't look so homogeneous.

And so it's easier, I think, to become a part of somebody else's family, whether that's just in the worship time or whether that extends out into the week and into the months and years. We were actually talking before we started the broadcast and we were talking about the perception from the outside, the frequent perception, the family integrated churches, this is something that could work for a nuclear family, but if you're an exception to that, if you're a single parent or if you're a child who doesn't have parents who want you go to church, but you're going, it doesn't really work in that. We've all seen single parents in our church. We've all seen, you know, people who are struggling with addictions, everything. We're pretty much like other churches, experiencing the kind of the pain points that all other churches were encountering all of this.

I think a perception from the outside, people would be surprised at what they actually found in an average family integrated church. Yeah. And like Carlton was saying, the church is a family. So when a, when a boy or a girl shows up with her family, not their his or her family out there, Well, they have a family. They've got fathers and mothers and uncles and grandfathers spiritually in that church.

The church is a family. And so a church just needs to act like what it is when somebody like that shows up. We have lots of them in our church. We have quite a number of single parents, quite a number of singles that don't have their families in our church. They seem to be thriving because they're part of a family.

That's right. So anything else we want to say about this, you know, we've been doing this Carlton I mean you you've been doing this for a bunch of years We've been doing it for a couple of decades I'm really grateful for the fruit that I've seen from it and the children and in the parents It's unparalleled compared to my previous experience. So I'm ready for another couple decades of it and I pray that more and more churches take it on. Hey along those lines a couple of years ago one of the purveyors of a model that washed through the church 20 years ago, they ended up saying, hey, what we've done, especially with our young people, hasn't worked, so we want to take out a blank sheet of paper, and we want to sort of redesign this with the hopes that we'll do better with this next generation. What they've essentially said is, hey, what we just tried on your kids didn't work, so we want to start fresh and we want to try that on your grandkids.

I mean, hey, we've been at it for a generation now, and I think we're saying, hey, with all of our own personal shortcomings and with the challenges that maybe we've not, we've certainly not been perfect on, We don't want to go back and start with a clean sheet of paper. The more we've conformed ourselves to what there's a pattern for in Scripture, the happier we've been. Amen. And I'll echo that as someone who didn't start his church as an age integrated church, but who transformed into one over a period of a couple of years. I echo that, Jason.

I absolutely would not go back. What I've seen with fathers standing up, what I've seen with family worship, that this is the mindset that kind of flows out of this heart for the patterns of scripture. What I've seen with families worshiping together, serving together, singing together, an environment where finally all the screens are down and you're together for a couple of hours listening together, the connection points with the sermon afterwards and into the week, And even some differences as it relates to, while we're doing all this work to bring our children together, how should they be educated? And all these thoughts, or kind of I've seen this over the last decade, all these thoughts start happening in parents and all these wonderful things start happening in households. And it's just the most beautiful thing in the world.

I wouldn't change it for anything. God knows what he's doing. Amen. Hey, well with that, we'll conclude. And Carlton, thank you for joining us.

And Jason, thank you. Boy, it's been quite a ride. It's been a joy, hasn't it? We've been kind of doing this together, and it's been a real neat ride. So, thank you for joining us at Church and Family Life and our podcast as we seek to explain just how sufficient scripture is.

The Word of God is so sweet. It's so good. We're so glad to have it. We're so glad that we don't have to pull out a blank sheet of paper. We have the Word of God.

So, okay, we'll see you next time on the podcast. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com.

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