The fruit of faithfulness can’t be enjoyed overnight. It takes time to mature, through patient care and God’s blessing. That’s the message of pastor Kris Baines in this podcast as he shares his personal testimony of ministry in New Zealand.     Kris currently serves as one of the pastors/elders of Community Bible Church in Wellsford, NZ, and previously planted and served at Redemption Church Christchurch. Over several years, God worked in Kris’s heart to embrace His full sovereignty and the sufficiency of Scripture and to uphold God’s call for families to worship together in the local church, rather than be age-segregated. Yet there were real growing pains in making this shift. With self-deprecating humor, Kris tells how his own children (along with those of other families) struggled to be orderly and attentive at first, but of the joyful fruit that has come in their children’s lives through loving perseverance. An encouraging message to “not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” (Gal. 6:9)!

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of scripture. And hey, Jason, we got our buddy Chris Baines on the line. I love it when that happens. Hey, from New Zealand, it's tomorrow.

For you, it's tomorrow. Our today is- Yep, I'm ahead of the times. I'll let you know what's happening later on. Yeah. He's the pastor at Community Bible Church in Wellsford, New Zealand on the North Island.

And he also is a regional facilitator out there, praying with, connecting with other churches, walked through a really difficult time during COVID. Boy, your government was really mean to the church. But you guys said, well, Wait a minute, no, the Church actually is essential. Hey, can you just tell us a little bit about that, what happened? That was really amazing, what you guys did.

Yeah, well, obviously we went into lockdowns like everybody else. For us, up in the North Island, we had 107-day lockdown and completely restricted from church gatherings. But within that time, I was able to find many other like-minded brothers and churches and find ways to be obedient to the Lord's command to gather. And of course, now as things are coming out, people realize that that made more sense, that the government didn't have the right to stop us worshiping. So yeah, we were also part of a free-to-be church organization, which we're still doing here, which was a High Court case and running an appeal so that they could recognize the distinction between the government and the church.

So that's actually still in place. But it was a rough time, but it was a good time of unity. I think it was an essential time of the church being refined, and then there's been a lot of good fellowship forms since then and a lot of good strengthening among believers because they had to really choose to gather when it really cost something for them. You know, you were having all these secret meetings. I had to try to be discreet about that.

And one of my great memories from that time was when you would send me little clips of your singing. Everybody was just so melted in the singing. That was so beautiful. I still have some of these videos of singing. I miss that.

Yeah. I wouldn't wanna go back there, but I miss the sense of this means so much to us that we're gonna come together and worship the Lord in it. It wasn't that amazing. Contra band singing in New Zealand. Yeah.

Of course, it won't be secret anymore after this podcast now, but hey. What can they do? Your son edits, it'll be okay. We won't tell. I don't know who you are.

That's right. Hey, we're here to talk about church life. We're here to talk about your progression and understanding church life and kind of making doctrinal shifts and orthopraxy shifts over the years. Tell us the story. Okay, so we've been in New Zealand for 27 years now.

Back in 1998, we were part of a church, an American denomination that was beginning here. For four years, I served in that church as a youth pastor, assistant pastor, as a worship leader, and it was a blessed time. And then after four years, we moved to the South Island to Christchurch to plant the second church and that's where I would take a lead role as a pastor for the first time. And I'd never really known anything other than that model so I just really tried to replicate that model with the church plant in all aspects of ministry and that included the Sunday School Ministry and the Children's Ministry. The denomination that we were part of placed a big priority on that.

And so we began and that's what we knew. And it was probably a pragmatic approach. So I was teaching and as we're a small church, my wife, Becky, was leading the Sunday school while she was holding a baby and teaching. It wasn't it wasn't really segregated then anyway, because it was all ages. So she was doing that.

And that's how we began. A couple of years in. Somebody just made a comment about how it was for them in their church, they were visiting where the children were actually in for the service. And I'd never even heard of this and never even considered it before. And he began to speak about how often we can underestimate the retention and the benefit that children receive from being part of the church service.

And he talked a bit more about it and that it just didn't leave me. Those thoughts grew and I started thinking about it a lot more. It made so much sense and I wasn't necessarily thinking of it from a scriptural point of view. And what would happen is I didn't think other people would share my conviction. So we eventually got to a point where here I am as the pastor, I would dismiss the Sunday school who were going to go out with my wife and her baby, and I would keep my other child in.

So I realized the church could have seen that as why is the pastor not comfortable sending his child to the Sunday school that his wife is running? Which wasn't the case. So I was trying to work it out and then I came across Vody Boakensburg Family Driven Faith And that was a turning point because it was like somebody had gone into my heart and articulated all the convictions, all the things that were going on in my mind, in a way much better than I could. So from there, we began to do an either or. We had a few more Sunday school helpers at that point.

And so we offered, you know, you can go out to Sunday school, or you can stay in and we talked about why it might be beneficial to stay in. For the most part, it was our children staying in. That didn't really work too well. And that the reason why it was for our kids and the few that would stay in, they would be there, we're trying to train them to sit and listen to the sermon. And at the end of the sermon, they'd see all the kids come out from the Sunday school class with their colorings and their drawings and their candy or whatever, happy.

And they just look like, Look what we missed out on. You kept us away from them. So eventually we decided to move completely to age integration. We did some preparation, but then that was kind of the journey up to that point where we first started to sort of follow that model. Well, can you kind of map out for some of the doctrinal progressions, doctrinal shifts during this period?

Yeah, I think during this same time, there was a change going on in my heart and then in time the other pastor who I was co-pastoring with with regard to reformed theology. The denomination I was part of essentially denounced that But I was seeing such a such a sincerity and a seriousness about the word of God and about the sovereignty of God and the aura of God that I'd never seen before. And the time and time again where I would find that would be among these, I guess, reformed brothers and I didn't know a whole lot about it. So the understanding of God's sovereignty as I begin to grasp that just made God so much greater in my mind, my view of scripture so much greater and the sufficiency of scriptures, that was a key doctrinal underpinning there. And the fact that God himself has called family together to to worship together.

He wants the church to gather together. So that was kind of the main things that were going on regarding the sovereignty of God, the sufficiency of scripture for a doctoral point of view. And how long did it take to kind of play this out for you? I mean, you taught, I, you gave the progression, was this like a few months or a couple of years or. It was a couple of years for things to even out.

Cause initially the fundamental change that had to take place was communicating to parents that we shouldn't have the expectation that church should be fun for our children. Now, that can sound terrible to some people, but what we mean by that is if a child is bored, it's not just about entertaining them. If a child is fidgety and wants to leave, it's not about just letting them follow their own will at that point. So initially, when we change, we had a few challenges just with a couple of parents who would say, you know, my four year old is bored, so we really need a Sunday school to which I would reply, would you take the same approach if they said they were bored with vegetables in their dinner? You wouldn't say, OK, we'll give you ice cream instead.

You'd actually work with it. You'd realize that there was a higher purpose. And so that was a fundamental change in our thinking and in communicating to parents as well, that it's not just about entertaining the children. We then also obviously came across the Family integrated church network, which is now a church and a family life and your book reading the church and to find out there were many, many, many churches that were doing this helped us to feel not so weird. So we continued with the conviction that this was a pattern we wanted to follow because it's what we saw in scripture.

So it was a couple of years in, we were doing workshops to help parents train their children. We were encouraging them in some key points to look at the long view, to not just freak out because your child is bored, but to recognize if you're living for Christ the rest of the week, they'll be with you. So there were times where if I wasn't teaching my son who's now 16, I couldn't do this now, I would hold him in a bear lock, you know, service upon service. Or We would keep him in his stroller and one funny thing was we kept him in his stroller and that kept him in place. We knew that we had exhausted that option when one day the sermon had finished, the worship had finished and he got up attached to his stroller to go get himself a cookie.

So he walked along like a turtle. We thought, I think we've outdone the stroller. So, yes. So what happened was it took a couple of years to really communicate this. Ironically, it was sometimes some in the older generation that struggled because their idea was, we've always had Sunday school, you know, why would we not have Sunday school?

Yet they were forgetting even that here in New Zealand, there's hundreds of old churches around the country, in the countryside, in the rural areas, and they make beautiful photographs, but sadly they're empty. But the thing about these churches is they all have one room, because That's all people knew was to come with the family. And so it took a couple of years to really let things settle in. But I can say one thing, Scott and Jason, that was the biggest blessing and you cannot have this overnight when you start to see your own children, other children growing up, seeing the other children enjoying the worship service alongside their parents. That's the training for them.

They don't need to be trained as much because they see it as normative. So for the second sort of tier of our children, we haven't really had to train them to sit in church with their parents because they've just seen other children do it. And it's, it's normal to them. Was this a sound church growth strategy? No, I think particularly because you, because you go into the long haul, okay.

You're trying to convince parents from from scripture that this will be worth it further down the line. And when you start seeing that, it's helpful. But the fathers, they find it hard at first because if someone's used to sitting there, maybe passively in church, and then they've got to start training their child or navigating around how their children are fidgeting or sitting or keeping them still, that can be tough. But as you persist, there's blessing there. One story that always sticks out is we had a young family come up to us and they said, this is easy for you because your kids are just like that our kids aren't.

My wife Becky and I we just said if only you knew the blood sweat tears and prayers and what is being restrained in these children sitting here what they would like to do And the great thing was about six months, eight months later, this family came up to us and they said, you never guess what happened. Another new family came up to them and said, it's easy for you because your kids are just like you. Oh, how funny. Oh, that's great. And the beat goes on.

Yeah. Yeah. Problems. What were some of the problems? I think some of the problems were people thinking that we were against Sunday school as if that was the primary focus rather than for the families being together.

So again, when, when parents start having a child directed approach, looking at the way the child responds rather than training the child, rather than leading the child, that becomes a problem. We had some problems early on because still being part of the denomination, we would have teams come and visit and they felt sorry for us. And they were encouraging children's ministry to be almost the center of the church. So we had to try and justify ourselves. Eventually, we became independent because we we didn't want to keep having to defend ourselves as to why we were doing this.

Yeah, so that was some of the problems. People being stuck in tradition, people thinking that it was going over the kids' heads, but they could see that that wasn't really the case, you know. And the great thing is, our kids will say, church is fun. They love being at church, but it's a deeper fun. It's not because they're just being entertained, it's because there's fellowship and there's joy and there's life.

And yeah. What kind of counsel do you have for a pastor who's thinking, you know, I really, I do see the biblical pattern. I need to age integrate our worship. Are there a few things you'd say to a guy like that before he launched out on it? Yeah, I mean certainly he needs to be convinced in his own mind.

It can't be just a whim or another thing to try. He can't just be pragmatic about it. He's got to be fully convinced in his own mind that he sees this pattern in scripture, he sees the need and the benefit. And beginning with his own family, as we did, working it out, training children in your own home, having them sit in a line of chairs, watching a DVD of a preacher so that you yourself can experience that and you have something to pass on to other parents and then obviously speaking to your leaders. You've got to have the leadership on board.

I was thankful that we did and then communicating to the church. So it's always around why is if a pastor reads a new book or attends a seminar and next Sunday, hey church, we're going in this direction and we get spiritual whiplash. So bringing it to the church. In fact, when I, when I came to this church now, So the church I've been talking about, I was there for 17 years. I've been at this church for four years.

When I came here, it had already existed for 15 years. They were just about to implement a Sunday school. And I said, you know, if I come as the pastor, according to my conviction, I won't be able to to do that, not because I'm just against the Sunday school, but I'm for the families. I said, but can I tell you the vision behind that? Because I didn't want them to just think I was saying I'm not doing this.

So I said, this is the vision. And I shared the vision. They said, that sounds good to us. And then we implemented that. And again, it's been a blessing.

It's happened. So preparation is key. The other thing is not having a cookie-cut approach to all parents. We had times in the church in Christchurch where there's a single mom with a child. So we'd have people come and serve and help look after that child.

We had another woman who had violent foster children often in her care who would even run out of church or run out into the road. And so we would have people in the church come alongside and help and serve. You never want to say to people like that, just sit still, it'll be okay. You just need to train harder. So be flexible, inform your church, and be patient and encourage the parents to rest in the fact that this is a long-term thing.

A little bit of noise is okay. It will actually improve over time. That's neat. That's really great. Anything else you want to say about the transition?

One of the things that is also a blessing that often gets, I guess, underestimated is not just within the Sunday service as we listen to the preaching, as we sing worship, but encouraging your children to interact with all ages after the service, talking to your children about asking questions of older people, seeing a multi-generational fellowship is a beautiful thing to see. A pastor gets to interact with children. Not everyone does that. So three or four points in my sermon, I'll address the children. They're being addressed all the time, but I'll specifically make eye contact.

But you know what people know is secretly they're men points. Because when I say the simple truth, lots of guys go, I get it now, yep, I understand that. But outside the Sunday service, we have things like a men's breakfast where we had the young sons come along and join in. What a blessing that is. The benefits in the home and other times where your children can sit still.

But I just tell you one story that was just such an encouragement. There was a man in the church who was very skeptical and vocal about us integrating the children. He wasn't happy about it. And then he came along to a midweek prayer meeting at somebody's home. And we were all gathered and sitting on the floor.

It wasn't always like this. But on that particular night when we played, there was a there was a stretch of time where none of the adults could get a prayer in because the children were praying one after another. And I'm talking about five, six, seven year olds. They weren't just silly prayers. They were prayers for my uncle.

I don't want him to go to hell, please save him. And the adults were just, and the kids are just praying. And this guy at the end, he said, you know what? After coming to that prayer meeting tonight and seeing those children take part alongside their parents, I am fully convinced you've won me. And I thought, wow, what a blessing.

Mm, that's great, that's wonderful. Well, we've seen lots and lots of churches make the transition. Some of those transitions have been easy, some of them really hard. But I'm thankful to have seen a lot of it happen. And now, New Zealand.

It's going in New Zealand. Love it. Okay, Chris, thank you so much for your story. It's a great story. You're welcome.

Thanks for having me. God bless you. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope to see you next time. 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. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.