What happens when a seeker-sensitive church begins measuring its practices by Scripture? 

In this episode, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm talk with Paul White, pastor of Covenant Bible Church, about his congregation’s transition from a program-driven, age-segregated model to family-integrated worship. Paul shares how the sufficiency of Scripture led him to reconsider assumptions about church life and recognize the biblical pattern of generations worshiping together. He also discusses the challenges of that transition, patiently shepherding families through change, and why pastors must begin with settled biblical convictions rather than pragmatism. 

Looking back on his church’s journey, Paul reflects on the fruit: whole families worshiping together and children growing up within the gathered church — a picture he describes as both humbling and beautiful. 

Ready to start — or restart — family worship in your home? Download our free Restore Family Worship Starter Kit for simple, biblical tools to help you make family devotions a daily rhythm that anchors your household. 

Well Jason, we know quite a few guys who ended up ditching the old model of age-segregated worship. We know a bunch of them. And they ditched that model, and they started a family-integrated church. And we've got a live one right on here. He lived to tell the tale.

He's still alive. Yeah, Paul White, pastor of Covenant Bible Church. And man, It's so good to have you here. How long have you been doing this, Paul? We will actually celebrate our 15th anniversary as a church this month.

So we had our first meeting under the name Axis Church of Taylorsville on September 11, 2011. Okay, so that's a lot of years. But at some point, you changed because you weren't pastoring that kind of church before. You were doing kind of a mainstream church. So tell us the story.

Yeah, so we were planted by the Southern Baptist Convention, and so, you know, the models that were set before us were from that group, that angle, and we're in North Carolina, so we wanted to be the next Elevation Church and hadn't thought through a lot of the details of what that looked like. And so we just started doing what everybody told us we should do. Looking back, it's really funny because we were small. We didn't have very many resources, very many people. We didn't even have very many children.

And so, but we still believed that this is what you have to do if you're planting a church. So yeah, looking back, it was pretty rink-a-dink. We had a room that was smaller than most of our bedrooms that we would put three kids in and find some unsuspecting, kind-hearted church member to go in there and basically tend to the kids while we were trying to have a worship service in the room on the other side of the wall. But we didn't realize that we were spinning our wheels. We didn't know any better.

Obviously, we began to hear of other philosophies and ideas. At some point, I'm sure I discovered a Bodhi-Bhaktam sermon or something to that effect. It eventually found you guys, and I remember pretty distinctly listening to sermons on the sufficiency of Scripture, and I'm thankful for that Baptist heritage, Christian heritage that we had that led us to at least acknowledging that if the Bible says something, that settles the issue. So we knew there were lots of voices telling us to do things. We didn't really have much of a category for, you know, weighing all of that, all of those details of the inner workings of a church and church life by the Scriptures, until the Lord brought us to see that, things like the regulative principle of worship in the church and how those things should operate according to Scripture.

And so once we saw them according to Scripture, There was no, there was really not much of an argument to be made as far as church leadership or church structure. It was sort of a, hey, there it is. That's what we have to do. We can't keep going the way we're going. Thankfully, and this is all God's gracious providence, we were not in a position where we had to steer this massive church with 20, 30, 40, or 100 kids and lots of things invested into years of a kid's ministry.

We had what was probably, like I said, well, it was pretty an embarrassing children's ministry to say the least, but by the world standards. So it was pretty easy to pull a little plug and begin moving in the direction that we currently are. And we haven't had to endure a lot of the headaches that so many other men have had to endure because most of our church, like I said, it was young people, young couples. I had my oldest child and then there might have been three or four other kids. And so it wasn't world-changing as far as the ministry of the church.

So, and it's just been, I would say, relatively smooth sailing since that point. And that's only because the people in our congregation recognize, if the Bible sets this precedent, then that's what we have to do. We don't have an option to do anything else. So that's wonderful, but that might not give the full picture of how big a shift that represented, because I, Paul and I have been friends for a long time. And so I know the name Perry Noble and know there's an association there.

So probably most people who are our audience don't know who he is. Say who he is and what that association is. Just to tell you that Paul White comes from the edgy side of church planting hysteria. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So Perry Noble was down in South Carolina, forget the name of that church, now New Spring. And yeah, so when we were in the planting stages, SBC was, the way that you kind of go about it is visit these churches and learn from them. And so we would regularly go to Elevation Church in Charlotte. That was pretty normal for us. We loaded up a van and took trips or a trip down to South Carolina and visited New Spring Church.

So we wanted to be the next big thing in the church world, without the self-awareness, like I said, that we were kind of a no-name, rinky-dink, small town, not many resources, not many people, kind of a group. And so the further we got along into it, the further we realized, like, even if we could do this, it's not going to be very good. But but yeah, we were definitely aiming to be hip and cool and edgy. Like I said, our name was Axis Church of Taylorsville. If you asked us what that meant, we would have to come up with some sort of maybe spiritual sounding definition for that, but we have one.

So yeah, it was a big shift, but as far as church life, it wasn't very disruptive, I guess you could say, for the most part. There was a little pushback, and we could talk about that, sure. But yeah, that's that's it, that history. Was there any particular scripture that pulled you over the line? No, not one particular scripture.

It was the culmination of all of the texts where every time the people of God are gathered, they are all together. And if that has been the precedent from the beginning of time until, you know, as far at least into history that the Scriptures address, and you could even go into extra-biblical history. But if that's all that you ever see, then I would argue that the burden of proof is on anybody who would do anything different. That's just the way that I think and reason. So it was really the culmination of the scriptural witness.

What kind of pushback did you get from friends or even family? We had one family in our church. We've only had one family to ever leave over this issue. And it was one of our very first planting families. And I think at that time, they might've had two children who were very young, two young boys.

And they were going through what every young family goes through when you have a couple of young children, this process of training. And I think for them it was hard to look in into the future and realize it isn't always this difficult. These are the trainings and it will get better. And so they, this was the issue. They said, we just, we want to go to a church where somebody's going to be, you know, watching after our children so that we can focus on the preaching and the worship.

And we actually sat down with them. When people want to leave our church, I like to argue with them. So I want to sit down and kind of hear, what are your reasons? If I'm wrong, biblically, I want to know because I want to go in the way of truth. And if you're wrong and you're a Christian, I assume that you want to be corrected too.

So we sat down and we walked through the Scriptures, every passage, and they agreed. They said, yeah, that's the biblical pattern. That's what the Bible teaches. And I said, so you understand that this is what the Bible sets forth. Oh yeah, yeah.

So what's the rub? And they said, we just want somebody to watch our children while we are in church. And I said, well, you know, at least you're willing to admit, you know, that we have the Scripture on our side. And we parted ways, and it wasn't, you know, with hard feelings or anything. We've stayed, you know, at least on good terms with them.

But Yeah, that was about it. I've had a little pushback here and there from pastors that I've known, but none of it has been doctrinal. None of it has been substantial. It's always been the practical questions which answer themselves over time when you live it out. You know, the difficulties.

Right. Yeah. If you have a two-year-old and a one-year-old, it's going to be really hard. But in six years, it's going to be a lot easier. But that has to come with time, and it's hard for people to see that.

Well, what are some of the difficulties of having generational worship? Obviously, you're gonna have what some people would see as distractions in your worship service. You're going to have different families deal with their children in different ways. Very true. You've got some people who are, and I'm kind of one of these real sensitive to what could be a distraction.

You've got some parents that you wonder if they, you know, like what is their threshold for actually hearing their child? Because they've never hit it. Yeah. And so they're just navigating that and understanding people handle this different ways. You know, Family integrated worship, generations worshiping together doesn't mean that we just ignore sound or we just let all of the kids scream all the time.

There has to be specific detailed instructions on how to handle those various things And there has to be an example set for those families to kind of see how things should work. But I think that's one of the difficulties, just navigating like, you know, this family over here, they're nipping it in the bud quick, you've got another family that's like, do they know that their kid is crying? We've had instances where families come in sort of fresh and in a desire to fit in whatever they think the mold is. We've had some fathers responding in entirely too severe ways with their children that we've had to address. I've had to tell a father, the way that you're responding to your child is far more distracting than the child itself.

You jerking a child up and stomping out and, you know, that's actually, we will tolerate a child crying before we're going to tolerate that because you're an adult. You know, you need to act like an adult. And so the way parents handle their children differently has to be addressed. I think another difficulty too is encouraging families through those hard seasons. And then just yesterday I was meeting with one of our families, and I told them, hey, just a few weeks ago while I was preaching, I noticed that mom and dad and all four little ones were sitting quietly with their faces toward the preacher with no disruptions.

You were all sitting there." And I said, you know, that probably felt like it was impossible last year. But look at you. You've made progress. And I was able to encourage them in that way. And so I think one of the difficulties is, can come from the side of pastors who are not, maybe because they want to be sensitive to all of the variations, they don't actively pursue families who are clearly struggling or who are clearly doing great and telling them, hey, you're doing a great job or hey, I notice you're struggling.

Are there any questions you have? So it's not all, I don't think that all of the problems are just people getting their act together. Sometimes it's us as pastors getting our act together and trying to shepherd people closely. You know, another difficulty is people are extremely sensitive to anybody saying anything about their child raising or how they're dealing with their children. And so that can make people really fearful about approaching a family and saying, hey, you know, you're, I noticed A, B, and C, Is there something we could do to help?

Or, you know, we sense that there's a problem here. You know, can we talk about how to address this? But I think you want to create an atmosphere in your church where families are open to that, open to reason and to even reproof and humble. Paul, you made me think of this. Every family is on a learning and maturing curve.

Somewhere on the curve. We all started at the place where we didn't want it to be the end of the curve. And then you start down the curve and things start getting better, more manageable, as you do learn the pro tips and you do sort of train towards it and raise expectations and all that. So, but every church is on a learning and maturing curve, too. And the three of us have worked together with what is essentially, I consider them a sister church, none of us were planted out of each other.

Antioch Baptist in Malawi, they are as a church on the curve that we are. There's really no doctrinal or practical daylight between us and how we're thinking about child-raising, church structure, and things like that, but we're two decades on the curve. And so it was for our brother, Mala, who we love dearly, he's spent a bunch of time here, we've spent a bunch of time there, for him and his wife and his kids to come be in a church that's been on this curve for, you know, two decades, he can actually see, okay, this is actually where this is headed. It's not always going to be like early stage learning and maturity. We can see kind of where this goes if you stay on the track.

So hey, we need to be that for each other. The churches that have been on the curve for a while and have learned and matured to a certain point need to be an encouragement to people who are just getting on the curve because it is harder when you just put yourself on the curve. Yeah. Paul, what advice would you have to other elders who are wondering what the cost is for doing this, what the blessings are, how to pull it off? What kind of advice do you have for them?

I would say you have to settle, settle the matter in your own mind and your own convictions. It, it, it can't be, you know, the, I believe it was Rick Warren, who famously did the whole like try Jesus for 30 days and you know, it can't be something that you try for 30 days and if it doesn't work, we'll go back to the old ways. It has to be a settled conviction based on the Word of God that you're not willing to shift off of, then I would say properly assess where your congregation is and where you want to be and begin taking steps in that direction, don't expect that you're going to get up this Lord's Day, preach a sermon on the sufficiency of Scripture for multigenerational worship in the church, And then the next Lord's Day, everybody is in line and understands perfectly. And if they're not, then we're just going to have to move the church discipline. It's not going to work that way.

It's going to be a slow process. And I would venture to say, I don't even know that I would preach a sermon on it very early. I think I would begin having conversations with families, begin sharing resources, just get the conversation started. I would try to answer as many objections and things just conversationally before you try to, in a sense, institutionalize it in the church or set it as a precedent. You know, if your church is 120 years old and you have always had Sunday school classrooms in the back of the church and you've always had these various things and your church has always operated in this one way and you come in and with, I would argue if you're thinking that the change is going to be done in less than a year, you're probably really pushing the envelope.

I would say it's going to have to be a really slow thought out process where you're dealing humbly with people, encouraging people, exhorting people. But it has to be, and that goes back to the matter of principled conviction, Because if your conviction is settled, then there's no amount of time that it could take where the conviction just sort of wears off. I've heard people say that motivation will get you so far, but discipline and principle is going to carry you when motivation stops. So, you know, when you hit pause on the sermon on the sufficiency of Scripture for these things, or you end whatever book you just read, you know, you're going to be extremely motivated for a little bit, but there has to be something more than that. I think it has to be a pastoral heart for your people, a desire to see their good, you know, for our church and probably y'alls as well.

A lot of these things are sort of first-generation stuff, And so I determined early on to accept that a lot of what we are doing in our church is simply laying the groundwork for the next generation. And so we're gonna get the ball down the field to a certain yard line, but we're probably, we may not get the touchdown. That might be for our children and grandchildren. So for pastors who are in this situation, get conversation started, eventually bring it to the public as far as the ministry of the Word. And I've thought through this so many times because I've seen so many men do it the wrong way.

You can't just come into the pulpit and preach a sermon out of the blue on the sufficiency of Scripture for family integrated worship or multi-generational church. You've got to go all the way back to, you know, what do we believe about the Bible? What do we believe about scripture? Like laying, because a lot of that is just assumed. Well, we all believe the Bible, right?

Well, if the Bible says it, we'll do it. But you might have a lot of people who are not as convinced about certain things from scripture and how to use the scriptures. So you might have to, again, the sports analogy, you might have to back way up and start from very fundamental principles. And that makes the trek longer. But I think the Lord will bless that faithfulness and that willingness to shepherd with a shepherd's heart.

I'll always come back to Jacob and Esau and Jacob said, you know, you go ahead. We'll catch up to you later. I've got sheep. I've got nursing lambs. If I drive them too hard, they're going to die.

I have to walk patiently with the flock that I've been given. Every pastor has to assess his flock, where they are, and every family in that flock, and then map out the best and wisest, safest approach for his church. That's great. That's a great roadmap. That really is.

One last thing. What would you say has been the greatest blessing of having a generational church? It facilitates the opportunity for every member of the family to be family members in worship, and it paints a picture in the worship of the church that people are not seeing anywhere else in the world. So when you have visitors come in, and I know that there's a lot of talk now about the revitalization of or reinvigoration of many young men to want to be godly, masculine men, and I'm completely on board. And I think that there might be one aspect of that that they don't get to see played out anywhere else except for in the local church where they see whole families together, worshiping together, and we've had so many come in, and they say, it's amazing how—this is really funny, because we have—I don't know, we probably have between 60 and 70 people all together.

Between 30 and 40 of those are little children, kids. So we have kids everywhere in this small one-room sanctuary, and we have people come in and they say, it's amazing how peaceful your church is. It's amazing to see fathers, you know, holding small children or little babies or again children sitting in the worship service. So it gives us an opportunity to paint that picture for others. It also lets us see it ourselves, to see the fruit of obedience and gospel ministry before our very eyes that if we're not careful, we might overlook.

But I told our church, you know, we have a little playground outside, and I said, on the Lord's day afternoon, after our meal, we're all out there and the kids are playing. And I will sit and I look at this field full of children. And, you know, it's this great joy balanced with just an awful trembling and fear, and usually prayers that the Lord would save these children, that He would keep us together, that he would use this next generation for his purposes in our community. So it is an awful, humbling responsibility, but you don't see it anywhere else. There's nowhere else you can go where you can see what this thing looks like, this side of heaven.

And so, yeah, it's encouraging to anybody who will peek their head and get to see it. It's really a blessing. And I would say what we're seeing, what people praise, is simply the fruit of what God has commanded. When we do what God has commanded, we will see the visible blessings of it. So it's, you know, the glory goes to Him.

His ways are perfect, His ways are good, and any human being in their right mind has to look at it and say, this is as beautiful as the sunset or sunrise, you know, landscape. It's wonderful. I love it. Love the way you describe that. Really appreciate you coming and telling your story.

And hey, thanks for joining us, Paul. We really, really, really appreciate it. Hope people really enjoy your testimony. Amen. Amen.

Thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. And check out the resources in the link below about the family at church and how to exist for the glory of God in a generational church. Hope to see you next time.