Welcome to the  National Center for Family-Integrated Churches, "Church and family Network". For over a decade this network has been a unique tool facilitating connections between churches who worship in an age integrated fashion and the families looking for them. 

How do you go about finding a healthy family-integrated church? Well first of all, we recommend that you search our list of churches that have affirmed our confession for uniting church and family. It's a confession that establishes the supremacy of Christ and His Word, and it's an explanation of the way church and family are meant to function together in a harmonious way according to Scripture. But here's a word of caution as you go out to try to find this church. There's a danger of people using our network, and when they find a church on our network site, they somehow conclude that it's the perfect church because it's an age-integrated Church.

And then after attending for a while, they may get discouraged because that church on the network had flaws or it wasn't exactly what was described in the confession for uniting church and family. So while We gladly promote the existence of family integrated churches. Family integration, while it's important, is not the most important thing about a church. So here's how our network works. The churches on this network have not been evaluated by the NCFIC.

Our position toward the churches on our network goes like this. You evaluate us, but we don't evaluate you. We've written a confession that establishes the basics of what we stand for, and if the church genuinely embraces those things, we're happy to have them on our list of churches. But we don't make any claims for the integrity of their churches or of their leaders. So here is a seven-question Checklist to determine whether a church you're visiting is a healthy church.

Are you ready? Question 1. Does this church preach the true gospel? Question 2. Does this church place the Lord Jesus Christ at the center of everything?

Question number three, is the Bible the ultimate authority in all matters in this church? Question number four, does the pastor attempt to do biblical exposition or is he simply speaking out of his own passions. Question number five, is the church elder led or is the senior pastor biblically qualified? Ideally, we recommend you go to a church with multiple biblically qualified elders. Question six, does the church practice discipline?

Number seven, is the church age-integrated or substantially so? Notice this element is much further down on the list of how to find a healthy church. We do not believe that age integration is the most important matter in church life. While we do believe it is a biblical and therefore a critical matter, it is better to be in a gospel-centered, Bible-preaching church that's not age-integrated than it is to be in an age-integrated church where the Gospel is neglected and the Word of God is not central and the leaders are not biblically qualified. So I pray that you'll find a wonderful Gospel-centered church that's age-integrated, but don't be disconnected from a local church.

The church is the body of Christ and it's so important that you and your family make a local church a huge priority in your life. I pray that God blesses you with a wonderful gospel centered Bible preaching evangelistic Christ-exalting family-integrated church. You