In this panel discussion, we hear the brief stories from different elders on how the Lord lead them to plant a family integrated Church. Also, we learn why these men felt that they should plant a church and how the Lord has used those churches. The speakers also give some very helpful advice for potential or new Church plants.

Church and family conference in in 2001 You would have you would have found that probably 1% were going to an age-integrated Church and it's amazing what's been happening the pace of church planting has been pretty pretty aggressive I was having lunch with Ken out or breakfast with Ken our the other day and we counted I think we counted nine or ten churches around us or something like that where there were just where there were just he and I five, six years ago, and Mark Fox as well. And so there really has been a tremendous upsurge. We planted that one question in there about are you having church by yourself at home? And we did that so that we could just have an excuse to say, stop doing that and go find a church of the Lord Jesus Christ and be with people, real people, who are just as messed up as you are probably. But we just so urged people not to abandon the church.

That would be such a terrible thing to do based on the nature of the church and God's calling to the church. You know, Calvin believed that the visible church was present Was present when the Word of God was preached when the ordinances were Practiced and Church of Discipline was practiced and he he proposed that that was the that was the the sign of a real church now I would just encourage us to be involved in the church and not give up. Okay what I'd like to do is have each one of these guys introduce themselves and just explain a little bit about their experience where they are what they're doing and and then we'll engage in questions So if we could start with Paul. I'm Paul Renfro and I'm at Grace County Baptist Church in Spring, Texas, north of Houston. I'm an elder with Vody Bockham, So that's been such a blessing.

The plant started in April 2006, and the Lord has continued to bless. And so that's who I am. My name is Mark Ciannamasso. I'm pastor of River Rock Church. I'm just outside Lynchburg, Virginia, Central Virginia.

And we started the church about five years ago. I was an associate pastor in a church in Florida previous to that, and very multi-ministry church, where I rarely got to see my family and I like my family and so We moved from there and just decided that I'd probably be out of Vocational ministry for about five or ten years to my children were old enough to do ministry together But God had other plans They read a book that some of you may have read by Eric Wallace Uniting Church and Home and got halfway through the book and realized there was such a thing out there that you could worship with your family together. So God led us to start that church about five years ago. I'm Mark Fox. I'm pastor of Antioch Community Church in Burlington, North Carolina.

We started the church in 1987, and about six or seven years ago we realized at a conference that we heard someone mention the word family integrated church and describe that concept that we are one. We didn't know that we had become a family integrated church or that that was the concept that described us. But God took us through a process over several years of leaving the traditional model and becoming family integrated. Although I'm concerned because during the last question when it asked, are you looking for a family integrated church to join my oldest son clicked yes on that so. I'm Jeff Bright and with an elder at Chatham Christian Assembly we've been meeting there while the church was planted in January this year in Pittsburgh which is just about 25 miles west of Raleigh.

Prior to that about three years ago we were one of the families that were just meeting without any church government, without elders or deacons. And for a season after I came to my first conference, which was the last one that was held here in Raleigh, that was about three years ago, the NCFIC conference, and was really brought under conviction that we needed to be meeting in a place that was according to the scriptural patterns. So we began traveling a little distance to meet in Wake County, which was about 45 minutes from where we were, with the intent that eventually we would move back local, but for a season, we felt it was okay to go and learn and come under the authority of the elders there. And so eventually two years later, the Lord led us back to Chatham County where we have begun with eight families there it's been a real blessing. It's on now.

Ken Auer at the Southwest, one of the elders at Southwest Way Christian Assembly. We were part of a church that was getting more, basically if you read the first half of Mark's book, that was describing our church, just a different place. And All of a sudden they kind of took a sharp left turn towards seeker sensitivity and we were thinking we needed to go further. And we were blessed by the elders. I was one of the elders there and we were blessed by the elders to go and start a new work and that's about five and a half years ago on the other side of the county.

So it's been a blessing to do that and after two years with Jeff we sent him away and we still miss him and we're hoping to maybe plan another one or two in the next year or two. My name is Eddie Burrows and I'm one of the elders at Faith Baptist Fellowship and I've been in a ministry in the traditional or modern church for close to 17 years now. I've pastored almost 16 of those years as a church pastor in the traditional modern church. And about three years ago, God began really moving me to realize that where I was at was not bringing glory and honor to God in my own family and even in the church. And so God started transitioning me to be family integrated, so to speak.

And so I brought it to my church that I was at, and they said no. And so I left and started a church in Rocky Mount. And that's the short of it. And we've been meeting now for a year and God is just really, really blessed in a great way. So many of the folks that are here have been influential in leading me to where I am even today So having opportunities like this right here is just wonderful.

Thank you. I'm Boyd Dellinger. I'm pastor of Family Integrated Church in the Fayetteville, North Carolina area in the little town of Hope Mills just beside Fayetteville. And we are starting January, we'll start our fifth year. I was pastor of another Family Integrated Church for four years before that.

And then before that I was a very discouraged youth pastor so much Well most of you guys are church planters. Mark probably, I guess, I don't know, did you plant your church originally and then it just continued to morph? So all of you guys are church planters. That's pretty interesting, honestly. I mean if you if you if you you know pulled you know the pastors within a hundred miles here there there wouldn't be very many church planters.

So you're you're really a unique group. So could could you just talk for a minute about what was it that made you feel that you needed to plant a church even in the face of the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of churches around you? Why did you feel like you should start a church? As a discouraged youth pastor, the Lord started to change my heart, and I knew something needed to be fixed and wasn't sure what it was, because I didn't know anything about family-integrated churches. I was given some information to read by a friend, and I called that pastor who had a family integrated church.

And I said, listen, I'm starting to see puzzle pieces of what I should be doing, but I don't know what the box looks like, what it's supposed to look like when it's finished. I said, I know Father should lead. I said, I'm seeing where youth ministry is not going. There's not the hundredfold fruit. He said, come up here, visit our church, and see what it's like.

I went up there, visited their church, and then I said, listen, I've sent out resumes. And every time I talk to any church leader on this pastor's search committee and tell them what I'm interested in, they're like, thanks, and we'll file your resume. He told me, he said, brother, you're going to have to start your church. And I said, why? He says, it's easier to give birth than to raise the dead.

And that stuck in my mind. And so, after seeking some additional wise counsel, the Lord directed. And so, that's just my short story. I don't know all these guys. Somebody said over here but with God all things are possible.

Yeah, yes, All right. Maybe I still need to speak. I don't know, Scott. I think a lot of, you know, we were just, the mentors that I had, basically kept on telling me go back to the scriptures. And I kept going back to the scriptures.

And when I kept reading the scriptures, I would look around at my life and the lives around me. And I said, this just doesn't look the same. And just kept seeing that and kept feeling more and more uncomfortable and then I remember in 1998 I think was the first time I heard Doug Phillips speak in a North Carolina home school and as he was saying this there was all these things that I was saying, it should be like this but I don't know how it works, maybe we can't do it now and he would just start saying all these things that scripture says this and we don't do this in our church and scripture says this and we don't do this and I'm like I'm not the only guy who thinks this and so maybe there's two of us that are crazy but anyway shortly after that just having Lord Sovereignly introduce me to Little Bear Wheeler and then I got to meet Doug and through him met some other folks. We saw it, we went down to San Antonio, already thinking that was the direction we needed to go. As I said, the church we were at had been getting rid of some of the trappings.

No Senior High Sunday School, they brought them in. They started having no Junior High Sunday School. But then all of a sudden it started changing. And went down to San Antonio and just saw this incredible intergenerational thing happening where well, first of all there were people of all ages with people of all ages and they seemed to like it and it was really just just a blessing to watch seeing the older women working with the younger women, older men with the younger men, and that was happening including the 16 year old boys, young men, working with 4 year old boys, and just seeing that happening, I just said this is such a beautiful thing. This is what I've been seeing in scriptures, I just didn't see it around here.

And we decided we had to do that. I do want to encourage you though that when we saw this is what we're being called to, one of the things we said, yeah but we should have people who are, I was only 39 at the time, you know, I wasn't even 40. And I said, you know, there's got to be somebody elder, you know, to do this. And I looked around and the families that were interested in starting this with us, my daughter Hope at the time had just turned 10 and she was the oldest child we had. There was another one who was seven, and we had six families.

Five of them had children under one. We were the only ones who didn't at the time. Lord blessed us since then with another child. But as we looked at it, we said, you know, Lord, if this is the direction we're going, you're going to provide the people. We just got to go faithfully and little by little these people who are older came up.

You know, this guy is a little older than me and a few others. But you know, now we have a lot of young people of all ages and you know what, if You don't feel like you're old and experienced enough, go forward and you will be. That's a true statement right there. One of the reasons that we sent two families to help with the Pittsburgh church and we're starting to work with five families to start a new church in Ashboro is because they're driving 45 minutes to an hour to get to our church. So there needs to be a family integrated church in every community in the country.

There may be 500 churches in your county, but there may not be two that are raising up godly families and teaching men how to leave their homes, etc. So that's our modus operandi. We want to do what God seems to be calling us to do in that area. Mark, could you just tell us a little bit more about your story? By the way, Mark has a book called The Family Integrated Church back there.

I wish there was somebody to hold it up. It's right there on the right hand side. Mark, maybe you could just sort of flesh out your story and how God is taking you to where you are. And now you're involved in church planting and things like that. Well, the best way to get my stories to read the book.

We did start the church in 1987 and we started with five families and we had a vision of being the church that God had been waiting for his whole life in Alamance County. We were going to solve all the problems in the county and the state and then go on and solve the problems in the world. What can I say? I was 29 and pretty ignorant. But God, through a series of processes, he took us through.

One of those was to begin a ministry on the college campus at Elon University. We got invited to have our church meet on the campus every Sunday for nine years. I was an adjunct professor then. And so for nine years we met on the campus. And when you're meeting on a campus, you can't have Sunday school.

You can't have children's church. You can't have nursery a lot of times. And so all of these programs and extra things that we were doing kind of just fell by the wayside And that was part of God's plan as he began to bring in families and we we outgrew We came to the place where we really didn't fit on the college campus any longer They were tired of us and we were looking for a place where we could have more of a family ministry. But the blessing was that 500 kids came through that ministry and some of them are still with us married now having children and have caught the vision for family integrated churches and some are studying to be pastors and want to have their own family integrated church one day. So we're still in process.

We've got, like I said, we accidentally planted a church last year. Four families left us because they wanted to be in a hymns only church. And we are currently working with five families that want to be sent out to Asheboro because they live in that area to start a new church in 2008. So God's good. He's faithful.

Great. Thank you, Mark. I know I started off as a lone pastor in a small church up in Ohio and did that three years and said, that's not it. Then I went back to my home church and was a singles minister for three years. Said, that's not it.

Then I was an elder at a church that taught Reformed doctrine and that was good. But there was still something missing. And it gets to the point, I think, where even men who wouldn't necessarily call themselves church planters get to the point that I cannot continue in this current situation any longer. I remember talking to the youth minister when I was a singles minister. He said, basically, 95% of my time is spent oiling the machinery.

5% is of significant ministry in the lives of people. And I think the testimony of all these men here would be that now, we're about the main thing. We're about the main thing of proclaiming the gospel and providing real answers to real problems in people's lives and calling men to significance in their families. And it's wonderful. It is an incredible, incredible blessing and it's worth the risk of a church plant because if you try to change the regular church we all know what happens there in 99% of the situations you end up getting fired so that's so it's you get to a point where Lord wherever you want to send me and whatever you want me to do, I'll do this, because I'm empty with what I'm doing in these current situations.

We've got a lot of questions about church planning. I want to move on. By the way, I read recently that there are 7, 000 churches planted every year in America and 4, 000 go away within the first few years. So you talk about the day. It's worth the risks of planting a church.

Well, there are risks of doing anything, but there are risks of planting churches, and difficult things can happen. Let's just shift gears. And we'll get back to some of the other church planning questions, but here's one. So I've totally blown it. My children are out of the nest.

I wasn't a strong leader. And now my wife and I are determined to partly fill our quiver. I'm left defeated and deflated and discouraged. What do I do now? We need grandfathers.

We need repentant grandfathers. Amen. Um, I don't know. We have one older family that describes husband and wife. They've come out and we just tell them, look, you know what, you have wives who believe in, or husbands and wives who believe that they should have as many children as the Lord gives them and God gives them five in seven years or something, they could use some help.

They could use encouragement. You may not have done everything the way that they're trying to do it. That's okay. If you're humble and willing to serve, you've got a lot of wisdom. Even if all the wisdom you have is here's all the ways not to do things.

We need you. Titus 2 says, by the way, The only place in the scriptures where it describes specifically what sound doctrine is is in Titus 2. It says this is sound doctrine, read the rest, but older men teaching younger men, older women teaching younger women. You're not disqualified because you blew it 20 years ago or however long it's been. We need you.

Your biological family is gone, but your spiritual family is all over the place. The issue here is it's never too late to repent. God calls us to repent throughout our lives and that we may have some sorrow, some mourning over some failure there, but it's never too late to repent and there's always a blessing there you'll follow the Lord even in the latter days of your life. I want to add one more thing. It's both directions.

I failed as a son in honoring my parents. I needed to repent of that. Building a relationship back with my parents teaching them how to Teaching them that I need to honor them You know, so it works in both right, you know, we don't have it all together I'm still trying to figure out how to honor my parents You know young people you've got a better foundation that I did because you're being taught that. But we all need to repent and it's never too late. I'd also like to, thank you, sir.

I'd also like to say too that you know there's also the side that right along with with repentance and and and moving in it into the direction that God wants you to go into there's also a chance that your grown children will look at you and say, wait a second, you know, maybe I can change too, maybe I can do something different, you know, I don't have to continue, you know, the motion's got to stop somewhere and start going in another direction. And so by demonstrating that repentance and that seeking God's hand would be a great testimony to your grown children that hey, there's a chance to change. God's gotta second Jesus. Amen. Okay, another question.

I've heard that family integrated churches are opposed to Sunday schools and youth groups why Because Sunday schools and youth groups are built on a paradigm, really a Greek paradigm. Sunday schools are built really a fashioning after public school. And the model of Greek education is pretty much get people in a room and disseminate information to them. The Hebraic form of education is, come walk alongside me, and I will teach you. And the scripture tells us that a companion of fools suffers harm.

So when you put a bunch of them in a room, you get the idea. And the problem is that when you do that, their most significant person now is not their parents. The most significant person to them is their peers. And so you break down the God-given pattern of fathers to sons, fathers to daughters, and it seems harmless, but it does break that bond and it keeps multi-generational faithfulness from taking place. Children don't learn from their peers and if they do it's not good.

They learn from people who are more mature than they are and that's the pattern of Scripture. That's what Titus 2 is, Older teaching the younger. One of the things I saw as a youth pastor is children turning their hearts towards me. As prideful that made me feel, it was unbiblical. I saw them turning their hearts towards their boyfriends, their girlfriends, and their peers.

One of the reasons behind questions like that is that everybody says, well, what about the single teenager that comes to your church? What do we do with him? You have to have a youth ministry to teach him. Well, we don't see that pattern in scripture, and this is one of the biggest when I was telling even family and friends about a family integrated church when the Lord was starting to show me things. One of the biggest questions is, what do you do with single people if you're so family integrated?

Well, the Bible gives a verse on that. Psalms 68 verse 5 says, A father to the fatherless and a judge of the widows is God in His holy habitation. Here's his next verse. God set at the solitary in families. That's what God does with single people.

The scripture says God set at the solitary in families. That means those who are alone. He puts them in families because we are the family of God. We are a family of families. And so when a single young person comes to your church incorporate them in a part of the family because it is a family of God.

And so we see as Sunday schools and youth ministries undermines that, we don't see that pattern anywhere in scripture. So we gotta go to the scriptures and says, what does God say? He says, you set the solitary in families, Psalm 68 verse six, because you'll need that, because that question will come up. If I could say something too, Scott. You know, one of the things that I think we could say to a question like that is, you know what, we're not against Sunday school.

We're not against a youth group. We're for the training of godly children and for giving the men the responsibility that they need. And so why can't you have a Sunday school class as families? You know, why can't you have young people getting together to play volleyball with their dads? Or with families?

You know, we have a lot of young folks in our church that do a lot of things together in the context of being with dads, being with families, where they're not just together as a group cruising the mall, but they're together doing something constructive. And so I would answer, you know, we're not against young people spending time together and getting to know one another. We're not against people being taught the Bible and understanding the Bible stories, but let's give the fathers a responsibility as youth pastors, if you will, and Sunday school teachers because it's their responsibility to begin with. You know, I think a lot of us got shaken up when we started seeing, as youth pastors, hey, how many of you guys were youth pastors at one point? Uh-oh, there you go.

We all were. So you know, you have a view from the bridge of what's really happening and the collapse that's taking place there. Any more comments about youth ministry, the structure of this multimillion dollar effort that we've been, you know, subject to for the last 25 years. The other issue is wherever a person gets spiritual help, they become committed to that entity. So if they found Christ in the youth group, they're gonna be committed to the youth group.

And we want them committed to biblical paradigms. We want them committed to the family and to the church of Jesus Christ. And so when we set up an artificial construct out here, whether it's a parachurch ministry, whether it's a youth group, when people are affected spiritually by that, they become incredibly loyal to that. And it's best to have them loyal to biblical paradigms. In occasion we'll have families that will come and say, well, I've grown up in a traditional church and we're used to going to Sunday school every week.

We're used to getting up in the morning and going to Sunday school. That's just been our tradition. And I say, great, keep the tradition. Have Sunday school before you come to church and have it in your home. And the father is the Sunday school teacher, and there's something supernatural, spiritual, between a father and a child.

Proverbs 17, 6 says this, children's children are the crown of old men, And the glory of children is their father. There's something supernatural in that connection there. And you just see it in the world, in relationships in the world, how a child would grow up in the home of a father who was not godly, who was actually abusive, emotionally abusive, physically abusive. But there's something within that child that yearns for their father's affection. That yearns for their father's attention.

They'll spend the rest of their life trying to get it. The glory of children is their father. No one else. I was just gonna add, back to Titus 2, although we don't have any formal Sunday school things, we often have the dads getting together with some of the boys, teaching things, working on projects together. It's a tremendous thing to see that happening.

And one of the things I've seen, a lot of people in here are homeschoolers. I'm not sure if everybody is or not. We didn't get that poll yet, did we? But One of the tragedies of homeschooling often is we have boys being raised by moms. And I have a very godly wife.

She cannot train my boy to be a man. I'm still learning how to do it, but she'll never be a man. I guarantee it. Right? So, you know, and in that, again, having the, often when you get Sunday school programs, you fill them up.

When you fill them up, you don't get enough men, you put some women in there, and At the same time, we have our wives, some of our older women teaching the younger women. There's a lot of skills they didn't learn growing up about being keepers at home. So we have a keepers at home group that meets once a month for a lot of the younger ladies and the wives get together and transfer skills. There's a lot of great things you can do in training in a context that is age appropriate without going against this whole idea of the older man teaching the younger, et cetera. Okay, I've got a bunch of church planting questions.

I'm not going to ask them all, but let me throw another one out. What are the best and worst practices for starting a church? I was going to say, we have enough mistakes right here to fill the world. So go ahead. I think the spirit in which you start a church is very important.

We were blessed that it wasn't a church that came out of dissension or some church split, which I think is a dangerous way to start. It was something that came out of submission to the Lord, waiting for his timing. As Mark testified, when we did a church plant, two families came from Antioch and then four families came from SWCA, both with intentions of planting in that area, but nobody was claiming territory and saying, well, this is going to be our church plant. Well, this is going to be ours and have two. It was really in a spirit of unity, a spirit of this is the Lord's church.

This is his work. We're all part of the same work. Let's meet together. So starting something and knowing how easy it is for us to make mistakes, as Scott has said, to just rely on the Lord both as to how it would come together and when it would come together, but with a spirit of unity that we are doing the Lord's work and coming with a spirit of oneness with other churches to be able to do that seemed to be a very important piece for us. What I've learned from experience, also seen it in other churches, I suggest, strongly suggest before you have your first Sunday together, to have the church leadership and your doctrine and your constitution together before you meet.

Because if you start a church and then 10 months down the road you say okay let's look at our doctrinal statement you're probably gonna have your first church split because everybody's gonna put their two cents worth in especially if you don't have church leadership. So elders church leadership is paramount just and I've seen this from other churches as well as one I've been a part of, to have that established before you start to welcome in sheep who are looking for a shepherd. I would say also, just like when we have families come to our church from another church, we don't allow anyone to start attending Antioch unless they have reconciled, made everything right with their previous church. If they're bringing baggage from their previous church, we don't want it. We have plenty of baggage of our own, we don't need yours.

So make sure everything is settled between you and the former pastor, you and the former leaders. And I think that would be paramount with a new church plan. If people are starting it because they're just a ragtag band of people who are reacting and rebelling against other authorities, then you've got problems from the very beginning in the foundation. And so making sure that all those accounts are taken care of. Amen.

A list of do's. Start with the plurality of leadership. Don't start a church as the lone elder. Or if you have to do church discipline. How's that gonna work?

A clear mission and vision statement that everybody understands, laying out all the things you believe, especially the things that are hard for people to take. Don't keep those tucked away and then surprise them six months after they became a member. A united core group of members who are in agreement with your mission and vision statement and with your doctrinal statement. Clear doctrinal statement of what you believe. A clear membership process where everybody who comes in understands your mission, your vision, your doctrine, what it means to be a member of that church, and a clear commitment to membership.

Obviously, with the plurality, you have to have men who are apt to teach, men who can teach the Word of God. If there's nobody in your group who can teach the Word of God, then you're not ready to start. If you want to fail, then absolutely have a meeting to decide what your doctrine is going to be before you get started. Select an elder who's not qualified. A battle on a small boat it's not good.

Make sure the members clearly understand you have to have unity. It'd be better to be unified with four families than to have 20 families on all types of different doctrinal pages and philosophy of ministry pages. And do not raise up leadership too quickly. Make sure men have been tested. Picking the wrong leaders can sink the church plant boat faster than anything.

Yeah, those are sobering words, absolutely. True. Anybody else? I think starting a church, the worst way to start a church is to think it's a good idea to start a church. I know when I first read Uniting Church and Home, I got halfway through the book and I said, this is it.

I was revved up, ready to go, ready to start the church. I called Eric and talked to him and he said, wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa. He said you need to talk to a pastor who has already done this. He gave me his name, Stuart Jordan, down in Alabama. I called Stuart and I said, you know, I'm excited about starting a family integrated church.

What do you recommend? He said, here's what I recommend. Read through the entire Bible and underline, highlight every reference to family and worship and children and parents. I said, whoa, it's going to take me a while to do that. And he said, I've already done that.

And so he sent me a copy of all the occurrences in God's Word that talk about that. So you have to know that it's not a good idea, but it's truly God's idea in starting a church. OK, here's a little different question. I'm on staff at a church that's full of families and young children, but has a traditional format in education of the different ages, separating families through programs. However, we're in the midst of change, attempting to educate as whole family systems, but feeling like we're creating the wheel all alone.

Any suggestions? How to transition from a traditional church to an age-integrated church? Where do I get information? Creative ways to educate whole families together, any illustrations or examples? Transforming a church.

Generally I'd say be persevering, long-suffering. I was talking to somebody else earlier. As long as people are willing to talk about it and move forward, keep going. When they're not, stop talking. If you see people open to that, there's a lot of resources and obviously it's hard to list them all off, especially since I don't have a good memory for titles and names in ISBN numbers.

But really, as long as people are willing to do that and are willing to have the conversation, start with the word and start trying to figure out what is it and work towards it. I know people who started family integrated Sunday school classes at large churches. There's a lot of ways to take those steps. I think as long as people are recognizing the principles we're talking about here and they're moving in that direction, I think keep them moving in that direction. Don't fight them because they don't got it perfect yet because none of us do, do we?

You know, as long as they're moving that way, just keep going. I would also somewhat say that if you're already on staff at a church and there's also, there's this wave of change already in the place, then I would make sure that the leadership that's there is together in the change. Make sure that all of the all of the ones who make decisions are together in the process of change. Because if you're the lone wolf out there trying to shift your church in one direction, you've got another staff member trying to shift in another because you're in very turbulent waters when you're in change. And so I would say, you know, just like what we said earlier in planting a church, you know, there's some key things that have to happen.

Well, that has to happen also in a church that's transitioning. Make sure that the leadership is all together in that change. Otherwise, there's no telling where you'll end up. You might end up planting a church. You know, I had a really interesting experience this last year.

I spoke at a conference of family pastors, men's ministers, things like that. And they invited me to come in to talk about this subject and I was fascinated to meet lots of people who lead from the middle, just like this fellow here. He's a staff, he's on a staff, the church is going in a certain direction, he has some thoughts and there are other people that have thoughts. What do you do? There is really, there's a rising number of these people in the church in America who are leading from the middle and they're trying to make small steps.

There's some really amazing things going on who honestly, men who believe everything we believe, but they're in churches that are on a long, long road. They're patient. Maybe they're a lot more patient than we are, and that's why we're church planters. But this discussion is everywhere. The message is gaining traction.

And so this question is all over the place. I'll just throw one out. I know these guys would have many things. I would say the first thing that church leadership would need to do to transition their church is to firmly establish in the minds of the people the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture. That scripture is exposited carefully, that the people begin to get their eyes on the words of scripture and say, how can I mirror this?

This is God's word for the church. What this says, even though it's so different than everything that I've ever thought or done or seen, this is what we should do. And you know, I encourage pastors to take two to four years doing expository preaching, explaining the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture, explaining that we should be actually applying Scripture in family life, in church life, in work life, and showing them how you do that. And it takes time because if you just change the structure, you'll have an explosion. But if the hearts and the minds of the people change, then they can move together.

That's my premier piece of advice for a staff who wants to transition to church. It's the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture. Any other thoughts on this? Yeah, just one of the things that's very encouraging to me, I spent a lot of time before we actually started this, studying the life of Paul. And if you don't think the Bible talks about church planning, how much does it talk about Paul?

That's what he did. And you read it, and you can just see the examples. But as I was kind of alluding to the biblical backup, when he went to Corinth, he says, he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. You know, the time of the synagogue was the established church, right? I mean, the modern version of the established church.

But when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself complete to the word, Solemnly testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ said, you know every Sabbath he was doing this and when they resisted and blasphemed He shook out his garments and said to them your blood be upon your own heads. I'm clean from now on I should go to the Gentiles He departed from there and went to the house of a certain man named Tiddiest justice a worshipper of God whose house was next to the synagogue. Again, as long as that conversation is occurring, he was there week after week after week when they started saying, you're blaspheming. You know, when it got to the point where there was no more conversation, it was time to move on. You know, at lunch today I met a man, he's sitting back there in the back near Vody, but he's part of a large church in Chesapeake and he asked his pastor, he's on staff there, he asked his pastor if they could start having a family integrated worship service in addition to the other worship services they already have in the service at 12 o'clock noon.

So in January they're going to start a 12 o'clock family integrated service. I thought, how innovative, what a great idea, even within the existing confines of the church. If you have a pastor who's willing, or the leaders of the church who are willing to work with that, then I think that's one way to start a new work. Okay. Here's a question on church membership.

When should a child living at home with parents become members of the local church? And I'm going to answer that one. When they're baptized. When they have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, they've entered into the fellowship, they understand what the church is, they understand their salvation, and then they're ready for church membership after their baptism. That's my opinion.

I know there are many opinions about baptism and church membership and I'm not even sure what all what all these men would say.