In the sermon 'Why Attend a Family Integrated Church,' speaker Scott LaPierre discusses the biblical pattern of families being together for worship and other religious activities, beginning with the Old Testament and continuing in the New Testament. Jesus was known to interact with children and defend their presence during worship. The speaker acknowledges that family integrated churches can be more challenging for parents and may not be as attractive to some people, but believes it is essential to follow the biblical pattern for families. The sermon concludes by examining the benefits and challenges of a family integrated church and encourages attendees to embrace this approach.

Morning everyone. If you've attended the church for very long, raise your hand if you think I talked too quickly. Okay, the fact that only a couple of you raised your hand is a reflection of the way Katie has helped me in my preaching to speak slower. And if you haven't heard me say anything I shouldn't have said for quite a while, that's also a reflection of Katie going like this when I'm preaching. Well she's at the Above Ruby's retreat with some of the other wives in the church and she'll be coming home early this afternoon so you guys gonna have to help me out this morning and if you see me talking too quickly or hear me talking too quickly I should say give me this is the sign Katie gives me to slow down and I suppose if I'm saying something inappropriate you can give me that sign too.

All right. Father it's always a great privilege together with our brothers and sisters in Christ to worship you. We're one family with you as our father and Christ as our brother. We come to you hopefully with that recognition in mind and if that not be the case I pray that you'd impress that on each person's heart. We're a family Lord it's a privilege to preach this sermon and hopefully better establish that vision that's largely been the vision for this church prior to me even coming and I thank you for that and for burdening men to have us worship as families.

I pray as we, not a typical sermon this morning, not necessarily verse by verse through the book of the Bible, but really more topical. It'd be our last sermon on this topic. And I do pray, Lord, that you'd help really for this to serve as an anchor in terms of establishing in our hearts why we do things the way we do them here, why we would worship as families, why we would see ourselves as family integrated and enjoy having children around, being part of our services and our activities and events. I know that, I don't know people's familiarity with this approach, if they'd been here for some time, they'd have similarity, But if anyone's new, then this would be new for them, perhaps, because it's not common at other churches, Lord. And so I do pray you'd just use me as your vessel, but ask that your Holy Spirit would give people an understanding, especially if this is new to them or they've seen anything different.

And I do thank you for your word. Thank you for families. Thank you for adoption, bringing us into your family and giving us brothers and sisters in Christ. I pray all these things in your son's name, amen. Amen, amen.

So the 12th morning sermon is why, I think your bulletins say why a family integrated church, but I think it's better to say why a 10 to family integrated church. So we've been going through Luke's Gospel verse by verse, but as I shared with you last week, the elders and I had a conversation about a sermon explaining why we generally do things as families. And so this is part two. If you didn't hear part one last week, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to that. I wanted to cover this before getting back into Luke to prevent any other interruptions as we go through that gospel.

So last week also was about having children in worship, and we focused on the Old Testament did a survey of a lot of Old Testament verses definitely wasn't exhaustive because I couldn't fit there's much more than I could have fit in one sermon and this morning we're gonna be looking at the New Testament so last we focus on the Old Testament This morning we'll be focusing on the New Testament, and this brings us to lesson one. In your bulletins, having children around is also the New Testament pattern. Having children around is also the New Testament pattern. As you can see, the sound guys are getting very creative with colors recently for the bulletins. So I wanna show you some verses in the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles.

Some verses in the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles. And because we're going to be, I'm trying to cover a lot of different verses, We're not going to be able to dig into them, definitely not like we normally dig into verses. We'll move pretty quickly, hopefully chronologically to limit the flipping around. And we'll start with the scripture reading from Matthew 21, 12. This is the familiar account of Jesus cleansing the temple.

So if you look there with me, it says, Matthew 21, 12, Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of thieves, or a den of robbers. Verse 14, and the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. But when the chief priest and the scribe saw the wonderful things that Jesus did, and notice this part. And the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant, and they said to him, do you hear what these are saying?

Now just go ahead and pause here for a moment and give me your attention. I want you to notice that the religious leaders are upset about two different things. First, they're upset about what Jesus was doing, that he was healing the blind and the lame, and they probably were not fans of him flipping over the tables and chairs as well. But the second thing that upset them was the children in the temple. And you can see that if you look at verse 15.

It says, when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, they didn't like this, they criticized Jesus. They were indignant and they said to him, do you hear what all these children are saying? So they didn't wanna make this noise, they didn't want the praise going on, but look at Jesus' response in the rest of verse 16. Jesus said to them, yes, have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. And so Jesus wanted the children there.

He defended their presence. He defended their praise against the criticism that the religious leader has brought. Turn to the right to Mark 9. Mark 9 verse 35. Mark 9 starting at verse 35.

It says, and he, this is Jesus, sat down, he called the twelve and he said to them if anyone would be first he must be last of all and servant of all and so as you read through the Old Testament you see prophets who had object lessons right they would use physical instruments sometimes they would add things out to serve as illustrations of their teachings. Well, Jesus does that here. He wants an object lesson for his teaching. And so look at verse 36, he takes a child and he puts him in the midst of them and taking him in his arms. And now I don't want you to focus on what Jesus said here.

I want you to notice what Jesus did. He's in the middle of teaching, he reaches down and he grabs this child. He didn't have to tell one of the disciples, hey, go and grab a child, bring a child over here because we don't have any around us and I want to use one as an object lesson. And so the point is that even when Jesus was teaching, he had children around him, he's able to reach down and grab one. When I was preaching at David Eddy's church a few months ago, the worship leader, he had a child in his arm, one of his arms, and he'd switch arms the whole time that he was leading worship.

And when I got up to preach, I said something about it, and then everyone in the church just erupted in cheering for this guy that was able to hold a child the whole time that he was leading worship. So now I'm not saying that DJ Kevin and Jameson need to lead worship with a child in their arms, but it might be nice to see once in a while, okay? And you're saying, well, you know, they're playing guitar and they don't have an armproof. I mean, hey, this is why God gave us shoulders, right? So maybe they can...

Okay, look one chapter to the right at Mark 10 13. Mark 10 13 says, they're bringing children to him, this is Jesus, that he might touch them or bless them. And the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and he said to them, let the children come to me, do not hinder them. And then notice this, he says, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.

Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it, and he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them. Now, two points from this account. First, we see another instance of Jesus rebuking individuals that were trying to keep children away. And second, he argued that children are central to the kingdom of God. He even went so far as to, I mean it's a very strong statement here that I think argues for children to be present during worship because he goes so far as to say that it's individuals who are like children that the kingdom of God belongs to.

So I think that by extension if the kingdom of God belongs to people who are like children then we should probably have children worshiping with us. The next account turn to Acts 20 and after we get through these verses then we'll dig into some application and lessons. Turn to Acts 20. Here's the context for this account Paul was preaching late into the night and it's well known because there was an individual there who fell asleep, fell out the window and died. Yeah, that's what happened.

Look in verse 9, Acts 20 verse 9. Says a young man named Eutychus sitting at the window, and that's a little misleading to say a young man as we'll see in a moment. He's sitting at the window, He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer being overcome by sleep He fell down from the third story and he was taken up dead Paul went down and bent over him and taking him in his arms He said do not be alarmed for his life is still in him So Paul raises him to life verse 11 when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while. Until daybreak, they stood up all night together and then departed. And then in verse 12, notice it says, they took the youth away alive and were not a little comforted.

Now you can probably suspect just by the description of Paul being able to pick up this child, hold this child in his arms, pass the child along to the parents, that we're not talking about a young man. The better description in verse 12 where it says a youth that's the Greek word pice and it means a child or an infant it's the same word that's used in Matthew 2 16 to describe all of the infants that Herod was slaughtering and it's the same word that was used earlier in Matthew 21 to describe those children in the temple who are calling out to Christ and so don't think of Eutychus as a young man think of him more as a very small or young child And so the point is there was at least one young child, but I suspect more, who were there when Paul was preaching. Look one chapter to the right, Acts 21. The context for this, Paul is at Tyre, he's about to head to Jerusalem, and then look at verse 5. When our days there were ended, we departed and went on our journey and they all, it says, with wives and children, they accompanied us until we were outside the city, kneeling down on the beach, we prayed and said farewell to each other.

So Paul's leaving, they've developed this great affection for him, they're sad to see him go, they escort him outside the city to say goodbye, and all of the children are with them. Now, I know what you're saying. You could be looking at this and saying, well, this is only people saying goodbye to Paul. It doesn't seem like a very strong argument for family integration or for children to be worshiping with their families. And the thing is, I agree with you about that.

But, and you say, well why don't you show us some other accounts in Acts that defend this better? Well I just showed you the only two accounts in Acts that single out children like this. The account in Acts 20 with Eutychus falling out the window, and then this account here. These are the two accounts that discuss children. And why is that?

Because everywhere else that you read in Acts, it doesn't make mention of children, it makes mention of what? Families or households is the common word, households. Everywhere else in Acts it discusses households worshiping together, praying together, and the children were part of those households. The children are never mentioned separate from their families because the children were never separate from their families. I'll read just a few of the verses.

Acts 10 to the Romans centurion, a devout man who feared God with all his household and prayed continually. Acts 16, 15, Lydia was baptized and her household. Acts 16, 34, the Philippian jailer rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God. Acts 18 8, Crispus the ruler of the synagogue believed in the Lord together with his entire household. And so the point is the pattern in Acts is for families to be together praying, worshiping, and very frequently believing or coming to salvation when the gospel is preached.

Last week when we looked at the verses in the Old Testament I said that there were no examples of children being separated from their parents for worship and that's the pattern that continues into the New Testament as well. Acts is the book of history or narratives and there is no history or examples of children worshiping separately from their parents. Now go ahead and turn to Titus 2, so Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, toward the end of Paul's epistles. Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, look in Titus 2. And I need you to bear with me for the point that I'm going to make.

It probably won't be clear at first, but it'll become evident later. So if you look here in Titus 2 verse 1, Paul says, but as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Now this is not a trick question, but in this verse when Paul says you, who is he talking about? And don't say me or us. Who's he talking about when he says you?

Huh? He's talking about Titus. Paul wrote this letter to a pastor named Titus along with Timothy and we would see the same thing if we read the book of Timothy. These are the pastoral epistles written to individuals as opposed to the church epistles that were written to churches. Look at verse 2.

Verse, older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, love, and steadfastness. Notice Paul didn't address older men like he addressed Titus because the letter was not written to these older men. Instead the letter was written to Titus and Paul is equipping Titus to shepherd these men in his congregation, older men, well. The next verse, the same thing with older women. Look in verse 3.

Older women, he doesn't address them directly. He talks about older women to Titus to tell Titus how to shepherd them as his pastor, as their pastor. He says, older women likewise be reverent behavior not slanders or slaves to much wine. Teach what's good. Verse 4, train the young women to love their husbands and children, be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, submissive to their husbands, so the word of God may not be reviled or blasphemed.

Same thing in verse 6, He says what young men should be. He says likewise urge the younger men to be self-controlled. And then in verse nine he says what bond servants should be because slaves or bond servants were so common in the Roman Empire. He says bond servants are to be submissive to their own masters and everything, to be well pleasing, not argumentative. So Paul did not address any of these people directly simply because the letter was not directed to them.

Now turn to Ephesians five. And while you turn there, not to sound overly simple, we're looking at a church epistle now, a letter that was written to a church. And so the way that it would happen in the early church was a pastor or church leader would receive this letter and without printing presses or coffee machines and with some number of people who couldn't even read the service would look much different than ours, but the pastor or church leader would stand up with this letter from Paul and then he would read this letter to the congregation. Look at verse 22, Ephesians 5, 22. Paul says, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.

And did you notice the difference? Did you notice the difference between Titus and Ephesians? What did Paul do here in Ephesians 5 that he didn't do with Titus? Come on guys, we can do better than this. He addressed them directly, right?

Why did Paul address the wives directly here when he didn't do that in his letter to Titus? Yeah, it was to them. He knew these women were gonna be present. This letter was going to be read aloud. There's that, there's different times.

One that comes to mind is Ephesians 5, or 1 Corinthians 5. Paul says, I'm not there physically, but I want you to imagine I'm there. I'm there in spirit. So there's this way in which Paul wanted it to seem as though he's there, speaking directly to these women. He knew that there were going to be women who were present there in the church and so he addresses them directly.

He doesn't say pastor of the Ephesian Church or church at Ephesus or pastors of the churches in Ephesus. Go ahead and tell this to the wise. Paul speaks directly to the wise about submitting to their husbands. Look in verse 25, he does the same thing, expecting all these husbands to be present. He says, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

He knew the husbands would be present, he addresses them directly, and now look at Ephesians 6, verse 1. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, this is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Why did Paul address the children directly? Why did Paul address the children as directly as he addressed the husbands and wives in the church?

Because he fully expected them to be there. He expected the children to be there as much as he expected the husbands, wives, and if you look in verse four, he talks to fathers as much as he expected the fathers to be present there. Now Paul didn't have to do it this way. What he could have done was say, fathers and mothers command your children to obey you because you want them to have a long life, or you want them to live long and for their lives to go well, but instead he spoke directly to the children. And as I was reflecting on that, it reveals the expectation Paul had for the children who are present to do what or to be able to do what?

Listen, Pay attention. He even thought, I mean, we read this with chapters and verses, we jump to certain parts of the letter and we look here and there and I'm thankful for all the chapter addresses and headings and numbers and so forth. But that wasn't what it was like in the early church. It was a letter that was read, and so the pastor stood up and began at what we know as Ephesians 1-1 and read through it. And I don't know what commentary he might add, but what surprised me, if he read any commentary, was that Paul expected that when he got five-sixths of the way through this book, the children would be paying enough attention that when he addressed them, they would hear that.

The word would work in their hearts, they would be convicted, they would obey. And so he clearly envisioned church services with these children present, being able to listen, being able to be convicted, being able to obey, being able to have their hearts transformed by God's word. And so if you ever hear this argument, why are there no verses in the epistles commanding churches to have children present. In other words, if you're going to argue for having children present in the worship service or argue for a family-integrated approach, one of the common arguments against that will be something like, well, show me the chapter and verse. There's no chapter and verse because it was just assumed that the children were there.

They didn't have to have chapter and verse instructing things that were the norm or the expectation that families would be together for church. Now when I ask you a question, over last week's sermon and this morning's sermon, I'm pretty convinced that the biblical pattern is for families to be together. So the question is why wouldn't we see that with all churches then? This brings us to lesson two. A family integrated church, part one, is harder for parents.

A family integrated church, part one, is harder for parents. We live in a consumer-driven society that has, I would say, sadly greatly affected the church. Most of the seeker-sensitive churches are born out of this mentality. So the questions that these churches would ask sound like this. What will be the most attractive?

What will bring in the most people? What will be the easiest for people so they want to return? What obstacles or hindrances or things they find difficult Can we remove to make things as attractive and easy for them as possible? Now I know a family integrated approach to church requires more work. It is harder to watch your kids.

It is harder to get them to pay attention to the sermon as opposed to taking those same children and dropping them off with other people to watch them throughout the service and then coming back and getting them after. I know the family integrated approach is not attractive because there are few large family integrated churches. Some of you probably know I had a position for a short period of time, or maybe it wasn't that short, for about four or five years. I was thankful for any service I could provide there with an organization that was previously called National Center of Family-Innegrated Churches. It's now called Church and Family Life, because that previous title sounded kind of awkward, which I agreed with.

But anyway, I was supposed to oversee the churches and the network in Washington, actually in California, Oregon and Washington, until California was given to someone else. And my whole reason for telling you this is over that time I came to came to know not always that well but came to be familiar with about 50 or 60 churches throughout the western United States. They're family integrated. Most of the many of the pastors were bivocational. Why is that?

Because when they had family integrated churches, they were not well attended enough, or I hate to use the word popular enough, or attractive enough to grow large enough to bring on many of these men full time. It always made me incredibly thankful to be able to pastor full time. I did the bivocational thing for a season when I was still teaching elementary school and it was exhausting. So my point is I know that it's not that attractive to many people. And I'll be honest with you about something.

I want a healthy growing church. I want my church to grow as much as the next pastor doesn't. If any pastor doesn't say that, he's probably not being honest. So why would I lead my church to do something that I know can be unattractive and probably produce a smaller church as a result. Why not do whatever will be the most attractive and provide the largest church?

Well, I'll give you three reasons. The first reason is probably obvious from last Sunday's sermon and this morning sermon that I'm convinced that this is the biblical pattern found in Scripture and so that's what we should follow. Like I said last week it's not a hill to die on, it's not in a not it's let's say a non-essential versus an essential or a second tier issue versus a first tier issue. So we're gonna hold it. I've never confronted any pastors that were not family integrated, but I am still convinced that it fits the pattern in scripture.

The second reason is this. I like my children being around. I wanna have my children with me. I like to see them. I like to know what they're doing.

I like to know who they're with. I find pleasure in just observing them doing little things. You've probably learned more about God the Father when you became a parent because before you were a parent, you might have wondered if God really took much pleasure in you doing anything besides praying and reading the word, right? Do we all kind of have that nagging suspicion that the only time God is super happy with us or super enjoys watching us is when we're doing something spiritual. And then you become a parent and you pretty much enjoy watching your children do almost anything assuming it's not bad, right?

And then you think, wow, if I can be loving and love my children, but God who is love, if I can enjoy watching the children whom I love just go about doing ordinary things, then how much more must God who is love love watching me do ordinary things? Well, The point is I just enjoy seeing my children. I like to have them around. I like to watch them with other people. I like to be familiar with the people that they're familiar with.

Now, if there's one place in all of their lives that I want my children with me second to my home, where is it? It's church. I mean, I can go to the grocery store and I like bringing them there. If I have a speaking engagement, I like to bring my children or as many as I can. But if I can only choose one other place besides my home, but I want my children with me, want them around, it's going to be church events, church activities.

I've had more people than I can count tell me how fast the time goes with your children. And what's the saying? The days are slow but the years are fast. And it's completely true. Rhea is going to be 16 in a few months.

I can't believe that I have a child that's going to be 16. I mean that means Rhea could be married in like 17 or 18 years. That is shocking to me. Now the third reason is found in this verse. Hebrews 13 17.

Obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account." And it's referring specifically to elders here. So Pastor Nathan, Jake, Andrew, and myself will give an account to God for our shepherding of this church. That is incredibly sobering. That is the most sobering responsibility after my faithfulness to Katie or my account I'll give as a husband and then the account I'll give as a father. Only third to those two responsibilities is the account that I'll give as the shepherd of this church or one of the shepherds.

Well because of that, what can't we do? We can't run a popularity contest. We can't sit back in elder meetings and say, well what's going to allow us to have the biggest church or what's going to be the most attractive or what's going to be the easiest or what's going to be the funnest. We have to ask as elders what is spiritually best for the church. What will spiritually benefit the people in our congregation the most, and that's what we must do.

And I'm convinced that what's best for this church spiritually is generally doing things as families. And I say generally, because if you weren't here last week, there are a few exceptions, like my wife. It's interesting to preach this sermon while my wife's with some other ladies at the above Ruby's retreat, and I'm thankful for that. Or we have the men's group Saturday morning. But generally doing things as families, I'm convinced, and the other elders are as well that that's best for the church spiritually.

I'll share a few other reasons I feel this way. The next part of lesson to a family integrated approach part two encourages fathers to be spiritual leaders. A family integrated church, a family integrated church encourages fathers to be spiritual leaders. Now most of you probably know I was raised Catholic I was not a Christian until God opened my heart to the gospel in early 20s and I was saved at Calvary Chapel. I'm thankful for what I learned there, especially about preaching expositionally.

But you might remember last week's sermon, I shared that whatever we first experience, we tend to think is the best. If you weren't here last week, I shared that Whatever we first experience is what we tend to think is correct or best. And because Calvary Chapel is my introduction to Christianity, I thought that whatever they did was right, and if any churches did anything differently, then they weren't doing it right. So it's kind of like, I knew there were other Christian churches out there, but it's like Calvary Chapel's first and then everyone else's second. If you're familiar with Calvary Chapel, they're very segregated.

They don't even allow children into the sanctuary. So then I go into ministry at Grace Baptist. They had hired me. They were looking for a part-time youth pastor, and I was still able to keep teaching and I had summers and holidays the same schedule as my students so it worked very well and that's when I learned that there are other solid churches out there beside I mean that was almost a hindrance to go to Grace Baptist because it wasn't a Calvary Chapel I go to Grace Baptist and it's kind of like oh wow there are some other great churches out there besides Calvary Chapel. But Grace Baptist is also pretty segregated.

I mean, they'd hired me as the youth pastor. They had children's church. The children were not present during the worship service. So that's my exposure. The only two churches I've known besides Woodland Christian Church are very segregated.

And so I've never seen anything else that's not even on my radar that families would worship together. And so of course I'm convinced that this is the way to do things. But I noticed something. When I was hired at Grace Baptist, there was this feeling like, now we have a youth pastor, now we have someone to raise our children for us. And I started to become increasingly uncomfortable with my position.

It's difficult to become disillusioned with youth minister when you're the youth pastor. Maybe, hopefully you can picture the incompatibility there. I remember this one time there was a teenager in the church who was struggling, I was sent to help him. Now, I don't know if I was even a father yet. Say nothing about having any experience dealing with teenagers.

And so I probably had no business or there was an infinite amount for me to still learn about teenagers before going over there to try to minister to this teenager. But this is the typical approach. There's going to be this youth pastor, he's going to be young, fun, and cool. And pretty much the only one of those three I had even at that time was just young. Whatever the gene is that lets you be cool and fun.

I've never had that gene. God didn't give that to me. So I was a terrible youth pastor in my estimation. So youth pastor is going to be young, fun, cool, versus what? Older, wiser, experienced, mature.

But if you get older, wiser, experienced and mature, then the fear is that you're not going to get young, fun, and cool, right? So I started learning more about men becoming spiritual leaders in their homes, and I'm developing this conviction about fathers and husbands being spiritual leaders, and there's this intense collision between the position I have and this conviction that I have. Because my conviction is about men shepherding their families, but I'm a youth pastor who's shepherding other people's children for them, And it seemed like my position was allowing men to not do what I was becoming convicted men should do. So in other words, I'm becoming convicted that men should shepherd their families, but I'm allowing men to abdicate their roles because I'm shepherding at least their children for them. So I've become even more convinced since then that if we want spiritually strong families, if we want children who are growing up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, if we want men who are spiritual leaders in the home, we should pursue a family integrated model to church.

And I'll provide three encouragements for this. The first encouragement is that it allows the church to look like the home and the home to look like the church. So Hopefully you're worshiping together as families during the week and we provide the family worship guide in the bulletin to help supplement that or help support especially the fathers because this responsibility rests on the father's shoulders. So hopefully the family worship guide can be an aid to you as you gather your family around the word of God a few times per week. And if we're worshiping as families during the week, then there's gonna be this compatibility or this parallelism between the week and the Lord's day, between the weekdays and the Lord's day, or between what's happening in our homes and what's happening in our churches.

We're going to be doing the things in the church that we're doing in our homes and the things in the home that we're doing in the church. It's not going to be identical, but we're going to have in our homes prayer, scripture reading, Bible studies, and perhaps even some singing. We don't sing probably as much as we should as a family, but we enjoy singing at times, especially as our kids are getting older and learning more instruments. Now, let's say your children don't sit perfectly in church, And if your children do not sit perfectly in church, that pretty much makes them like every other child throughout history who's ever sat in church before, okay? So don't worry or be concerned if your children are not perfect.

And the second encouragement is this. Tell your children that if they have trouble sitting in church on Sunday, then they get to practice during the week. So your couch can make a nice pew where you take your children and you have them sit there and practice. And so tell them, hey, look, if we're gonna have trouble on Sunday, you know, that's fine, that just means we need to practice as a family and so when we come home then you can put a sermon on the radio for them to listen to or something like that and maybe the first time, and if you want, we we're close to the church so we actually walk down here and This is what we did, I put my children in the pew when they had trouble sitting in church well. So we came down to the church, and if you wanna do that, Pastor Nathan, myself, or Audrey will be more than happy to open the church for you, and you can bring your kids down, sit them in a pew, and say, hey, we had trouble on Sunday, so we're just gonna practice sitting in church during the week.

And maybe the first time it's, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes, and then tell them if you have trouble again, then the next time maybe we'll make it 45 or 60 minutes or something like that. I bet they'll shape up well after that first time though. Now third, Over the last six or seven years, I've probably done about six marriage conferences per year. And the times, even when I'm not doing a marriage conference, if I'm speaking at a homeschool conference, I'll usually try to have a marriage message there too. So I've pretty much done marriage ministry more than any other ministry outside the ministry in this church.

And ladies, I mean no offense when I say this, but I've found many wives are oblivious to two things that I want to share with you. And I've actually had the same obliviousness myself. Here's why I've been oblivious. We project ourselves on others. And so I don't have the skill set to build a home, so I see men build a home, and I'm just like, that is incredible to me that they can do that.

I see guys working on cars, and I just can't believe it. Well, this is comfortable for me to be behind the pulpit, but my suspicion is that for many other men, some who could even build homes or work on cars, would look at what I'm doing right now and they would find this to be intimidating. But I never knew that. I didn't know that for a super long time, that there were men who were nervous because we project ourselves on others and because I'm comfortable doing this. I assume every other man is comfortable praying and reading the word with his family.

And I'm assuming That's one of the most enjoyable things for many fathers to do, where they would choose to do that versus go work on a car. Because for me, working on a car, doing the last things I wanna do, right? Okay, what I found is there are many women who are oblivious about how nervous their husband might be to read the word with their family or pray with their family. And it, because I'm kind of a slow learner, it took a number, it took a few years actually, it took, you know, men coming up to me at conferences and saying, you know, I hear what you're saying about men being spiritual. I hear what you're saying about praying with their families.

I hear, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid I won't know what to say. I'm afraid I won't know where to start in the Bible. I'm afraid I'm not gonna be able to answer these questions. I'm afraid I'm not gonna sound like this guy on the radio.

I'm afraid I'm not gonna sound like a pastor at church. I'm afraid I'm not gonna do it right. And what happens if this, and what if my wife says this, or what if my children say this? Well, one guy says that, and you don't think too much about it. By the time you hear the fourth or fifth guy saying that, privately to you at your booth, you recognize, wow, this is a really genuine fear that men have.

And most women don't know that. And the other thing that many women are oblivious to is the huge potential they have to influence their husbands positively or negatively. And so I don't wanna spend too much time in this because it's not the main point of the sermon, but I do wanna say this, ladies. I have met men who have said they will never open the Bible with their families again because of one comment their wives made. Just one comment.

One criticism. And so ladies, I just want to say this to you. You need to make significantly more deposits than withdrawals. I'm not saying you can't question your husband, I'm not saying you can't disagree with him, but you need to make sure you've really built him up because of how challenging it is for many men to open the Word with their families. And if your husband will open the Word with you, make sure you've let him know how much you appreciate that, make sure you praise him to the children.

Because I'm convinced if we want a strong church with strong families, what we need are families that are gathered around the Word besides just on Sunday mornings. The next part of the lesson, a family integrated church part three, surrounds children with wisdom versus foolishness. A family integrated church surrounds children with wisdom versus foolishness. So I'll share another testimony. If you're going to be a youth pastor, you've got to plan youth events, something else that I was terrible at.

Every summer, I was supposed to take the youth to camps, but I quickly became disillusioned with the youth camps that I was bringing my youth to, primarily for three reasons. One, the teaching, two, the way that the girls dressed at the camps, and then three, the way that the boys were acting toward the girls at the camp. It just seemed to me, and some of the youth in my church that I was bringing as well, probably wanted nothing more out of these youth camps than to find some girl to flirt with. And by the way that some of the girls dressed, it seemed like maybe they didn't want much more out of the youth camp than just to go and have some boy flirt with them. So I didn't like the youth camp so I was bringing my youth to and I decided to have my own youth camps, put on my own youth camp where I was in control of everything that was happening there.

Well I found really quickly that as soon as I'm gonna put on my own youth camp all of the youth, all of my youth have the same fear. Do you know what that fear is? He's going to ask my parents to chaperone. Pastor Scott is going to ask one of my parents to come to camp and be one of the chaperones. Because apparently, if you're going to have some fun as a kid, you can't have your parents around, right?

So, it was so bad that I had young people coming to me privately saying, hey look, you asked my parents last time, can you just not ask them again? Or it seems like so and so's parents have not been asked to chaperone recently, so can you leave my parents alone and go ask these other parents, right? Okay, now fast forward. I come to Woodland Christian Church. We go to family camp, we go to beach camp, and what are the young people afraid of?

My dad's gonna have to work and he's not gonna be able to come to camp with us. Now which one of these do I want to foster? What do I want to see in my church? Do I want a culture where children's greatest fear is not having their parents around. I could go a little further and say that in family-integrated churches, not only do young people want their parents around, they generally want people of all ages around.

In family and go to churches, young people are learning to be more comfortable around older people, younger people, and I like that. I want my children around older people, wiser people, experienced people that they can learn from. I want my children around infants. I want my children to be comfortable with infants. I like to see the young people in the church comfortable with babies and around them.

That's one way, as we kind of talked about last week, to foster a better view of children. When young people are older, or excuse me, when young people are around older, more mature people, it raises the young people's level of maturity. If you want to see your children grow, spiritually speaking, not physically, you do want to see them grow physically too, but anyway. If you want to see them grow emotionally, mentally, and most importantly spiritually, put them around, we want them around people who are more mature or older emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Listen to this interesting verse I was studying this past week.

Psalm 144 verse 12. May our sons in their youth be like plants full-grown. May our sons in their youth be like plants full-grown. Our daughters like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace. So the psalmist said that he wanted the youth, or wanted people who are young, to be like their full-grown, which is to say to be mature when they're young.

It sounds confusing, but what he's saying is we want people who are young to be mature. He says the same thing about daughters. He says that when they're young, that they would be still strong pillars to fortify the palace. Does this world want your children to grow up and be responsible and ensure? Just shake your head and say no.

The world is working the other direction. The current is going down, pulling your children that way. We have to work hard against the current to raise them, mature them. And one of the best ways to do that is to have them around older people. Now another verse, Proverbs 13, 20, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

So when children are around wise people, they grow in wisdom, but if they're regularly around fools or foolish people, then they're going to suffer harm. Well, I don't want to sound harsh, but What is bound up in the heart of a child? Foolishness. So if you have a whole, no offense to the children here, the Bible says it's not me, and I was a child too, and so were all the other adults here, but what do you have if you have a whole bunch of children together? You got a whole bunch of, it's like a pool of foolishness, right?

So that's what the Bible says. We don't want, we want children to be together, have friends. We talked about this last week, but we want them to be constantly pulled up toward maturity, which we can accomplish by having them be around older, wiser, more mature people. Now a few years ago, Andrew Chris shared a testimony with me. It stuck out to me so much that I've asked him to share it again this morning, so he's going to come up and do that briefly.

So, just a kind of an…our life, a little bit of our experience. So When my wife and I were a bit younger before we had children and before God brought us here to Woodland Christian Church, we were greatly challenged how Christ worked with his disciples and kept them with him during his ministry, and just the example that he had with that. We also started observing many families around us, many families in our church. We had this privilege where we taught a class of two and three-year-olds, and we taught a class in the youth group. We got to see small children and older children and just observe and take notes of what was going on in their lives.

As we took and watched things, we appreciated the families around us and just tried to make notes of what worked well and what didn't work well. And observed, what do we want to have in our family? We started off a family and we started growing. One of the observations that we made was that a few of the families that didn't feel led to put their children in with the age segregated classes, Instead they'd have their children with them and have them sit with them and through Sunday school or whatever in the services of the church. And we saw a stark difference between these families and their children.

Sorry. These families thought that was important. The children were better behaved, more respectful. They didn't have as much peer pressure going on, and didn't have as much peer pressure as the other children in the programs that were there at the church, and also that the parents were more involved in the lives of the children. We greatly appreciated the families who had their children stay with them and the character that was being developed in them.

These families had fathers who shouldered the responsibility of raising and leading their families. Through these examples and in God's Word and prayer, we felt led to intentionally minister and worship at our church with our children with us. And this is the church we were previously at. And even though this wasn't the norm. So after our move, we moved up here and moved into this area and started coming to Woodland Christian Church.

We saw that they enjoyed doing things here as families, and that was something that was very attractive of us. Though it wasn't something that was essential for worship, we wanted to check out what did they believe and what is his doctrine, but it was a great blessing to see that we did things together as families, because that example in their lives is just important. Them not just see me go off and serve in different places, but be able to serve with me and catch that vision. I just felt That was a crucial thing for us. All right, and then the last part of lesson two, a family integrated church part four gives the familyless a family.

Gives the familyless a family. I don't know if family list is a word, but you know what I'm saying there, right? People without families, it gives them a family. So in October, Katie and I, we tried to take a trip together just the two of us once or twice a year, and we were able to go to Nebraska for this homeschooling conference on Friday and Saturday, and then I was invited to guess preach at a local church on Sunday. Now, the church that I preached at, I would guess the average age was probably 60-something.

So, there were not many children in the church. In fact, we can only see two families that had children in the church. One of those families was the family that had invited me to preach, and so we spent quite a bit of time with them. Now, Katie and I felt bad for this family's children because we suspected that they were going to be considerably grieved about not having many friends because there were not many children in the church. So Katie asked them how they felt about attending that church.

And we were shocked by their answer. They said, we love it, we feel like we have all these grandparents. We love it, we feel like, and I think they might even have said a number, like 40 or 50 grandparents. And we thought that answer was great. So, I wanted to be a pastor, or I wanted to be a pastor not long after I became a Christian, and I've wanted for years for that church that I pastor to be a family.

I wanted families to come in and become part of a larger family so that everyone who joins the church gets more brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, children. You know, Tammy is probably fine. She shared it during the prayer thing. Tammy Britt shared this praise this morning about how she's felt so alleviated of the pain that she's been experiencing. Well, because we've all been praying for Tammy, in a sense it's like celebrating that your grandmother's feeling much better.

Maybe your mother. How old does Tammy want to be? Does she want to be a grandmother or mother to us? So it feels like, wow, well, you're kind of celebrating that this woman you love who's become very dear to you is much more comfortable and feeling much better. So that's what happens when you become part of a church family.

Now you have all these brothers, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, children you celebrate when other children are born. We're expecting our tenth child, so we already have a big family. So I don't sit back and say, I never sit back and say I'm lonely, right? I'm generally trying to find time or make time for the kids I have and then find time for the people I feel responsible toward in the church. But who could be lonely?

Single people. The Church can provide the relationships that they need. And I mention this and want to stress this because there's kind of this idea that family integrated churches are for families, but they don't work for single people or they don't work for people without children. That is the opposite of the truth. Picture someone coming to church alone.

This person needs the church more than families do Because a family that comes to church together has each other. But single people don't. The church needs to become their family. The children in the church need to become their children. The grandparents in the church, like these young girls said, need to become their grandparents.

The church gives them the relationships that they might not have otherwise. And you think about some people, maybe they have a family, but they're the person in their family that gets saved, and the rest of their family is not saved. Well, now there's this huge separation between them and their physical family. The church becomes the spiritual family for them. So if you're here without a spouse or without children, I wanna encourage you, view the church as your family.

View the church as the place that God has given you and graciously filled it with brothers and sisters and every other relationship for you I want to provide some biblical support for this. Luke 8.19, Jesus' mother and brothers came to him. So Jesus is teaching, you know the reception when he's in Nazareth, he's not well received, it's so bad, that's his hometown, they take him up on a cliff and they want to murder him because they're not going to perform miracles there. So he leaves, he begins his ministry, he's away from his family, I suspect about 18 months at this time. They thought, there's one verse in Mark that says that Jesus' family thought that he had lost his mind Because he wasn't eating and sleeping and he's carrying on this ministry because they didn't know He'd grown up as just Jesus to them.

He didn't grow up as a son of God or Messiah to them So there's this day that Jesus is teaching and he hasn't seen his family all this time Luke a 19 Jesus's mother and brothers came to him. They could not approach him because of the crowd. Jesus was told, someone came and told Jesus while he's teaching, your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you. Now, what would you expect Jesus to say? If you didn't know this account, what's he gonna say?

Oh, well, hey, there's people listening to him teach, and he says, hey, I'm sorry you're not gonna believe this, I haven't seen my family in months. They just showed up, they're waiting outside, we'll continue this later, I wanna go say hi to them, or I wanna go bring them in, or let's pick this up tomorrow, something along those lines. Instead, he said, my mother and my brothers are these who hear the Word of God and do it. In an incredibly shocking statement, Jesus minimized all of his earthly relationships and elevated all of his spiritual relationships to the point where he said that his spiritual relationships or those that he has with people of faith, are supreme even to his biological relationships. And so it is biblical to come to church.

So sometimes you can feel bad. And I went through this for a season before my parents became Christians. And I still don't have a very good relationship with most of my family who's all Catholic and are upset that I left the Catholic Church. And you can kind of feel bad about that because you develop these super close relationships with people in the church. They're the ones you want to be with.

They're the ones that you feel closer to. They're the ones that you have Christ in the gospel in common with. You don't feel the commonality with these other people that don't have a heart for Christ, and you feel bad about it, and I just want to say this. Don't. Don't feel bad about it.

Strive to preach the gospel to these people, pray that God saves them, but understand, as important as our physical family members are, even Christ himself elevated his spiritual family members. So let me close with this beautiful truth about family. If you've repented of your sins and you've put your faith in Christ, then you're adopted into the spiritual family of God. Jesus is your brother. Hebrews 2.11 says, He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, and God the Father has become your Father.

If you have any questions about anything I shared this morning or I can pray for you in any way I'll be up right after service and would consider a privilege to speak with you. Hey by the way this is a good place to, it's actually kind of nice to have this opportunity while a baby's crying to say what I always say, right? Which is what? I'm glad a baby's crying on this Sunday. It was a baby, right?

It's not an adult. If you're an adult and you're convicted of sin and you're crying, then that's, we celebrate that too. But anytime we hear babies here, we're thankful for them. We love them. Just looking on the prayer board during the prayer meeting this morning, there's always this number of expecting mothers.

And then there's always these mothers who were expecting, who've had their babies and we're always praying for them and it's God just keeps that keeps those women in the church we're super thankful for that super thankful for all the babies that we can hear hear and hear hear and see here father thank you for the children you bless us with thank you for the the church family you bless us with this privilege to serve here, to be one of the elders. I just think of all the churches I could have been called to. You brought me to this one, Lord, sovereignly, providentially and you've done the same with each person here, Lord. Nobody's here coincidentally or randomly. I don't know what was going on in people's lives before they came to this church, whether today or whether years or decades in the past, but it was your sovereign hand that has worked in their lives for them to be here today and hopefully for other Sundays if you're calling them here, Lord.

And confirm that with each person that if this would be their church family they can commit themselves here and love and serve and build relationships here Lord keep us together keep give us unity strengthen the relationships between us as we are brothers and sisters in Christ help us to be able to in the language of Romans 12 rejoice with those who rejoice Weep with those who weep because when other people are, whether they're marrying or pregnancies or having children, we can rejoice with them because we are family members and we celebrate with them and we can weep with them as well and walk through those valleys with them Lord. I do thank you for our church family here. Pray that you help this just to be an established vision for us to do things as families and I thank you for Christ and that he's adopted us into your family where you can be our Father. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen.