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The mission of Church & Family Life is to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for both church and family life.
Transitioning to a Family-Integrated Church
Oct. 6, 2023
00:00
-54:23
Transcription

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches presents, Transitioning to a Family Integrated Church, a message given by Carlton McLeod at the Power of the Gospel Conference. Well good morning everyone. How are y'all? Good. All right.

The ground is white outside. Isn't that great? I love it. I love it. The Lord is so kind to us to give us such creativity in such a variety.

This morning you're in for a real treat. We have Dr. Carlton McLeod in from the Calvary Revival Church in Chesapeake. He comes, I'm excited to hear you Dr. McLeod.

Highly recommended by our friend Scott Brown and anyone who's a friend of Scott Brown is highly recommended is good for us. He's going to talk to us about transitioning in a family integrated church. Dr. McLeod is a sinner saved by grace. He has a wife and he has children and he has a great burden for the truth and the gospel and all things that we are to do we are to do with excellence as unto the Lord and this can be some tricky navigation so we're grateful for the wisdom that the Lord has given you and your preparation So would you join me in prayer and then we'll bring up Dr.

McCloud. Lord, we thank you, Father. We thank you that you've given us your word to guide us, Father, and you've given us transcendent truths so that we are not to rely on our own wisdom or the capriciousness of our thoughts, Lord, and yet you have put together men who have studied hard like Dr. McLeod and have labored in your word to bring forth your truth. And so we just ask that you would bless his lips now, open our hearts to your truth, Father, and that we would walk out of here more edified, more conformed unto the image of Christ, and Lord, more ready and equipped to glorify you.

And we ask it all in Christ's name, amen. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. McCloud. All right, thank you so much. Let's get that out of the way here.

Good morning, come on in everyone. It's room enough for all and everybody get any sleep? Anybody get any good sleep last night? Tell the truth. You got a couple, okay, praise the Lord.

I didn't sleep well the first night, but last night I was out like a light. So thank you, I'm refreshed this morning. My name's Carlton, and I have the honor to speak to you on a subject that's near and dear to my heart this morning, transitioning to a family integrated church. I'm cognizant that we have a keynote at 1030 and so what I'd like to do is give you kind of the foundation, tell you a little bit about my church and how our journey went and what we learned. Give you some principles that really blessed us and helped us.

And then hopefully, assuming that there are a few of you in this room who may want to take this journey, have a few time, a little bit of time for questions at the end. So if you have your Bibles, I want to read four texts of scripture and they're not long, we're not going to do an extensive exegesis of any of them but They kind of give us a framework for the first key doctrine that results in a church that transitions to family integration or any sort of reformation for that matter. And that would be the sufficiency of scripture. So really quickly, turn with me to Psalms 19 and I'll read verses 7 through 11 and then from there a familiar passage in 2 Timothy 3, 2 Timothy 4 and Acts 20. So real quick we just want to read the word of God to get a foundation and then I'll just kind of talk to you from my heart for just a few moments.

Psalms 19 verses 7 through 11 says, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The Testimony of the Lord is sure, making the wise simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. Fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.

The rules of the Lord are true and righteous all together. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned. In keeping them, there is great reward. Now turn with me to 2nd Timothy chapter 3 familiar passage here verses 16 and 17 we'll Read that quickly.

I'm reading from the ESV, by the way, if you're wondering. 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17 says, "'All scripture is breathed out by God "'and is profitable for teaching and for reproof, "'for correction and for training in righteousness, "'that the men of God may be competent "'and equipped for every good work.'" 2 Timothy 4, one of my favorite passages of scripture, It's the one I have printed on my Bible. Love this so much. Verse two, 2 Timothy 4 and 2, preach the word. Love that.

Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. And oh, by the way, if you have any desire to transition to a family integrated church that word patience is going to be key but more on that momentarily and then who can forget Paul's wonderful words to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20 as he ended the end of his time with them, nearing the end of his time with them, warning them day and night with tears. Verse 26 of Acts 20 says, Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of you all. For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God the whole counsel of God pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood.

Now friends these four passages of Scripture to me and there are many others in our Bibles of course but these four passages of scripture to me were key to our transition to a family integrated church because what each and every one of them does in their context is they promote the doctrine that drew most of us to this movement, the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture where we declare that everything that's necessary for life and ministry flows from the precepts, the principles, and the patterns of the word of God. And these are scriptures that are read in lots of good churches, but few of us in modern Christianity seem to take them where they really want to take us, which is to say that God's word is absolutely sufficient. We don't need anything else besides his word. And when we look at his word and see his heart reflected, then even our orthopraxy will be reformed because God has given us the patterns that make for ministry that please him. So reading these passages of scripture at our church really, really helped us have the resolve to go forward in this area of moving the church to a more biblical model.

Now let me explain to you where I'm coming from, because about the last thing our church was was family integrated. Our church began in 1997. I was 27, 28 years old. I had, and I'm just being transparent with you, I had read Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life, Purpose Driven church rather, I don't know, five times, six times. Mine was completely worn out with highlights and pin marks.

And I gotta do this, and I gotta do that. And I'm not trying to bash Rick Warren. I'm just telling you my story. And so our church was very programmatic, it was very pragmatic, it was loud, it was crazy. You guys are going to think I'm exaggerating.

I had turntables over here. Some of you don't even know what turntables are, that's okay. But those things that DJs use, OK, I had that in one side of the place. And it was just crazy. I mean, any given Sunday, there were balloons.

I mean, I don't know. Whatever we thought could pique the interest of the casual, unregenerate person. Oh, that church looks pretty hip, pretty cool. Let's go over there this Sunday and see what they're about. And so I'm coming from what many of us now look back upon and say, wow, how did that happen to the church?

That was me. That was me. You know, our dress, I know I wore jeans, you know, hat turned around backwards. It was really just, and So for me to stand here and talk about transitioning to a family integrated church is actually quite funny because if you saw me in my early years, you'd, oh, that boy's going straight to hell. Okay, so that's where I'm coming from and I'm proof positive that the Lord can get a hold of a humble heart and change that humble heart and turn it and make it into what he wants it to be.

Beginning Somewhere around the 10 year mark of the history of our church, having now had a few years under my belt, having now had another decade of studying scripture, of wrestling with the Lord, of praying, of fasting, of crying out, of seeing the fruit, or the lack thereof in our ministry in some areas. Somewhere around 2008, 2009, God really led us to reevaluate what was going on in our church. And the review wasn't pretty. I recall asking my then youth pastor to come into my office and we're gonna pray and we're gonna talk about what's going on with our kids because so many of them had fallen away. They participated in all of our cool programs.

I mean, we had everything going. If we could figure out a way to get a few Nintendos in the classroom, I don't know what that had to do with Jesus, but it was cool, right? And so we were doing all that stuff. But the fruit of it, very quickly, we began to see wasn't so good. They didn't know the word.

They didn't seem very interested in the word. And some of the reviews, some of that review of what happened to those precious children broke our hearts. And that was the start for me. When, despite our coolness, our hipness, when I started to name names, well what happened to little James? Oh, well, you didn't hear?

He's a homosexual. Well, wait a minute. So what happened to little Tamika? Oh, you didn't, you don't, bachelor, you don't, remember what happened there? She's wicked now.

Okay, What? You mean the same little girl that came to our cool hip youth lock-in? Yeah, that one. So what happened to this one? Oh, she's pregnant on her second child now.

That one. You know, last I heard they were firm in their atheism. This one. He's dabbling in the five percenter movement. Lord, what is this?

We didn't start this church to lose people. We started this church to see youth saved and delivered from the power of darkness. What is this? And I tell people today, I did this crazy thing as a result of that review. I ran back to the word of God.

And it started a transformative, life altering change for our church that now 17 years in is still standing and still doing pretty well by God's grace, but it looks nothing like it did before because God got ahold of us and ensured that we knew that his word was sufficient. And so that heart, those heartbreaking moments where the fruit of our ministry we had to count and look at and it didn't look so good forced us then to return to the overseer of our souls and say, okay master, what did we do wrong? And oh, by the way, we repent. We repent, we messed this up. Our motives may have been okay, but our orthopraxy not so much.

And what We did with your word mattered to the extent that lives were lost or at least to that point. So we repented and we turned and it was sad to acknowledge that much of the fruit that we had seen or much of the results that we had seen in our church mirrored the results that were at that time, this was mid 2000s, the results were coming in from evangelical churches about youth. Crisis in youth was just starting to hit social media and Christian websites. And the big 70% to 80% number had just come out, or had been out, but it was just really taking on steam. And I ran into a book providentially by a guy named Vody Baca.

And so my leanings of trying to figure out what was going on, Vody's book, By the Grace of God, really helped push me over the line and say, okay, we have to do this differently. And that's a book called Family Driven Faith. Many of you probably read it. So despite the cool music, despite how loud and crazy it was, despite the party that we had going on, kids were dying, and families weren't as anchored down in the word as they thought. It looked great on the outside.

Oh man, they really have a cool thing. People were coming and so forth. But underneath it all, it was pretty hollow. And something wasn't right. And so those texts of scripture that we'll mention a little bit again in a moment.

But those texts of scripture, among many others, really transformed us and helped us. And by the way, aren't you glad God is merciful? Just wave at me if you're glad God is merciful. I'm glad he's merciful. One of the things that I've been impressed at this particular year at the conference is how transparent the speakers have been even we who hold to this is sufficiency of Scripture susceptible to thinking we have it all down and we don't and so we have to continue to stay before a holy God even now I tell our church we may be family integrated and we may We may understand manhood better and womanhood better and we may have a lot of homeschoolers and we're doing education and all of those things But don't think for a moment.

We have it all down Because as soon as you do that, that's the pathway of pride and we know what comes after that this little thing called destruction So that's what happened in utter frustration we ran back to the word of God. Now just a couple of quick thoughts again. We don't have the time to exegete all of these texts, but just a couple of quick thoughts on the text. And then I want to give you 10 principles to transitioning to church that flow out of the understanding of the sufficiency of scripture. So just a few thoughts on those texts.

And then I hope to have time for it. I want to get that done because I hope some of you may have questions, and I hope we have a little time for that at the end. So anyway, when We look at the group of scriptures that we read and we begin to look at the first one, Psalms 19, we find out that the Bible's testimony about itself is that God's word is perfect, that God's word is sure, that God's word is right, that God's word is pure. That God's word, and I know this is, forgive me for sounding so simple, but at the time of all the chaos of our church, I needed simple, I didn't need complicated. And so God's word is clean, God's word is true, God's word has more value than gold.

God's word is sweeter than the honey from the honeydew and in that word or in his word there is the revival of the soul, there is the wisdom that we need to make substantive changes to the glory of Christ, There is joy, there is revelation from the heart of God, there is an eternal perspective that begins to have the power to shift some of our pragmatism now. The Apostle Paul taught his young protege in 2 Timothy, the sufficiency of scripture, that all of the Bible comes from the mouth of God and should be used for all of life and all of ministry so that our works are good unto him. He proclaimed with boldness that the word of God must be preached in its entirety, in season and out of season. In other words, when things are going great and when everybody loves what you're saying and then when things are not going so well, nevertheless the word of God must be preached. And we'll kinda talk about that because Transitioning a church in any way has lots of pitfalls associated with it and then removing all of our youth ministries.

Oh my goodness, the Word of God needed to be preached in season and out of season and there are many out of season moments as we started the process. But the implication is that regardless of the opposition, regardless of cultural norms, regardless of popular trends, regardless Even the opinions of the preacher, regardless of all of these things, the word of God must be preached in purity and the word of God must be preached in fullness. And so again, these are very simple things from those groups, that group of texts that I gave you. But I'm giving you my mindset. I was in a place where I didn't need a, we were in crisis.

We were losing children. Families were in disarray. Husbands didn't know how to be husbands. Wives didn't know how to be wise. We didn't really understand submission.

We were more egalitarian, you know, we had become more egalitarian. So it was all kinds of things going on and I needed the word of God. I needed the simple instruction of the word of God and sometimes we make things too complicated. The word stands as it is, it reflects the heart of God, it needs to be preached and it needs to be lived out. And so we must not simply preach the things that make for an easier time, which was always the challenge of the preacher.

But we must preach the things that constitute all of God's counsel to us. Again, as I mentioned earlier, Paul day and night with tears warned the Ephesian elders of coming trials with false teachers and reminded them of his own fidelity to scripture that they might go and do likewise in Acts chapter 20. And I was struck by that. I was struck by the thought that I may have allowed something false in our church and that the result of that could be just as damaging as a false teacher who takes away something precious from precious families. The question concerning a journey towards family integration really isn't at its core about family integration.

The question truly is, and this is where our church, we had to answer this question, Are the scriptures sufficient for you? You are probably familiar, most of you, with the Westminster Confession of Faith and I can't think of a document that says it much better. With respect to the scriptures, it declares, the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith in life is either expressly set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture unto which nothing at any time is to be added whether by new revelations of the spirit or the traditions of men and I had both going on in my church. And so the need for us to repent before the Lord as an elder team to stand before the church and say here's where we've gotten off, here's where we've blown it We ask for your forgiveness, and we pray in Jesus name that you would walk with us Toward this new journey, and we were by the way this was happening not just with keeping our children with us in the main services. This was going on in our perspective concerning marriage, what a man is, what a woman is, what is worship.

How do you do this properly in a way that honors the Lord and moves man out of the way? So it was topsy-turvy there for a while, but again, God is merciful. And so in summary, just in that short discussion on those four scriptures, In summary, it is the holding to the sufficiency of Scripture, the understanding of the sufficiency of Scripture, the belief that God has given us everything we need for proper and good and God-honoring ministry in the Word of God that kind of formed and laid out our pathway, and then it was a very natural thing. Once the church understood that, once we really anchored down there, then lining up ministry, lining up the execution of ministry according to the principles and the precepts of the pattern of the word became what we must do and indeed we did. And so any questions so far?

All good? Okay, so let's get into the meat of it then. How do we do this? Because we were a standard, again, programmatic, age-segregated church. How do we do this?

Well, there are ten things that I jotted down that I hope will be a blessing to you. Yes, sir, I'm sorry. Yes, absolutely, Absolutely. The four scriptures that really helped us. Psalms 19, verses 7 through 11.

2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17. 2 Timothy 2, or I'm sorry, 2 Timothy 4, verse 2. And Acts 20, verses 26 through 28. And there were many, many others but those are the ones that came back over and over and over again as encouragement to us to take this journey. Okay?

So let me give you 10 things that we did, 10 keys to transitioning to a family integrated church. And I'm coming from the perspective that your church is currently not family integrated or age integrated. These are the things that we did. And some of these I knew then, some of these I found out the school of hard knocks and so we'll talk about that here momentarily. The first one we've already covered and that is, and this is the big one, embrace the sufficiency of scripture.

That's the big one. If you decide to transition your church to an age integrated one, take the time to teach this doctrine. You have to believe it. You have to teach it. You have to give time for a congregation that may or may not be familiar with it, depending on your background, that may or may not be familiar with it to become familiar with it.

We went all, in our church, we went all the way back to the Reformation and Martin Luther and the five solas and began to work our way forward, which in our ministry context, a lot of our saints hadn't heard before. Again, that might sound strange to this group, but coming from where I come from, you know, that's something in a history book somewhere, not necessarily something that we hold to or see as vital today. And so we went back and we did lessons on the five solas and worked our way forward. We took the time to look at what the Bible says about youth and their discipleship, which really resonated with parents as that teaching began to unfold. And we just didn't do this once.

We did this over and over again in various contexts as we were praying our way towards this precious biblical model. But if you can solidify scripture's sufficiency in the hearts of the people of God, the whole process then becomes much, much easier because it's just then a matter of pointing to what the Bible says and what the Bible promotes. So that's the big one. Many Christians feel like they already hold to the doctrine but again that will be challenged okay there's a whole I thought I did too and so but again I held to it in declaration not necessarily in action if that makes any sense And I think that is a large part of the modern church today. We hold to, oh yeah, we believe the Bible.

And this is the word of God. This is the whole, and we got preachers who say, hold up your Bible and never preach from it. I mean, so this is kind of part of what Christianity has become in our culture. So there's a lot of folks who think they hold to it, but then to take the time to process the word and then begin to live by what it says and then to be very cautious concerning what it doesn't say is quite the journey and can be again depending on your ministry context. So that's the first one, that's the big one.

If you get that one, then this whole process becomes a lot easier, okay? Number two, One of the things we did was we lovingly, after we figured it out and repented, we lovingly demonstrated the fallacies of the unbiblical models. Now, when you say the word unbiblical, I'm not pointing fingers, nor am I trying to be accusatory. I'm just saying it's, when I say unbiblical, I'm saying it's not in scripture. That's all I mean by that.

And so what we did was we took the time to say, here's where we erred. And the way we went about that was we didn't say, you know, Kevin Swanson did this so wonderfully yesterday at the Burnings and Soul luncheon where he told that the story that he had in his mind, this idea that his church was somehow better than and he had to repent of that. So we never wanted to get into that because we knew that would take us to a dark place, an unbiblical place that didn't honor God. So we weren't pointing fingers at this church is wrong, this church is wrong. We just said, hey, here's where we went wrong and here's what our previous model, here's the damage that it wrought.

And so we took the time to point out the fallacies and the lack of fruit as best we could so that people could understand the problem. Why are you shifting? What's so bad about what we're doing? Okay, I have to tell you why we're shifting and what's so bad about what we're doing. Here's what we've seen and here's the trap that we fell into and here's the widening of the generation gap that this model promoted and here's and here's and here's and here's and so we took the time to do that.

We used statistics. We used the latest world view research. We cited some personal experiences. We did a bunch of things to try to help the church see that this pragmatism that we're walking in created pitfalls for us that we didn't even understand were being created at the time. Again, we took care, at least in our experience, in our church, we took care not to try to bash every church.

Now I mean it's kind of hypocritical to just barely be stepping out of something that you championed for years and go, you guys are horrible, right? And so we, that just didn't seem like the right spirit, didn't seem like it would be God-honoring. So we, as we were moving away, we focused more on what we did wrong and we took care to not give off a we somehow have something that nobody else has kind of spirit. Very off-putting and not necessarily, I think, the best reflection of the heart of Christ. So we took time to do that.

It wasn't, in our view, us against them. It was just, here's what God's doing with us. And we kind of left it at that, and people make up their own minds. I've been in circles, and I've seen situations in good, strong, family-integrated, you know, solo scripture or declaring churches where the air seems to be, we're the only ones that are doing something that honors God. And all the rest of you people are wrong.

And you know, I would just submit to you, we need to be careful there. We just need to be careful there. So we took the time to lovingly demonstrate the fallacies of the unbiblical model or the model that we don't see supported in scripture and That was a blessing to our church. A lot of people, the light started to come on. They're, wow, OK, I see.

Sufficiency of scripture, OK. And so this is not supported by scripture. You're not throwing everybody in hell who does this. You're just saying this is not what the Bible seems to prompt. Right, OK, got you, pastor.

OK, we're with you. And so that was the second thing that we focused on, okay? Now as you move into beginning to declare the sufficiency of scripture, demonstrate the fallacies of the unbiblical model, the lack of fruit thereof, the poor fruit thereof, the bad fruit thereof. You may, and again I'm assuming I'm talking to a few of you at least that are thinking about this. Number three is don't be fooled by the early adopters.

Okay, I'm going to give you some tales from behind the woodshed here. Don't be fooled by the early adopters. It is a long journey. Don't be fooled by the early adopters. Patience is going to be needed.

The Bible declares better is the end of a thing than its beginning and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. First Corinthians 13 says love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast and it is not arrogant. We had a few folks that as soon as they came, yes, this is just what we need brother. Yeah, here we go.

I've been waiting for this. Let's go. And several of those people are no longer even in my church. You know, it's kind of like the pastor who wants to start a building program and yeah, let's go till it's time for the money to be given, then it's, well, maybe not, right? And you get hung out there and so, I had a few folks that fooled me.

They were like, this sounds great. Oh my goodness, I get to sit with my toddlers. This is gonna be peaceful and quiet and beautiful. And so there was like this initial flurry of enthusiasm that I was taken in a little bit by. And then as it began to be, the process began to unfold and we started shutting down ministries slowly starting with our teens, working our way through our middle schoolers down into grade school and so forth, then as the rubber started to introduce itself to the road, some of the earlier adopters had wrinkled up noses.

Okay. So don't be fooled there. Patience is going to be needed. Once our elders made the decision to go forward, we slowly, as I said, closed one youth ministry at a time beginning with the teenagers and explaining that to them and loving on them and pulling them in to sit by their mom and dad and integrating them into the service of the church and the ministries of the church and then several months after that we shut down the middle school ministry, everybody knew it was coming and the last to go were the toddlers and finally kicking and screaming the nursery which was the most difficult one because all of a sudden those beautiful little babies that like to make beautiful little sounds were all of a sudden among us. And so we had to, that was an adjustment for folks who view kind of the corporate ministry as their chance to relax and have peace and calm and so forth as opposed to seeing the beauty of having our children sit with us and to hear the preaching of the word and be involved in the worship of God and so forth.

So don't be fooled by the early adopters. It is a long journey. If I'm talking to a few pastors here today, please learn from some of my pain. Even while we were teaching and encouraging the saints along the way with all of the biblical wise throughout the process, we started to see after the initial flurry of enthusiasm, some complaints began to rise up. And I found out that those complaints were there right from the start.

It just took a while for them to begin to come out and we started to see complaining even among those who were initially enthusiastic. So again, some of those amens weren't quite so loud as we got into the process and then they were all still saying yes, the sufficient scripture, Yes, I understand you're saying yes, we're gonna honor God by his word, but I don't like this. Okay, so just understand that that's a distinct possibility. Number four, this is very important. This is very important.

Understand the nuances of the family-integrated progression. And I'm going to explain that, but this is something I learned after the fact. I went in almost totally blind here. So understand the nuances of the family integrated progression. Okay, Carlton, what do you mean by that?

Okay, the fundamental doctrine that starts this ball rolling is that the Bible is sufficient. Here's what I didn't see. I was so focused on fixing youth and family that I didn't see that once you start down this road, and it's a wonderful road, it is the only road to travel, but once you start down this road of holding up the Bible as sufficient, God has a way of working his word into everything. And I'm saying that with a smile on my face because I can recall that okay our kids are sitting with us and this is more wholesome and this is this is great and we did it but what are those fathers supposed to do with those children? Well the Bible tells us, oh we gotta rework manhood.

He can't be passive, he can't be run over in his own home, what is that, and what is a mom supposed to do there? And that was a nuance that we missed, but there's more. The sufficiency of scripture begins to touch everything. Worship we were looking at with, hmm, that doesn't, did that song sound like it, that was, hmm, did that honor God? Changing over there because the sufficiency of scripture, the word of God found its way into reformation there.

How we were organized. Education. We can't very well bring them into our, what does the Bible say about that? Worked its way out there. See this is an area that I didn't see at the start.

Embracing the sufficiency of scripture will often cause a few other biblical but culturally difficult mindsets to develop. And depending on where you're coming from, for me, this was a shock to my church's system for many of you, maybe not. But if you look at us now from then and we see all these homeschools and so forth, man, we gained that understanding over bloody, bloody battles. Because in my community, public education is king. But the sufficiency of Scripture and the Spirit of God moving through his word in our church had something different planned for us that I didn't understand when all I wanted to do is just sit little Johnny by his daddy.

Okay, and so the whole thing began, and I found myself in this changing environment and it was all tethered to the word and it was pure and honorable before the Lord, but for a pastor, for any of you pastors in this room, it all of a sudden now, because you're thinking, oh, wait a minute, because now dad is thinking, well, Johnny's sitting beside me, but why am I sending Johnny to the public schools to be indoctrinated and why is this and why is that and why and I, oh by the way, what is marriage really and what are my real duties and so all of a sudden what things that you maybe didn't anticipate are front and center. Again an example, family integration or more accurately the outworking of the sufficiency of scripture will likely lead to examination of government education. It might lead to more defined roles for men and women. It will possibly lead to inculcating a biblical world view when before you didn't, you know, everyone thinks they have a biblical world view. But in my church, which is predominantly black, having to deal with government issues as we discuss jurisdictions because that's a sufficiency of scripture thing was difficult and is difficult to this day.

And I didn't see that when all I was trying to do was sit Susie by her mommy and start a process of family worship and discipleship in the home. All of that broke loose because of the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture. And it's been good and it's been healthy, I'm just warning you it's coming. Okay? It's coming.

For example, embracing a culture of life naturally flows from loving children and wanting them to be among us and wanting to disciple them and wanting to spend time in worship with them and we found ourselves at abortion clinics and flying in the face of so-called community leaders who are telling us one thing why our disproportionate number of black babies are being murdered in abortion. If you'd have told me 10 years prior to this, or at the start even of the family integration process that we would end up in a place where we were fighting, fighting, fighting and working with crisis pregnancy centers and so forth. I would have not been, I would have been okay with that but I wouldn't have seen the total transformation that would come upon us. Now again, for many of you, these are things that you may have held to strongly for a long, long period of time before a guy who was in, who had a certain view of scripture and had a certain model of ministry and to transition out of it, the understanding and knowing that there's more ahead than you think, I think will be a good thing going forward.

The same view of scripture that moves the church towards family integration will move it in other areas and wise elders and leaders and pastors understand that and I didn't so you have been warned. Number five, prepare to love people in the midst of conflict. This is a simple principle but you can if you decide to if you're currently an age-segregated church and somewhat programmatic maybe even a little pragmatic you can just go ahead on and bank on some conflict. Hopefully it will be minimal, hopefully there will be love throughout the process, hopefully it'll go smooth but it's coming and so prepare And I was a little naive here. I thought I could pull this off.

Eh, it's not going to be a problem. No one's going to leave. Nah, they'll just see the word of God is sufficient and everybody will be, no, that didn't happen. Okay? It appeared that it did happen the first six months and then we started losing families.

And I started hearing stuff like, you know, I just don't feel the love anymore. What does that mean? We haven't, what are you talking about? You know, I just, you know, I just, I just, y'all, it's just too much change, it's too much. And that was difficult.

So prepare to love people in the middle of that. The church could appear to some families even though in your mind it isn't, but the church could appear to some families to be changing very rapidly even though the original intent was simple, just families worshiping together. Some might feel abandoned by the new direction. Some might feel it's become political. Some parents of older children might feel like failures all of a sudden.

I actually had a woman who left our church. Her family left our church. I was very close to this family. And I said, what's the real issue here? Have we done something unbiblical?

Has there not been love in the process? Well, she said, no, no, all that's fine. She said, here's the issue. I feel like a failure. I said, what do you mean?

He said, my son's 18, my son's 17 at the time. I didn't raise him this way. And every time you get up and talk about family worship and family discipleship and education and so forth, and what we need to do, I feel like an abject failure and how I raised them like what I did wasn't good enough. And I said, that's not our intent. We just start where we are and we go forward.

Yeah, but I don't want that feeling. That's real, at least coming from where I came from. That's real. And they left. And it was very, very difficult because we weren't judging her.

We were just trying to walk according to the scripture. That could happen. Some parents of younger children may not want to be bothered. Some with no children may resist the noise and the commotion. Some may see the church as legalistic all of a sudden or extreme.

And so be prepared to love people harder in the midst of conflict if you choose this path. Number six, guard against ministry arrogance. Okay, We talked about it a little bit as we started, but guard against ministry arrogance. In the process of transition, I found this to be a key element. And most of us in family integrated, family discipleship, the efficiency of scripture type circles, we're not out to promote this.

But I'm telling you, as somebody who teaches these doctrines in churches, I mean, I wish I had time to explain the types of different churches that I teach these doctrines in a common complaint. And it's not fair, but it is a complaint. You guys think you know everything. And you know, We're not good enough now. Yeah, my kid goes to a room over there for a little while and all of a sudden now I'm, and some of that's just coming from some conviction, I get that.

But on our side, let's guard, let's continue to guard against ministry model arrogance. It's very important in my mind to communicate this heart to the church because the church is not just family integrated. A church is a church And there's so much more going on in the church of Jesus Christ than where our kids sit. That's an important element. It's an important part.

But it's not the only part. We're in a conference about the gospel. If you want to put something high up on the priority list, let it be the gospel. And so that by itself, that mindset by itself ought to help us minimize that. But just beware, it can catch you out there.

You can begin to think that our church is the only church that's doing it right. And if you really want to go to a good church, brother, you need to come to our church because that church down the street, You have that big mega church down there with all the balloons and stuff. They're doing it wrong. And there, those may be valid criticisms, but it's the heart that I'm talking about. Be careful with your heart here, OK?

Be careful with your heart. Pride really does go before destruction. And everybody's leaving, but we're right. OK? I pray that we avoid that as much as possible.

I pray that we don't develop the us-for and no more Syndrome in our in our churches where yeah, it might be just be the three of us and no one likes, you know And but hey, we're the only ones going to heaven brothers or hanging there, you know Be careful there because I wonder if our Lord Were he here in body? Would have a same mindset as opposed to waiting out amongst those who are weary and lost and destitute and broken and hurting. And if we become so doctrinally pure that we can't wait out amongst the hurting, then our doctrine isn't that pure. Number seven, celebrate the wins. In this process when you do have good things that happen, oh my goodness, go ahead on and let everybody know and do it in a balanced God honoring way.

Again, not in pride but with the spirit of celebration. May I be so bold to say that celebration is not a sin? I don't know. You're all looking at me funny. That it's OK to smile?

Is there like a scripture that says thou shallest not smileth in churches? You know, I don't know, but again, here's a knock on us is we're very stodgy and just dead, but we're right. But we're dead, okay? And so celebrate the wins. Goodness, when you have a family, maybe there's a testimony time and a father takes the microphone.

He says, hey, I was very disconnected from my wife and children after doing family worship. And my love for my wife has just gone over the top and the Lord, the spirit of the Lord is moving around our house and we're beginning to, we're beginning, our home is beginning to reflect the scriptures where there's songs and hymns and spiritual songs and melody being made in our hearts, beautiful music unto the Lord and I know my children and I don't have to communicate with them on Facebook. I mean, they're right there in front of me. You know, I don't have to send them a text to get them to come out of their room. They're right there.

And so when you have an opportunity to, with love, celebrate the good things that come from this, then do so. Do it if you're, as the church is transitioning, try to keep that in front of folks to see that, hey, this isn't some cultic, legalistic, dead, boring, this is the way God designed it, and it's beautiful. It's beautiful. Okay, number eight, I gotta hurry up here. Number eight, brace yourself for loss.

I mentioned it but if you're in a church that is age segregated, just like conflict will come, there will be some loss. And I was arrogant enough to think that that wouldn't happen to me but eventually it did. It took six months to a year but it did. We didn't survive our transition unscathed and I just placed this out to a warning to a loving a brotherly warning to pastors who go down this road. We didn't survive our transition unscathed even when we thought we did.

With a growing reformation like the NCFIC for example the vast majority of the church holds firmly to age integration but the move will simply be too much for some people and I think it's a test of our own character how we love them even as they disagree? And can we, with humility, love them as opposed to saying, well, you know, you're wrong. But one day, you know, after God's judgment, maybe you'll figure it out. I mean, let's be careful there, because too often we're hurling the lightning bolt when just a few years before that we were in the same place they were. Ok.

So and number nine be in it for the long haul don't look at this as a model to try to see if it will cause your church to grow. This one doesn't come in a conference packet. This is the outworking of the sufficiency of scripture, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, of the patterns that God has given us. And so we must not be just hearers of the scripture, we must be doers and we shouldn't just do when it's convenient but rather we need to do over and over over the long haul. That's part of being a sanctified Christian as we learned yesterday.

So my encouragement is if you go be steadfast, be immovable even when our enemy takes every shot in the book to keep the church and to keep your families from shifting according to scripture, be in it for the long haul. This model, the model isn't really a good word for it because it suggests that you can just move it around but this is the life of the word of God. And so be in it for the long haul. If you treat this like a clever idea with which we try to differentiate ourselves from other churches then you'll get the pragmatic fruit thereof. But if you treat it like this is the heart of God for the church, then the expressions of beauty and the fruit that bears will sustain your church over the long haul.

So just as the church must commit to scripture in other areas, if you decide to go this route, be committed to stay. That's my humble counsel. One more and then we'll close it up here. Number 10, glorify Christ and preach his gospel. Family integration as we've said is an important thing.

It is indeed a critical thing but it is not the main thing. And so don't let your church become This is the family integrated church and we don't know what else they do. They're not ministering in this area. They're not taking food over this area. They're not really on the street corners.

They're not handing out tracts. They're not serving the destitute. They're not loving. But their children stay together, right? And they dress a certain way, okay?

That's not good enough. It's not good enough. That's one part of what a church does, but it is not the whole part. And so preach the gospel. If you're gonna be known for something, be known for declaring that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and God the Son.

He came to this earth born of a virgin who took the law and kept it perfectly in our place, died a horrible martyr's, criminal's death on the cross, rose again on the third day, rose and ascended to the right hand of the Father forever making intercession for us and is coming again soon to judge the living and the dead. Let your church be known for that. Hallelujah. Say glorify Christ and preach his gospel and beware again of that spirit that says, you know, we're family integrated, we have something you don't. Well maybe you do but don't allow pride to take away what's precious and don't allow pride to keep you separated from your brothers who may not have your understanding just yet.

Scott Brown said, you can reform your marriage, embrace biblical manhood and womanhood, get education right, get child raising right, get modesty right, Get work right and if you've not embraced the true gospel, nothing will be right. Okay, and I agree, hearty amen to that. So I'll close with this, it is 1022. Probably don't have as much time as I wanted, but I'll close with this scripture from Mark chapter 16, and may seem a lot to close with this one, giving our topic, but again, if you leave here thinking this, I think it'll be worth the while. Jesus said, go into all the world, and make them family integrated?

No, go into all the world and make them family integrated? No. Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. Go preach the gospel.

Let the outworking of the gospel influence your churches. And when that begins to happen, honestly, we'll be more family integrated churches, more modesty will happen, more love will happen, more faith will happen, more service will happen, and the name of our Lord will be honored and praised. Those are just a few suggestions and a few comments from a guy who's done it recently and thank you so much for your time and attention. May the Lord bless all of your churches in whatever state for his own glory, amen. For more messages articles and videos on the subject of conforming the church and the family to the Word of God and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website ncfic.org.

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We believe that the family-integrated church model is the church structure that is found in scripture. This is not a matter of first liking the idea of family-integrated church and then looking for it in scripture. Instead this conclusion is based on not only the inerrancy and inspiration of scripture, but also the sufficiency of scripture. Recognizing the scriptures as the sufficient standard for the local church is really the foundation of the family-integrated church and must be the starting point for a change in church structure.

Speaker

Dr. Carlton McLeod is the pastor at Calvary Reformation Church. Dr. McLeod earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Science from Hampton University and a Master of Theology and Doctor of Ministry from Andersonville Theological Seminary. He and his wife Donna have been married since 1992 and they have two daughters, Dori and Aryanna, and one son, Jonathan. Dr. McLeod is relentless in his pursuit to compassionately teach with a biblical worldview. After spending his early years in ministry attempting to pull young people out of the kingdom of darkness with all the world’s methods, the Lord led Dr. McLeod back to the Bible to see the critical need for constant, fervent, and Spirit-led biblical family discipleship. The D6Reformation.org was created out of this desire. His other passions in ministry include discipleship, debt-free living, the covenant of marriage, the supremacy of Scripture, servant leadership with accountability, integrity, and obedience to God, family integration, biblical manhood/biblical womanhood, and missions.

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