Posted in Church Life

For several weeks now I have been promising to share some of the exciting things God is doing in our family.  It has simply not been the right time to do so until now.  At last, this situation is at a point where I can share what has been going on in our lives in recent weeks.

For some time, my husband and I have felt the Lord speaking to us about the idea of family-integrated worship (see the great comments following this entry).  We began seeing in His Word that His plan is for parents (and especially fathers) to be responsible for discipling their own children in the faith.  We discovered through the Scriptures that the normative practice is for children to be present in times of corporate worship.  Through careful study on the subject, we learned that the modern Sunday school movement is quite recent and actually has its roots in evolutionary philosophy.  These things caused us to question practices in the church which we had long accepted as “the right way to do things”.  We became convicted of the Lord that we should not take part in these practices.  My husband in particular began taking even more seriously his responsibility as the spiritual leader of our family.

Around this same time, our views on evangelism and even, in some areas, theology began a slight shift as God taught us through in His Word and our thinking began lining up more closely with Scripture.

During this time of learning and growing in the Lord, we also had a feeling of great loneliness.  We felt as though no one around would understand our journey, and that was very isolating.  We began a quiet search for a likeminded fellowship of believers.  We very soon realized that churches like the one we were hoping and searching for are very few and far between in our area of the country.  This was a disheartening discovery.  We began praying fervently for the Lord’s wisdom and direction in this area of our lives.  Eventually, we felt God leading us to step out in faith and, with two other families He brought to us, begin a family-integrated Reformed Baptist church.  Over and over again, we saw the Lord affirm this leading through various circumstances, and always when we went back to the Scriptures, we saw reassurance that this was the right thing to do.

This past Sunday was our very first worship service together.  (Though we do not plan to be a “home church” in the usual connotation of that term, we are meeting with several families in our home at this time.)  What a sweet time of fellowship and simple worship before our Lord it was!  What a blessing to learn from God’s Word alongside my children, with my own parents nearby as well.  What a time of refreshment and encouragement with likeminded brothers and sisters in Christ.

I cannot say that the road to this decision has been easy, or that we have not met with some opposition.  There have been those who have misunderstood what we have chosen to do.  But there have also been many who have been supportive and encouraging as we have sought to follow the Lord in this work.  This is only the beginning, but we feel the hand of God on us in this and know He will bless us if we are faithful to obey Him.