A recent article about the new direction of the School of Leadership at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY almost knocked me out of my chair.  I was hooked when I read the opening line:

 

The School of Leadership and Church Ministry at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary will take a new approach to equipping students for local church ministry, but it will be centered around creation’s oldest institution—the family.

 

That’s right... The Family!  Leading the charge in this ‘new direction’ is Randy Stinson, who took over as Dean of Southern’s School of Leadership and Church Ministry in August.  While he is not moving toward a full-orbed FIC model, he is addressing the key issues that have given rise to the movement.  Stinson notes,

 

“Most local church ministries tend to act independently of one another... You have a women’s ministry doing its thing over here, and you have a men’s ministry doing its thing, and you have youth ministry and children’s ministry, and they tend to act independently of one another. Consequently, they tend to lack a unified vision. [When] everything is segregated by age or gender or in some other way, it inadvertently ends up fragmenting the way that the family should operate…” (emphasis added)

 

This is precisely the argument of Family Integrated Church advocates.  However, it is an argument that, until now has fallen on deaf ears when it comes to theological training.  Most institutions look at the facts and simply try to add more “Significant Other Adults” to their youth ministry model.  We applaud Stinson’s boldness.  As a Family Integrated Church, we have seen firsthand how difficult it is for those committed to the age-segregated paradigm to come to grips with its failure, and more importantly, its lack of biblical support.  Stinson went on to explain that the changes in the program will equip students at Southern with a “new vision of local church ministry.”   Among other things, Stinson said:

 

 “We are going to seek to reinforce spiritual growth as it occurs as a family. This will be done by integration of various church ministries…in a way that they reinforce each other and keep a unified vision of how they are supposed to operate and what they are supposed to be doing.”

 

Dr. Stinson outlined five key elements of his new strategy:

 

• Integrate women’s ministries in local churches with children and youth ministries so that older women are teaching and mentoring younger women in a Titus 2 mold.

• Coordinate men’s ministries that work directly with ministries to women, children and youth to provide male leadership for families, widows and orphans in a James 1:27 vein.

• Promote a philosophical unity between the various ministries of the local church to include unified views of marriage and parenting as well as a unified vision of gender roles in the home and church.

 

• Equip and encourage husbands and fathers to serve as spiritual leaders in their homes.

• Aim all local church ministries toward evangelism.

 

On the issue of evangelism, Stinson captured the essence of the FIC approach when he said,

 

“I see this operating in a way that there is a specific evangelistic component in all of this so that when a father recognizes that there is a young boy in the church that doesn’t have a father, he reaches out to that young man, so when he takes his boys to a ball game or a fishing trip, he is bringing this young man with him and in turn will eventually meet the boy’s father and will eventually have the opportunity to share the Gospel with that father. The same thing would be true for women’s ministry in the Titus 2 format.”

 

Amen!  Anyone who has tried to defend the FIC model has had to answer this question.  It is refreshing to see such a simple, biblical, logical explanation of the issue of family-based evangelism.  We do not have to provide segregated environments in order to evangelize biblically.

 

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Seminary, noted that this an historic shift.  “I don’t think we realize how revolutionary this kind of vision is,” Mohler said. “No other school on the planet is trying to do quite what we have just described here.”  This is sad, but true.  Southern is charting new territory here.  Unfortunately, a biblical view of the integration of church and family has become so unusual that a move back to the scriptures in this area represents a modern-day reformation.

 

Again, I do not intend to imply that Southern has come all the way to the FIC position.  Clearly, they intend to work within the framework of youth ministry, children’s ministry, men’s ministry and women’s ministry.  However, these steps are necessary if we are ever to reform the church.  Most churches cannot fully embrace the FIC model without imploding.  This move on Southern’s part begins to answer the question with which we are constantly bombarded, “What do in the interim we do if we are in a traditional church?”  With FIC churches continuing to grow and multiply, books being written on the subject, conferences being held on a regular basis to equip FIC church planters and pastors of conventional churches looking to reform, the FIC vision is about to reach critical mass.  There is a reformation brewing.  Praise God for Southern Seminary and their courageous stand.  

 

VB