Why Family Integration?

God has commanded parents to teach and train their children. Statistics clearly support that when parents disciple their own children, an overwhelming majority of those children remain in the faith. However, when that job is left to the church staff a similarly overwhelming majority leave the faith. As one parent stated which really sums up family integration, "The heart of my child has turned back to his father."

What is family integration?

Grace Community Church is committed to strengthening families, so we keep them together as much as possible. This means that almost all home groups and Bible studies are geared for adults and children of all ages. We do have some meetings just for men and women, and couple events, but overall we try to keep families and single parents together. This is obviously in contrast to the popular approach, which divides up families and intentionally segregates by ages and marital status.

Because we believe that children are a blessing, and that God designed for the whole family to worship together, we structure the service for "family-integrated" worship. By choice we do not offer a separate Sunday school or children’s church. Fathers are exhorted and equipped to lead their families in daily worship and to train their children in the way of the Lord.

During worship time at Grace Community, families sit together in the service, pray together during family prayer time and take communion as a family, led by the fathers or a deacon. We encourage parents to walk around in the back area during the service if necessary to care for infants or small children while being trained. There is an option for small children to be cared for during the message time but are returned for communion. Again, this allows parents to teach children the discipline of attentiveness in shorter time periods.

How is this possible?

Of course family integration requires that the parents take their own spiritual growth seriously and seek to pass on the joy of knowing Christ to their children. At Grace Community Church, the leadership desires to spend significant time training and equipping the men and women to do just that through relationships, not just programs! The home is thus restored as the arena of life, relationships and equipping, as well as evangelism.