Customer Reviews

Family-Integrated Church

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I was excited to get this book because I have been wanting a detailed explanation of how and why the family-integrated model (where families are kept together rather than divided into age-oriented ministries) might be a good way to do church. However, the title was a little bit deceptive. This is a book about the lessons J. Mark Fox has learned from pastoring a church for many years, and that church happens to be one that is family-integrated. This is a good book with valuable lessons for church leadership, but there is very little material in it that actually deals with family integration. If you are looking for a book about general church ministry written by a man who has been in the trenches for the long haul you should read this book. But if you are looking for an in-depth treatment of the family-integrated church model, I suggest you look elsewhere.

Pastor Fox has written a book that is not only interesting to read, but will challenge some of your most basic and long held beliefs about church on Sunday mornings. Pastor Fox is calling Christians back to a BIBLICAL model of training and discipling children and he desires to see families knit together on Sunday mornings instead of torn apart.

I attend a family integrated church and so I am already familiar with this paradigm. For many years, however, our family attended a more traditional style of service with Sunday School and Youth Group. I sure do wish we had found a family integrated church earlier!

Here's some food for thought: when we go out to eat at a restaurant, we don't walk in the door and hand our children over to the "professional" meal administrators to teach our children how and what to eat while we go and eat in another room. Why do we hand our kids over to others for their spiritual nourishment? Think about it ...

This is an excellent book. Read it and see for yourself!

What is a church like that does not divide families when they come through the front door? What is worship like when children and even infants are present? Can a church survive without "age-segregated programming?" What about a "youth group?" Church leadership? Outreach and missions?

There is a movement that is growing in this country, a movement back to the way things used to be as far as church is concerned. It is called by various names, the most common being the "family-integrated church."

This book is the story of how one church has been working to bring families back together. You will laugh, be encouraged, and your heart will be drawn back to what the Lord says about His church as you read this book. It will also serve some readers as a blueprint for change.

J. Mark Fox is Pastor of Antioch Community Church, where he and his wife Cindy have served since the church began in 1987. Mark is also an adjunct instructor in the School of Communications at Elon University, and writes a weekly religion column for the Daily Times-News in Burlington, NC. His columns have won two Amy Awards, in 2004 and 2005, for excellence in communicating biblical truth to a secular audience. He teaches Writing and Public Speaking classes to homeschoolers and is a frequent presenter at the North Carolina homeschool convention. Mark and Cindy live in Burlington with their seven children, two dogs and a cat.

First off I'm a little biased. The author is the Pastor and one of the elders in my church. I really appreciated how Mark conveyed how the Lord moved the church to the family-intergrated model. It is good advice on the nuts and bolts of how to do church biblically. I think you will appreciate this book and hopefully the Lord will use it to challenge you.
One side note. Mark says that we use Biblical Eldership: An Urgent Call to Restore Biblical Church Leadership by Alexander Strauch I would also suggest The New Testament Deacon: The Church's Minister of Mercy by Strauch. It explains the true meaning and role of deacons and it is how deacons serve at Antioch.

Mark Fox shares his "recipe" for healthy church growth and encourages readers to return to Scriptural principles as the foundation for church ministry. Through humorous anecdotes, related experiences, and biblical support, Fox challenges his audience to rethink the modern church model. "Family-Integrated Church" is both a book that shares the importance of worshiping as unsegregated families (parents and children worship together)and a guide for considering healthy leadership models. Both pastoral and engaging in his approach, Fox writes from his heart, often humorously, and gives readers a taste of how joyous family-integrated worship truly can be.

I enjoyed this book - I have become very interested in the family worshiping as a whole on Sunday mornings. I am generally disappointed that the church at large has copied the public school model of segregating families by age. This book provides an overall look at one church that opted out of age-segregation and instead integrated the family within the church. Only children under two years of age leave their Sunday morning service. This church places emphasis on training men and fathers who in turn pass the training on to their families. Another very interesting read, which is related in topic to this book, is "Already Gone" by Ken Ham. Mr. Ham, along with a statistician, shows a statistical link between regular Sunday school attendance and young adults leaving the church. Both books would be useful to anyone interested in this subject.

I love the transparency the pastor/author portrays. He tells of their transisiton from being a new church that is modeled after the typical program driven into the family driven approach. This is a church that is setting the standard for normal Christ-centered church, without the trappings of being caught in the 1800's, as some family integreated church lean towards. Family integration ought not be a reclaimed a certain era, but reclaiming a Biblical model of Christ-centeredness and family focus. Thanks Mark Fox for living this out, leading this way, and leaving a legacy for others.

Mark Fox writes an excellent and easy-to-read book for anyone who wants to become introduced to, or more knowledgeable about, the Family-Integrated Church. The book is most certainly not a `how-to' manual, but that speaks to the heart and humility of its author, as he recognizes that family-integrated churches - while having many things in common - will have their own distinct personalities. Beyond that, Mark's premise is simple: create a health family and you will by nature create a healthy church.

In the book, Mark shares the story of how the church he founded back in 1987 changed over time as they came to realize the effect(s) that their methods and programs had on families. He also shares some of what worked and some which did not.

What Mark shares is how their church came to realize the tremendous evangelism and discipleship opportunity that existed right before their eyes - the family. While sharing the story of Antioch, Mark demonstrates that when the home is brought together; taught together; discipled together; and worships together, they become a tremendous asset for the church...able to shine the light of the gospel out to others around them in some amazing ways.

If you want to witness first-hand a family-integrated church in action, then read this book. What is worship like when all ages are in attendance throughout the entire service? How do they handle crying children? What about their teens? Do they have a youth group? How can you possibly teach children who are in different grade levels? How is outreach and ministry accomplished? In addition to finding out the answers to these questions and more, you will witness how Antioch Church brings together those of every age so that they can impart the best of wisdom and experience upon each other, with an eye towards furthering the gospel.

I received this book on Friday. I finished it Saturday morning. Every question I had was answered. How refreshing. There are so many things I loved about the book. One of the things that sticks out in my mind is that the author just wrote from his experiences (drawing, of course, from scripture to do that!) Not one time did the book cause me guilt (challenged me yes...very different) or have a flavor of "here's what you need to do". The book addressed music, evangelism (seems to be the biggest concern for people wanting to implement the FIC model), small groups, church discipline and church leadership and its function. I appreciated the emphasis on evangelism and that the author warns about "implosion". I finished the book literally laughing with relief yet charged up.



I'm not sure Mark Fox realizes how vital this book is. The issues raised in the book address THE issues. I will be recommending this book to all of our friends and to our church. I enjoyed it more than Family Driven Faith and I LOVED that book. Family Integrated Church has more topics that were so relevant to our concerns and the growing concerns of the homeschool community that seems to be leary of the reputation the FIC is getting because of the Patriarchy Movement. Personally, our family doesn't reject or deny the Patriarchy Movement but also regrets that there is so much controversy surrounding it. I'm glad that this book doesn't reflect (nor does have major conflict with) all of those ideas. I recommend reading Uniting Church and Home by Eric Wallace first, then Family Integrated Church, then Family Driven Faith. After all these, perhaps Mark's new book, Planting a Family Integrated Church will be out!

Our family has been part of two "family-integrated" churches that each dissolved within five years. It has been frustrating and heart-breaking, because we believe this model is the Biblical model, though counter-cultural and downright strange to most Christians. Pastor Fox's book is very encouraging in that he shows it CAN be done! However, he shows how God has worked in his congregation in spite of their mistakes, rather than glossing them over. Many of the mistakes that his church experienced were similar to situations we experienced, but they were handled differently by the elders of the church. I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about family-integrated church life.