We hear too often of young adults who just don't fit in at their churches. There are ministries for kids and teens ... and then ministries for married couples. Which leaves single adults feeling disconnected.

And then we heard of a different kind of church, one that doesn't segregrate members of their congregation into isolated groups, but takes a more familial approach. In this kind of church, singles are not excluded, but are part of the family.

Voddie Baucham pastors Grace Family Baptist Church, a congregation that practices this "family-integrated" principle.

We cornered Voddie at a conference late last year, microphones in hand, and ended up spending nearly an hour talking about how single adults fit into his church.

We were fascinated by how the conversation unfolded....

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Motte Brown: Well, Voddie, thanks for your time. I know you're busy.

Voddie Baucham: Yes. It's my pleasure.

Motte Brown: Let's talk about your book The Family Integrated Church. First, please describe the family integrated church.

Voddie Baucham: The Family Integrated Church is a church that is intentionally designed without age-segregated structures. Family Integrated Church come in all shapes, sizes, all denominations. But the one distinguishing characteristic common in Family Integrated Churches is that lack of age-segregated structures, and therefore, an emphasis on discipleship in and through homes.

So the family, the home, becomes the mechanism for discipleship within the context of the local church — as opposed to the church that would say that the mechanism for discipleship in the church is various age-group ministries: For this part of your life you disciple here, for that part of your life you disciple there, for that part of.... The Family Integrated Church is the opposite of that in its structure.

Motte Brown: What are some of the flaws of what you call systematic segregation?

Voddie Baucham: There are three basic flaws with systematic age-segregation. Number one, it's not found Scripture. You can't go to the Bible and come away with this "young adults," "medium adults," "married" — you can't go to the Scriptures and come away with that kind of segregation as a church model.

Problem number two is that that kind of age segregation has proven to be detrimental to the biblical model of family discipleship.

And problem number three: It hasn't worked. We're losing young people at a rate of somewhere between 70 to 80 percent by the end of their freshman year in college. What we're doing doesn't work.

There were two main objections to the Sunday School Movement back in the 18th and 19th centuries. Sunday school was originally designed for the un-churched. You had child labor laws; you had kids working; they weren't going to schools. So Sunday school was for these people to be educated and learn how to read and write and things of that nature. It was not discipleship. And so objection number one was that this was going to be made available for Christians.

Objection number two was that if we do this, families will stop catechizing their own children.

Both of those things were prescient, because that's where we are today. If you want your children discipled, if you want them mentored, raised up in the Faith, then find a segment in the church and a trained professional or a hardy volunteer to do that. So those are the main issues that I have with the systematic age-segregation.

Ted Slater: They're delegating or forfeiting their authority to disciple their kids.

Voddie Baucham: Yes. Absolutely.

Motte Brown: And that's one of the reasons it's detrimental and works against the church.

Voddie Baucham: Exactly. It works against the scriptural model of family discipleship. You talk to children and youth ministry leaders and their main frustration is "Man, stuff is not happening in the home." And I look at them and I say, "That's because for 30 years we've said, 'Hey, we're trained professionals; don't try this at home.'" That's what we've communicated to the families by our structures.

We've basically painted this picture that says that if you really want to disciple teenagers, you really need a youth ministry degree; and you really need to understand their culture; and you really need to do music this way; and you really need to.... So we've communicated without saying it that, "Hey, mom and dad, you can't do this." And now we're coming back and we're saying, "Hey, where's mom and dad?" Mom and dad are doing what we have, basically, taught them to do as we usurp their authority.

Motte Brown: So your church isn't segregated at all in terms of life stage.

Voddie Baucham: No.

Motte Brown: What does it look like? I mean, do you teach by topic? Typically, you have a morning session of Sunday school and then you have the service. What does it look like in your church?

Voddie Baucham: We don't have Sunday school.

Motte Brown: No Sunday school.

Voddie Baucham: No. We don't have Sunday school.

Motte Brown: It's just one service.

Voddie Baucham: Yes.

Ted Slater: Do you have small groups?

Voddie Baucham: Yes, we do. We have different small groups that meet in homes. That would be — well, how do I put this? I was going to say it would fill the role that Sunday school fills in most churches, but that's not true. Because our homes fill the role that Sunday school would fill. Our families catechize their children, and our families have family worship. The average family in our church probably has family worship three to four times a week. They're catechizing their children.

Our worship guide, every Sunday morning, is designed in such a way that it could be taken home to be used for family worship. First, we start off our service by praying through what we call our "prayergram," which is divided into four categories:

• Pray for one another, for James commands us. So we have five families listed there that we're praying for, for that week.
• Pray for kings and those in authority, so Paul tells us and Timothy. And so we pray for one local and one state and one national leader every week.
• Pray that the Lord of the harvest would send forth labors. So we pray for one unreached people group every week.
• And then pray for those who shepherd and feed the flocks. So we pray for our elders every week.

And so now your family prayer is outlined for you.

We also do catechism at the beginning of the service as our responsive reading. So one of our young people will come up and they'll read the question, and we'll respond with the answer to the catechism. Five questions, usually. So, now, you take that home. You've got a prayer; you've got catechism to work on all week.

We have a hymn of the month that we sing every week throughout the month, and so we learn it together as a church. So now you've got a hymn to sing in family worship. You see.

We also have a chapter in the New Testament and a chapter in the Old Testament that we read every week in our service, a whole chapter. And if it's simply a list of names, we'd muddle our way through, because we're modeling something there. We read systematically through the Bible. So right now, in our Old Testament reading, we're reading through Joshua; our New Testament reading, we're reading through Acts. And so now, you've got Bible reading.

So a guy who has never led his family before takes the worship guide home. He can pray. He can go through the catechism with his children. He can sing the hymn of the month, because he's learned it in church. And he can read through chapters of the Scripture that we've been reading on Sunday morning.

Motte Brown: Some of the feedback we get from singles on Boundless.org is "We're having trouble integrating into the church. We feel like outcasts." Does that have anything to do with the growing Emergent Church movement?

Voddie Baucham: You know, I deal with that in Family Driven Faith. The Emergent Church Movement is, basically, a response in a number of areas. This is an oversimplification, but it's kind of a response rejecting the pragmatic, market-driven, seeker movement. And it's swinging the pendulum in the other way. We want to be spiritual. We want to be authentic. We're not selling something here.

People are sophisticated, and they see that and say, "You're trying to be slick and give me a show, and I can get a better one on Saturday night. I want to feel like I'm at God's house, and this feels like I'm somewhere else. You're covering the tunes that I hear in the bars. I've already got a source for that."

So it's a reaction to that on the one hand, but it's also a reaction to fact that we're losing young adults. They're disappearing from the church. We have these young adults who in some instances are saying that the church has abandoned them ... and so these people have abandoned the church. "Let's recreate church in their image, kind of in an effort to reach 20-somethings and 30-somethings. Let's find out what their culture is and do a church that fits their culture."

Well, in Family Driven Faith, I'm dealing with the front end of the problem. Why are these people leaving in the first place? And one reason that they're leaving is because they're not part of the church. They're part of a systematically segregated subculture in the church. And when they graduate from the high school ministry, where do they go now? Do you go to the big church? "I've never been a part of big church. You know, it's never been real to me before." They've got nothing, you know.

Motte Brown: So the Emergent Church was born out of something good; a longing for something that's real and not marketed. But is there a danger in the Emergent Church Movement ?

Voddie Baucham: Absolutely. Absolutely. I am not a fan of the Emergent Church Movement. There are some aspects of it that I find affinity with. The Mark Driscoll wing I find affinity with. The Brian McLaren wing I think is heresy. I think one of the big problems is they started with not just man, but with this specific subset. It's like they said, "Let's find out what this subset is disgruntled about and what they want and then let's do that." And so we have a lot of aspects of mysticism that's now been brought in because they want things to seem more spiritual. Well, some of the Emergent churches are undoing the Protestant Reformation, but they're so a-theological that they don't realize it.

There's this move away from theology, away from these propositional truths. That part of it is dangerous because we're starting with man and not starting with the Scriptures.

Ted Slater: It's as though they want a sense of mystery, but the way they define mystery is "ambiguity." But the thing is, there's sufficient mystery in exploring the Cross.

Voddie Baucham: Yes. Yes.