An IFBer exposes FICM's dangers

[barttheanorak]

Hi people

Sorry I haven't been around for a while. Having never been in fundamentalism I sometimes don't know if I have much to contribute but it continues to plague my mind from what I've seen of it in books and on websites.

I'm acutely aware of the increased web presence of the Family Integrated Church Movement. While I can understand their thinking on some things, I think on others it is very very flawed.

And I'm glad IFB man David Cloud does as well. I'll give him his due - at least he states his denomination from the start so's you know what you're getting.

The full article's here
http://www.wayoflife.org/files/09b8f3c2a...b-451.html and
does re-emphasise a few things Cloud already believes that the likes of Vision
Forum don't (eg KJO) but it's refreshing to hear a fundy laying into certain
principles that the likes of Voddie Baucham, Paul Washer and Tim Conway (not
that one) emphasise.

If you don't want to read the whole article, the bit that cheers my heart is below the dots

Chris

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4. The Integrated Church has gone beyond the Bible in making rules about family
and church.

The Integrated Church tends to be very legalistic. There is much liberty within
the biblical model for both the family and the church, and it is legalistic to
make laws that go beyond the biblical bounds.

For example, there is the teaching that the church must always be "family
integrated." A lecture published by Vision Forum says, "The biblical example is
that entire families are present for corporate worship. Age-segregated worship
is rooted in evolutionary humanism, not biblical Christianity" (Doug Phillips,
"The Role of Children in the Meeting of the Church," 2002, Family Renewal Audio
Library).

The Bible says nothing about this one way or the other. Segregation of the ages
has its dangers, but there can be a time and place to teach children and young
people separately from the adults. A segregated ministry has some dangers that
we need to consider and avoid, but it's not a heresy. As the pillar and ground
of the truth and possessing the Lord's commission to "teach them to observe all
things whatsoever I have taught you," the church has the authority to teach
children and young people just as surely as the home has (1 Timothy 3:16;
Matthew 28:19); and the church has the right to decide how to accomplish this in
a practical sense. I believe there is a great benefit in having children taught
separately from the regular adult preaching time, at least part of the time, and
in having some youth meetings. The Bible nowhere says that children and youth
must always be with their parents. That is to make law out of the Bible's
silence.

Sunday School is neither a pillar of the faith or a heresy. It is simply a tool.
The Sunday School movement began as a way of evangelizing children from poor
families and did not meet in the church or even during normal church times. It
was held in various places in the community on Sunday afternoons. The typical
Sunday School today is partly evangelistic and partly discipleship. Each church
must determine how it will fulfill Christ's command to preach the gospel to
every creature and disciple those who believe, and the Sunday School can be a
helpful tool if it is conducted properly. Having or not having a Sunday School
doesn't determine whether a church is biblical.

If mom and dad want to keep their children with them at all times in church, and
if they don't want their children to participate in youth activities, that is
their prerogative before the Lord, but to go beyond this and make such things a
law for everyone is to go beyond Scripture.

Another example of the legalism of the Integrated Church movement is its
teaching that daughters must remain under the father's roof until marriage. The
following is a review of a Vision Forum book and DVD by a fundamentalist home
schooling mother that investigated their materials:

"The two items I have reviewed are the book `So Much More,' a book to daughters
about how to have `vision' for the kingdom of God. And the DVD `The Return of
the Daughters,' a documentary on the whole idea of daughters staying under their
father's roof until marriage. On the surface these items seemed to be very
God-honoring. Yet, I had an unsettled feeling that something just wasn't quite
right. On the DVD, it seemed very touching to want to `protect' your daughters
in the way they suggest. What Christian father wouldn't want to do the best for
his daughter? Being a home school father, my husband wanted to have an open
heart to what the Lord may be leading him to in the future. We spent all these
years training her to be a keeper at home and as she becomes an adult, we do not
want to just `throw her to the wolves.' This is exactly what the DVD suggests
you are doing if you don't keep your daughter at home until marriage. ... The
book had much material that seemed on the surface to be great. It mentioned
modest dress, Christian femininity, etc. Yet, it warned daughters against an
independent spirit and self-sufficiency to the point of calling working for
anyone other than your dad, selfish and Marxist. It also mentioned if daughters
did not have families that agreed with this vision, they should find a family
that would adopt them into their families so they could fulfill this role. The
whole idea was the family should not be split up at church and if you wanted to
be a visionary daughter you better find a family in one of their Integrated
churches so you could be a part. It was such nonsense as I have led `bus kids'
to Christ in junior church and have wondered how they would have fit in at
church without any families to adopt them. There were so many other glaring
flaws, often times they used Scripture quotes that were intended to be commands
for our relationship to Christ, and they twisted it to be for our relationship
to earthly fathers."

To teach that young women cannot leave their father's roof unless they are
married is going far beyond Scripture and putting man-made yokes on God's
people. Though we agree that we are not to follow the dictates and ways of
today's feministic-influenced society (Psalm 1:1) and children are to obey their
parents in the Lord (Ephesians 6:1), that does not mean that we have to submit
to man-made laws that go beyond this. The Bible alone is our sole authority for
faith and practice. Is a young woman still a child? For a young woman to go to a
godly Bible College and even to become a single missionary within the ministry
restrictions of the New Testament Scripture (e.g., 1 Timothy 2:12) is not
unscriptural. My wife was saved as a teenager living in home broken by divorce.
Her step father was an unbeliever, so she had no earthly father to help her
spirituality. She faithfully attended the best church in her area, and after she
graduated from high school she attended a godly Bible College, worked in a
church, and was called to be a missionary. Before we were married, she worked as
a nurse at a missionary hospital, and I do not believe that she was disobeying
the Bible. A single woman can operate under the authority of the church as
surely as she can under the authority of a father. Consider Phebe (Romans
16:1-2). She was sent by Paul on a ministry journey to Rome and Paul instructed
the church at Rome to assist her, yet no father or husband is mentioned.

To instruct young women to leave their own fathers and put themselves under
another father, because her own father is not following the Integrated Church
model, is actually rebellion to God's Word. Where does the Bible teach this? The
Bible says, "Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right" (Eph.
6:1). It doesn't say, "Daughters obey your father in the Lord unless he refuses
to follow the Integrated Church philosophy."

Beware of Integrated Church legalism.

[Elijah Craig]

A stopped clock is right... every so often.

[redbeardiam]

David Cloud criticizing somebody for legalism? smh.

It's weird how right these points you posted are. I refuse to go to his site and read the rest.

[MKxcomm]

I heartily disagree with this. He condemns extra-biblical teachings and turns right around and creates his own.
Yes, women shouldn't just ditch their father's if they are unbelievers, but it also is never stated int he Bible that
women without "heads" should place themselves under the authority of the church. He also dances around the
child vs. woman issue. He implies that this woman who is adult enough to go to college and work as a nurse, but
then relegates her to the role of a child by insisting that the church be the stand-in for her father. It's more of this
patriarchal BS that places barriers in the way of women and children having direct access to God. Did it ever occur
to these people that this woman was an adult in every way and didn't need someone to step in between her and
her maker to make decisions for her? I understand that if you're a man, these teachings don't seem that far out.
But as someone who was relegated to being nothing but a mindless, obedient pew-warmer my whole life, I believe
Cloud still clearly misses the mark and still leaves wide berth for pastors and parents (who consider themselves believers)
to abuse their assumed authority when it comes to those under them.

[Discovering Life]

(11-17-2011 01:05 AM)MKxcomm Wrote:  I heartily disagree with this. He condemns extra-biblical teachings and turns right around and creates his own.
Yes, women shouldn't just ditch their father's if they are unbelievers, but it also is never stated int he Bible that
women without "heads" should place themselves under the authority of the church. He also dances around the
child vs. woman issue. He implies that this woman who is adult enough to go to college and work as a nurse, but
then relegates her to the role of a child by insisting that the church be the stand-in for her father. It's more of this
patriarchal BS that places barriers in the way of women and children having direct access to God. Did it ever occur
to these people that this woman was an adult in every way and didn't need someone to step in between her and
her maker to make decisions for her? I understand that if you're a man, these teachings don't seem that far out.
But as someone who was relegated to being nothing but a mindless, obedient pew-warmer my whole life, I believe
Cloud still clearly misses the mark and still leaves wide berth for pastors and parents (who consider themselves believers)
to abuse their assumed authority when it comes to those under them.

^^^^^^
This

The rules for women (and family church participation) may differ but the mindset is the same, as MKxcomm so concisely pointed out.

[captain_solo]

Yeah, I know in my fundy church, the pastor's response from the pulpit to this type of stuff (home church proselytes, "the church is pagan", father should be the pastor of his family, etc) was responded to with equally troubling expressions of the authority of the church.

Sorry, but the OT man of God, or the authority of the Apostles, does not apply to a pastor of a church, or a father. If I remember correctly, wasn't "priesthood of the believer" a Baptist Distinctive?

[redbeardiam]

(11-17-2011 01:05 AM)MKxcomm Wrote:  I heartily disagree with this. He condemns extra-biblical teachings and turns right around and creates his own.
Yes, women shouldn't just ditch their father's if they are unbelievers, but it also is never stated int he Bible that
women without "heads" should place themselves under the authority of the church. He also dances around the
child vs. woman issue. He implies that this woman who is adult enough to go to college and work as a nurse, but
then relegates her to the role of a child by insisting that the church be the stand-in for her father. It's more of this
patriarchal BS that places barriers in the way of women and children having direct access to God. Did it ever occur
to these people that this woman was an adult in every way and didn't need someone to step in between her and
her maker to make decisions for her? I understand that if you're a man, these teachings don't seem that far out.
But as someone who was relegated to being nothing but a mindless, obedient pew-warmer my whole life, I believe
Cloud still clearly misses the mark and still leaves wide berth for pastors and parents (who consider themselves believers)
to abuse their assumed authority when it comes to those under them.

Thanks for that. I missed the line about single women somehow being under the authority of the church in a special way. yuck. And just to clarify, my agreement is only with his criticism of the other group of crazies, not with his views.

[Tennessee Gal]

I remember working in a Christian ministry with a lady whose children had attended Christian school their entire growing up years. This school was connected with a very legalistic Independent Baptist Church.
Her daughter was graduating from highschool and was scheduled to attend Hyles- Anderson College in the fall. The daughter was offered a job for the summer at a Baskin Robins ice cream shop. They decided she should baby sit for the summer, because she might be exposed to rock music at Baskin Robins .
I turned around and told her if her daughter at 18 years old would falter in her faith by being exposed to rock music, then she and her husband had failed.
So many of these kids, when they are on their own, either don't know how to function in the real world or they go hog wild. Oh at the time, my husband was an independent Baptist pastor. Thank God we left that group of Baptist and went on and faithfully served in the pastorial ministry for an additional 24 years before my husband's home going .
It is sick to think an adult single Christian woman who is on her own has to be under the authority of her father or church.

[barttheanorak]

Hi everyone

It's a couple of years since I posted this thread - for some reason I was only notified of the first response. Looking again, I can now see I missed some implications of Cloud's article. Reading his other stuff (don't worry I'm not with him on rock music, alcohol or the KJV) I've always sensed that he's very anti the kind of thing where men OR women are stopped from working at Baskin Robbins because they might be exposed to rock music (having reluctantly sat on the anti-rock bench for many years, I never allowed my actions to become anywhere near so extreme) but I guess he's left some gaping holes in the article I quoted here originally.

My apologies for any insensitive behaviour or hurt caused.

Bless ya all

Chris

[redhot]

After I graduated from Fundy U, I accepted a job in a Christian school more than 1,000 miles away from my parents. One day the principal called me in and said that he had heard that I wore a bathing suit at the gym. (It was a ladies-only gym; my room mate had turned me in.) He said that in the absence of my father, I was now under the authority of him and my pastor, and he felt that he should admonish me about my choices. He wanted clarification that I only wore a one-piece, and that I wore clothes over it on the way to the gym. He was also concerned about the type of music they played. I am ashamed to say that I humbly answered his questions and then left to go home and question whether I should cancel my gym membership.