Many people, both fans and opponents, define conservative family-integrated churches primarily in terms of those practices that we avoid. We don’t do Sunday school. We don’t do youth group. We make it our ambition not to do those things that divide children from parents and youth from elders. We don’t sing funky music or put on puppet shows.

Is this how outsiders think of your church? Do they say, “Oh, we could never go there because they don’t have a youth pastor”? Now consider, is it possible that they think this because this is how you think of your church (or the church that you are looking for)? You’ve seen the problems of modern youth ministry and you know that is not the way to do it.

While this list of taboos is technically true of the family-integrated church, it creates a vacuum in the life of the church body if her members decide to associate based primarily upon what they don’t do. As families and churches seek to undergo sanctification and reformation, they certainly will find that they must cease many old practices. Scripture could provide us with a whole catalog of “Thou shalt not” behaviors and a thorough study of them would profit us greatly, but it never suffices merely to put off the old man and his lusts (Eph. 4:22). God does not just command us to relinquish the idols but also to take up the right worship of the Living God instead.

So what do you do now? Your teens have no youth group; how are you going to integrate them into the life of the church? Your young ones have no Sunday school; how are they going to learn their Bibles? Your kids have no youth pastor; how will they be discipled? How will you reach out to the unsaved neighbor kids next door without that puppet ministry? Have you replaced these practices with any other ones?

While we firmly believe that it is right and proper for churches to avoid practices that are not to be found in Scripture, it is a mistake to think that a family can prosper in a church if they have devoted themselves to avoiding those practices without regarding what should replace them. Put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24). Instead of thinking of your church as the one that does not have Sunday school, think of it as the one where all parents are charged with training their own children. Instead of thinking of your church as the one that does not have a youth group, think of it as one wholly devoted to involving young people in hospitality, mercy ministry, and evangelism. Instead of thinking of your church as the one that just avoids some error or other (you know, the one that caused you to leave your last church), think of your church as the one wholly dedicated to living out the full implications of good gospel doctrine. If you devote yourself to that, then maybe your fellowship will not just be known as that church that does not do youth group.