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Thank you very much. Thank you. When I started Faith Ward Baptist Church back in 2005, one of the big things that I did differently from the churches that I grew up in was I went with the family integrated model, meaning that we never had a nursery where we took the babies out of the service and put them somewhere else. We never had a children's church, junior church, just right from the beginning. We wanted to have the entire family in church. A lot of people in those early days, they thought we didn't have a nursery because we were just too small to have a nursery, but then we explained to them, no, there's never going to be a nursery because we want to have all the kids in the service. You've always been family integrated at Verity as well. Absolutely. We went with the family integrated model, and as far as that decision, being a Baptist, we always want to just follow the example of scripture, and when you go to the Bible and you just ask yourself, okay, well, where's the children's church ministry or the nursery ministry in the Bible, you just don't find it. From the Old Testament to the New Testament, you find just families always being together. They call the congregation together. They call the assembly together. You've got husband, wife, children, so we decided to follow that pattern. It's funny because we had to have the same conversation because in the early years, people, like you said, they just assume, oh, it's because you don't have the facilities. Then you go and get the bigger buildings, and it's like, why are the kids still here? It's like, no, this is what we do. This is what we believe. Actually, we have found that it's helped because when you reach new people, one of the biggest things that they're apprehensive about is having to have their kids go away from them. Visitors don't like that. Especially if they're good parents. Yeah, if they're good parents. They don't want to just turn the kid over to strangers. Also, what I've found is if they didn't grow up in a church, if they're actually a new convert that your church reached, they don't want to be told that your kid has to go to some Sunday school where they don't know the people. When we tell them we're family integrated, they can be with you, they're actually relieved. We've actually found it's been a positive thing. Only people who want that or who grew up that way are the ones that it's hard for them to understand that. Have you ever been hit with this proof text from the book of Nehemiah where they take that verse where it talks about that all the people that could hear with understanding were there? Yeah. Then they'll say, see, that's not little kids, that's not babies, they were out of there. Have you heard that proof text? Yeah, I've heard people bring that up. How did you deal with that? Yeah. Well, the interesting thing about that is if everybody who can understand was there, then who's watching all these kids? Exactly. Or all these kids are just out on their own. Obviously, if everybody with understanding is there, then that means everyone that can't take care for themselves is also there. Yeah, because if it was talking about age, you would just have basically thousands and thousands of babies and toddlers unattended because everybody who can hear with understanding is there. If you actually get the context of the scripture, it talks about people not knowing the language. If you actually read the whole book of Nehemiah, remember how it talks about people speaking in the language of Ashtad and they can't speak in the Jews' language. So when it talks about everybody who could hear with understanding, we're talking about the language. Absolutely. Absolutely. Like in the New Testament, you find people want you to show them verses about, well, show me ... They want you to prove a negative. Show me where the Bible says there is no Sunday school or no ... Why can't it show you that? Because they don't have it. Yeah. But here's what we can show you, where Paul's writing letters, obviously, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. And he's telling other churches, hey, when you're done with this letter, send it to the other church and have them read it. And then you have, of course, Ephesians. He has these letters where he's expecting them to read them out loud to the congregation. And then in the letter, in chapter six, he addresses the children. So it shows you that Paul expected the kids to be in the congregation. Yeah. He expected them to be there. Yeah. The epistles were written to be read in churches. And they say, children, obey your parents, oh Lord, for this is right. They actually address the children. Right. So the pattern you find in scripture in the Old Testament, when you look at Nehemiah and other Old Testament congregations ... Moses. Moses, when they assemble together. And the New Testament is to have your kids with you. So obviously, it is the biblical pattern. But also, a selling point for me is that it's the best way to protect your kids. Because obviously, you don't have to look very far to find churches where kids are being hurt and being violated because of some of these ministries, because you're separating them from their parents. Right. So I like the fact that at our church, we say, hey, we never separate children from their parents for any reason. Children always walk them in the congregation, in the service with their parents. So we're never taking them away from the guardians that God gave them. So kids are more protected, the family is together. It's just the best way to have church. Plus, a lot of people will bring up the fact that, well, it's a big distraction. People, they've got to hear the word of God, it's so important. And a couple of things I would say about that is that, first of all, I think it's super important that those little babies and children hear the word of God as well, even from a very young age. But also, I think of Jesus Christ with the disciples and they didn't want little babies and children. And the Bible even says infants, which would be one who's not even old enough to walk. And they didn't want the infants. They didn't want the toddlers and children being brought to Jesus. And Jesus said, no, no, no, suffer the little children to come unto me from such as the kingdom of God. And the word suffer there, our modern word would be allow. Allow the little children to come unto me of such as the kingdom of God. And so we need to suffer the children to put up with the children. Because suffer not only is it being allowed, it also means to kind of endure and put up with. And yet they're going to cry a little bit and maybe sometimes even make positive noises where they're cooing and laughing. And I've seen people get really upset by a baby just making a little noise here and there and they're glaring and whatever. And it's really just not a big deal. I think we as pastors just need to get used to preaching with just a little bit of distraction going on and we need to just get over it. But not only that, sometimes I feel like in some churches, they almost treat the church like it's some kind of a trance or a hypnosis or something. Like if a baby makes a peep, it's just going to like break the spell. Have you ever thought about that? Like somebody was just about to make some decision for Christ or somebody's about to get saved or their life's about to be changed and then a baby's like, wah, they're just like, whoa, wait, where am I? Oh, wait, nevermind. And you know, honestly, I want to echo what you said. I think a lot of it is these preachers need to just get over themselves because I think a lot of pastors have this idea that people are just like, you know, hanging on their every word and whether kids are in the service or not, that's just not true. People zone out sometimes. They're kind of half listening anyway. But you know, but the thing is that once you have that culture though, the interesting thing about a family integrated church is, you know, once you've been doing that for years and you've had families that get used to it, the kids actually become pretty well-behaved in the services. Obviously you have little babies, you have to train, you know, you have to take care of the babies and the toddlers, you begin to train them. But eventually you just have this church full of people. Visitors walk in and they're like, I'm amazed how well behaved these kids are. But it's because we have them in church, you know, the reason that kids act rowdy sometimes is because you put them in these like areas where they're kind of told to be that way. But kids, you know, kids like the preaching. Kids are coming up to me after the service and telling me things they learned in the sermon and you know, my own kids. So it's good to have them in church. They're learning. The parents are learning. They're learning to be disciplined. And they pick up way more from the sermon than you think. Right. And it forces the parents to discipline their kids because, you know, sometimes it's kind of a cop out for them because they can put their kids somewhere and then their kid can just be a brat and they don't have to deal with it. But in church, they have to kind of figure out how to make this thing work, you know. And obviously in order to make the family integrated church work, you know, people do have to take their kid out of the service if it's like screaming and crying. Right. Obviously, if you have kids, you know, and some people are slow to take their kid out. And I've even had to say from the pulpit as a pastor, hey, can you please take the child out? You know, right. And it's not a big deal, but obviously people do need to be taught how to use it properly. And when the kid is being loud, they do need to take it out to the parking lot or take it to the mother baby rooms or other areas that we provide. Yeah, absolutely. Another conversation that we have a lot is telling people how to teach their kids how to behave in church by having Bible time at home. Absolutely. Right? Absolutely. Have you had that conversation? Yeah. Oh yeah. Because you want to do the majority of the training for them to sit in church by doing that at home. And you can do that by having Bible time at home where you're having them sit and, you know, mom's reading or dad's reading the Bible to the kids. And of course, you know, a lot of our family's homeschooled, so just in that homeschool environment as well. So the church, you know, we as the pastors have to provide training, you know, and teach people how to do things. And then a lot of it is just once you develop that culture, people just kind of look around and they see what everybody else is doing. They see how they're trained. Moms talk to each other and say, you know, your kids are really well behaved. You know, you got younger moms are asking older moms and getting tips. Well, and that's biblical. The Bible says that the older women should teach the younger women how to be sober, love their husbands, love their children. So, yeah, that's the kind of just peer training that needs to take place as well. When I think about being family integrated, you know, we chose to be family integrated when we started Verity because of a scriptural position. It was a conviction for us. But when I think about being family integrated, when I think about all of the churches that have had just terrible things happen because of children's ministries and allowing, you know, just access to kids. And then even when I think about just churches that didn't have anything bad happen to them, but just just thinking about having to, you know, get volunteers for a nursery, get volunteers for this and get volunteers for that. I would choose to be family integrated just because like it honestly just is a better model. Yeah. Like even putting aside that from a practical standpoint, it's just better. It's a better model. It's easier. And I think if people did it, they would realize like, wow, this is way better than trying to have all these other ministries and babysit these kids. And when you bring up the dangers, because let's face it, the Bible says that in the last days, perilous times shall come. Right. And we're living in some perilous times where abusive children abound. Absolutely. And you can't be too careful in 2020 with your children. And one of the things that we bring up a lot is just we don't want to turn our kids over to strangers or we, you know, we're afraid that they could be harmed in some way or molested or whatever. Well, the rebuttal that will come back at us is, well, we do all these background checks and everything. But yet from the research that I've done, it seems that the average pedophile ends up getting away with it scores of times before they get caught. Absolutely. The average pedophile isn't going to get caught on the first victim or the second victim or the third victim. So all a background check is telling you is they haven't gotten caught yet. Right. But does it really guarantee that they're not going to get caught down the road or that they are going to do that or haven't already been doing that and getting away with it? Right. Let's face it. Sadly, most crimes of that nature don't get reported, they don't get caught, they don't get dealt with. Yeah, absolutely. And at the end of the day, you know, these pastors, I'm sure their hearts in the right place when they do the background checks and the buddy systems and all those things. But at the end of the day, nobody's going to take care of their kids better than mom and dad. No one's going to protect them better than mom and dad. And even on a liability, you know, just looking at it from a liability standpoint as a church, having kids with their parents is the best thing for everyone. It's the best thing for every, you know, I don't have to run background checks on parents because those are the parents. Your kids are always with the parents. So it's just a model. If people think about it, they would realize it's the best model scripturally, practically, as far as safety is concerned. It's the way to go. You know, I have a theory as well about why so many kids grow up in an independent fundamentalist Baptist church and end up going to these liberal fund center kind of party churches non-denom because of the fact that in their most formative years, they went to a children's church that in many ways resembled a liberal church. Because if you think about it, over in the main auditorium, you're singing hymns. It's the King James Bible. It's a preacher getting up and preaching for an hour, and he's preaching heavy doctrine and everything like that. Over in the children's church, you got Kool-Aid, animal crackers, somewhere in outer space, you know, you got like kind of wild songs, a lot of hand motions, and a lot of snacks, and a lot of fun. And then it's kind of a more positive only sermon. And it's a little bit more dumbed down, it's flannelgraph, and I'm not against, you know, parents using flannelgraph to teach their children the Bible or singing fun. I'm not even against singing fun Sunday school songs at home and singing all those things. I have no issue with any of that. But what I do think is that when they never experience the real thing, serious church, and they get to a certain age and it's like, okay, now you're 12 and you start going to church. Now, all of a sudden, you're not used to it. And I think people underestimate how much of our psyche is formed when we're 2, 3, 4 years old. Even 1 year old. Look at Moses. I mean, Moses is being breastfed by his mom, and she only trained him just for the first few years. But yet, when he was come to years, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Right. Absolutely. Because he had that influence at the youngest age. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, I'm watching my kids, you know, and we're talking about two year olds, four year olds, six year olds, you know, eight year olds. And they're sitting through the service, taking notes during the preaching, singing, you know, my kids, they love to sing the hymns because they grew up singing the hymns, you know. And we sing the fun songs with them too at home and all of that. But you know, they know what church is supposed, what church is supposed to be like. And they like it, you know, and honestly, they like it because that's all they've really known. That's what they grew up with. Well, and even if they didn't even understand a single word of the English language, as a little toddler, just they're learning the culture, like they're learning what the hymns sound like. They're learning what the preaching sounds like when they grow up. That's probably the kind of church that they're going to gravitate toward. Whereas over in the Sunday school department, the lessons being taught by a woman often too. And then you wonder why they grow up and they go to a church with a female pastor. They go to church with Starbucks in the lobby. They go to a church where it's a rock and roll for Jesus. And like our one year old, two year old, you know, they're not able to speak, but yet they're humming. They're singing the hymns and you could tell that they're singing the same song. You know, they're learning the tune. So it is creating that culture in them. And you know, people think that kids don't grasp, you know, they say, well, they're not grasping everything. But you know, the truth is neither are the adults, you know. We just want our church members to pick up a few things from each sermon. Right. Not necessarily going to get everything. They're not going to get everything and they're going to get things at their level. So, you know, kids are learning at their level. We don't have to dumb down the preaching for them, you know. And then even adults are learning at their levels because even adults, newer Christians are obviously not going to understand everything like someone who's been around a while or whatever. Look, I've got 11 kids, so I know a little bit about childhood development. And one thing that I know is that when toddlers are very young and they can only say a couple words, mama, dada, mine, whatever, they understand way more than they can say. So you can talk to your little tiny toddler that you've only heard him say maybe five or 10 English words, but yet you can say to that child, put this in the trash for me. And they'll just hobble over and where they can barely walk and they'll go throw that in the trash for you. Hey, can you go get me that cup of water? They go grab it. They understand way more than they say. And they're picking up little bits and they're just like a sponge at that age, just sucking it up. Absolutely. And it's so important that they get exposed to real church, to a Baptist church. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I would agree 100 percent.