NCFIC answers critic. It's "Quivering Daughters" redux...

[MamaJunebug]

Please stay with me, I know this is repetitious for a lot of you. ;)

The National Council of Family-Integrated Churches (NCFIC.org) has produced the movie Divided which is a single-sided "documentary" that identifies youth ministry as detrimental to Christianity and calls for all congregations to adopt the family-integrated church model or ... be responsible for the death of Christianity.

A blogger named Tim Challies reviewed the film and writes in part,

So what do we do with Divided?

I think we need to see it for what it is. This is a movie that heavily promotes a very obvious agenda. It does not take long for us to learn that Leclerc is a member of a Family Integrated Church and that he has been for many years. This then casts doubt on this journey he is taking. Is it a true journey to learn a better way to do church? Or were the questions answered long before the film shoot even began?

It is notable that the film does not offer any measured response to FIC. There are many conservative, biblical Christians who reject FIC and I am sure it would not have been difficult to interview a couple of them. Leclerc does not allow any of them to speak. Instead, he sets FIC against the girl with the mohawk. The purpose of the film is not primarily to call people away from youth ministry, but to call them toward FIC. After all, FIC is not the only valid response to the rowdy, win-them-with-fun kinds of youth ministry. I have been in conservative churches almost all my life—churches that deliberately offer age-appropriate classes. These classes have raised up a generation of godly young people who know and love the Lord. Divided says that all of these classes are founded upon paganism and will produce pagans. This is demonstrably untrue.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment with the film, then, is it lumps all non-integrated churches together.

http://www.challies.com/dvd-reviews/divided-the-movie

So not surprisingly, the NCFIC folks have begun to critique the critic. Much like the way Stacy McDonald and Jennie Chancey established a comments-locked webpage, Steadfast Daughters, to criticize the heartfelt book Quivering Daughters (which exposed abuses in patriarchy but earnestly and repeatedly encouraged Christian daughters not to reject their Savior, Jesus Christ).

NCFIC helpfully provides a link to Pastor Kevin Bolling's critique of Mr. Challies, at sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=7271114791

There's also a link to Mr. Kevin Swanson's audio critie of Challies at

sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=7261110600

Both from NCFIC.org

Hm! Sermon audio, you say? Where I came from (Lutheranism), sermons talked about the sin of man and the Love of God in Jesus Christ. I haven't listened to either critique, but I'm going to bet a complimentary charter membership* to freejinger.org that neither man's "sermon" focuses on Christ's redeeming work for us.

I'll further bet both men talk a lot about what Christians must do to be good Christians.

Because the more I see of these folks, and the more I (make myself) listen to their sermons, the less I hear of my Savior and the more I hear of the saved ones. Which is not what attracts me to my faith.

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*I will be enrolling as a charter member as soon as I update my PayPal!!!!

[debrand]

I'm going to have to watch Divided but I have a feeling that my head would explode