How ‘Church’ Can Become ‘Family’

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they
would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to
all, as any had need. (Acts 2:44-45)

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no
divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the
same purpose. (1 Corinthians 1:10) For whoever does the will of my
Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. (Matthew 12:50)

There is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised,
barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all! As
God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion,
kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and,
if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as
the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe
yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect
harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which
indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. (Colossians
3:11-15)

But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget
the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind
all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your
children’s children. (Deuteronomy 4:9) Like newborn infants, long for
the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation. (1
Peter 2:2)

Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing
honor. (Romans 12:10) So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us
speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.
(Ephesians 4:25) Keep on doing the things that you have learned and
received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with
you. (Philippians 4:9)

When the ‘chorus boom’ invaded our churches a couple of decades ago,
one of the most popular was: ‘We are heirs of the Father, We are joint
heirs with the Son, We are children of the kingdom, We are family, we
are one.’

But our songs sometimes do not match reality. About that time a
popular Christian book had this complaint: ‘Our churches are filled with
people who outwardly look contented and at peace but inwardly are crying
out for someone to love them… just as they are – confused, frustrated,
often frightened, guilty, and often unable to communicate even within
their own families. But the other people in the church look so happy and
contented that one seldom has the courage to admit his own deep needs
before such a self-sufficient group as the average church meeting
appears to be.’ [Keith Miller, The Taste of New Wine, Waco: Texas, 1965,
p.22] [97]

An unnamed ‘serious man’ once reminded John Wesley that ‘the Bible
knows nothing of solitary religion.’ He was right. God’s antidote for
loneliness is community, koinonia, rich fellowship, experienced in the
church.

The key purpose of the church is to continue to do in our world what
Jesus did in his. It’s as simple as that. But the key difference between
Jesus and the church is that Jesus did not need to be redeemed! The
church – every church – is a mixture of good and evil. Jesus the head of
the church is there, present with his people, who comprise his body.
God’s Spirit is at work in the church; so is the Devil. The church is
not yet spiritually sanitized, just forgiven.

Last week an ex-church leader came to talk to me. He was driving his
wife and ten-year-old daughter to church these days, and not attending
himself. Why? He’d been hurt, and was disillusioned by the church. But
as we talked I think he came to see that though his diagnosis was right
his attitude was flawed. He should be there, with his family, meeting
God, who still ministers to us in worship as we minister to him. We are
to have the same attitude to the church Jesus has: he loves the church,
not because it is perfect, but in spite of its imperfections. Jesus
always loves like that. So must we.

So the local church ought to be the best resource in our culture to
create ‘community’. It is God’s family, where we are accepted with all
our faults and sins.

When people attach themselves to your church group they ought to
quickly feel at home. Your church circles should be semi-circles,
opening to include new people. But here’s the rub: deep down many
church-folk are scared of their ‘networks’ becoming flexible, because
their security is tied up with the predictability of those
relationships. In church after church I ask the leaders: Is yours a
friendly church? To which they mostly answer, ‘Yes’. Then I ask: name
the adults who have joined your church through conversion in, say, the
last eight years. Many churches have great difficulty naming them. And
when I talk to people who tried to ‘break into’ an established
fellowship they say, ‘They were nice to me the first few Sundays, but I
didn’t seem to get invited to any of their homes. They didn’t give me
the “cold shoulder”. I just knew I wasn’t welcome.’ Why is this? Deep
down we are fearful of new people upsetting the chemistry of the group
that satisfies our needs! So we preserve the group intact at all costs –
even if we don’t realize we are excluding others.

Churches are actually clusters of groups: fellowship groups,
service groups, mission groups, social groups etc. When someone enters,
they need to be attached to one or more of these groups within a few
weeks, or they’ll drift between them and out the back door.

Now the most common fallacy I encounter at this point is ‘we must
get so-and-so onto a committee so he or she will feel involved.’ But
many committees stifle creativity, and are not the best place to
initiate involvement. In any case, in a church that’s alive, the first
group ought to be a ‘faith development’ group of some sort, where new
people’s spiritual gifts can be assessed before they are invited to be
involved in ministries.

We can’t talk about the church as ‘family’ apart from the notion of
‘covenant’. This means that God has redeemed, rescued his people, and
invites them to live in obedience to his will. His will is discovered
especially in Scripture, and is ‘incarnated’ in Jesus and in the
redeemed community. So one of the purposes of the church is to nurture
godly families. The image of God is to be transmitted not only
genetically, but also in the way that parents raise their children. The
laws of God are to be taught to children, who, hopefully, respond by
freely choosing to obey God, to walk in his ways.

What is the best way for children to be motivated in this direction?
Kid’s clubs? Sunday School? Junior Church? I remember the well-known
American church consultant Lyle Schaller being asked this question. His
response: children’s programs are good, but they are not the key
ingredient in the development of a living faith. Children watching the
Big People ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’ as they worshipped is by
far the best stimulus to a child’s godliness. Also, as children see the
church modeling life in Christ by rejecting exploitative attitudes and
practising love, forgiveness and self-sacrifice they will find the
church to be very attractive.

This kind of church family/household is thus an open community where
all are welcome. It will resist buying into cultural attitudes which are
ungodly or discriminatory, like legalism and moralism, racism, slavery,
sexism, or the greedy exploitation of God’s earth. In such a church the
marginalized (name them in your town) will find a home.

How does the church-as-family relate to the biological (or extended)
families within it? If we had to rank-order priorities I believe the
list would look like this:

0. God first
1. Spouse
2. Children
3. Vocation – ‘religious’ or ‘secular’
4. Everything else.

But when all these relationships are in balance they ought not to be
in conflict with each other. Nevertheless, every church ought to be
careful to arange their activities to avoid dividing families too much
or expecting various family members to be at meetings too many nights of
the week.

‘Family nights’ are a good idea – one night a week where all church
activities shut down. I would encourage families on this night not to
answer the phone, to refuse all other invitations, and if anyone visits,
to explain politely that they might come back at another convenient
time. Turn the TV off (videotape ‘essential’ programs). Plan talking
time over the meal, and a fun time afterwards. Maybe older children can
go to their homework at, say, 8 o’clock.

More broadly, every local church should ask: we cannot do everything
for everyone, but what can we do well? Those ministries will probably
come under one or more of three headings: primary (support networks for
those in need of help by the church generally), secondary (self-help and
issue-centred groups and the creation of support networks) and tertiary
(for example, a church-linked professional counseling service). One
church I know, for example, operates half-way houses for homeless youths
and women; they have self-help groups for single adults, men in search
of their masculine soul etc., and have a ‘Barnabas House’ counseling
service on a pay-as-you-can basis.

Every church should run father/son, mother/daughter events, Dobson’s
Focus on the Family films, family picnics… the list is endless. But,
more importantly, various families should do things together – and
include fractured or single-parent families. In other words, children
should have opportunities to relate meaningfully to mature Christian
adults other than their parents; adults should be able to find
meaningful friendships with other like-minded people (eg. parent
networks); and all should reach out to a limited number of marginalized
people. Who for example, helps older single adults, especially widows in
your church? Or seniors? Or the unemployed, early retirees, and single
mums?

Every church should have ‘family services’ where whole families
participate – perhaps a 9.30 am service every Sunday in large churches,
once a month in smaller ones. And every church should run a ‘How to Help
your Friend’ course at least every two years, and seminars for parents
etc. from time to time.

The church is uniquely placed to do in its world what Jesus did in
his – teaching God’s truth to everyone, and relating to the ‘little
people’ like the mentally ill, the lonely, children from dysfunctional
families. Then we shall be truly God’s family in a heartless world.

In a way, family relationships are the church. If the church is the
body of Christ, the human relationships within the congregation and
between congregants and others in the community are the circulatory and
nervous systems. The way to know God’s love is through relationships
with others, so family ministry must be central to the mission of the
church. If we cannot get that right, we will not be able to perform any
of the other missions expected of us. The Good News itself is that God
offers to be our parent, and Jesus promises to be our brother if we
follow him. When we do, we find ourselves entering a whole new family of
brothers and sisters and parents. Even evangelism cannot take place,
then, unless persons are embraced in relationships which mirror the
family-like love of God through which the spirit of God can work.

Diana S. Richmond Garland, and Diane L. Pancoast, The Church’s
Ministry with Families, Dallas: Word Publishing, 1990, pp. 235-236.
[148]

Early in the life of Family magazine we ran a survey among the
readers to try to find out about their marriages. We asked about stress
points, and found to our surprise and dismay that a major cause of
stress affecting both husbands and wives was the pressure of church
commitments. In a paradoxical way, that made me feel slightly better.
It was a relief to discover that I was not the only one who had faced up
to divided loyalties between husband and ‘things that were being done
for God’.

Anne Townsend, Now and Forever: Christian Marriage Today, London:
Fount Paperbacks, 1986, p.14. [91]

Let [those] who cannot be alone beware of community. [They] will
only do harm to [themselves] and to the community. Alone you stood
before God when he called you; alone you had to answer that call; alone
you had to struggle and pray; and alone you will die and give an account
to God. You cannot escape from yourself; for God has singled you out. If
you refuse to be alone you are rejecting Christ’s call to you, and you
can have no part in the community of those who are called…

But the reverse is also true: Let [those] who are not in community
beward of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was
not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your
cross, you struggle, you pray. You are not alone, even in death, and on
the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of
Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can be only hurtful to you…

We recognize, then, that only as we are within the fellowship can we
be alone, and only [those who are] alone can live in the fellowship.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, New York: Harper & Row, 1954,
p.77. [198]

There was a woman in my parish who suffered more physically than
anyone I’ve known. As a young woman she had been a haute couture model
and a singer with an operatic-quality voice. A degenerative arthritis
slowly destroyed her joints, wracked her with excruciating pain, and
left her crippled…

Though her faith never wavered, more than once she said to me that
God had abandoned her. ‘Where,’ she asked, ‘am I to see God’s love for
me?’

In her last years, she became the centre of attention for a group of
women in the parish. Most of them were a generation younger, and had
gotten to know her through a women’s Bible study and other parish
activities. Singly or at times together, without any planning or
organization, they simply began to visit her at home and in the hospital
when she was there. They would run errands, care for some household
duties, but mostly just be with her, pray with her, sit with her, talk
with her. Slowly in the depth of her sufffering, she began to realize
that she had not been abandoned by God. True, there were no moments of
mystical intimacy, or interventions of dramatic healing. The love of God
came to her in a quiet way, through the calm, patient affection of those
women. We cannot live the Christian life in isolation. He calls us into
koinonia.

Kenneth Swanson, Uncommon Prayer, NY: Ballantine, 1987, pp. 113-114.
[232]

When you became a Christian, you not only became a friend of God but
you became a member of God’s family, and like your own family, you have
no choice about your brothers and sisters, and so it is in the family of
God – the church. If I had been put in charge of picking the members of
the church I attend, I would not have picked all of them, and I am sure
that they certainly wouldn’t have picked me! However, the more I meet
with them and see what God is doing in them and with them, the more I
have grown to appreciate them and to marvel at how really great God is.

John Chapman, A Fresh Start, Sydney: Hodder & Stoughton, 1983, p.
189. [116]

Some two thousand years after the birth of that dynamic community of
God, a small group of believers was getting ready to start a church in
the northwest suburbs of Chicago. They decided to go door-to-door
throughout the community with a survey. Their first question was, ‘Do
you actively attend a local church?’ If the answer was ‘Yes,’ they
thanked the respondent for his or her help and went to the next house.
If the person said, ‘No, we don’t go to church,’ they asked him why. The
results were astonishing. Some of the most frequent responses:

• Church is irrelevant to my daily life
• Church is lifeless, boring, and predictable
• The pastor preaches down at me, instead of to me
• There’s too much talk about money

I was a part of that group of believers, and I was heartbroken by
the responses given to that survey. I vowed, before God, never to allow
our church to be boring or irrelevant. If the vision of Jesus Christ is
true (and it is), then church should be the most dynamic, compassionate,
challenging, and relevant place on planet Earth.

Bill Hybels and Rob Wilkins, Tender Love, Chicago: Moody Press,
1993, p.155. [188]

Frequently… real love fails to flow in a local church because
Christians do not enjoy [Christian] security. The results of such
uncertainty are many: for example, there are those who cannot give
themselves to others because it is too painful; they feel that they will
be diminished or that the cost will be intolerable; they fear rejection
or that they will not be appreciated. Others find it as difficult to be
on the receiving end of love because they feel they do not deserve it,
or because they see the love as artificial or manipulative (what is he
after?). Such attitudes to giving and receiving love from one another
are often transferred either to or from our relationship with God. In
particular, the feeling that we must earn love dies very hard.

If, by contrast, we know that we belong to God, that we have been
given access to the grace of God in Jesus, that God chose us in him
before the foundation of the world, that we have been appointed by him
to live for his praise and glory and sent to bear fruit for him by
practical love and goodness of all kinds – then we are free to give
ourselves to others without fear… Jesus told [his] disciples that the
bottom line of such effective Christian living is the realisation that
‘apart from me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5). It is very clear that we
cannot by ourselves love one another as Jesus has loved us. Without him
we can achieve nothing in this – or in any other – direction.

David Prior, Bedrock: A Vision for the Local Church, London: Hodder
& Stoughton, 1985, pp.56-57. [262]

People come to a church longing for, yearning for, hoping for [a]
sense of roots, place, belonging, sharing, and caring. People come to a
church in our time with a search for community, not committee.

We make the mistake of assuming that, by putting people on a
committee, they will develop ownership for the objectives of the church.
People are not looking for ownership of objectives or for functional,
organizational, institutional goals.

Their search is far more profound and desperate than that. They are
looking for home, for relationships. They are looking for the profound
depths of community. They are not looking for transitory, temporary,
annual goals, hurriedly sketched on newsprint or butcher paper at a
planning retreat.

Amid the alienation and loneliness of this time, they bring to our
churches a desperate search for community. They almost put up with the
silliness of our brochures, the institutionalized new-member
orientations, the self-serving nature of our membership hustling. Their
search is that desperate.

Kennon Callahan, Effective Church Leadership, San Francisco: Harper
& Row, 1990, p.106. [164]

The preoccupation of local congregations with programs and
activities is deplorable. People win people to Christ; programs do not.
People discover people in significant relational groups, not in a
merry-go- round of programs and activities.

Some churches become so involved in sponsoring a vast array of
programs and activities that they lose sight of the people those
programs and activities allegedly serve. Professional staff become
preoccupied with advancing their own territory – the programs and
activities related to their area of responsibility – and lose sight of
people they started out to serve.

Increasingly, effective and successful congregations have discovered
that people are more important than programs – that people reach other
people – precisely because all of us search for groups in which we can
discover significant relationships of sharing and caring. Effective
congregations offer these groups – and start new groups of similar
character in thoughtful, helpful ways.

Kennon Callahan, Twelve Keys to an Effective Church, San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1983, p.39. [146]

It is an extraordinarily vital and impressive thing – the Christian
fellowship that meets you in the pages of the New Testament. Here you
have Saul of Tarsus, haughty Pharisee, Hebrew of the Hebrews, who took
care that everybody should know it, sharing his deepest intimacies with
poor illiterate slaves from Greek slums, barbarians, he would have once
called them, Scythians, miserable outsiders – yet now miraculously his
brothers… It was an amazing thing, that early fellowship; and it meant
everything to those who shared it… And that is meant to be normal
Christianity. That is the impact your life and mine might be making on
the world around us, if we were really men and women of the Spirit.

James Stewart, ‘The Fellowship of the Spirit’, The Gates of New
Life, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1956, pp.92,101. [118]

The church is not a club where people with common hobbies meet. It
is not a voluntary association, such as the American Medical
Association, in which members guard and tend to their shared interests.
Nor is it simply a helping organization, an Alcoholics Anonymous that
people seek out after they determine they have an unmanageable problem.
People choose to join AA or a civic club but, in that sense, no one
really ‘joins’ the church. The members of the church are called,
gathered together by the God who showed himself in Jesus Christ.

The New Testament thinks of the church as Christ’s body (1
Corinthians 12:27); Christians are their Lord’s limbs and organs (1
Corinthians 6:15). It comes to no less than this: as Jesus’ body the
church holds within it ‘the fullness of him who himself receives the
entire fullness of God’ (Ephesians 1:23)…

In community Christians encourage and hold one another accountable
before their Lord. They complement one another’s gifts, providing a
fuller and more compelling reflection of Christ in the world… In the
period of its inception… it was a sense of community, of identity and
vision granted by the story of Christ, that once changed the world. Who
is to say it cannot do so again?

Robert E. Webber, Rodnay Clapp, People of the Truth: The Power of
the Worshipping Community in the Modern World, San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1988, pp.53,67. [205]

Discipleship simply means one man asking another man how he is
doing, receiving an honest response, and responding to that need from
the depths of his heart and soul. It means that when a man’s company is
laying off people and he is scared he will lose his job, another man
will sit with him and listen to his fears. Perhaps the man who listens
will be able to share what God showed him during a similar crisis in his
life, put his arm around him and ask what he can do to help or pray with
him. When men have this kind of committed, supportive relationship with
each other, spiritual growth naturally happens. This is discipleship in
real life.

Real discipleship provides a path that moves a boy into deep, holy
masculinity. In its most basic form, this kind of discipleship begins at
birth. It means that older men, whatever their ages might be, care
enough to invest themselves in the spiritual, emotional and physical
lives of younger men. It means that older men will surround a boy as he
becomes a man so that they can help guide and strengthen him through the
stages of life and honor and celebrate his deepening status as a man of
God.

A man needs to be a disciple spiritually and emotionally in order to
discover his feeling life and to be healed from his father-son wound.
This discovery usually does not happen to its own. Most men live without
feeling much of anything until they reach midlife and cannot keep their
emotions inside any longer. Left on their own, they will do almost
anything to keep their feelings at bay – go out and get a new car, a new
wife or a new job. They will try everything to avoid dealing with what
is in their hearts.

Earl R. Henslin, Man to Man, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers,
1993, pp.192-193. [307]

The call to the church in this era is a call to be present with its
people… [and] to assist in the search for behaviour patterns that will
enhance the lives of all people. The time has come for the church, if it
wishes to have any credibility as a relevant institution, to look at the
issues of single people, divorcing people, post-married people, and gay
and lesbian people from a point of view removed from the patriarchal
patterns of the past, and to help these people find a path that leads to
a life-affirming holiness.

John Shelby Spong, Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality,
San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988, pp. 52-53. [97]

If you are among the body of concerned citizens, I urge you to not
just sit there. Get out and work for what you believe. Democracy only
succeeds when people get involved. Campaign for a position on the local
school board. Write your representatives in Washington. Better yet, help
elect congressmen and senators who hold to the Judeo-Christian system of
values.

Picket an abortion clinic. Serve on the hospital lay committee. Take
a teacher to dinner. Examine the policies of your local library. Support
your neighbourhood crisis pregnancy center. Accept a pregnant teenager
into your home. Write the producers and sponsors of sex and violence on
television. Petition the city council to rid your town of adult
bookstores and dirty theatres. Pray for your country every day. Support
the work of your church in reaching to a lost and dying world for
Christ. And by all means, do these things in a spirit of love that would
be honoring to the One who sent us…

• Work to help the homeless in your community – especially where
  children are involved.

• Form a community action group to fight pornography – or participate
  in an existing group.

• Raise money at bake sales to donate pro-family books to your local
  library.

• Take advantage of the opportunities that may be available in your
  local public school district to review text books that are being
  considered for adoption. Let the school board know of any
  anti-religious or immoral biases in the books…

• Volunteer your time with an AIDS support group, thus providing a
  Christian response to this dreaded disease.

• Teach a Sunday school class on social-action issues affecting
  Christians.

Dr James Dobson and Gary L. Bauer, Children at Risk: Winning the
Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Your Children, Dallas: Word
Publishing, 1990, pp.41,79-80. [275]

‘Molly and me, and baby makes three,’ in the words of an old
sentimental pop song. The point, in Rodney Clapp’s words, is simply
this: ‘For the Christian, church is First Family. The biological family,
though still valuable and esteemed, is Second Family. Husbands, wives,
sons, and daughters are brothers and sisters in the church first and
most importantly – secondly they are spouses, parents, or siblings to
one another.’ And Clapp goes on to point out that ‘exactly as family is
how the New Testament church behaves.’ It extends hospitality to a wide
range of Christians and others. Its central sacrament draws on the
analogy of a family meal. At their best, both ‘first’ and ‘second’
families are a magnet for unbelievers who are drawn to the love that is
shared within and beyond their boundaries.

Rodney Clapp, ‘Is the Traditional Family Biblical?’, Christianity
Today, 32, no.13, September 16, 1988, pp.24-28. [134]

Lord,

Thank you for the church – the church around the world and in heaven
and the church around the corner.

Thank you that you are present there even though the church is
imperfect.

Thank you that you love the church even though we must cause you so
much pain.

Thank you that as you died and rose again to form a redeemed
community so you are dying and rising still, giving us new life an new
hope.

Lord, help us to do in our world what you did in yours:
to
worship the Father in Spirit and in truth
to work hard for justice
and to promote love
to heal the sicknesses and loneliness and hurts
of ‘little people’
to befriend women and men, religious people and
reprobates
to preach the gospel truth even when to do so may invite
persecution
to bring down the haughty from their high seats and to
promote the humble and meek
to care for little children and to
advance a child-like ‘kingdom of God’ in our church
to pray in
solitude and train disciples.

So, Lord, may I love the church as you love the church and see in it
the incredible potential you obviously saw in it when you entrusted to
it alone the preaching of your Word in the world. Amen.

A Benediction

And may the risen Christ who dwells in his body, the church, and is
redeeming his church from all corruption to that it may be presented to
his Father faultless and without blemish, encourage you to align
yourself with that redemptive process. For his glory alone. Amen.