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2008-02-05 issue:

Church as family: worrying and celebrating

Real Families article

by Michael A. King

Print Article

A generation ago my missionary parents turned our large family into a touring band singing Bill Gaither’s “I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God.” Ever since then, I, like many of us, have had to work not to see family and church as interchangeable.



That’s good. Scripture itself (Romans 8:15-17, Galatians 4:5, and more) tells us that through Christ we become adopted sons and daughters of God, hence also each other’s brothers and sisters.

It’s also bad. Family is a central New Testament image of the church. But there are so many more images to enrich us: In his Images of the Church in the New Testament, Paul S. Minear famously claimed to have found 96.

Then blend the family image with a family-like structure, as do so many small congregations, and disentangling church and family really gets hard. So I both celebrate the image of church as family and worry about it. Let me just sample the smorgasbord of factors that may be pondered, starting with reasons to worry.

Reasons to worry: A problem with small churches that are families is this: The cozy family church can also be the cramped family nest. You crawl over each other like baby birds and risk seeing that tiny space as the only world there is. Everybody knows everybody else’s business, and whoever misses being in this loop or that feels devalued and excluded. The church as family can become the nest that traps us instead of a launching pad into God’s great world out there.

A second problem is that family churches are wrapped in a force field. Walk as a stranger into a family-style church and reel like I do when I forget the sliding-glass door is closed and crash right into it. The family church force field can be invisible, but it’s there. It’s made up of all the things you have to know, all the rituals and memories you have to have shared, all the rules (“This is the way we do family.”) you have to have mastered to belong to the gang.

Reasons to celebrate: Still there are reasons to celebrate church as family. One is that for many of us, family equals safe. In an ever-complex culture that changes at ever more dazzling speeds, the small family church is a haven. Here the impersonal hordes, the cool but intimidating styles of mass media, in which all humans except us are beautiful, the indigestible masses of information hurled at us by ever-evolving technologies, are tamed. Here, as on that long-gone TV show Cheers, they know your name. They know your foibles and your triumphs. Here, as in any family, they’re supposed to take you as you are, just because you’re family.

Another reason to celebrate church as family is that it offers amazing potential for healing. Many of us are underparented, overparented, nonparented. Many of us come from broken families, hurting or hurtful families, families that have disowned us or from whom our addictions or poor choices have severed us. Church as family gives us a fresh start. Here we again become children, this time of a more reliable parent than any human one, and gain new brothers and sisters who, though flawed, are at their best committed to helping carry our burdens.

Repeatedly as pastor I’ve watched with awe as people who seem broken nearly beyond repair enter this new family and change. Often the change is even dazzlingly physical, as those whose wounds have undermined even bodies experience a reweaving at every level of being. In such cases I’ve frequently been involved as pastor but not enough to account for the radicality of the transformations. Something more profound is going on. Partly, it’s the work of God. But one key way God works is precisely through those brothers and sisters in the family of God.

A snapshot of reasons to worry or celebrate can be seen in worship-style tendencies. The family church may miss treasures offered by worship viewed, for instance, as unfolding within the image of Jesus as the vine and the church as his branches. Such worship may treasure silence, order, the minimizing of commotion outside to help still the storm inside.

In contrast, like biological families at reunions, the family church is often informal, noisy, fun loving. People hug and cry out welcomes. Children scurry. We’re so glad to be together. Can’t you just feel it? This can trap. It can also heal.

Let’s be part of the family of God and of branches on the vine, of the body of Christ, of the royal priesthood, the holy nation, of the Holy City to which all God’s people stream from every nest.

Michael A. King is pastor of Spring Mount (Pa.) Mennonite Church, publisher of Cascadia Publishing House LLC and editor of DreamSeeker magazine.

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