Church as Family

The meaning and value of family may seem like one of the most obvious things in the world. After all, most of us are born into a family, grow up under the care and tutelage of parents and spend our lives answering (happily or unhappily) to an array of grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles and other kin. In so many ways, family is the ground we stand on. Small wonder we want to call it “natural” and believe it to be as final and unchanging as the law of gravity.

But in fact the meaning and value of family have shifted constantly from time to time and from place to place. It is well known, for instance, that the ancient Greeks considered homosexual practice natural, presenting little or no problem for their families. In some places and times, polygamy has been considered as (or more) natural than monogamy. Customs of inheritance, the gender roles of spouses, conditions for marriage and child rearing practices are just some of the aspects of family life that vary from culture to culture.

Contemporary Christians are perhaps more aware of the varieties of family than their ancestors. The late twentieth century is widely acknowledged as a time of rapid and epochal change, as a period of extraordinary diversity and widespread conflict. So Western Christians dwell in societies in which the very definition of family is debated. Do we best understand family as a man, a woman and their biological (or adopted) offspring? Or is a society better off if we widen the definition of family to include two men or two women living together, with or without children? Is lifelong fidelity, heterosexual or homosexual, at all realistic or even ideal? However marriage is defined, why do married people have children? In a world of burdened resources, should they have children?

All this may be unsettling and even frightening. But in some ways it is a beneficial development. It is only after we have admitted that the family takes many shapes and forms that we can ask what a Christian shape and form is and dream about how to better embody it here and now.

Church as First Family

Modern Christians have often assumed the Bible offers a detailed, once-for-all blueprint and definition of family. But the God of the Bible is not a philosophical construct, not an impersonal force to be dissected and manipulated. The God of the Bible is the living, dynamic source and sustainer of all that is, who deigns to enter history and relationship with the people Israel and the man Jesus.

So the Bible itself is not a list of abstract, timeless formulas providing technical guidance on such things as family life. Instead, the Bible is centrally and first of all the story of Israel and Jesus. To create and live in truly Christian family, then, the church in every generation and culture must read the biblical story anew. It must attend closely to the poetry and prison letters (and other genres) to see how the pioneers of the faith responded to the story in light of the particular challenges and privileges of their cultures. Then, without assuming it can simply mimic the pioneers (declaring, for instance, that all good Christians must wear sandals like Peter or that women will cover their heads in worship like the early Christians at Corinth), the church must respond to the story of Israel and Jesus in the light of the particular challenges and privileges of its day.

Turning to the Bible for clarity of vision rather than technical guidance, we are quickly reminded that Jesus called his followers to live in the light of the arrival of God’s kingdom: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15 NRSV). The coming of God’s kingdom was in many ways shocking. Not least was it shocking because in its train came a revolutionary understanding and practice of family.

Jesus creates a new family. It is the new first family, a family of his followers that now demands primary allegiance even over the old first family, the biological family. Those who do the will of the Father (who, in other words, live under the reign of God) are now brothers and sisters of Jesus and one another (Mark 3:31-35). Jesus can speak even more challengingly: he forthrightly declares that the advent of the kingdom means brother will turn against brother, children against parents and parents against children (Matthew 10:21-22). So far as biological family is concerned, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34 NRSV). Those who love father or mother more than Jesus, this Jesus says, are not worthy of him (Matthew 10:37).

The consequences for the early church were real, visible and disturbing. A Roman family might, for instance, worship a number of popular gods—especially those in favor with the ruling elite at the time. It could be financially and politically costly to worship a single, imperious god, such as the God of Israel and Jesus. So if a Roman son became a Christian, the entire family fortune and heritage were endangered. The resulting conflicts were severe. Families were actually divided.

At the same time, it is important to notice that Jesus did not destroy the biological family. He did create a new first family and call for allegiance to the kingdom to precede the biological family. Yet he also spoke strenuously against divorce (Matthew 19:3-12) and welcomed and blessed children (Mark 10:13-16; Luke 18:15-17). So Jesus did not expect the biological family to be denied or eliminated. What he did was decenter and relativize it. He did not see it as the vehicle of salvation. He expected the first family, the family of the kingdom, to grow evangelistically rather than biologically (Matthew 28:19-20). Entrance to the kingdom in fact required a second birth, this time of water and the Spirit (John 3:5-6). For those who would follow Jesus, the critical blood, the blood that most significantly determines their identity and character, is not the blood of the biological family. It is the blood of the Lamb.

The sense of church as the first family is also clear in the letters of Paul. His most significant language for describing the church is the language of family. For Paul, Christians are children of God and brothers and sisters to one another (see, for instance, 1 Thes. 1:4, 6). The phrase “my brothers” occurs more than sixty-five times in his letters. Paul can also call members of a church “my children” (as in 1 Cor. 4:14; Galatians 4:19). Both the number and the intensity of these familial phrases make Paul’s letters remarkable in their time and place.

Such greetings were not merely pious niceties. The church Paul knew met in households. Paul expected and depended on Christians’ opening their homes (and thus their biological families) to Christian brothers and sisters (Romans 16:5; 1 Cor. 16:15; Col. 4:15; Philemon 2). Such hospitality extended to a wide network of Christians, including missionaries and those on business trips (2 Cor. 8:23). By so opening their homes, these Christians in effect recognized and welcomed “relatives” near and distant.

On a more basic level, Paul crucially links familial language with baptism. The Gospel of John, as we have noted, recognizes a need for the disciples of Jesus to be born again, to know a second birth that redefines identity and admits the disciple to a family-community that will nurture the new identity. Paul has similar concerns but addresses them with the language of adoption rather than birth (Romans 8:15-17; Galatians 3:26-4:6). He reminds believers that they have a new identity because they have been baptized into Christ. When children are adopted, they take on new parents, new sisters and brothers, new names, new inheritances. And those who have been baptized into Christ, according to Paul, have been adopted by God. This new baptism means that Christians’ new parent is God the Father (“Abba,” cries Paul). Their new siblings are other Christians. Their new name or most fundamental identity is simply “Christian”—one of those who know Jesus as Lord and determiner of their existence. And their new inheritance is freedom, community and resources provided a hundredfold (Mark 10:28-31; Galatians 3:26-4:6).

New Testament scholar N. T. Wright affirms in dramatic terms the centrality of what is here called first family. Noting that “from baptism onwards, one’s basic family consisted of one’s fellow-Christians,” he writes:

The fact of widespread persecution, regarded by both pagans and Christians as the normal state of affairs within a century of the beginnings of Christianity, is powerful evidence of the sort of thing Christianity was, and was perceived to be. It was a new family, a third “race,” neither Jew nor Gentile but “in Christ.” (Wright, pp. 449-50)

Single in First Family

One of the immediate and down-to-earth effects of Jesus’ creation of a new family is that single, or unmarried, people are very much a part of family. Perhaps it is not too strong to say that there is at least one sure sign of a flawed vision of the Christian family: it denigrates and dishonors singleness.

It was in the light of the kingdom come that Paul could write, “He who marries his fiancée does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better” (1 Cor. 7:38 NRSV). How could singleness be better than marriage? Paul recognized that the age of the kingdom does not come painlessly. Jesus announced and embodied God’s kingdom; the church after him witnesses to this Lord and his kingdom. But this means all false gods and idols are challenged. The rule of the principalities and powers—the undue, overreaching claims of governments, markets, fashions, cultures, educational and other institutions—is revealed to be illegitimate and ultimately destructive. So the false gods are not friendly to Jesus and those who would worship only the God he called Father. And so we live in awkward times. A new age has arrived but is not here in its fullness; the old age drags on with more than a little effect and efficiency. Because the powers of the old age remain real and often malignant, Christians can survive only with hope—the hope of Jesus’ return and the complete manifestation of God’s loving, just rule. In these circumstances, Paul notices that the married person may sink more deeply into the affairs of the passing world, or the old age, than singles (1 Cor. 7:33). With spouse and children, the married person takes on additional responsibilities and anxieties. The single person can live and serve in less complicated “devotion to the Lord” (1 Cor. 7:35).

For our day, Paul’s awareness of the advantages of singleness can serve as a reminder that in Christian (or first) family singleness and marriage are complementary. And this complementarity has some quite practical effects. Christian parenting, for instance, is a task for the entire church. It is a responsibility (as baptismal ceremonies in many traditions imply) even for those who have never conceived or legally adopted a child. This is not to dispute the primacy of biological or adoptive parents. But in Jesus’ and Paul’s first family, Christian parents are agents of the church. And they are engaged in a task too big and important for them alone. Single Christians should not be exempt from either the joys or the responsibilities that children bring. Singles are significant role models. In a transient society where many children are separated from biological relatives by hundreds of miles, singles can serve invaluably as surrogate grandparents or aunts and uncles. (A service most important, of course, to the parent without a spouse.)

Serving the church’s mission, singles also have the advantage of mobility. On balance it is simpler for the single, should it seem right, to move to a new situation, to make do with less money or even to confront potentially dangerous circumstances. This is not something for married Christians to exploit: no Christian, married with children or not, is exempt from moving, giving up possessions or facing danger. Yet singles can affirm a unique missionary advantage and take it seriously.

Married in First Family

If singles have the missionary advantage of mobility, married Christians may possess the missionary advantage of hospitality. Christians are peculiar people with a long tradition of welcoming strangers. God called the Israelites to love and care for strangers, since they were strangers themselves in the land of Egypt (Leviticus 19:33-34; Deut. 10:17-19). Jesus welcomed strangers or outsiders of many sorts, even to the point of inviting them to table with him. So too the early church put hospitality at the center of its life. As we have noted, Christians generously opened their homes to fellow believers. Christians are called to be hospitable within both the first family of the church and the second, or biological, family, and Paul effusively praises families whose homes are the hub of the church in several cities (Romans 16:5, 23; 1 Cor. 16:15; Col. 4:15; Philemon 2).

Among the significant strangers Christian parents must welcome are their own children. Our children are strangers to us in many ways: they come to us as aliens and have to learn to live in our world; they ask awkward questions (“If Christians are supposed to love each other, how can they kill each other in wars?” “Why is God letting my little sister die of cancer?”) that remind us how strange we ourselves are. Christian parenthood, then, is practice in hospitality, in the welcoming and support of strangers. Welcoming the strangers who are our children, we learn a little about being out of control and about the possibility of surprise (and so of hope). Moment by mundane moment—dealing with rebellion, hosting birthday parties, struggling to understand exactly what a toddler has dreamed and been so frightened by in the night—we pick up skills in patience, empathy, generosity, forgiveness. And all these are transferable skills, skills we can and must use to welcome other strangers besides our children. We become better equipped to open ourselves to strangers who are not our children but our brothers and sisters in Christ. Thus the Christian home can be a mission base in many ways.

The Christian Home as Mission Base

The Christian home is a mission base when Christians live in intentional community, such as Chicago’s Jesus People U.S.A. or Washington’s Sojourners Fellowship. But the Christian home is also a mission base when Christians who happen to live in the same neighborhood enjoy meals together, share a lawn mower and tree-trimming tools or “exchange” kids for an occasional evening.

The Christian home is a mission base when members of a church move into the same apartment complex, sponsor Bible studies and organize supervision of the playground. It is a mission base when it opens its doors to missionaries on furlough, friends marooned between apartment leases, someone out of work or a family that has lost its home to a fire. It is a mission base providing us resources and encouragement from which to launch into new mission endeavors—whether across town or across the world.

The point is simple. In a world that offers less and less nominal support for Christian practices, in a world increasingly fragmented, hostile and lonely, there is no end to ways the Christian home can serve as a mission base. The limit, quite literally, is our imagination.

In sum, Christian family is first and finally the life of the church. It includes singles and marrieds, those with and those without biological or adoptive children—all called to exercise unique but complementary missionary advantages. Its purpose is to witness, through its shape and practice, to the kingdom of the God met in Israel and Jesus. Christian family is where we live not so much in a “private” haven from the world as in a mission base to the world. The Christian home is where we strain and labor and sometimes weep in service to the kingdom. But it is also where we learn to “do” mission as rest and play, where welcoming friends and reading novels and planting gardens and making babies are among our most noble moral endeavors. It is where we do our most strenuous and refreshing work—for what could be more strenuous and more refreshing than rearing children?

» See also: Church

» See also: Church in the Home

» See also: Fellowship

» See also: Godparenting

» See also: Hospitality

» See also: Love

» See also: Parenting

» See also: Singleness

» See also: Witness

References and Resources

R. S. Anderson and D. B. Guernsey, On Being Family: A Social Theology of the Family (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985); B. Berger and P. L. Berger, The War over the Family (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983); R. Clapp, Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993); D. E. Garland and D. R. Garland, “The Family: Biblical and Theological Perspectives,” in Incarnational Ministry: The Presence of Christ in Church, Society and Family, ed. C. D. Kettler and T. H. Speidell (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1990) 226-40; S. Hauerwas, A Community of Character (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) 155-95; W. H. Willimon, The Service of God (Nashville: Abingdon, 1983) 170-86; N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).

—Rodney Clapp