Category: Church Is Family

It is fairly easy to teach children to give, especially when we provide the gifts they give. First, there’s excitement when they receive the gift, usually followed by disappointment when they learn they can’t keep it. The excitement grows when they learn that the gift will help feed people; it grows when they learn they can help people learn about Jesus.

The excitement of giving quickly becomes a habit, and kids become keenly aware of the needs around them. That’s where families begin to grow together. My own giving has been challenged when my kids have asked for money for various missions needs. Some of their requests have been met with challenges to do extra chores or to give up a portion of their birthday money, which is usually followed by a discussion about the value of personal sacrifice.

But giving isn’t merely a matter of collecting money; our giving should always be a matter of connecting people to God and helping them to grow in their faith and encouraging them to serve as well. We can see this pattern in the conversion of Cornelius in Acts 10. Verse 2 tells us that Cornelius “and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.”

Cornelius and his family were Gentiles who were beginning to connect with God, and they were beginning to serve by giving to those who were in need. Then God sent Peter to preach to them. Acts 10:24 says, “Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends.” Cornelius continued “giving” by introducing his relatives and friends to the Gospel message, which led to them being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 10:48).

Let’s continue the pattern in our own families and within the church by giving generously to people in need. Families can also give together by serving together, at the third-Saturday food distribution, for example. Let’s continue giving together so we can all grow and serve together.

Our culture has trained us to be self-reliant. This becomes painfully obvious when other people begin to get involved in our personal lives; then we bristle. However, I was recently encouraged by several young men and women who said that they want to find some older men and women who would be willing to give them insight into marriage, work, and leadership issues.

This should encourage us to understand that the church is a family and that families teach each other. In Titus 2:1-6, Paul encourages us to do that: “You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled.”

Early on in my Christian life, I was taught that each of us should have a Paul, a Barnabas, and a Timothy. In other words, each of us should have a person in our life, like Paul, who teaches us how to become a Christian and how to live as a Christian. Each of us should also have a person, like Barnabas, who encourages us to live according to sound doctrine, to hold us accountable. Each of us should also have a Timothy, someone whom we can teach and encourage.

Whether you are young or old, take the time to get to know your family. Find someone who can teach you what you need to know. Find someone who can encourage you. Then find someone whom you can teach and encourage so that this family can continue to connect people to God and other people, to grow in our faith and knowledge of Jesus, and to serve like Jesus.

Forgive me, but one of my favorite memories of Easter is our family’s annual egg hunt. For me, the only thing better than searching for eggs was getting old enough to be allowed to hide the eggs. One of the most exciting things for me as a kid was to know that my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older cousins were so good at hiding eggs that it would a long time to find the eggs. Because of their skill (which led to finding eggs weeks and months later) I always looked forward to the day that I could hide the eggs; I wanted to be as good as they were.

That kind of imitation is key to our understanding of the Easter message. Jesus’ death and resurrection are the ultimate expression of God’s love for us, and we ought to imitate that love. Paul wrote about this in Ephesians 5:1, 2: “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

When we are immature in our faith, it’s easy for us to focus on what Jesus’ death and resurrection means for us as individuals. We are forgiven. We have the promise of eternal life. We have a relationship with God that we didn’t have before. Those are great things, and they are certainly reasons for us to celebrate, not just on Resurrection Sunday but on every Sunday, even every day.

But that’s just the starting point. Just as children grow up and take on new responsibilities, Christians must grow up and start imitating God and live a life of love. Perhaps the reason that we hesitate to live that life of love is because Jesus’ love is a sacrificial love. God, as our heavenly Father, loves us in such a way that he sacrificed his only Son Jesus, who gave his life willingly, to forgive us and to give us eternal life. As God’s children and Jesus’ brothers and sisters, we are called to imitate that love. Let us love sacrificially.

As a parent, I can honestly say that there isn’t much higher praise than to be recognized when my kids say and do the right things. So, family, I want to thank you for reflecting your Father in heaven.

From March 6 – 13, we hosted a group of students from His House at Central Michigan University, which was here to minister to the homeless and others in downtown Detroit. The morning they left, their leader simply gushed about how well this body of believers welcomed them into our family and helped with their ministry.

Here are some examples. Melanie Govan brought extra blankets so the students would be warm as they slept in our building. Cathy Andrews and Liz Garofali washed some of their clothes and towels. Debbie Green made a meal for the team one night. They thanked Sue Duncan for the ice cream. They also thanked everyone who gave them their cell phone numbers, just in case they needed anything. While I’m sure that those who offered some help wouldn’t think much of what they had done, the CMU students praised God because of their care.

This has to be the same kind of pride that Paul felt when he wrote 2 Corinthians 1:3, 4: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” Even though our church family members would consider their contributions to be small, the students praised God. Even more than that, while the students felt that their contributions to the homeless in Detroit were small, they reported that the people they helped praised God for their help. I praise God for you, as well, because you have responded to God’s mercy in your lives by sharing some comfort with others who then showed God’s mercy to people who desperately need it.

While it’s clearly biblical to consider the whole body of believers within the church as our extended family, many times we seem to be missing a real sense of family roles within the church. Most times we are content to think of God as our Father and everyone else as our brother or sister. But the church’s identity as the family of God goes beyond the understanding that all Christians are siblings.

The Bible shows us that there are other ways that we must relate to each other within the church. In 1 Timothy 5:1, 2, Paul writes: “Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.” Paul tells us that there are generational roles within the family of Christ.

These roles are more than positions of authority; they are a matter of mutual respect and healthy growth within the family of God. While we might blame the generation gaps for the perennial conflicts within the church over issues such as worship preferences and the adoption of various forms of technology, the differences in age and spiritual maturity among God’s children should lead us toward growth, rather than division.

The familial roles within the church help us to grow as a church. Younger generations are going to become the leaders of the church; so they must look to the older generations, who must model Christ-like servant-leadership. Young men and women are facing the attacks of culture that older Christians have already faced, and the older generations must help the younger ones survive. Our culture continually devalues the aged, but younger Christians must take a stand to protect older Christians and care for them. Ultimately all Christians must love each other as family, guiding, protecting, and encouraging each other as we grow together.

I think it’s strange that so many people in the church, and not just this church, believe that “ministry” is what happens at church. Many also believe that only people who are called “ministers” are the ones who do “ministry.” That can’t be further from the truth.

The “family” is probably one of the biggest mission fields that we have, and parents, then, are front-line missionaries. While the church helps missionary-parents be trained, to be encouraged, and to be equipped.

We can see this throughout the Scriptures. In Deuteronomy 6, we read how all of Israel was called to train up children at home. In Acts 10, Cornelius, the first Gentile Christian, invited his whole family and his friends to his home to hear Peter preach, and they were all baptized. In Acts 16, we read how Lydia and her household and how the Philippian jailer and his household all believed and were baptized.

Jesus recognized the influence of family as well. In Mark 5 we read about how Jesus had cast out a legion of demons from a man and into a herd of pigs. Because Jesus delivered him, the man begged to go with Jesus, but in Mark 5:19, Jesus said, “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” Verse 19 says that he went home and told everyone what Jesus had done for him and that “all the people were amazed.” One life was changed directly by Jesus, but many others were influenced back home.

Back home, with the family, that’s where life happens. That’s also where lives can be changed. Considering that parents spend far more time with their children—and grandparents with grandchildren and aunts and uncles with nieces and nephews, etc.—than all of them spend at church, it should be clear how much the family of Christ must minister to the family and with the family so they can be ministers at home.

I have traumatic childhood memories of Saturday-morning cleaning. It didn’t happen every week, but when Mom started playing Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn records (far more traumatic than the actual tasks of cleaning house), we knew it was time to work together.

The church is a family, and family works together. It’s obvious that we need to work together to make sure that all the “church work” gets done: classes need teachers; food needs to be gathered, sorted, boxed, and distributed; etc. But that isn’t the extent of our responsibility to each other as the family of Christ.

The early church went beyond what we consider church work and took care of each other. They shared their possessions with each other and even sold their property, giving the money to the apostles to take care of others. Acts 4:34 tells us that not one person among them had any needs.

Paul tells us in Galatians 6:10, “As we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” This family of believers has done amazing things to help take care of people outside of our family—as well we should—but Paul indicates that we ought to take special care when it comes to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Our ministry programs have many needs where people can help, but our family also has needs. We have families with newborns and we have senior adults who might needs some extra help around the house. We have folks who are unable to shovel their walks. We have folks who need assistance getting to appointments. The thing is, I don’t plan to develop and maintain a list of such needs. Rather, I encourage everyone to get to know the members of our family so that we can identify and meet those needs on our own. As we continue to connect, grow, and serve together, let us not forget to take care of each other as well.

Hebrews 2:11 tells us that “Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.” It’s very simple: the church is family. God is our Father; Jesus is our brother; and the Christians around us are our brothers and sisters as well.

I understand, however, that some people aren’t all that wild about the idea of the church being family. Some people have or have had bad family experiences. Contrary to the bumper sticker wisdom, there isn’t a lot of fun in dysfunction. And if we’re honest, there are times when our church family is dysfunctional, too. So, for some, thinking of the church as family might not be a positive thing. But we have to change that.

It’s one of my goals for this new year to help this body of believers to become more like a family. We have a good start; as far as I’m concerned, we are family. But there’s more we need to do. Most of the work shouldn’t involve new programs, but all of it requires some new thinking.

Younger folks need to interact with older folks, and older folks need to interact with younger folks. That is going to require thinking about mutual respect and concern. It’s going to require all of us reaching out to each other and offering tangible help when it’s needed. It’s going to require humility. It’s going to require patience—probably a lot of patience. It’s going to require all of us getting involved to do the work that has to be done, from cooking and cleaning to teaching and leading. Ultimately, it’s going to require a lot of love.

I believe we’re up to the challenge. We have a loving Father who has given us all we need to get the job done and a loving Brother who has set the example. Let’s work together to be the family God wants us to be.