The Church Is a Family

Let me get the stupid objection out of the way. Yes, the church is not just a family. I get it. However, it is primarily a family, and that emphasis is incredibly important and transforming.

One of the things I think I've identified as a deficiency in the evangelical church at large (including Reformed churches) is an understanding of biblical ecclesiology and how this influences one's understanding of ethical obligations one has to the church.

If the church is a business, then my obligations are that of my obligations to a business (financial, external work-oriented). If the church is a therapy session then my obligations are emontional (making sure everyone feels valued and heard). If the church is a school, then my obligations are educational (learning the correct theological box-checking). But if the church is a family, then my obligations are those that belong to family, which would include much of the above but far, far more.

In fact, if it is a family, a household, then the obligations are to other people rather than to myself, as many of the above views of church tend to be individualistic and self-centered. Getting my emotional support, my contribution toward the business, my furthering education and knowledge, etc. is a selfish outlook. Family, however, looks to the church as having a goal as a group for the group. 

The church as a household, a family, to which I belong, changes my obligations from self to the group and the individuals of that group. It has a balance between the community and individuals thereof that the others do not. Let me give some examples.

As a pastor, I have witnessed the other models applied to pastors when these pastors no longer fulfill the function of the leader of these groups. In the business model, he can no longer do his job so he loses it and is on his own. This often has led to pastors being abandoned in their old age or illnesses. It's logical. He can't do his job, his position is a job, and therefore, one who can't do his job needs to be let go. It's just good business. Horrible ethics, but good business, and everyone goes along with it because they've been taught the logic of their ecclesiology by the way we treat the church as a business. We hire pastors as employees, so we fire them as employees. BTW, the business model is essentially the club model of church.

In the therapy model, if a pastor isn't good psychologist, he's not as qualified. He has to be a Mr. Rogers figure who is in step with the feelings of the congregation. Although most pastors I know would not categorize their churches this way, I would say that most of them fall into this category. This is the church that cares a lot about how people feel, and how words are spoken in a way that caters to how it will land on people emotionally. They are churches that evaluate to what the congregation responds positively and leans into that. This is the tickling of the ears that Paul talks about. It is to be concerned about the emotional response, how the pastor makes them feel, that truly matters. This doesn't mean that doctrine or the Bible isn't taught. It's just all taught with people's personal emotional responses in mind.

In the school model, their is an emphasis on checking the right theological boxes. Calvinist? Check. No women pastors? Check. Trinitarian? Check. This model tends to emphasize teaching as confessionalism and often confuses that with transformation. This is often seen in a disconnect in these churches between theology and ethical wisdom. One can usually see this clearly in the distinction between what is taught in the pulpit in theory and what one sees a pastor say in counseling or in private when giving advice for living. Wisdom is optional when picking a pastor because the emphasis is on whether he believes the right things and the wisdom is just a nice bonus if it exists at all. If not, it doesn't matter because the church is a school and he has the right curriculum by having the right fill-in-the-blank answers when it comes to theoretical theology.

In the family model, however, a church looks to its pastors as fathers, its older women as mothers, and one another as brothers and sisters. When is the last time you saw a good family fire their father? Why would anyone select a father of a family if he wasn't wise just because he had the right answers on a multiple-choice theology test? What father do you know cares so much about how his children feel that he doesn't say things that need to be said so that his children become what they need to become in the world? 

In the business or club model, fellow Christians are just connected to you because they work for the same institution. They're fellow employees as they seek to promote the club and they work to increase its appeal to the consumers. If someone in that group can no longer work to make the club/business more appealing, they are seen as a liability. The one who makes the club most appealing to the consumer is valued the most as a representative of the church. Hence, a hierarchy of value based on who can increase the finances, membership, and positive PR of the church is created by this model.

In the therapy session view, the people who are the most in-tuned to others emotions in order to endear others to the church and to themselves are the most valuable. The hierarchy of value here is created by viewing those who have the most relational equity as being the most valuable to the goals of the community. Those who don't have the gift of schmoozing, who aren't extraverted, are less valuable in the community, and even expendable. Churches like these feel the loss when these people might leave but feel little loss when those who are lesser valuable in this regard might be lost.

In the family model, everyone is your father, mother, brother or sister. You can't lose one without feeling a massive loss. All have such a high value that fathers aren't going to be left in the cold once they can't bring in the bacon. Mothers are going to be valued as one values his mother. Brothers and sisters are going to be valued equally as brothers and sisters. All are loved because family is not a group of individuals who are external to me. They are me. I cannot lose a limb without feeling the absolute loss of it. I would never cut one off unless it was filled with cancer and I absolutely had to. I value me, so I value everyone who is me. I may say that some parts of my body are more vital for the life of the body but I can't say that any member of my body lacks enough value for me to treat it as expendable. 

But we don't want to be pragmatic. Truth is truth. What model does Scripture teach? 

In 1 Tim 3:15 and Eph 2:19-20, the church is called the household of God. It's further descriptions of the church as a race, nation, etc. are all familial terms (probably not something understood by modern Western readers). We are called brothers and sisters everywhere throughout the NT. 

On top of these explicit teachings, however, is the central one that describes the church as the body of Christ, and therefore, that we, as members of Christ's body, are therefore members of one another. In other words, we are family, and I am my family and my family is me.

The business model, the therapy model, the school model, and any other model of the church that does not see the church as a family and act accordingly is ecclesiological heterodoxy. It isn't just a preference. The church isn't something Christians get to redefine because they like how a business runs better than a family. They like the way a school is run better than a family. They like therapy time better than family time. Christ gets to say what his church is and it is his family, his body, the household of God.

This will influence how fathers are chosen, how older women are treated, how fellow Christians are cared for. The obligations of family are more than the obligations of the others. There are financial obligations to the business model but far more to the family. God never commanded employees to honor their bosses or fellow employees in such a way so as to aid them financially. Yet, he does command that devotion to fathers and mothers. He doesn't command the emotional support of one's fellow academics in school but does command to comfort our sisters and brothers in prison, in sickness, in distress. He doesn't command to rebuke, correct, exhort and to train people we're just trying to endear to ourselves and connect to emotionally but he does command that it be done in the family of the church for the sake of building up the family in Christ. And all of these obligations within a family are done from love rather than some external duty to an institution or project that may lack the motivation of love. 

If the church was a family, no father would ever be put out to pasture to die in homelessness and poverty because he can no longer get his reports in by the end of the day. No one would choose pastors based on likeability but on their ability to lead their children in wisdom. No one would treat a fellow Christian with envy because whatever a Christian has received, I have received because they are me. No one would see their brothers and sisters as taking up their time because my time is their time. We would long to be with one another as family longs to be with one another. We would long to take care of one another as family takes care of one another. And they will know that you are His disciples, not by your ship-shape operations of a church service, not by your likeability as a vacuous emotional support, not by your theoretical theological box-checking, but by your love for one another. 

And that is why the church is a family because its Father is love.