Family and Church
- JCGR
- Mar 9, 2022
- 4 min read
Family means a lot. Whether that impact is positive or negative, family means a lot. Think about the effect your parents, siblings, and even your extended relatives have on how you perceive your life. Coming from a Hispanic family, where everyone is opinionated, strong-willed, and not shy about sharing their thoughts, is a definite case study of family affecting everyone, sometimes for good and some for bad.
As family can impact each of us, so can family affect how we perceive our community and our spiritual commitments. We tend to project or see through the lenses of our experiences and how someone in our immediate circle of influence has treated us. Did you lose your father at a young age? You may look for affirmation from a father figure. Did your parents always give you what you wanted without question? You may feel entitled to get things your way. Did someone cause you pain or abuse you in any way? You may respond by extending either safety for others or doing to others as it was done to you. You may consider that the old saying, "monkey see, monkey do," is accurate to a point.
With a world in dire need of hope, strength, compassion, mercy, and love, the church is ripe to cement the best partnership it can develop to make strong disciples of all nations. It is the oldest church group, the best-suited avenue for discipleship, the one unit that even Government fears somehow. The family is the central avenue to reach humanity with the hope of the Gospel. While communities at large focus on so much effort, when the consumerism found in churches is removed, and genuine faith is the focus for everyone present, the family rises to the top as the best choice to make an everlasting impact.
The Bible never speaks to the centrality of the synagogue as the place where children are taught about matters of eternal importance. Instead, the synagogue is where the community is taught, primarily adults, and the adults then pass the matters of faith to the children in the home. Yet, since the early 1900s, the church developed youth programs and children programs, which separated the children and youth to give them an avenue for focused discipleship. Sadly, consumerism kicked in somewhere along the way, and the intentionality faded. Instead, everything was for entertainment and games, sprinkling some bible teaching.
The result is evident in the disciples that have developed out of it and how the programs and services have grown out of this detour. Young, inexperienced pastors are given the "entry-level" position of "Youth Pastor," and they are trained with the lesser (younger) members of the congregation, with the hopes that in a few years, the inexperienced pastor is capable of handling adults and can move on to be the "Pastor" of a church. In this example alone, we see that ministry is now given tiers, groups are separated, and calling may not be considered for consumerism and business mentality.
The church is only the doorway to something greater and better. Come to the regular meetings and see what can be taken to make each of us fulfilled. Is it just a pep talk, similar to your school days? Just come to the worship service. Do you want to make decisions that fulfill a need to be heard and have some positional authority? Be part of a decision-making team or committee; You can lever up or down based on your whim. Are you looking for a business to avoid dealing with conviction or responsibility? Then focus on programs that run throughout the year to bring people in and keep them occupied. When the church is not the means to corporate worship to the Living God, but something or someone else, consumerism has set in, and it erodes the power of God in our lives because we usurp His throne.
Rightfully do we read in Scripture, in Ephesians 4:
11And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
This paints a complete picture when we also consider Deuteronomy 6:
4“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. 8You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. 9You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
The central truth is not that the current systems may not work, but that the focus of attention has been shifted to the wrong place. It is not about us, the readers, but it is for us. It is about God, and the Gospel and the teaching of it to the next generation are for us to cherish and to hold as our mission (Matt. 28:16-20).
What is your response to the call to make disciples and not consumers?
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