Church and U2 concerts: exploring what ‘family’ means for the local church

Amongst the metaphors for the church that the New Testament writers use are that of ‘family’ and ‘household’. Jesus instructs his disciples to address God as Father (Matthew 6:9) and Paul emphasises the adoption we have as sons and daughters in the family of God (Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15,23). As a gathered church, Paul talks about Christians as the ‘household of faith’ (Galatians 6:10) or the ‘household of God’ (Ephesians 2:19; 1 Timothy 3:15; cf. 1 Peter 4:17).

Over the last 20 years, the Family Ministry movement has articulated the reciprocal principles of ‘family as church’ and ‘church as family’. The first of these principles—family as church—focuses on the discipleship of children in the Christian home. Parents are the most significant spiritual influence in their child’s life. Therefore, Family Ministry has advocated for the active equipping of parents for this role[1].

The second of these principles—church as family—focuses on the role of the church congregation to be a family-like environment for all people; children, teens, adults, and seniors, singles and married, divorced and widowed, those with children and those without. As the New Testament makes clear, all are members of the household of God.

The right question that flows from an understanding of ‘church as family’ is, what does it mean for the church to practically express its household nature, day by day, week by week, year by year?

Diana Garland wrote one of the key textbook treatments of the Family Ministry movement in her aptly titled Family Ministry: A Comprehensive Guide, first published in 1999 and updated with a second edition in 2012. Whilst the book is now hard to find and the ministry conversation has (helpfully, in my opinion) moved to a more comprehensive paradigm of intergenerational ministry, Garland’s writing provides helpful analysis of the ‘church as family’ question which we can continue to benefit from today.

Garland begins by describing three social and practical benefits that well-functioning families provide their members.

•        A family meets the needs of attachment and belonging.

•        A family shares life purposes and emotional and physical care.

•        A family provides a base of knowledge, resources, time and help.

Of course, our communities are full of families which are marred by the destructive power of sin and fail to provide these benefits to lesser or greater extents. However, just as the perfect Fatherhood of God is not diminished by the failure of earthly fathers, the painful failure of families on their members need not detract from our understanding of the perfection of the family of God and our seeking to express this in our local church communities. In fact, one of the most effective ways that Christians can minister to those whose own families have failed in any of these ways is to foster a strong, functional, and practically supportive community in the local church.

The danger, however, is that our churches may not provide these benefits, because they are not sufficiently behaving as families. This is where another of Garland’s insights is particularly profound. Garland explains the difference between a family and a pseudo-community.

‘Pseudo-communities form when my interests and lifestyle rubs shoulders with yours, but no real community is formed, no real friendships are formed. We may be involved in the same team, but there is no invitation to share one another’s lives and no sense of responsibility or sense of obligation of one towards the other…

Pseudo-communities are based on one-dimensional commonality rather than multi-salient relationships that characterise (real) community.’

Several years ago, my wife and I had tickets to see U2 at the Sydney Olympic Stadium. We knew in advance that the first few hundred people who made it through the turnstiles when the gates opened would be allowed into the exclusive VIP section which was enveloped by the runway arms of the stage. So, we both took the day off work and lined up outside the stadium from 9am for the 6pm open.

We and the growing crowd who lined up with us formed a sense of community. We all had aligned purpose and joy. We were chatting to those around us, minding each other’s bags when we needed food or toilet breaks, singing along to our favourite songs, and all cheering in anticipation when we heard The Edge do soundcheck[2]. We streamed into the stadium together, danced and sang for hours with each other, cheered for an encore together, and then… went home, never to see each other again.

For close to 14 hours, my new gang of 500 closest friends and I had formed a pseudo-community based on common interests and geographical proximity. But I had no real desire to get to know these people, to share life together beyond that day. Once the event was over, we had no anticipation that we would meet each needs of attachment and belonging, share life purposes, or provide a base of knowledge, resources, time and help.

Churches can be the same. I love Jesus. I love singing praises, reading the word in community, hearing the word expounded in a sermon, and the breakfast served at my church is second to none. I also love that my church gathering is well attended. There is a buzz in the air, plenty of people to chat to and exchange pleasantries with. The danger is that my church could just be a pseudo-community of like-minded individual disciples who also enjoy these things, rather than a household of faith that actively takes up the ‘sense of responsibility or sense of obligation of one towards the other’.

How would I know if my experience is closer to ‘church as family’ or “church as pseudo-community”?

Here are a few questions you could ask.

• How well do you know the other members of your church? Do you feel that you belong at church? Is it an essential community for you? So much so, that it is difficult to imagine spending a weekend without seeing other congregation members.

• When you need help (physical, social, resource, knowledge), are these the people who are first in mind to provide it?

• Do you trust the people at your church to the extent that you can be truly vulnerable with them, confessing your sins and bearing each other’s burdens?

However you would answer these questions, consider the following ways in which you could build a stronger sense of ‘church as family’.

• Take 10 minutes out of your week to sit down, distraction-free, and consider your church community. Write down what you appreciate about your church, who the people are that you know well, and who you don’t. Consider who in your church you would miss if you weren’t to see them for 1-2 months.

• Rather than drifting between a number of brief and surface level conversations with 8-10 people after your church service, go deeper with 1-2 people. If you’re stuck for conversation starters, ask them how they became a Christian and who were the influential people in them becoming so.

• Test the waters of vulnerability. Ask someone at church you have a good relationship with to pray for you. Share what your needs are and then ask if they could pray for you then and there, not just in some ideal future time. Return the favour. Set a reminder on your phone to pray again during the week, and send the person a text to let them know that you have continued to pray for them.

Does your church feel like a family? Or, as one commentator has cheekily put it, is your church more like a U2 concert with a Bible-based TED Talk? It is not about quality of production, but quality of relationships. It is about expressing the reality that the Apostle Paul describes for us; that the church is a family.

1 Two excellent books in this field are Timothy Paul Jones (2011) Family Ministry Field Guide: How the Church Can Equip Parents to Make Disciples and Reggie Joiner (2009) Think Orange.

[2] Yes, I know it was more likely to be one of his many guitar techs, but let’s not let facts get in the way of a great memory.