Church: a family of believers
The church of Jesus Christ is a worldwide community of redeemed people from ‘every nation, tribe, people and language’
(Rev. 7:9). So as believers we are all
different. We come from different kinds
of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds and cultures, we face different kinds of
circumstances and we may struggle with different issues in life. However, if we are truly born again, we are
all people that have experienced the grace, love and salvation that God has
given us in Jesus.
The language used in Scripture of
relationships among born-again believers is that of family. We call one another ‘brother’ or ‘sister’
(Acts 28:14-15, Rom. 16:1); Paul talks of having ‘fathers’ in the faith (1 Cor.
4:15); the church is described as God’s ‘household’ or family (1 Tim. 3:15,
Heb. 3:6), and so on. So as believers we
have two families: a natural family into which we were born, and a spiritual
family, the worldwide Body of Christ, into which we were born again when we
received Jesus into our lives.
Furthermore, as people become believers and as their families also get
saved and come to church, the church community itself becomes a ‘family of
families.’
So it is natural that we should want
to get to know and relate to our extended spiritual family, certainly in our
own geographical area. However, it is
also important that we become committed to a local expression of church in
particular. Our local church is a
community in which we are regularly together with other believers, in which we
can therefore come to feel ‘at home,’ and in which we can put down our
spiritual roots, settle and grow together with our family in the faith.
Commitment
to family community
Regularly attending a local church
and its meetings and program activities, gives us access to taking part in
worship and receiving regular teaching from the word of God which will build us
up in the faith, as well as enabling us to develop some ‘family friendships’
along the way.
However, to fulfil the New Testament
aim of growing to maturity in the faith, we need to understand that attendance
alone does not go far enough. Growth to
maturity through discipleship is not something that happens to us in individual
isolation. Many issues in our growth can
only be addressed and/or developed in the context of our ongoing commitment to our particular local church family
and the relationships that we have in it.[1]
So
we need to move on from merely being attendees or from being spectators on the periphery
of church life
(keeping ourselves at a ‘safe distance’ in
relationships by maintaining these at a superficial level week by week), and become committed participants,
rooting ourselves into the life of our church family. If
we do not become rooted in church family life, we may remain spiritually
immature in many ways. It says of the early believers that ‘they devoted themselves… to the
fellowship.’ (Acts 2:42).
Learning
to love our neighbour
The local church in which we feel ‘at
home’ and into which we decide to root ourselves, is a gift given to us by
God. Our participation in this church
family helps us to grow in our knowledge of God. Padilla observes that, because the knowledge
of God is experienced personally, it is therefore inseparable from our life in
church community. Our ‘neighbour in
church’ is growing in his/her knowledge of God, much as we are ourselves, and so
we cannot grow to maturity in our own knowledge of God in isolation from him/her.[2] Participation in the church family gives us
the opportunity to learn to fulfil God’s two basic commandments, to love him
and to love our neighbour (Matt. 22:36-40), and to fulfil the New Testament
exhortations to love and care for one another (e.g. 1 John 4:11-12).
In a sense, the whole of life –
whether it is our relationship with God, or our marriage and family
relationships, or with our colleagues and friends at work or school, or simply
with our neighbour down the street – is about learning how to live in
relationship with others.
Life in our church family is no
different. As we root ourselves into its life, we can get to know our ‘neighbours
in church’ and learn how to relate wisely to them and to love them, and so
fulfil God’s commandment, rather than simply worshipping God together. Sometimes we may even find that some of them
are not actually born again yet, or they are merely religious.
In the all-round environment of our
church’s life we can be discipled and grow in our faith. We will be enriched by our interaction with
people who may be very different from us.
We can learn how to serve, work and have fun together both in and
outside of church meetings. We can learn
the values of caring for and helping one another practically; of encouraging,
standing with and supporting one another in times of need and crisis; of
working issues through patiently, wisely and with grace when there are relational
tensions, and of practising forgiveness and reconciliation, and so on.
It is these kinds of relational
values that express the heart of the Greek word koinonia used in the New Testament along with its verbal form koinoneo, with their various meanings of
fellowship, sharing, communication, participation, partnership, social intercourse
and distribution. These biblical values
suggest a growth of closeness and commitment in relationship between believers
that goes much deeper than being merely superficial with one another.
The relaxed openness, relational
closeness and trust that participation in a house- or cell-group in particular
can create, can help us to develop and practise these holistic biblical values
and thereby build more meaningful, loving and trusting relationships. This can then help us in terms of opening
ourselves up to others and learning to live together in family community, and
it can also help us in terms of being accountable for the way in which we live
our life outside of church meetings.
This all-round environment leads into healthy spiritual and relational
growth. Furthermore, as we learn to
practise these values in the life of our church family, we can also begin to
practise some of them in our relationships with non-believing ‘neighbours’
around us, and this may then perhaps attract them into our church.
It should be obvious that merely
attending church once a week on Sunday morning, although this is good and
healthy in and of itself, is simply not enough to develop the kind of committed
relationships and to practise the kind of holistic values which are described
above, and inevitably therefore cannot in many ways fulfil God’s purpose for us
of growing together as disciples of Christ.
Establishing these kinds of values requires a commitment to meeting and
engaging with other believers at least twice every week as a minimum norm, so
both on Sundays and sometime during the week.
Our mutual commitment to relationship
with one another in church family community, in and through the nitty-gritty
issues of worshipping, serving and socializing together, going through both
good times and difficult times together in the heat of real-life issues,
produces growth to maturity together in the faith and can result in lifelong
friendships developing among believers.
There are many verses in the New
Testament epistles which exhort us in regard to our relationships with one another,
such as the following:
‘Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.’
(Rom. 12:10)
‘Accept one
another, then, just as Christ accepted you…’
(Rom. 15:7)
‘...rather, serve one another in love.’
(Gal. 5:13)
Valuing
the family we have been given
The relationships that we have with
other believers that God has given us in our church family are far more
important than any activity we do in church.
People are a gift to us from
God, and so we need to learn to value our church family and the relationships
that we have with them.
Of course, this runs counter to the
conditioning of secular society in which relationships tend to be utilitarian
(i.e. we use people for what we can get, but otherwise stay distant from them)
and in which self-centred pleasure- and entertainment-seeking seem to take
priority. Knowing that we belong to a
community of people that genuinely show commitment and care is an important
antidote to the loneliness and social isolation that many people feel today,
going a long way to fulfilling our basic human need for social interaction and
friendship.
This then suggests the following
principles:
a.
Avoid a consumer attitude
The common consumer attitude of
secular culture – sometimes found even amongst believers! – that begins with
questions such as: ‘What can I get out of this?
What can this church give me?’, is essentially self-centred thinking
which wants to receive without committing to meaningful relationships. However, if we were to begin with questions
such as: ‘What part can I play? What can
I contribute? How can I help in serving
together with you?’ in addition to also asking ‘What can this church give me?’,
then we are more likely to grow in our discipleship and to develop closer, mutually
committed relationships.
b.
Don’t criticise your church for its weaknesses
We should recognise that every church
has its own particular strengths and weaknesses, much as any family does. Our own local church is no exception. We should learn to recognise and value its
strengths, and to pray and commit ourselves to helping our leaders to find ways
in which its weaknesses may be effectively addressed. Leaders are not perfect, they cannot do everything, and they need
our support, not our criticism.
Despite a church’s imperfections, if
we spend long enough in it, we will doubtless find marks of God’s grace and
love there. If ‘the grass appears to be
greener’ in another church, then we must learn not to criticise our own
church. It is also true that, if we
spend long enough in that other church, then we will become aware of its own
weaknesses, not just its strengths.
Don’t forget that every
believing community of God’s people is a work of grace in progress,
just as we ourselves are!
c.
Don’t drift from church to church
Some believers make the mistake of
effectively becoming rootless drifters, spending some time in one church and
then leaving it for another church, and so on.
Such rootless drifting, perhaps seeking to find that ‘something special’
or going where the ‘grass appears to be greener’ for a while, hinders such a person’s
discipleship and growth to spiritual maturity.
It leaves him/her without committed relationships and the support and
accountability that come through these.
Having significantly fewer meaningful and committed relationships then
leaves the person more isolated and therefore also more spiritually vulnerable.
If the person is unable for whatever
reason to relate effectively to other people, such wandering can also become a
way of running away from dealing with issues in his/her personal life. What became an undealt-with issue in one
church, often then becomes an issue again in the next church they attend. Such rootless drifters tend not to want to be
submissive towards spiritual leadership, and so they wander instead of learning
to stay and get rooted, growing and serving together with others in a healthy
way.
d.
Don’t walk off, work things through
As in a natural family, in church
there can sometimes be tensions in relationships, or things can go wrong. This is where we need to learn to apologise,
to work things through, and to forgive hurts etc., as much as it lies within
us. We cannot afford to simply walk off
without dealing with things properly.
Rather, we should see problems and issues as opportunities to help us to
grow and mature together. The message of Christianity is that
relationships are redeemable. We
are reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20), so we should learn to forgive and to be
reconciled with each other as well. This biblical value contrasts with the
tendency in secular culture today in which breaking and abandoning
relationships, with the resulting inward brokenness and heart wounds, has sadly
become all too common.
Walking off elsewhere without
resolving our problem and speaking badly about those we have left, or,
conversely, staying and not dealing with it, which can lead to bitterness in
our heart and gossip, are both wrong scenarios.
Forgiveness and reconciliation ought to be the aim: ‘Love covers over a multitude of sins.’ (1 Peter 4:8). If we feel we must leave, then at least we
ought to work things through, forgive and then leave in peace.
Walking off and abandoning
relationships not only hurts those we leave behind (including leaders and
children in the church) – hurts which can then take several months to heal – it
also shows how little value we attach to the relationships God has given us. It
is a denial of learning to love our neighbour. It can also leave our children hurt, which
can then potentially become a seed of bitterness in their hearts towards church
as they grow up.
Some
good fruits of being rooted
There are several advantages that we
can gain from rooting ourselves into the life of a church family:
a.
It gives us an accepting
environment in which we have the opportunity to practise life-applied lessons
we are learning about discipleship and following Jesus, and it helps us to
become accountable about how we are living our lives, as we are discipled.
b. It
helps us to receive healing for past relational hurts and to learn how to
develop healthy relationships, working issues through properly together, rather
than continuing in any dysfunctional relational patterns we may have experienced
before we became believers.
c.
It helps us to get inner
life issues dealt with, and so get released and healed, and to deal with any
wrong attitudes we may have from time to time, and so mature socially.
d. It
helps us to learn how to work with our leaders, and to serve together with
other believers.
e.
It makes us a friendly, attractive community
which other people may want to join and which demonstrates the truth of the
gospel in life:
‘By this all men will
know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’
(John 13:35)
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