Henry Zylstra, in Testament of Vision, wrote a provocative essay, “Eccentric Religion,” in which he asked how an observer from Mars might describe the role religion plays in American life: “He could do worse than take a copy of Time magazine, point to its table of contents, and say that what he had seen down here was a lot of people interested in: Art, Books, Business, Cinema, Education, Medicine, Music, People, Personality, Press, Radio, Religion, Sports, Theatre. … “
Zylstra’s analysis, I think, can be applied equally well to family ministry. That same Martian could do worse than describe the role family ministry plays in church life by taking the Sunday morning bulletin and saying this church is interested in: Sermons, Music, Youth, Family, Elderly, Singles, Deacons, Books. …
If our visitor were asked if Family, tucked in between Elderly and Youth, was the governing concern in the life of the church, he would have to say no, that Family was a category of ministry operating alongside the other ministries of the church but didn’t appear to be any more, or any less, important than the rest of them.
Far from being the sinew and ligament that hold the entire body of Christ together (a role the family once played with great effectiveness), the family has been reduced to the status of an arm or leg, to be set in a splint if broken, to be built up by a well-planned exercise program if healthy, to be admired because of its importance at all times-but after all, it is just one part of the body in this culture.
To be sure, there are benefits to specializing family ministry, indeed to specializing family life itself. It does draw attention to a problem area. The family is threatened in our culture. Busy as we are, we need to schedule family times in our appointment books (for me it’s 6 to 8 two evenings a week, 12 to 5 Saturdays, and most Sundays). Either we carve out the time or the family gets carved out by work, racquetball, and community service.
Books on the family tend to assume this compartmentalization. Most tell us to spend more time with the family. They treat the family as if it’s a slipping Dow Jones Industrial stock that needs to be shored up by huge injections of cash and specialized attention.
But there are dangers to such an approach. One is that the biblical view of the family as the overall unifying agent of humankind is lost.
Minor problem: there are few specialized treatises on the family in the Bible. The word itself is mentioned about three hundred times, but most of those times it simply identifies a specific family (“the family of Judah” or “his family” or “their family” or “our family”). The teaching on the importance of the family is clear: It is important; it is central; it is God-ordained. But the teaching is for the most part inductive and implied. We learn about families in the Bible by watching them at work.
By observing biblical families, we see that the Bible assumes the family is the Christian microcosm for all of life. Two specific lessons come through:
The family is the link between the individual and the group. Practically, the Bible makes the family unit the ideal structure of society. It is the way of caring for children, widows, grandparents. Some social agencies may be set up to help, but the primary responsibility falls to the family. To ignore that responsibility is condemned in the strongest terms: “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Tim. 5:8).
The family is the practice field of life. Family relations, in 1 Timothy 5:1-2, are used as the model of all interpersonal relationships. We are to treat older men as if they were fathers, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters. We learn how to relate to others by learning how to relate to family. The family is all of life writ small.
For many, this has extended beyond interpersonal relationships to include our way of viewing nature. Francis of Assisi’s “Creation Psalm” is a good example: “Alleluia, be praised Good Lord for Brother Sun, who brings us each day. Be praised Sister Moon. … “
Francis makes the intimate relationships of early family life the model for our outlook on the whole world, animate and inanimate. He seems to be saying that if only we can inject the fireside memories of youth, of loving brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, into our worldview, life takes on a warmer cast.
Given this importance, it’s no wonder we view the disintegration of family life with alarm.
Implications for family ministry?
The family needs to be restored as the primary operating unit of the church. All kinds of families: newlyweds, families with children, single parent families, couples.
Families need to study the Bible together, visit the elderly together, attend church together, watch James Dobson films together, stay home together.
As helpful as classes on how to be a good family may be, we need even more to learn how to be a good family by trying to live Christianly in a hundred different religious and social settings-together.
Terry C. Muck is editor of LEADERSHIP.
Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
