Are We Family?
I recently was in a discussion with ministry leaders about a cultural shift in the church that would move us from isolation to family.
And everyone wants a shift like this, no one wants someone who is following Christ to be isolated. Almost everyone agrees - following Jesus is a team sport. During the course of this discussion, one of the things that came up was the question:
How do we know if we are family?
The question really stuck with me. I’ve had my own experiences with family, surely you have too. And all those experiences are vastly different. How do you begin to measure/evaluate if we achieved something we can’t get a common definition around?
Well, I wish I had a super easy answer for you, but that was not the case. Wrestling with a question like that is much harder because we’ve all had such different experiences with the idea of what family is, and what family might look like in the Church.
However, we did come up with some good questions. Questions that might help you internally evaluate if the people you are doing life with are really more like family and less like a loosely connected group of Christians. I hope they help.
Do you feel responsible for each other?
Do you meet each other’s needs?
Are you honest with each other, especially when it’s hard?
Can they walk into your house even when you aren’t ready?
Are you in the details of each other’s lives?
This is just the starting point. What questions would you add?