Family Part 2

Thank you to everyone for the lovely comments I've got about this. Shame you can't get them on the blog so we can get a discussion going sometime but never mind!!

I've been chewing this whole family thing over a lot and its not often I visit a topic a 2nd time so quickly. But I keep wondering if instead of just saying the Church is Family we need to start teaching more on what that means. To the 1st Century church this was all so easy because they were use to families living together, having to get over disagreements because their livelihood depended on it with the whole farming things. And with the early Church they couldn't bitch about each other because they were in a persecuted minority.

I have been looking at families. A friend of mine has recently got engaged. Very romantic story about meeting her fiance on Facebook, but then with him being in Canada and her in San Diego they decided she would live with him family in Canada for a bit to see how the relationship developed. A great way of getting to know someone warts and all. I think of another friend in California who married 3 years ago where the two families were so intertwined and so close to each other that even when she was not seeing her now husband (they took about a 4 year split) his parents still supported her in mission, and of course everyone was so delighted when they got back together. And because they were all so close there was room to include us when we went over for the wedding.

Now that's a question how come its the closer families are to each other that there is always room for someone else? Maybe this is the same for church? The closer those in the congregation are to each other, the more secure in all things, the more truly welcoming they are? The more the less of a threat if someone new gets invited to dinner, someone knew speaks "a word", the leaders are safe in who they are and what is going on that there is space for people to make mistakes?

Actually that is something I think is a biggie too for families - the space to make mistakes. My kids are great but they do screw up but I still love them, help them out and give them some love whilst they sort out the next move and because of this they seem to try lots of things without fear. And I know this in other families too where it is safe to make mistakes.

Again though going back to the congregation thing, because that is really where the rubber hits the road, I think in the West we have a luxury of being able to fall out with each other. In the parts of the world where the Church is persecuted for just being they do not have that luxury. But also I see in those parts of the world a deeper understanding about the survival of family.

I do wonder if here in the West we have lost a lot of what connected family is what with the nuclear family, of being able to survive without the help of parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and that has fallen into our congregational life?