Highly recommended book by Robert and Julia Banks. About 260 pages, this will take some time to get through, but it’s well worth the effort. The following excerpt is so important, I hope you read this and commit yourselves to loving your new family members “for better or for worse”.
Paul frequently spoke of the church as a family. Comparing the church to the human body stresses the interconnectedness of the members and the importance of allowing room for them to minister to one another. The family analogy emphasizes the quality of members’ relationships and their care for one another. In congregations today family terms are used loosely. Members refer to their church as “a family” or “the family of God” when most have only a limited knowledge of one another-like those advertisements for various firms that project their mass market of customers as members of one large, happy family. In other congregations family terms are used in a purely spiritual sense. The bridge between members carries only religious traffic.
Paul not only used family language as his primary vehicle of expression regarding the church but he used it on a number of levels.
-NT churches-whether in smaller or larger gatherings-met primarily in people’s homes (Acts 2:43; 16:40; 20:8; Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:19; Col 4:15; Phlm 2).
-Paul and other apostles founded their churches primarily on converted households (Acts 11:14; 16:15, 25-34; 18:18).
-The church in the home was the basic building block of the congregation (Rom 16:23; 1 Cor 11:18, 33).
-The bond between church members is similar to that between family members (Rom 16:2, 13; Gal 1:2; 4:19; Col 4:9; Phlm 10; etc.).
-Congregations are described directly as the household of God (Gal 6:10; 1 Tim 3:15; Eph 2:19; etc.).
-The central activities of these churches were familial in character (1 Thess 5:26; Rom 12:9-10; 1 Cor 11:33).
-Ministry-whether by resident members-or visiting members-was basically modeled on a Christ-centered form of ministry exercised in the family (1 Cor 16:15; 1 Tim 3:4; 5:1-2).
So there are multiple ways in which the church is a home based, homemade, homelike affair. It can be argued that these days it is not always helpful to draw an analogy between the church and the family; so many families are abusive or dysfunctional that often people do not know what a good family is. We should remember, however, that families in the first century were just as ambiguous, if in different ways, and that the early Christians transformed the model of family life so that they could make use of it. This meant that in the best instances members became ideal fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters to one an other. Their authentic relationships developed out of their belonging to a common family, with all the resulting privileges, responsibilities, and rewards. This heightened sense of family included physical, psychological, social, and material dimensions. Members were to greet one another as a family with a holy kiss. They were to treat each other as a family by expressing affection for one another. They were to eat together on a regular basis, as a family. They were to love and care for one another, as a family should.
For some early Christians the church family replaced the original family that they had lost upon conversion. For others relationships in their churches restored or deepened the family bonds that already existed. In either case Paul intended that believers maintained a real involvement in each others’ lives that
was based on a serious commitment to one another.What difference would it make today if members of a congregation, like the members of a family, committed themselves seriously to loving one another “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health”? We may not live under the same roof, but, according to Paul, when I join with you in a church, I am to take care of you and you are to take care of me. You become my responsibility and I become yours. Both of us have, as Martin Luther put it, a responsibility “to become to each other what Christ is to us.”
Robert and Julia Banks, The Church Comes Home