• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Lifeway Research

Lifeway Research

Enlightening today’s church with relevant research and insights

  • Research
  • Insights
  • Resource Library
  • Fast Facts
  • Search

The Church Is a Family

Uncategorized | Feb 24, 2017

Dhati Lewis Family

by Dhati Lewis

Of all the word pictures and metaphors used to describe the church, one stands out above the rest: family. In fact, it is so much of the essence of the church that it cannot even properly be called a metaphor.

Metaphors describe what the church is like or similar to—light, flock, field, building—but family is not metaphorical; it is a literal description of the phenomena we know as church.

The church is not like family; it is family.

Among Wolves Dhati LewisGod is literally our Father, Jesus is literally our elder brother, and we are literally brothers and sisters in Christ. Family is the primary way the early church identified themselves.

This can be seen by the fact that the word disciple, so prevalent in the early part of the New Testament, disappears after the book of Acts. It is replaced by the term brother in the rest of the Bible. Family dominates the self-understanding of the early church.

We could argue that this is because of Paul’s letter but it didn’t come from Paul. It is deeply rooted in the revelation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The Christian Identity as Family

Our creeds and confessions focus on Trinitarian orthodoxy, but Matthew 3 emphasizes the revelation of God as family. What the revelation of Jesus Christ introduced into the world is that God is more than what we thought, namely that God is family.

In our adoption as sons, we are brought into the experience of what God has always been. In church life we are usually more concerned about orthodox statements that express this reality than we are with living out the experience of family.

What Does Your Church Believe? 

See also  What if My Calling Causes My Kids Pain?

In his book When the Church Was a Family, Joseph Hellerman writes of a time that he was made aware of his error in his own ministry. A friend of his came to pick him up at his office for a lunch appointment and, while he was waiting, picked up a brochure titled What We Believe, and began reading it.

Afterward, the friend made a stinging evaluation. He said, “Joe, a person could read through your statement of faith and conclude that Christianity, as your church teaches and practices it, has everything to do with how an individual relates to God and absolutely nothing to do with how people relate to one another.”

Hellerman later reflected, “… our church’s doctrinal statement wholly ignores God’s design for human relationships, a topic that occupies a great deal of the biblical record.”

Paul consistently threads together the Fatherhood of God and believer’s relationships with one another. He cannot think of God outside of His “Fatherness,” and can’t think of believers outside of their “brotherhood.”

Our problem is semantics. When we say church, we don’t think family. We have to understand that we are not simply planting a church, we are not starting a Bible study, we are not starting a 501-c3; we are establishing a family.

Excerpted from Among Wolves: Disciple-Making in the City. Used by permission of B&H Publishing.


DHATI LEWIS (@Dhati) is the lead pastor of Blueprint Church, director of BLVD, a church planting training course with North American Mission Board, and author of Among Wolves.

Related posts:

watch clock end times Bible pastors researchWhat Do Pastors Believe About the End Times? What Do Pastors Believe About the Book of Revelation? 3 Ways to Reach Non-Religious People in Your Community Recapturing the One Factor That Made the Early Church Unstoppable

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us On…

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Popular

  • Most Popular Sermon Passages, Topics in 2021
  • Gen Z Mental Health Crisis: How Pastors Can Make a Difference
  • 7 Reasons to Praise the Lord
    praise
  • 7 in 10 Women Who Have Had an Abortion Identify as a Christian

Join the Lifeway Research Newsletter

Lifeway Research: Enlightening Today’s Church with Relevant Insights.

Signup for email updates on our church and culture research.

Sign Up

Leader Resources

Bible
Clip Art
Classics
Clip Art
Current Events
Clip Art
Discipleship
Clip Art
Pastoral Ministy
Clip Art
Theology
Clip Art
VIEW ALL RESOURCES
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Custom Research
  • Resource Library
  • Search

Copyright © 2022 · Lifeway Research, a ministry of Lifeway Christian Resources