Tag Archives: Family

What is God Like?

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While looking for ministry methods, Christianity has the tendency to skip over the Gospels and dive into the book of Acts and Paul’s letters.  Yet it is in the Gospels that we have four accounts of God coming to earth to show us what God is like.  “When Church Was a Family” by Joseph Hellerman is one of the more thought provoking books I have read in a while.  He writes:

“The earthly ministry of Jesus of Nazareth constitutes the one time in the history of humanity when heaven fully and finally came to earth.  In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have the opportunity to see the question What is God like? answered in the flesh-and-blood world in which we live.  During His incarnation Jesus not only procured our way to heaven.  He also shows us how to live on earth.  Now we can pattern our lives after Jesus.”[1]

The answer to What is God is like? as seen in the Gospels is love.  At the baptism of Jesus the heavenly Father breaks silence and declares his love for his Son.  “And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matt 3:17) Here we discover the family love bond between the heavenly Father and Jesus.  This familiar love becomes the basis for Jesus love for his disciples and the disciples love for one another.   “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” (John 15:9) “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

While reading the Gospels our Western eyes are drawn to ministry methods and we can easily miss the relational component of Jesus’ approach.   Imitating the methods of Jesus without the family love element will result in a sterile religion rather than a dynamic spiritual family.  It is essential for your disciples to understand that God relates to them as a Father and they are to relate to him as a son.  This understanding is the basis on which your disciples are to lovingly relate to one another as brothers.  The brotherly love your disciples have for one another is a window for the world to see into the heavenly Father’s love for Jesus and their perfect unity. “I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:22-23)

[1] Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family (Nashville: B & H Academic, 2009), p. 62.

Family and Making Disciples 5 – Belonging

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Chicago Tribune writer Marla Paul took a risk when she wrote a self-revealing column confessing her sadness and frustration over her own inability to build and sustain friendships. She wrote this column expecting little, if any, response. However, she was inundated with letters from others experiencing the same kind of isolation.

One person wrote, “I’ve often felt that I’m standing outside looking through the window of a party to which I was not invited.”

Marla Paul ended her column about loneliness with these words: “Sometimes it seems easier to just give up and accept disconnectedness as a dark and unshakable companion; but, that’s not the companion I want.” She writes, “She is going to keep longing, searching, trying, and hoping that someday she will be able to discover and develop community.” [1]

People need to belong. The television show “Friends” is popular because people long to be part of a tribe of friends as seen on the show. This desire in man to belong comes from the nature of God. For all eternity the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have had each other and belonged to one another. Since man is created in the image of God, we too were made to belong to others.

Part of the discipling process is helping your disciple understand that they belong to God as a son and also to God’s family. A disciple of Jesus belongs to the family of God because he was wanted and adopted by the heavenly Father. Trevor Burke writes: “Adoption is about being wanted. It is about belonging” [2]. Along with discussions around the word of God about what it means to be a child of God, the discipler must continually include the disciple in his own life as well and draw his disciple into a loving group of the children of God.

Some closing thoughts on belonging:

  1. Include your disciple in your life. By allowing your disciple into the routine of your life, he will see how you relate to your spouse, children, and friends. It illustrates to him what it means to belong to God’s family. (Paul wrote of this approach in 1 Thessalonians: “You know how we lived among you for your sake…We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.”)
  2. Teach each member of your discipling community to consistently communicate to one another that they belong to the group and that they are an important part of the family. (We cannot be reminded too often that we belong.)
  3. Serve your disciple. One way to say “you belong” is by serving your disciple when they have a need. Even better is when a whole community can serve a need of one of its members.

[1] Paul, Marla, The Friendship Crisis: Finding, Making, and Keeping Friends When You’re Not a Kid Anymore, (Emmaus: Rodale Publishing, 2004)

[2] Burke, Trevor J., Adopted Into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p.197.

Family and Making Disciples 4 – Leadership

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The types of leaders that are necessary to begin and sustain a multiplication of the kingdom of God are Godly moms and dads. The instruction, encouragement, kindness, time and sacrificial love that go into raising Godly children are the same necessary ingredients to make followers of Jesus. Paul reveals his own parental approach to disciple making in 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 where he writes: “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.”

Yet, sadly, the same parents who have raised Godly children feel inadequate to make disciples of Jesus because Christianity has made discipling an educational method through curriculum, classrooms, and certification rather than a family relationship. I believe that the church has passed over kingdom leaders because they were not perceived as qualified, even though they have raised Godly children. I am now challenging parents to help advance the kingdom of God by making followers of Jesus in the same way that they raised their children.

The church (ekklesia) is made up of the children of God, and so it only seems consistent that we would function as a family on earth. Families cannot be run as an organization, and yet Christianity approaches the church as an organization as seen in the way it recruits and trains its leaders. The starting point for recruiting church leaders are with men with post-graduate degrees from religious education institutions The seminaries instruct their students in theology and church leadership, but how much preparation do these students have in how to be a good husband, wife, or parent?

I attended a pastor’s conference where business and military leaders challenged us to take the leadership principles from their organizations and apply them to our churches. One pastor said that the same leadership training he was giving us he also used to help businesses. This is not to say that there is no authority, structure, or accountability in the church; healthy families have all these things. I also am not suggesting that a leader of a business cannot be an effective leader in the church, or that pastors do not have helpful insights for the business world, but there is a marked difference between how a business and a family functions.

Here are a couple of action points I am working on:

  1. I am rereading the New Testament with the lens of viewing the church (ekklesia) as the “family of God.”
  2. I am recruiting Godly dads and moms, who could never imagine themselves making disciples or as kingdom leaders, to disciple others in the same way they raised their own children.
  3. I am interviewing Godly moms and dads for insights into how they raised their children and applying it to how I can disciple others.

Family and Making Disciples 3 – Multiplication

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The church (ekklesia) is a family and is to be led as a family. When the apostle Paul was looking for men to lead the church, he looked for men who were good husbands and dads. Paul understood the family essence of the church and that the same principles that build a healthy family are the same values that will multiply the kingdom of God. He writes: “He (the overseer) must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church (ekklesia)?)“ (1 Timothy 3:3-6)

Multiplication in a family is a natural and anticipated result. Good parents create an environment that is not only safe for the child but also one that moves the child onto maturity. Parents understand that the maturing process takes time but it is balanced with the expectation that someday this child is to leave their home to raise his own family. There is something unnatural about a 27 year old still living at home.

Jesus used the example of yeast and a seed to illustrate the multiplication nature of the kingdom of God. Jesus said: “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:23-25). The multiplication principle of “death brings life” was taught and demonstrated by both Jesus and Paul through the love sacrifice of their own lives for others. Paul writes to the disciples in Thessalonica: “…but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you” (1 Thess 2:7-9).

The marked difference between how parents approach their children and an organization their members is sacrificial love. Just as a child learns love through the daily sacrifices his parents make for him, so the love of God is taught by the believers laying down their lives for other believers. We demonstrate to the world the love of God when we, as the family of God, lay down our lives for one another. The disciple John wrote: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us“ (1 John 4:9-12). This is why the church is to function as a family and not an organization.

Family and Making Disciples 2 – The Church: God’s Family

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How I view God and His church (ekklesia) affects how I see myself, how I relate to others and how I relate to God. For all eternity, God is a Father, and Jesus is a Son. Therefore, family is an eternal concept based on the nature of God. The idea of family is not confined to man’s time on earth. As long as there has been God, there has been family and as long as there will be God, there will be family.

God the Father behaves like a father because he is a father. God’s father-heart moved Him to adopt us into His family even at the cost of the sacrifice of His own Son. Because of this adoption Jesus relates to us as our brother. The author of Hebrews tells us that: “Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. He says, ‘I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises.’ For this reason he (Jesus) had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:11-17). My relationship to God is both as a child with his father and as a brother with a brother.

The apostle Paul views ekklesia as God’s family. In 1 Timothy 3:14-15 he writes: “…so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church (ekklesia) of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.” In Paul’s writings, his language of choice for what we would call “Christian(s)” is familiar language. He uses the word “brother(s)” 129 times – in contrast to his use of the word “saints” 29 times, and the word “believer(s)” 11 times. Paul never uses the term “Christian” or “disciple.”

Paul’s understanding of the Father nature of God and that the ekklesia is the family of God directed the way he ministered to others. In the city of Thessalonica Paul was like a mother and father to the disciples. He writes: “But we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us…for you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory” (1 Thessalonians 2:7-12).

Making followers of Jesus cannot be separated from the family nature of God. As God the Father loved Jesus, and Jesus loved us, so in the same familiar manner we are to love one another. A parental sacrificial love for others is the catalytic force that will produce disciples of Jesus and advance the kingdom of God.

Family and Making Disciples

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In the movie “The Sound of Music” the widowed Captain von Trapp tries to run his family like he ran the Navy, with dire consequences. Although the Captain loved his children and the children loved their father, his organizational structures placed unnatural barriers between the Captain and his children. The nature of a family is unlike that of an organization and so the two function differently from one another.

The apostle Paul presents the church (ekklesia) as the “family” or “household” of God and yet our approach to church has been as if it is an organization (1 Timothy 3:14-15). We begin a church with a constitution, by laws, church government and then institute programs to run the church, which are both organizational in nature but foreign to any family. Ekklesia is based on the family essence of the Trinity; God the Father, His Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We have been adopted into the family of God as sons and daughters so it only makes sense that we should function as family on earth as we will in heaven for eternity (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6-7).

In Philippians 2:22 we get a glimpse into Paul’s approach to disciple making with his disciple Timothy. Here Paul writes of the father-son relationship which he had with Timothy – again a family relationship. Just as children were not meant to be raised by an organization so disciples are best made in the context of a spiritual family. One reason why Christianity has struggled to make disciples is because we have approached disciple making with programs rather than as a family. Can an organization empower and develop its people? Certainly. But, there is a marked difference between how an organization develops its people and how a parent loves his child.