Family and the kingdom

Following the women in ministry leadership discussion at Gathering 2006, concern was expressed that, with women as senior pastors, we might be cultivating conditions that permit men to abdicate their call to lead in the home.

While we should be concerned about men’s involvement in church and family, I’d like to re-direct the question towards biblical expectations for family and church.

Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:22) to challenge his followers to locate even social and family customs within the kingdom. He taught that divorce (Matthew 19) and marriage (Matthew 22) should be guided by kingdom ethics, not tradition. His “family” were those who did God’s will (Mark 3:35). While he upheld the command and tradition to honour parents (Mark 7), it was contextualized in “new” kingdom teaching about honouring God, instead of remaining merely a human rule.

Paul also located marriage and family within the kingdom. Countering tradition, he advised against marriage (1 Corinthians 7) – even for women – in order to “live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord” (7:35). Further, Paul’s advice to families in Ephesians is contextualized in the radical new identity and priorities of the church (chapters 1–4). Mutual submission (5:21ff) evidences Spirit-filled living.

High divorce rates, weakened social fabric, and other forces have prompted Christians in recent years to see the revitalized nuclear Christian family as a saviour of society. But, in order to be a viable moral enterprise, the family requires a community beyond itself.

The larger faith community establishes a kingdom ethic that challenges secular society in the name of Christ. The faith community makes it possible for singles, single parents, and blended families, along with intact “nuclear” families, to help shape the story and character of that community.

Individual families, located within this larger structure, are freed to focus on kingdom priorities. Priorities such as taking care of “orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27) and feeding the hungry or clothing the naked (Matthew 25), present ample opportunities for spiritual leadership for both men and women.

We also need to ask what kind of family structures and roles best portray the kingdom ethic we’re aiming at. What kind of impact on our society will we achieve with traditional patriarchal family structures? Is there room for other structures? Does the Bible provide that room?

The pattern of shared leadership was set in Genesis 1:27–28, but broken by the Fall. Christ won our redemption and points us back to that pattern. In the new kingdom, neither man nor woman is independent of the other (1 Corinthians 11:11).

Often, we idealize traditional family structure. For example, a conventional task of spiritual leaders in the home is to lead family devotions. Some men may simply not be good at reading aloud, and are intimidated by the devotional task. Is remedial reading the answer? Or should a couple explore gifting, and take initiative to lead in areas of passion and giftedness?

There are different gifts, interests, and personalities. A husband may exercise spiritual leadership by piling the kids into the car and grabbing tools to fix things at the home of someone in need, volunteering at the local food pantry, or going on an MDS assignment.

It will take training and practice to successfully live out biblically-based shared status and roles in both the church and home, as couples seek to locate their relationship and gifting within God’s kingdom purposes for their marriage and family.

To ask if men will lead or abdicate is limiting. Rather, we should ask: Can we create a framework for releasing the gifts of both men and women in a biblical context in order to achieve God’s mission to extend his kingdom in our world?

We need strong families, lodged within an even stronger commitment to God’s calling on our lives.

This is the last in a series of Out Front articles that follows-up on the women in ministry leadership discussion/resolution.