Sheneka Land
Ministry With Families
Dr. Jackie Johns
My Theology of Church and Family
The art of raising a family has been fraught with a myriad of myths throughout the ages. This produces a diseased theology of church and family. Dictionary.com defines a myth as “any invented story, idea, or concept.” History proves that humanity, when left to its own devices, can create powerful and negative impacts on the family.
The church can become the vehicle of healing as it seeks to restore broken and scarred families. But first, the church must recognize its wrong teachings from the past and present. Wrong readings of Scripture have produced spiritual dysfunction and emotional pain within the church community. A re-reading and re-examination of Scripture may be necessary amongst church leaders as well as children, parents, and grandparents that constitute the church in order to bring harmony to the conjoined community of family and church. It is imperative that the Scriptures be read in a method that brings unity and health to the spiritual family. Spiritual progression is impossible if the Scriptures are not read going forward rather than reading and teaching solely from past experiences. Testimonies are great and inspiring, but new testimonies of the Father’s love and grace need to be the norm within the theology of church and family.
A correct theology of church and family can be extracted from the example of Jesus as He lived in intimacy and grace with others. And Jesus continues to live in loving covenantal relationship with His own. Throughout Scripture, narratives are found where God the Father modeled covenant relationships. An understanding of covenant relationships is crucial within the family and church if each is to empower the other. Without intimate group relationships, the family and church as communities will disintegrate. Healthy relationships are built through covenantal interrelations.
A past and present mistake within the church and family has been its seeming promotion of the family as the predominate of all human relationships, while concurrently advocating church events that separate the family more than uniting it. If the family is the foundation on which Christian love and servanthood are built, then the church must exercise more responsibility to teach and train families how to walk in covenant relationships.
Covenant has often been misunderstood as being the same as contract. The difference is that a contract is an agreement that focuses on the desires and needs of involved individuals being met, while a covenant relationship is one in which the individuals agree to relate to one another with mutual respect and a desire to empower each the other. In short, a contract does not exist to consummate and nurture an intimate relationship, while a covenant relationship seeks to create a sacred relationship that co-exists in a relationship with God who is the head, partner, and judge of all covenant relationships. A correct theology of church and family involved covenant and when practiced well will produce healthy, godly families.
Modernity and postmodernity have presented deep challenges to the theology of church and family. Because the very structures that were intended to support and conserve the familial covenant commitment have collapsed, the church faces a mammoth challenge in effectively providing Christian models and training for the family. Church leadership must strategize prayerfully so as to provide an environment that promotes a covenant lifestyle that the present secular culture may not value.
I personally embrace the Family-equipping model for family ministry because it is one in which the church works inter-generationally to promote the parents as the primary disciple-makers in the lives of their children while the church family is an active participant in the process. This mingling of generations within the church family is necessary to prevent relationship isolation and covenant relationships result. In this model, the church becomes a place where family members can gather and be spiritually nourished in an environment of acceptance, intimacy, and mutual concern. Family-equipping ministry provides a place where the family can relax in an encouraging and supportive atmosphere.
As the church envelops the covenantal and family-equipping concepts of spiritual training, I believe that the theology of church and family will be defined as living institutions of love, grace, empowerment, and intimacy that provide a place of haven and rest for the weak and weary. As the church lives out this covenant model, my prayer is that those inside and outside the church walls will witness and experience the mysterious love of the people of God, as they emulate the character of their mysterious heavenly Father.
Ministry With Families
Dr. Jackie Johns
My Theology of Church and Family
The art of raising a family has been fraught with a myriad of myths throughout the ages. This produces a diseased theology of church and family. Dictionary.com defines a myth as “any invented story, idea, or concept.” History proves that humanity, when left to its own devices, can create powerful and negative impacts on the family.
The church can become the vehicle of healing as it seeks to restore broken and scarred families. But first, the church must recognize its wrong teachings from the past and present. Wrong readings of Scripture have produced spiritual dysfunction and emotional pain within the church community. A re-reading and re-examination of Scripture may be necessary amongst church leaders as well as children, parents, and grandparents that constitute the church in order to bring harmony to the conjoined community of family and church. It is imperative that the Scriptures be read in a method that brings unity and health to the spiritual family. Spiritual progression is impossible if the Scriptures are not read going forward rather than reading and teaching solely from past experiences. Testimonies are great and inspiring, but new testimonies of the Father’s love and grace need to be the norm within the theology of church and family.
A correct theology of church and family can be extracted from the example of Jesus as He lived in intimacy and grace with others. And Jesus continues to live in loving covenantal relationship with His own. Throughout Scripture, narratives are found where God the Father modeled covenant relationships. An understanding of covenant relationships is crucial within the family and church if each is to empower the other. Without intimate group relationships, the family and church as communities will disintegrate. Healthy relationships are built through covenantal interrelations.
A past and present mistake within the church and family has been its seeming promotion of the family as the predominate of all human relationships, while concurrently advocating church events that separate the family more than uniting it. If the family is the foundation on which Christian love and servanthood are built, then the church must exercise more responsibility to teach and train families how to walk in covenant relationships.
Covenant has often been misunderstood as being the same as contract. The difference is that a contract is an agreement that focuses on the desires and needs of involved individuals being met, while a covenant relationship is one in which the individuals agree to relate to one another with mutual respect and a desire to empower each the other. In short, a contract does not exist to consummate and nurture an intimate relationship, while a covenant relationship seeks to create a sacred relationship that co-exists in a relationship with God who is the head, partner, and judge of all covenant relationships. A correct theology of church and family involved covenant and when practiced well will produce healthy, godly families.
Modernity and postmodernity have presented deep challenges to the theology of church and family. Because the very structures that were intended to support and conserve the familial covenant commitment have collapsed, the church faces a mammoth challenge in effectively providing Christian models and training for the family. Church leadership must strategize prayerfully so as to provide an environment that promotes a covenant lifestyle that the present secular culture may not value.
I personally embrace the Family-equipping model for family ministry because it is one in which the church works inter-generationally to promote the parents as the primary disciple-makers in the lives of their children while the church family is an active participant in the process. This mingling of generations within the church family is necessary to prevent relationship isolation and covenant relationships result. In this model, the church becomes a place where family members can gather and be spiritually nourished in an environment of acceptance, intimacy, and mutual concern. Family-equipping ministry provides a place where the family can relax in an encouraging and supportive atmosphere.
As the church envelops the covenantal and family-equipping concepts of spiritual training, I believe that the theology of church and family will be defined as living institutions of love, grace, empowerment, and intimacy that provide a place of haven and rest for the weak and weary. As the church lives out this covenant model, my prayer is that those inside and outside the church walls will witness and experience the mysterious love of the people of God, as they emulate the character of their mysterious heavenly Father.
My Theology of Church and Family
Ministry with Families
Raheel Rizvi
My Theology of Church:
The church-in-mission is primarily the local church everywhere in the world. The local church is the people of God in the local context. This context and church are part of the church universal. In the local context the people of God is the imprint of the entire church universal.
Renewal of the local church begins when the Holy Spirit calls a congregation or group back to their true identity and source (Luke 15:17). This identity is found in God, His coming Kingdom, in the Word made flesh, the Bible and the Tradition of the church universal. Local church renewal occurs when the Holy Spirit transforms the people and the community into the likeness of Christ through repentance (metanoia – changing of mind)) and openness of hearts to God. This renewal of spiritual power comes often as the community opens space for prayer and when it worships in “spirit and truth” .
The primary task of local Christians is to be witnesses. The church’s call, according to the NT, is to witness. Mission is witness. Martyria is the sum of kerygma, koinonia and diaconia – all three of which constitute important dimensions of the witness for which the church is called and sent. We read the New Testament as the testimony (witness) of witnesses, equipping other witnesses for the common mission of the church . Testimony in this way becomes a demonstration, through the lives and actions of God’s people, to the fact that the Kingdom of God is present in the disciples of Jesus Christ.
Witness and disciple making go hand in hand . Discipleship and disciple making are the critical point in the life and being of the local church. If it fails at this point, it will fail at all others. Jesus’ investing his life and embedding his teachings in his followers and developing them into authentic disciples were the basis for the founding of a movement that has extended itself into the twenty-first century.
A focus on the local church in mission reflects a desire to see congregations in both the West and the Global South become missional. Impacting the world begins with local congregations giving up Christendom assumptions and adopting a missionary stance both in their own culture and cross-culturally. Missional congregations pray both for renewal within their community and in the market place. In local congregations, missional structures are created that go beyond the hierarchies of the past and provide a balance between worship, community and mission at all levels of church life – in the cell, the local and the trans-local expressions of church. Every member is motivated and equipped to take his/her role in inspiring, encouraging and equipping local leaders. Missional leaders fan into flame a vision that both builds on and sparks excitement and sets the church toward imaginative diakonia. Missional congregations partner with other communities, both congregational and those specifically ministry-focused. Activities and strategies are created that embody the way of Christ on the way to new people .
The calling of God to us is never silenced, and we are always being drawn (raised up) to new possibilities. Discipleship as creativity, and discipleship as faith, commits itself equally to this. It will be about knowing that the community of faith, and ourselves as Christians, minister to each other by remaining true to what is the church’s own, and our, vocation. That is, our vocation is to keep embracing the insights of God’s presence as these lead us on, in and into discovering what it is to be human in Christ in the world around us.
Healthy churches operate with a team. Establishing effective ministry teams involves much more than adding a new program or changing the names of existing committees. Team ministry is ownership and self-initiated vision in which members carry out plans they themselves have conceived or have had a part in conceptualizing.
There is a further distinction between teams in the marketplace and teams in the church. Our convictions about humility and brokenness come from God, not popular psychology. The study of God’s Word and prayer, not management theory books, create the passion for team ministry and prompt our desires to yield to his will. It’s God who is the instigator and sustainer of healthy functional team relationships.
I believe that there is no set pattern of leadership presented in the New Testament, but rather, there are principles that serve to guide the modern church in establishing godly and effective leadership led by the Holy Spirit as evidenced by corporate resolutions to competing visions. It was the Spirit who spoke the will of God and that to and through a discerning community.
A focus on the quality of the experience of followers as a mark of effective Christian leadership means that Christian leaders must be as much concerned with the wellbeing of community (Body of Christ) as they are with the accomplishment of the organizational vision. Further, it is argued that the organizational vision must be understood and accepted by the community it serves, rather than being simply passed down from a leader. Where a community consensus exists as a result of the Spirit’s leading in the lives of leaders and followers. In addition, the work of team building is accomplished as a natural outgrowth of the collective agreement on the organization’s purpose and goals.
I think Christians of all traditions have been challenged to think more broadly of their own identity as a follower of Christ. With the recent expansion of Christianity around the world and the anticipated spread of the gospel into all peoples, we can hope to realize the beauty of both the particular and the universal in a truly global Christianity.
And I am excited. Because the future is one of unity, diversity, LOVE, tradition, innovation, community, justice, and Christ centered disciples.
My Theology of Family:
God intended for the family to be the basic unit in society. A casual view of history reveals that as go marriages, so goes the family; as go families, so goes the community; as go communities, so goes the nation; as go nations, so goes civilization.
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. (Ephesians 3:14)
The home is the window through which children get their first glimpse of God. It is also where they get their first glimpse of who they are and what they are worth. Children discover their value and worth in the mirror of those around them by how much they are looked at, listened to and touched, by what their parents say to them and about them in front of others, and by how much time their parents make for them. Often this initial view will stay with them throughout their lifetime.
I believe, just as a plant flourishes in the fertile soil of the earth, so a Christian family flourishes in the sound doctrine of the Scriptures. Indeed, sound doctrine leads to sound living in Christ. Through the work of the Spirit, sound doctrine illumines the mind, transforms the heart, subdues the will, warms the affections, and nourishes the soul. It is truth for life. Whether in church, at home, or in the margins of life, nothing is more important to our families than the teaching and application of sound doctrine.
The establishment of a covenant between God and the nation of Israel has become the foundational focus in developing a theology of the family. It is covenant love that provides the basis for family. For this reason, family means much more than consanguinity, where bold ties provide the only basis for belonging. Family is where we are loved unconditionally, and where we can count on that love even when we least deserve it. Therefore, in order to understand the family, we must understand a covenant.
A covenant included vows which clarified the expectations of its members for each other. In a covenant the terms exist in order to consummate and maintain the relationship. Furthermore, God serves as witness to all covenants. He is a partner and judge in all relationships.
When family members experience covenant love, grace, and empowering, they will be able to communicate confidently and express themselves freely without fear. Family members will want what is best for one another. They will make a concerted effort to listen, understand, accept differences, values, and confirm uniqueness.
Jesus created a new family, a third race, neither Gentile nor Jew but “in Christ.” Our Lord neither denied nor eliminated the biological family; He provided the means for the human family to become part of His divine family. The dysfunctional family can be healed only by joining the household of God. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (Ephesians 2:19).
Through God’s Spirit, the church is the extended family for those who receive Him. It is only in the power of God’s Spirit, within the church, that the nuclear family can resist the social forces that attempt to remark the family. As the church approaches the next millennium, it must assume its role in redeeming and strengthening the family.
The church-in-mission is primarily the local church everywhere in the world. The local church is the people of God in the local context. This context and church are part of the church universal. In the local context the people of God is the imprint of the entire church universal.
Renewal of the local church begins when the Holy Spirit calls a congregation or group back to their true identity and source (Luke 15:17). This identity is found in God, His coming Kingdom, in the Word made flesh, the Bible and the Tradition of the church universal. Local church renewal occurs when the Holy Spirit transforms the people and the community into the likeness of Christ through repentance (metanoia – changing of mind)) and openness of hearts to God. This renewal of spiritual power comes often as the community opens space for prayer and when it worships in “spirit and truth” .
The primary task of local Christians is to be witnesses. The church’s call, according to the NT, is to witness. Mission is witness. Martyria is the sum of kerygma, koinonia and diaconia – all three of which constitute important dimensions of the witness for which the church is called and sent. We read the New Testament as the testimony (witness) of witnesses, equipping other witnesses for the common mission of the church . Testimony in this way becomes a demonstration, through the lives and actions of God’s people, to the fact that the Kingdom of God is present in the disciples of Jesus Christ.
Witness and disciple making go hand in hand . Discipleship and disciple making are the critical point in the life and being of the local church. If it fails at this point, it will fail at all others. Jesus’ investing his life and embedding his teachings in his followers and developing them into authentic disciples were the basis for the founding of a movement that has extended itself into the twenty-first century.
A focus on the local church in mission reflects a desire to see congregations in both the West and the Global South become missional. Impacting the world begins with local congregations giving up Christendom assumptions and adopting a missionary stance both in their own culture and cross-culturally. Missional congregations pray both for renewal within their community and in the market place. In local congregations, missional structures are created that go beyond the hierarchies of the past and provide a balance between worship, community and mission at all levels of church life – in the cell, the local and the trans-local expressions of church. Every member is motivated and equipped to take his/her role in inspiring, encouraging and equipping local leaders. Missional leaders fan into flame a vision that both builds on and sparks excitement and sets the church toward imaginative diakonia. Missional congregations partner with other communities, both congregational and those specifically ministry-focused. Activities and strategies are created that embody the way of Christ on the way to new people .
The calling of God to us is never silenced, and we are always being drawn (raised up) to new possibilities. Discipleship as creativity, and discipleship as faith, commits itself equally to this. It will be about knowing that the community of faith, and ourselves as Christians, minister to each other by remaining true to what is the church’s own, and our, vocation. That is, our vocation is to keep embracing the insights of God’s presence as these lead us on, in and into discovering what it is to be human in Christ in the world around us.
Healthy churches operate with a team. Establishing effective ministry teams involves much more than adding a new program or changing the names of existing committees. Team ministry is ownership and self-initiated vision in which members carry out plans they themselves have conceived or have had a part in conceptualizing.
There is a further distinction between teams in the marketplace and teams in the church. Our convictions about humility and brokenness come from God, not popular psychology. The study of God’s Word and prayer, not management theory books, create the passion for team ministry and prompt our desires to yield to his will. It’s God who is the instigator and sustainer of healthy functional team relationships.
I believe that there is no set pattern of leadership presented in the New Testament, but rather, there are principles that serve to guide the modern church in establishing godly and effective leadership led by the Holy Spirit as evidenced by corporate resolutions to competing visions. It was the Spirit who spoke the will of God and that to and through a discerning community.
A focus on the quality of the experience of followers as a mark of effective Christian leadership means that Christian leaders must be as much concerned with the wellbeing of community (Body of Christ) as they are with the accomplishment of the organizational vision. Further, it is argued that the organizational vision must be understood and accepted by the community it serves, rather than being simply passed down from a leader. Where a community consensus exists as a result of the Spirit’s leading in the lives of leaders and followers. In addition, the work of team building is accomplished as a natural outgrowth of the collective agreement on the organization’s purpose and goals.
I think Christians of all traditions have been challenged to think more broadly of their own identity as a follower of Christ. With the recent expansion of Christianity around the world and the anticipated spread of the gospel into all peoples, we can hope to realize the beauty of both the particular and the universal in a truly global Christianity.
And I am excited. Because the future is one of unity, diversity, LOVE, tradition, innovation, community, justice, and Christ centered disciples.
My Theology of Family:
God intended for the family to be the basic unit in society. A casual view of history reveals that as go marriages, so goes the family; as go families, so goes the community; as go communities, so goes the nation; as go nations, so goes civilization.
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. (Ephesians 3:14)
The home is the window through which children get their first glimpse of God. It is also where they get their first glimpse of who they are and what they are worth. Children discover their value and worth in the mirror of those around them by how much they are looked at, listened to and touched, by what their parents say to them and about them in front of others, and by how much time their parents make for them. Often this initial view will stay with them throughout their lifetime.
I believe, just as a plant flourishes in the fertile soil of the earth, so a Christian family flourishes in the sound doctrine of the Scriptures. Indeed, sound doctrine leads to sound living in Christ. Through the work of the Spirit, sound doctrine illumines the mind, transforms the heart, subdues the will, warms the affections, and nourishes the soul. It is truth for life. Whether in church, at home, or in the margins of life, nothing is more important to our families than the teaching and application of sound doctrine.
The establishment of a covenant between God and the nation of Israel has become the foundational focus in developing a theology of the family. It is covenant love that provides the basis for family. For this reason, family means much more than consanguinity, where bold ties provide the only basis for belonging. Family is where we are loved unconditionally, and where we can count on that love even when we least deserve it. Therefore, in order to understand the family, we must understand a covenant.
A covenant included vows which clarified the expectations of its members for each other. In a covenant the terms exist in order to consummate and maintain the relationship. Furthermore, God serves as witness to all covenants. He is a partner and judge in all relationships.
When family members experience covenant love, grace, and empowering, they will be able to communicate confidently and express themselves freely without fear. Family members will want what is best for one another. They will make a concerted effort to listen, understand, accept differences, values, and confirm uniqueness.
Jesus created a new family, a third race, neither Gentile nor Jew but “in Christ.” Our Lord neither denied nor eliminated the biological family; He provided the means for the human family to become part of His divine family. The dysfunctional family can be healed only by joining the household of God. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (Ephesians 2:19).
Through God’s Spirit, the church is the extended family for those who receive Him. It is only in the power of God’s Spirit, within the church, that the nuclear family can resist the social forces that attempt to remark the family. As the church approaches the next millennium, it must assume its role in redeeming and strengthening the family.