Church Family = Extended Family

I love being a part of a church family where it really seems like family.  

With all the good and the bad that involves...they are family!

This past week I have reflected a little bit on how my relationship with the church body has grown. As a young child and a pastor’s kid, you were at church anytime the building was open.  In my teens years I came because it was a place for me to see my friends, maybe learn something and but not to be involved.  It was an obligation and one I do in order to please those around me.  While in college, the church became more of a necessity, a staple.  It was a place I knew I would be safe.  The friends would be different from the majority of the friends I had at work, or at least they should be.  

Fast-forward to present day.

I have been attending the same church for a very long time.  

I have been passive and active.  

I have been stagnant and stretched.  

There were times when I enjoyed being a part of the body and other times when I forced myself through the doors.  However, throughout the past 15 years or so, one thing that has not really changed, this church body is my extended family.  For good or for bad.   

When a think about a group of people I want involved in my life, its this one.  When I think about a group of families that I want to be invested with, its this one.  

• I learn by watching them parent.  
• I learn by watching them endure trials.  
• I learn by watching their reactions to joy.  
• I learn…because we are striving to grow up together to be like Christ as one big family.  

Where else could I have tickle war in the hallway with a group of kids?

Or see my nieces and nephews grow spiritually?

Or be a part of multiple generations who work together for the same goal?

Or work on team with various personalities and gifts and love it!?

Or team up with my brothers and sisters from around the world to be a part of the bigger picture of the church?

The church is a great place to utilize your giftedness, to learn new gifts and seek to know people who are very different from you and to be engaged with people who are like you.  

In the end,…we do have one major similarity…

Our love for 

our triune, creator God, 

our Savior, 

His Word, 

His People 

and His World.

A quick encouragement from the apostle Paul about the church: 

"be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk worthy in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.  May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light."  

Col. 1:9-12