You might already know this, but the church as we know it didn’t walk out of the Bible times. It’s morphed and evolved, just like society, since the first band of Yeshua followers huddled around flatbread and recounted the stories and teachings from His life. Since then we’ve added and taken away: buildings, choirs, Sunday Schools, 501c3s, youth groups, potlucks, Sunday services, and even the modern role of the pastor is something that we’ve cooked up since the Bible was done and dusted (here’s a great book on the subject). None of those things is wrong in themselves, necessarily; we’re free to express our life in, and pursuit of Christ in any number of ways, in keeping with our times and culture. So sure, choir yourself crazy. What ISN’T fine is when modern Christian inventions overwrite God’s original intent, thus jettisoning God’s will and blessing. To wit:
Who’s the spiritual leader of your home? Who gets to be the pastor?
The spiritual formation of your family is of paramount interest to God. You could say the existence and thriving of His entire Body (nay, of all His work on earth) hangs in the balance. The home is designed to be the primo atmosphere for making disciples, for instance. Yes, there are Plan Bs (and Cs and Ds, thank God), but nothing can touch the effectiveness of a godly home for shaping godly people. It’s God’s specially designed disciple-building center. So who does God say should be spiritually forming your family? Let’s go way way back for the answer…
Deuteronomy 6 was written so that “you, your son, and your grandson” will know God’s laws and keep them. In the intro to this section of the Bible, even before the laws themselves are first articulated, God tells us how He wants those laws disseminated:
…teach [the words I command you today] diligently to your children, and talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up… You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
So when these laws are spoken to God’s people, God is already thinking about the grandchildren of the hearers (which is really cool to consider). And how will those as-yet-unborn kids hear about God’s laws? Not at the temple (which didn’t exist); not at the synagogue (same); not even at the tent of meeting. In God’s mind, the grandchildren of these people will hear about His laws in their HOMES. The parents would pass these things along to their children. They wouldn’t find a Levite to come teach in their home. They wouldn’t look for a special school they could pay to teach God’s law. They would teach it themselves. And there wouldn’t (necessarily) be a “Bible time” when the family comes together and folds its hands, like some mini church service (they wouldn’t have had any reference point for that concept, remember); these things would be taught while the family went on walks. Whenever everybody was sitting together. When everybody lied down together for sleep. It was to be a natural part of life, and God’s Word would flow through the home as a cultural given for anyone who sought to obey Him. THAT’s God’s plan.
Contrast that to today. Christian families, by and large, receive zero spiritual instruction from their parents (except maybe as an emergency tool to get their kids to obey. God + guilt = behavior modification. Yuck). Very, very rarely would a parent open a Bible and commence to teaching their children from it. (There are a number of reasons for this, not least among them is “I don’t feel qualified”. …and I’m not here to demean you if that’s where you are right now.) Instead, “committed” families get their youngsters into the church house like clockwork, hoping that Programs will raise their children in the fear and admonition of God. “Turn my children into good, Bible-literate, culturally acceptable Christians,” families seem to say to church organizations, “while I focus on training them in Americanism and whatever grab bag of strongholds our family tree has running through it.” This assignment to raise everyone else’s children is an insurmountable challenge for the church worker, to the point of being ridiculous. The spiritual leader of the average Christian home, if there is one, is the church pastor (“senior pastor” if the organization is big enough), who we see for about 45 minutes each week, from afar, and often doesn’t know our names. (I’ll add that often, because she cares more about her family’s formation than Dad does, Mom is the gatekeeper for whatever the church/pastor is saying at the moment.)
Sound wonky to you?
Maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know. But it certainly isn’t God’s plan. Do you know that the word ‘pastor’ is just a transliteration of the word ‘shepherd’? Do you know that a shepherd’s job is to know every single one of his sheep, specifically, including their emotional and physical histories, tendencies, and present threats, then to fend them all off? (Great, short book describing Psalm 23 in detail through a shepherd’s eyes!) Would you agree that job would take some time, hands-on care, and present, sustained, focused attention? Indeed it would. And would you also concede that one man giving that much attention to, say, a hundred people would be nigh unto impossible? (Jesus only attempted to do that for 12 guys. And He’s super good at it.)
NOW does it sound wonky to expect your church pastor (who also has meetings to run, a staff and organization to maintain, bills to pay, and all the other thousand things people expect of their pastors/priests) to be the spiritual leader of your home?
But of course, God has cleverly furnished every single family with a built-in pastor: Dad. (Mom does a fair bit of pastoring too, let’s not neglect praising her… but keeping tabs on each individual as well as the family collective is not her burden to carry.) Unlike the church’s pastor, Dad DOES have the capacity of knowing every member of the family intimately, caring for them individually, rooting out their afflictions, providing them with just the resources they need to grow and flourish, and defending the whole family against cultural or generational threats. This pastor-built-into-the-family idea is like the genius who thought, “Why don’t we put a pocket ONTO the pants you’re already wearing… then you don’t have to carry a bag around for your keys!” Perfect idea! Similarly, God says, “This family need pastoring. So let’s bake one right into the fabric of the team!”
Instead of Dad being there to kind of affirm and implement whatever the church pastor’s recommending, the church pastor is there to help equip and support dad! Moreover, anybody who considers themselves a pastor, teacher, evangelist, apostle, or prophet is there to buttress family leaders (that’s moms too) who’ll implement Kingdom life into the people they serve. Abraham, YOU put your hand to the plow of pastoring your flock (start with your wife. Take THE BEST care of her… heck, lay down your life for her!), learn from other men who’ve been walking that road faithfully for a few decades (that may include the local pastor! Get a meeting with him and find out if he’ll help you), get skilled and equipped… and for God’s sake, Don’t let the local pastor steal your job!
Hear, hear!
Brilliant!