Family Reunions

We had a family reunion yesterday up in Tennessee. We had somewhere around 100 folks show up, which I was very pleased to see. It was my mom's side of the family and all of her living siblings except one were able to attend. There were lots of cousins and their children and grandchildren as well. When I was growing up this side of the family had at least one, sometimes 2 or 3, of this sort of get together every summer since the family was less scattered geographically. It was generally at a public park in the early years, then later at my uncles farm. It was where many of us cousins got to know each other better. In a family like this (mom is one of 13 siblings) it was just about the only way to get everyone in one place, by having the event outside!

The fun and food that happened in those events played an important role in cementing family relationships, in keeping the family acting like a family. Several generations could spend a full day together every so often, talking, playing, eating, discussing all kinds of things: family events, religion, politics. Now that the family is scattered, this happens much less often. My cousin, who organized this one, did the work to organize it in part because she wanted her children to get to know her other cousins better, like she had been able to do when growing up.  I think all of us in the family miss that.

I think that also describes part of what we miss in many churches today, especially mega-churches. I frequently ask my children and others of their generation what impacts their choice of a church to attend. One thing that comes up at times is the desire to know whole families and not just their own generation. In most large churches, we organize the groups outside of the large worship events by age, effectively segregating generations. Families are broken down into individuals.

In my last blog I discussed how Obama and indeed most of secular society since the Enlightenment have viewed the individual as the key unit of society and self-fulfillment as the key goal in life. The Bible uses the family more as the basic unit, with Abraham's family carrying the load in the Old Testament and the church as the 'bride of Christ' and the 'children of God' being the New Testament family. Individual sin and repentance is important, that is true; but the thing that holds society together is a family. Families require a lot of giving and caring, not just self-fulfillment. It is very different model than the individual of the Enlightenment view.

The reunion yesterday reminded me of that as we recovered some of that extended-family cohesiveness, at least  for a day. We need to find more ways to do that in the local church, too.