We are Family
Adrian Thornton

We are returning to our Family on Mission vision. This year, we’re giving focused attention to what it means to be a family as a church.

We recognise that “family” is a loaded word. Some of you hear it and feel warmth. Others feel pain. Some of you think, I don’t need another family. Others think, I don’t want the church to become like the family that hurt me.

Yet, if we are Christians, we must let Scripture lead us. According to Genesis, there is the created order and the corrupted order. God created family as something beautiful, but sin corrupted it almost immediately. Many of us have lived more in the corrupted order than the created one. Yet when the New Testament speaks of the church as family, it is not optional language.

The church is a family. Jesus made this explicit. When told that His biological relatives were looking for Him, He replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Then, pointing to His disciples, He said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:48–50).

Yet when we hear the word family, we instinctively think of the nuclear unit—mum, dad, a couple of kids. In the Western world, that unit is not only dominant; it is shrinking. Census data over the past century shows that average household sizes have steadily decreased. Family life has become smaller and more private.

This is not accidental. It is the result of the individualistic culture we live in.

For example, the Industrial Revolution shifted work from farms and extended households into factories and cities. Families no longer worked together; individuals left home for employment. Urbanisation separated extended kin networks and normalised the smaller, self-contained household.

Even the Enlightenment period further elevated individual reason and personal liberty above shared tradition and communal identity. Authority shifted from “we” to “I.” Identity became something discovered internally rather than received from the community. Over time, Western society has centred life around the autonomous individual.

For most of history, however—including the biblical world—people lived in collectivist cultures. Family meant extended, interdependent households. Decisions were made for the good of the group, not the preference of the individual.

This matters because when we read the word family in Scripture, we often read into it our modern nuclear assumptions, something the original authors never meant.

Joseph H. Hellerman addresses this directly:

He continues:

Scripture reinforces this. Galatians 3:26–29 declares that we are all children of God in Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:13 says we were baptised by one Spirit into one body. Ephesians 2:19 calls us “members of his household.” Salvation is not a private matter, it is incorporation into a people. We have been saved into a body, into a household, into a family.

Yes, Jesus knows us personally. But we were not baptised into isolation. We were baptised into Christ’s body.

So, the big question is: Do we use church to support our personal walk with God? Or is church the place where we actually experience and live out our walk with God?

Acts 2 shows believers sharing possessions, eating together, and devoting themselves to one another. And 1 John 3:14–15 says we know we have passed from death to life because we love each other.

God is expanding our circle again. He is calling us back from a corrupted, shrinking vision into His created intention: a loving, interdependent, Spirit-filled household.