Church as a Family Business

My experience with any number of small declining Presbyterian congregations is that they all have a similar vision of themselves. The universal refrain is, “We are a warm, friendly family.” And it often is true. They are so warm and friendly toward each other that they have become insular. Their motivation for survival has become to preserve the relationships, traditions, and history that they can’t envision living without. Newcomers will pose challenges to the status quo and are a threat.

When I raise this issue, others chime in with another context: The mega-church (or the mega-church wannabe) model. The complaint is that everything is run like a business, and the wannabes are trying to convert their congregations into businesses, so they grow into a big church. Critics want these churches to behave more like a family.

The family metaphor is the most frequent metaphor for the Church in the New Testament. Jesus used the idea of family with God as an intimate Father, but he was not alone among his contemporaries. The Qumran community that produced the Dead Sea scrolls had the same metaphor. The metaphor served as a barrier against unholy outsiders and created solidarity within the community.

Jesus’ use of the family metaphor takes on a new twist. The Church is a family, but its father is the compassionate father of the Prodigal Son parable. Kenneth Bailey notes that this parable is about the redemption and attempted inclusion of two sons, not just the prodigal. One son symbolizes law-breaking sinners (the son who leaves) and the other law-keeping sinners (the one who stays home but has no love of the Father.) So the Church is a family on a mission to gather lost family members.

Paul also repeatedly uses family metaphors. He uses them to subvert the culture’s status hierarchies by casting all disciples as brothers and sisters in Christ. He uses them to instruct people on how they should think about each other regarding compassion and conflict. He uses them as guides to help us understand how to relate to God.

But what Paul really ramps up for is the outward focus of the family. Not only are wayward Jews to be sought out, but the whole world. We are family, but we are a family on a mission. The mutual support and relational aspect of being a family is not lost but added to our mission is the radical expansion of the family by adoption. In contrast to the “we’re just a warm, friendly family” rant of so many dying congregations, it is the antithesis of the Qumran community.

Now in our day, family is a relationship that is utterly separate from our economic life. In the Greco-Roman world, the family was also a business. Family and business were inseparable aspects of daily existence. Too often, we read family metaphors in the New Testament and unthinkingly imagine a bond of relationships that cocoons us from the world outside. Not so for New Testament-era folks. Families were engaged in the family business.

Business and economic metaphors are scattered throughout the New Testament. Jesus and Paul cast themselves as servants within the household who are about the master’s business. Christian discipleship is cast in terms of the oikonomos, the household servant who acted completely in the master’s stead during his absence. Jesus talks about a great harvest, and the workers are few. He reminds others that he must be about his Father’s business.

Therefore, you could not think about the New Testament family without thinking about business. Our culture has separated the two spheres, and there is a profound tendency for us to gravitate toward one or the other. The gravitation toward family leads us to cocooning away from the culture, and the gravitation toward business reduces the gospel to a crass advertising campaign. We need to recover an image of the Church like a family business.

Insular family congregations need to be challenged to understand that their congregations are not a cocoon. There is mutual caring and support, but there is also a mission. We are to be about the Father’s business.

Those coming out of settings where business has been the congregational motif need to think twice about attempting to expunge any sense of “business” from the Church. Is it truly the presence of business thinking or the absence of family that is at issue? By equating business with all things unholy, there is real danger in swinging to becoming an insular family.

Furthermore, antagonism towards business defeats the Church’s mission of communicating the gospel. The Church is to have an outward focus. We are told that people learn in relation to what they already know. As we reflect on people’s daily lives, where will they most likely be engaged in an outward focus? At home with their families? No. It is in their 9 to 5 existence in places of employment. Yet the one place where people are involved in outward-focused missional activity is denounced as unholy, selfish, greed-driven sin. All that is left is family metaphors, which are completely inward-focused in our culture.

Marketing textbooks often reference the fate of the railroad industry as a cautionary tale about misperceiving what business you are in. Mid-Twentieth century railroad companies were experiencing increasing competition from cars, over-the-road hauling, and air transportation. They chose to focus entirely on railroad services and compete head-to-head with the new modes of transportation. They lost. The problem was they had defined themselves as being in the railroad business. Had they understood themselves as being in the transportation business, they would have embraced new modes of transportation and incorporated them into transportation services they already provided.

In addition to lifting up the family business metaphor, I would suggest that the most effective challenge to congregations trapped in a business mindset is not the condemnation of business and marketing. Rather, embrace the business marketing mindset but press them to define their business. Are we really about selling “fire insurance?” Are we a self-help seminar business? Are we a group therapy clinic? Are we a spiritual experience department store? What is the Church’s mission, and how does every aspect of our life together relate to our mission?

Furthermore, the pervasive image of the Church in the New Testament is one of family. Can we say we have truly embraced God’s “business plan” of familial communities bearing witness to the kingdom? The absence of family is a deviation from the business plan.

We need to recover the image of the Church as a family business.