Prioritize Which? Church or Family

One of the regular issues that arises in busy families is keeping all of the proverbial plates spinning.  The schedule is full, the laundry needs to get done, soccer practice is starting, kids are fussing about something, and guess what?  The dishwasher just started leaking.  In the middle of all of this comes church.  And not just Sunday Services but bible studies, kids clubs, outreach events, a special retreat, discipleship requests, service projects, meal deliveries, baby showers, and counseling needs.  Oh, and choir practice.  Don’t forget choir practice.

What gets prioritized?  What is most important? What can be cut and what must stay? It is at this point when it seems that family and church often get pitted against each other.  There are two sides of the battle that line up. On side, God calls us to love our spouses and raise children to know the Lord, and we need time to do that.  And since church takes away a lot of time, therefore church things get cut.  Or on the other side, God calls us to serve the church and gather with them.  Family can wait while the service gets done. 

Does it have to be like this?  Does family and church have to be pitted against each other?  I do not believe so. There is a better way. 

Converging Priorities

Let’s first recognize that the commands of Scripture do not cancel each other out.  We are, as 1 Corinthians 15:58 says, to be “always abounding in the work of the Lord” in “ministering to the saints” (Hebrews 6:10). And at the same time, with the same love and fervency, spouses are to “love your wives” (Eph. 5:25) and love husbands and children (Titus 2:4).  There is not one that is a higher good than the other.  I have heard it said that if one’s family is not cared for then church ministry is lost, therefore family is a higher priority than church.  But I would counter that by saying that if church is not a priority, then you are not caring for your family rightly, and church ministry is lost there too.  My main point is that church and family should normally work hand in hand.  On one hand, we are to love our spouses and children by demonstrating to them and leading them in the joyful commitment to the people of God.  You are not loving them rightly without this.  Children must be raised to follow Jesus Christ and following Jesus means loving what Jesus loves, which is his church.  On the other hand, the love that the church calls us to means caring for the closest people to us which is our family.  Not caring for our family makes us worse than unbelievers (1 Tim. 5:8) and disqualifies us from the highest service to the church which is the office of elder and deacons (1 Tim. 3:4-5, 12).  These are not priorities to set against one another, they are priorities which converge together for the glory of God.  The bulk of normal Christian living is that the home and the church revolve around one another. 

The Regulative Principle to the Rescue

Some will quickly want to remind me of what I wrote in my first paragraph.  Pastor Jay, there is no way I will be able to care for my family while I am running hither and fro with the 10 different things you mentioned on the church calendar.  I completely agree with you.  Almost no one should be doing all those things.  And the reason very few will be doing all of those things, including the pastor, is because Scripture doesn’t compel us to.  The Regulative principle reminds us of this and rescues us from incessant activity.  The regulative principle says that churches should only obligate what Scripture explicitly says we should do.  This means our worship services are not a canvas upon which we can be as creative as we want to be.  We worship only how God has shown us to worship.  We gather to sing Scripture, read Scripture, preach Scripture, pray Scripture, speak the Scripture to one another, give offerings, take the Lord’s Supper and baptize.  We are obligated to do these things because the Lord commands them in his Word.  The regulative principle teaches that since this is basically all the Scripture commands for the worship of the gathered saints, we cannot add any more commands upon his people.  Thus, the other ministries of the church are opportunities, not demands.  You can’t opt out on Sunday, but you can opt out of the other events.   Except for Sunday, the church calendar is under the banner of freedom.

Wisdom Lived Out

When you are waving the banner of freedom, you can be sure that lazy people will be happy to come under it.  And that is why churches are tempted to tone down the freedom talk.  Churches get sick of the 20/80 rule:  20% of the people doing 80% of the work.  Therefore the church, being full of sinners like us, will rightly and constantly seeking to spur each other on.  Spur them on to what?  Love and good deeds! (Heb. 10:24).  In 5 different places in the book of Titus Paul tells how Christians are to be zealous for good deeds (2:7, 14; 3:1, 8, 14).  So if we are to be zealous to serve the saints and spread the gospel, and we are to be diligent to love our children and families, then how do we decide what to do?  Godly, biblical wisdom is what should direct.  Wisdom is seeking to fulfill both commands in the fullest way possible.  The perfect balance of this is a moving target that will constantly look different.  Think of all the different life situations.  The single college student will often times have massive ability to serve in significant ways.  Conversely, Paul says a married couple will have some attention diverted from church service for family obligations (1 Cor. 7:33-34).  Is there a newborn?  Twins?  Is there a debilitating sickness?  A huge financial hit? Sometimes, churches will have people step away from service to care for significant family issues.  That is a temporary measure for an exception occasion.  It goes the other way as well.  Sometimes a person needs to do dramatic ministry to pull the church through a dark season, or go on an extended trip for a wide door of opportunity.  All of these issues of life have to be factored in and adjusted to. Sometimes the adjustment will be dramatic because the situation is exceptional.  But the goal is always the same; fulfilling both calls to serve the church and the family in the fullest way possible, knowing that what is possible will go through changes.  Remember, children should be raised to love and serve the church and spouses encouraged toward the same.  Simultaneously, church ministries are done by people who are managing their household well.  We don’t use one to downplay another.  We don’t normalize prioritizing one over the other.  We are always striving for both, realizing the sliding scale of how things are done will move as life happens.  Yet the middle balance is always the goal; great service to the church and great care for family.

The Dangers

What makes all of this hard is not that life is busy, but that we are worldly.  Churches acting worldly will put pressure on people to serve the packed calendar.  The worldliness of this may be a legalism of maintaining a right standing by serving.  Or there may be a business mindset of getting more people coming for making more money.  Church must forsake pushing for things that God does not obligate.  These ministries are opportunities that some will take and others will pass.  

Families can act worldly also.  Families can give most of their time and/or the best of their time to a variety of hobbies (or one very big hobby).  Sports can become a huge endeavor with an eye to scholarships.  Family leisure and vacations can become the untouchable idol.  Or it may be a smattering of all these and more for attaining community respect.  When this is the case, families don’t need to cut their service to and with the church in order to give more time to family, they need to cut their hobbies.  They need to cut some of the sports and stop bowing to the idol of community respect or the promise of athletic scholarship.  These families are just doing what the world does, seeing church get in the way, and cutting church in the name of family love.  Family love sounds good, but in those cases it is really worldliness hiding under the name of love.   In more rare cases, families will seek to become a church unto themselves.  Everything turns inward, but the claim is it is all for God.  This also misses the Biblical mark because churches are never one family but the gathering of every kind of person from every tribe, tongue and nation.    

The Examples

There are two places in scripture that I would like to point to regarding this specific discussion.  First is the requirement of being put on the widow list. 

1 Timothy 5:9–10 A widow is to be put on the list only if she is not less than sixty years old, having been the wife of one man, 10 having a reputation for good works; and if she has brought up children, if she has shown hospitality to strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has assisted those in distress, and if she has devoted herself to every good work.

Notice first that this is the list that every woman is to strive to be on.  This is a woman who the church is going to support in her widowhood because of the kind of woman she had been for a long time.  Notice second that it is looking at the totality of her life.  It is looking at her marriage, her parenting and all the rest.  This isn’t something that you start after the kids are gone.  Finally notice the abundance of service.  It was a reputation of service, it was church service (washing saints feet), and it was sacrificial service (assisting the distressed).  With this kind of over-the-top emphasis on good works that are outside the home, there is no way that it is feasible to say that raising young kids means serving the church and the gospel is shelved for a decade or two.

Second, I want to argue from the nature of discipleship.  The heart of discipleship is imitation.  The law of imitation is very simple; what they see is what they do.  Period.  If you are going to raise children to love Christ and to love the people of God, which is what godly parenting is aiming for, then you must do it conspicuously.  It is impossible to raise kids with these priorities while in your own life and home you make the gathering of the saints a secondary, first-thing-to-chop kind of thing.  Children will value what we value.  Children will prioritize what we prioritize.  You won’t raise children to love and prioritize the saints if you allow anything and everything (including family) to keep you from them. 

So let me say it one more time: don’t pit church and family against each other.  The church requires families to be cared for and family care requires churches to be loved and served.  Don’t cut one to serve the other.  That should be a rare occasion.  Wisdom will call for adjustments from time to time in this balance, but normal Christian living is family care and church love side-by-side.