'Church family' means doing the dishes together
How a church dinner made me re-think my expectations of a healthy community
This is a follow-up from last week’s post, “How can you know if a church is safe?” I saved #7, “It feels like a family,” to explore in more detail this week.
I thought I knew what a “church family” was. For nearly 10 years, we were part of a church where we knew almost everyone, where we and our kids had our closest friends — many of us were around the same age, after all — and where small groups truly seemed to care for each other.
But when that family abandoned me, I didn’t know what was real anymore… Until a new church changed my expectations.
It started the night I was supposed to run Thanksgiving dinner. We were just a few months into attending this church, and I’d volunteered to organize the event.
I assumed I’d be working for hours to clean up afterwards. We had more than 100 people attending and a gym full of tables, chairs, and potluck dishes. It would be a mess, so I’d recruited a handful of volunteers for cleanup. This was the sort of thing I’d done many times before, as women’s ministry leader at our previous church. I knew the drill: once everyone went home, our little group would be left stacking chairs and carrying the trash out.
Then something unexpected happened. As the meal wrapped up, I started trying to figure out where to put things away. But then I noticed a few guys were already folding chairs and breaking down tables. Another group of people were collecting trash and packing up the table decorations; others were loading dishes on a cart. They wheeled it down to the kitchen, where several women were already washing dishes.
I hadn’t told anyone what to do. They just started working on their own. Pretty soon, I realized far more people were cleaning than had officially signed up as volunteers.
As I watched — and felt I was watching more than working, given how much was happening without my assistance — I couldn’t help but compare this with past experiences. What was unfolding around me was unlike the church events I’d run before.
There was a sense of ownership here, a different set of expectations for who was responsible. What we’d known before as “church family” was a group of people who developed good friendships with one another. Yet church members were not expected to stay after events and help clear tables — that was for the paid staff or their specially recruited volunteers.
Our old church family was organized around shared preferences. We were connected because we came together regularly to have experiences provided for us by a group of professionals.
This new church was nudging me to reevaluate my expectations. This Thanksgiving dinner reminded me how “family” means having responsibility to and for one another. A healthy family pitches in to make a meal together, and to tidy up afterwards. A healthy family comes to the table expecting to give, not just to take.
Our prior church had cultivated a consumer mentality among its members. There had been a small core of committed volunteers, yes, but the majority of attendees showed up for events, enjoyed the show, and walked out afterwards without a thought of who would stack the chairs.
This new church had a different vibe. Of course, there were still members who came and went without really helping out, but there was a much larger group who took it upon themselves to do the behind-the-scenes tasks that make a family run, like washing the dishes and sweeping the floor.
Before we go further, some objections may be coming up.
“I’ve been in a church where we had to set up chairs every week, and it was unhealthy or abusive.”
I’m definitely not claiming a church will be safe if people are working together this way. There are certainly churches run by overbearing pastors who demand service from members, or where the congregation feels a sense of obligation to pitch in — if you don’t “volunteer,” you’re excluded or punished somehow. From what I could tell, no one was working because they felt they had to. There seemed to be a foundational difference between this church and our old one: people came not to be served, but to serve.1
“People cleaning up together just means the church is new or understaffed; it doesn’t say anything about the culture.”
This also could be true. The early days at our first church involved a large group of volunteers running setup and breakdown in our rented space each Sunday. But as we grew, added staff, had a capital campaign, and finally moved into a building of our own, the work of the church shifted away from the congregation as a whole, towards paid staff and a much smaller group of volunteers. (I suspect this movement paralleled the declining health of our pastors and overall culture.)
This wasn’t true at our newer church. It had been around more than 40 years, had a paid janitor, a maintenance person, and other staff. They could’ve paid a facilities manager to set up and break down tables and chairs, as our previous church had. Instead, when it came to gathering the church family, we pitched in as a family.
So… “How can you know if a church is safe?” There is no simple answer, and no guarantee either. But that Thanksgiving dinner gave me another way to look at it.
I’d previously thought we were safe because we had a close-knit “church family” — at the church where we were abused, we’d been vulnerable with each other and helped each other walk through grief and suffering. We set up countless meal trains for one another. Precious though it was, none of this mattered when the leadership went off the rails. Some of our closest friendships dissolved in painful silence or blew up in an explosion of angry accusations.
Some other factor was at work. That Thanksgiving dinner helped me see: for many white evangelicals, our expectations of “church family” are shaped by consumer culture more than the kind of loving service, mutual submission, and one-anothering described in the New Testament.
When church is seen as a service provided to us by professionals, we will relate to one another in radically different ways than if we believe it’s our responsibility to make church happen.
Church as a consumer service promotes dependence and passivity among members — someone else will provide my spiritual nourishment, someone else will make sure my kids are learning and having fun. Someone else knows the answers and will ensure everything runs smoothly.
If abuse occurs in this sort of culture, congregants are already primed to listen to leaders and let them take care of any problems. So when the leaders themselves ARE the problem, there’s little chance anyone can or will challenge the system.
When church is a family — when people feel a sense of responsibility to and for one another, this can lead to very different outcomes. People will feel they are all called to be “ministers” of the gospel, not hand this job over to paid professionals.2 In fact, the Greek root of the word liturgy means “the work of the people” — a huge contrast to the typical suburban church where people sit in an audience to watch others perform.3
A “church family” that depends on everyone playing their part will look and feel different from a church produced by professionals. This can be good or bad, depending on your preferences.
If you have a church experience someone else designed, you’re more likely to get high-level production value, excellent entertainment, a varied menu of programs and events designed for various age groups, and probably some church “branding.” The style of the church will mostly match your own culture and demographic. It will be comfortable.
By contrast, a church family that truly involves everyone, where you’re dependent on each other to make church happen — it simply won’t fit as nicely. Some of the worship songs will be a little off-key, perhaps. Maybe there will be dated or clumsy graphics on the screen. You’ll have potluck lunches instead of catered meals; you might be needed to wash the dishes afterwards. A church family like this might mean you have the equivalent of a “weird uncle” who overshares his political opinions.
I noticed things like this in our church in Delaware. The folding chairs had been banged up for years, and there was mismatched furniture in the Sunday school rooms. I loved it — this meant money wasn’t being spent on optimizing our experience, or curating a modern aesthetic. Those weren’t the priorities in our budget, or in our relationships with one another.
My expectations for church family grew in our time there. The church wasn’t perfect — not by a long shot — but I felt safer because there was more of a family culture than the consumer culture we’d been part of before.
Everyone wants a church family, but the way many of us go “church shopping” highlights how we’ve imported consumer culture where it doesn’t belong. Church family doesn’t happen because you all enjoy the same productions. Church family isn’t about how much you have in common.
Family is a commitment to one another despite the fact you don’t.
Before we go: I don’t want to leave you with the impression this church was “perfect” or even almost perfectly safe and healthy. It had its share of problems, and even some areas that concerned me. However, the difference in values I’ve described above was one of the main factors that led us to commit, despite the fact we didn’t agree with all of their doctrine and practices. How people cared for one another and took responsibility encouraged us to believe that, if problems arose, they might be handled differently than we’d previously experienced.
“…just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” - Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45
Another green flag: This church actually listed the congregation as “ministers” in the bulletin, above the staff pastors.
The Greek leitourgia comes from a combination of laos (people) and ergon (work). However, I also found numerous articles from Catholic and other sources contesting this definition because “work of the people” can imply that in worship people are providing something God lacks. It would be better to say God’s people are receiving and participating in God’s work for them. I’m simply using the term to emphasize the difference between church experiences where we are passive observers vs. active participants.
There is much to unpack and think about. Church is complicated sometimes. It good not to generalize too much as many factors determine responses.
Recently our church leadership committed our church to several big projects with overlapping time and financial support needed. These were piled on existing commitments and the response was poor leading to staff frustration at the congregation. Their frustration in turn shamed and/or angered those who were already stretched with time and money commitments. that dynamic squelches the heart to spontaneously respond.