Page 2 - PC Issue 14 Summer 2020

Connection
MESSAGE FROM THE MODERATOR
Being the Church at Home
2 SUMMER 2020
PRESBYTERIAN
presbyterian.ca
The Rev. Amanda Currie with her hus- band, Nicholas Jesson.
By the Rev. Amanda Currie, Moderator of 2019 General Assembly
Since the COVID-19 pandemic has had most of us sheltering at home, self-isolating and physical distanc- ing, we’ve been spending less time with our church communities and more with our families. Staying home has come with blessings and chal- lenges. Yes, we’ve enjoyed the quali- ty time with our household members, but we’ve also been stretched to manage the inevitable squabbles and conflicts that arise when we’re living in close quarters for a long time.
Congregational leaders have scrambled and adjusted to guiding and serving their church communi- ties from a distance. We’ve figured out online worship, pastoral care by phone, electronic methods of giving, and delivering sermons and devotional materials by mail to our members. We have struggled with the reality that the church cannot gather together physically during such a serious pandemic and found ways to continue to be the church in a dispersed form. But the situa- tion has also inspired some to begin thinking about families as the prima- ry place where Christian education, faith formation, service and mission have always been intended to take place.
I remember someone suggesting that one of the new developments of the 20th century in North Ameri- can churches was that Christian education became formalized and professionalized. It moved from be- ing the responsibility of parents in the home to becoming the job of “theological experts” in the form of Sunday School teachers and pas- tors in the church. Of course, with that development, the time devoted to faith formation was reduced to a few hours each week rather than the regular attention to matters of faith that could take place in the context
of daily life.
In recent years, many congrega-
tions have been intentional about providing resources for families and encouraging faith conversations, prayer, learning and service from the home. But in the midst of most fami- lies’ busy and hectic lives, I wonder how many Presbyterian households take time to read scripture and pray together. How many incorporate spiritual disciplines into their daily or weekly routines, besides the habit of going to church on Sundays (or most Sundays, anyway)?
As much as the pandemic is a terrible situation, it could provide us with an opportunity as well— the chance to encourage and equip families to initiate new patterns of shared prayer, worship and Christian nurture that could be continued even after we’ve been allowed to return to more of our past activities. Perhaps we might reclaim the idea that the Christian household is more than just a family, but is the smallest unit of the church itself, sometimes called the “domestic church.”
I came across the concept of the domestic church when I was study- ing theologies of marriage in con- nection with my doctoral work on interchurch families. Sometimes also called the “church of the home,” the idea will be most familiar in con- temporary Roman Catholic circles because the Second Vatican Council sought to restore its practice in the 1960s. However, it is deeply rooted in Christian tradition, both biblical and historical.
In an article titled, “Marriage as Worship: A Theological Analogy,” German Martinez suggests that the idea “goes back to the very dawn of the Christian community and its worship” when churches met in family homes, and households gave bir th to communities. Giving the examples of the households of Lydia and Cornelius, he argues that Christian worshipping communities “originated in the bosom of the fam- ily, around the table, and under the couple’s hospitality.”
Florence Caffrey Bourg, in her book, Where Two or Three Are Gath- ered: Christian Families as Domestic Churches, notes that it has been used in various fashions, from the Pauline “house church” texts through John Chrysostom, Augustine, Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus to more contemporary writers such as American Congregationalist Hor- ace Bushnell. She points out that in a commentary of 1 Corinthians 16, John Calvin remarks enthusiastically,
Currie family of Ottawa around 1981: The domestic church in which the moderator was nurtured in faith and life. She is the second from the left, wearing the blue top.
“What a wonderful thing to put on record, that the name ‘church’ is ap- plied to a single family, and yet it is fitting that all the families of believers should be organized in such a way as to be so many little churches.”
In Familiaris Consortio, Pope John Paul II embraces the concept of do- mestic church because families are called to participate in the mission and ministry of the whole church: “the Christian family, in fact, is the first community called to announce the Gospel to the human person dur- ing growth and to bring him or her, through a progressive education and catechesis, to full human and Christian maturity.” He describes the Christian family in terms that sound like a small church: a believing and evangelizing community, a com- munity of dialogue with God, and a community at the service of human- ity, and he suggests that the ministry is not only carried out by the parents, but includes the full participation of children:
“All members of the family have the responsibility of building, day
by day, the community of persons, making the family ‘a school of deeper humanity’: this happens where there is care and love for little ones, the sick, the aged; where there is mu- tual service every day; where there is sharing of goods, of joys and of sorrows.”
Pope John Paul II recognizes that family life can be difficult, and that “There is no family that does not know how selfishness, discord, ten- sion, and conflict violently attack and at times mortally wound its own communion.” He advises that unity in the domestic church requires sacri- fice, a generous openness to under- standing, forbearance, pardon and reconciliation, as well as the equal dignity and responsibility of women with men.
Ecumenical families, whose mem- bers belong to different Christian de- nominations, have been encouraged by the concept of domestic churches because, like every other Christian family, an interchurch family repre- sents the Body of Christ in the home. While our churches remain formally
divided from one another, we are united in one church within the small- est ecclesial unit that is the Christian household.
While it continues to be difficult for our congregations not to gather for worship, fellowship and service week-to-week, our smallest Christian communities have been granted the gift of much time together in these days. Thinking of the activities of the earliest Christian communities in Acts 2:42-47, can we, as the wider church, equip our “domestic church- es” so that they can “devote them- selves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers”? Can we nurture and support our “churches of the home” as they spend time together and have all things in common: shar- ing possessions, taking care of each other’s needs, sharing food, praising God and living together in love for one another?
May God bless and strengthen our church in all its forms, and may God add to our number those who are be- ing saved.