Consider Yourself One Of The Family – Broader Horizons

We are continuing the series on me growing journey of understanding what family is.  As a recap there was the early days back in Wellingborough.  I saw a wider world of family church wise when I went to Peckham during the university days.  There was the dramatic shift in fortunes from the comforts of church life in Peckham to some making the connections in the early Stoke-on-Trent days between church and community.

As ever with me though, just when I thought it was safe to be getting the whole family business …

Family 2006-2009 – Stoke-on-Trent: A Family In And Out Of Church

The irony would be positively delicious … if it were not for the fact that I was living through it.  From the insular limited Wellingborough family life, I’d been drawn to understand the extended church family in Peckham.  Yet that still needed to be opened further by the early experiences of church as community family in Stoke-on-Trent.  The nudges outwards had been instigated or indirectly inspired somehow by Hughie.  It was only through the Summer Camp that he ran and got me to attend that I ever got to see Reuben who would be the conduit through which I’d get to know Peckham family life.  Yet again it was Hughie that was the personal catalyst to leaving the loving Peckham family to experience that Stoke-on-Trent life.

The delicious irony comes in understanding that in opening all the doors that he did up to and including the Stoke-on-Trent stuff, Hughie also opened the doors to the YMCA life that opened my eyes to a combination of something greater than the families that I was already used to.  Here, alongside a new dear brother in Ray, who would be a very important aide in the next transition of understanding family life.

Expressing Jesus love is expressing family love at its best.  It’s the love of a Father to His children and a big brother to His younger siblings.  It’s the insight into the love between the husband and wife.  It is not just serving for the sake of it, but it is serving out of family ties.  So when that’s expressed, however and wherever it is expressed, the recipient gets the hint that it’s something more than the regular kind of love that is advertised.

I effectively began practising that during the YMCA days more than I did before.  So complete strangers from a variety of backgrounds would become members of the family.  I’d embrace them to my life as they saw how genuinely interested I was to embrace their life without prejudice.  Not that everyone went with it, because that’s the nature of people.  Not that everyone who went for it first, kept with it, because that’s the nature of people.  What is also the grace of God, though, is those beautiful moments and relationships that would blossom when the connections happened.  When they did it was astonishing.

This came in handy because unbeknownst to me some serious rocky days for me in all kinds of ways was approaching.  It was the love of this new family of oddballs and allsorts some educated and refined, others rough and ready as they come who would take me through those days and reveal the family love of God that was not tied to my background or my familiar places.  Indeed sometimes I detected the tension between the two different worlds that had so recently emerged.  I noticed how sometimes they didn’t seem to come together and when they did how there was a tension between the two that didn’t seem to fit what I was growing to understand about this family love and what makes a family.

I entered a season of some uncertainty and insecurity after a number of incredibly hurtful decisions in my life – some made by me, some made by others.  Soon I found that the family who were consoling me, encouraging me and giving me their time in relating me did not come from any of the circles that I grew up with.  First Danny at the YMCA patiently and persistently walked through it with me.  Along with him the ever generous and insightful Gordon Crowther offered a listening ear and a heart that can relate to difficult journeys that are made in life.

Then there was the awesome Andy Kind.  In my low estate when there were so many questions and few answers there were close encounters of the divine kind that came about through knocking about with Andy Kind.  I will never forget what he and others around him did for me when I needed it most and it reaffirmed for me a concept of family that had to embrace something larger than blood family, larger than denominational (and thereby cultural) family, larger than even church family.  Relationships and bonds that can be developed between people who are willing to engage in life together beyond the surface and are committed to seeing the best in each other are truly family.

As that growing understanding mixed in with other developments of church life and the whole discipleship thing, I grew ever more dissatisfied with some insular thinking that had dominated all that I’d ever known.  So that mixed in with everything else, and crucially understanding the ongoing nudges from God, things had to change.

That leads me to where I am today, and how I’d state my position on the family is as follows … in an upcoming blog entry.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd