Kitchen Tables and Interventions

The way I write is actually fairly simple – it’s much like birthing a sermon. You incubate it in prayer, research it in study, and wrestle with it until you have a burden you believe is from God that you must communicate. With apologies to Martin Luther, my burden for this article was birthed at the kitchen table. It was a discussion about a family member leaving her husband and the resulting unintended consequences of the divorce. The typical topics emerged – the pursuit of personal happiness, emotional abuse, and the bottom line offered in most such conversations in American life: it’s my life butt out. Not much to create a writer’s burden or lift writer’s block but the seeds started sprouting fairly quickly. The seminal seed that took root in my thoughts was what role the church should or could play in such a situation. How could the church most effectively be the church in this situation? Both participants in this family fiasco are believers that frequent a local Baptist church. This is not a case of ministering to or reaching unbelievers.

I know the rote answer is the expected remedy: incarnate the gospel, offer spiritual counsel and support, and offer intercessory prayers for those involved. All are worthy endeavors. Perhaps though there is another path – one less traveled. Rather than accept the plausibility structures society has constructed, we challenge them with a biblical ethic and a clear expression of the implications of the gospel. Much was made in my last article about how the church reaches the world with the gospel. How about this for an option? Let’s stop supporting conventional wisdom about marriage and divorce and offer a contravening biblical example and witness.

The local church needs to offer a prophetic voice that trumpets a different note: one man and one woman for forever. The local church is in essence a counterculture that allows for covenantal accountability and church discipline as a prescription against the crescendo of divorces among believers that are as prevalent as the society we seek to influence. Such an example of regenerate church membership would serve as a biblical witness more effective than any support group we could ever formulate. It would rescue marriage from the clutches of radical individualism and help return it to the covenant relationship God intended. That could be change we (and the people we seek to reach) could believe in.

The purpose of such community would not be a red light green light display of the quick adjudication and application of discipline, but a real community about the purpose of the gospel: reconciliation and restoration (see Galatians 6:1-5). The church could emulate the A&E show Intervention where a group of concerned family members would surround the parties involved and do everything possible to bring forth reconciliation. Imagine the power of such loving intervention. What other aspect of American society can you think of that is more dysfunctional in society today than the so-called nuclear family? In many ways, the family has gone nuclear. It has imploded. The church’s response in many cases has been shrugged shoulders and silent acquiescence to the status quo.

I already anticipate the response will be that such a move will lead to Pharisaical pronouncements of judgmentalism and separatism. John 8 might be bandied about as a model for how the church deals with its members. A better example is Paul’s mandate to the chaos in Corinth in chapter 5 – to deal with the explicit leaven in the lump. This passage makes a distinction between the way the church deals with members and unbelievers. Members are accountable. The need is for biblical discernment that is not judgmental and can see clearly to remove the speck from a brother or sister’s eye. The above argument is for a church that is salt in the world, salt that has not lost its savor.

For a mystery so profound that the Bible uses it as a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and the church, the contemporary church treats the marriage relationship way too casually. Mark Galli makes similar observations in his article “Is the Gay Marriage Debate Over?” (here) He opines that our participation in the radical individualism of our culture has made our voices mute in the debate on gay marriage. That’s a topic for a different day.

Yet its relevance is indisputable. The need is for the church to be distinct and different than the world around us – new creations in Christ. Missional will not be just something we do, but who we really are. The church being the church becomes what Lesslie Newbigin called the only hermeneutic of the gospel, a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it. Many in the church today decry our irrelevance and suggest we find ways to incarnate missional living. Nothing is more incarnational than believers in community living radical lives for Jesus Christ. It’s a way to let our lights shine before men that they may see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven.