What We Mean When We Say Family

We use the phrase church family so easily, and I have used it myself more times than I can count. But I have been asking lately whether we truly live as though it means what we say it means. Because family does not disappear when it becomes inconvenient. It does not quietly withdraw when someone is no longer in the same season or no longer easy to be around. In a real family, distance does not erase love, and disagreement does not cancel care.

And this is true not only within the church walls but inside our own homes. There are families with prodigals, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, spouses, who are alive but far, breathing but distant, once close but now gone in ways that have nothing to do with miles. Some of them walked away from faith altogether. Some never had it. And the temptation, after enough silence or enough rejection, is to quietly let go, to protect yourself, to stop reaching. But our side of it does not change based on their response. We are called to love them, to pray for them, to care, to keep the door open, to share the Word even when it is not received. We do not get to give up on people simply because they have given up on us, or on God. The father in the parable did not chase his son down the road, but he never stopped watching for him, and when the son was still a great way off, his father saw him and ran. That watching, that readiness, that refusal to stop hoping. That is our part to carry, for as long as it takes.

We see this kind of brokenness in families everywhere, and as painful as it is, there is an explanation for it in the world: people who do not know Christ have no model for the love He commands. They have not experienced being pursued when they were lost, forgiven when they deserved nothing, or chosen before they had anything to offer. But in the church, among people who have been saved by that love, who know what it means to have been sought out and not abandoned, who carry the Word and gather in His name, there is no such excuse. We have been shown what love looks like at its fullest. We have been on the receiving end of a pursuit that cost everything. That is exactly why it should look different here.

Jesus described the heart of a shepherd this way: "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?" (Luke 15:4). The pattern of Christ is not distance or indifference. It is pursuit.

What grieves me is how often someone new, or someone who simply sees things differently, is not met with patient, Scripture-grounded love, but with quiet resistance. Instead of opening the Word together and walking in humility, there can be a subtle closing of ranks, a spirit that isolates rather than restores. Conversations happen about the person rather than with them, and over time, the weight of that isolation pushes them toward the door. Then we explain it away by saying they were not a good fit, when the more honest question might be whether we ever truly tried to love them well. Scripture calls us somewhere else entirely: "Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted" (Galatians 6:1). With gentleness not harshness! Restoration requires nearness and humility, not pressure and pride.

We also need to be honest about something that can take root quietly, especially in leadership. Sometimes what is presented as discernment is actually control, and what appears to be strength is simply a need to remain unquestioned. This is where unhealthy patterns hide most easily, behind biblical language, inside spiritual-sounding decisions, in environments where people feel slowly managed or pushed out while everything still looks fine from the outside. God addressed this kind of shepherding plainly through the prophet Ezekiel: "You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost" (Ezekiel 34:4). And Jesus confronted it directly: "They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger" (Matthew 23:4). He also made clear that His way looks entirely different: "Whoever would be great among you must be your servant" (Matthew 20:26).

All of this is why I understand, more than I wish I did, why some people walk away wounded. You do not have to belong to a church to show kindness or generosity. But if we belong to Christ, if we carry His name and speak His Word, then our love should reflect Him in a way that is unmistakable. Scripture does not leave room for a love that lives only in language: "Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18). And Jesus said plainly, "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). Not by how polished we sound. Not by how well we perform on a Sunday. By a love that is steady, sacrificial, and real.

If we are going to call ourselves a church family, it has to mean more than shared space or familiar language. It must be a love that pursues the one who has gone quiet, that restores gently rather than pushes out, that refuses to use silence as a weapon, and that reflects the heart of Christ even when it is inconvenient to do so. The question is not whether we are saying the right words. The question is whether the people around us are experiencing them as true.

Love,

Andrea Anderegg