When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community
Book Review • Hellerman, Joseph H. When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2009. Kindle. $10.49.
Read time: 12 min
When the Church was a Family looks backward to look forward. What if local churches today looked and functioned according to the ecclesiological ideals of Jesus, the apostle Paul, and the early church fathers? So asks Joseph Hellerman, Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Biola University in La Mirada, California. He serves on the pastoral team at Oceanside Christian Fellowship, and his educational credentials include M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. degrees in theology and church history. Drawing from theological and historical reflection and a wealth of pastoral experience, Hellerman challenges readers to reimagine the local church as a surrogate family commissioned by Christ to occupy a place of utmost priority in a Christian’s life. In this review, I will summarize and critique several notable strengths and weaknesses of Hellerman’s book and argue that his often-incisive argumentation sometimes falls short, hyperbolically driving home corrective insights while lacking needful nuance.
Summary
Hellerman sets out to expose the radical individualism that compromises the relational commitments of Christians in Western societies, and he does so by painting a vivid New Testament portrait of the church as a tightly knit family (9). He weaves biblical data from the gospels and the Pauline corpus with historical accounts of the early church. Then, he juxtaposes that historical model with modern western conceptions and tendencies rife in churches today. His heart is to see believers and churches strengthened by embracing this maxim:
“Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life” (1).
The author criticizes a consumeristic approach to church life and the reflex of Western believers to flee churches as soon as inevitable crises or conflicts arise—ever in search of a better fit. He poignantly asks, “Why are we seemingly unable to stay in relationships, stay in a community, and grow in the interpersonal contexts that God has provided for our temporal and eternal well-being” (2)? This book provides a timely answer in ways that check the spirit of mercenary autonomy that has no place in the church as he tries to recapture “the social vision of the early Christian church as a strong-group, surrogate family” (31).
Structure
The structure of When the Church Was a Family follows a logical pattern. In chapter one, Hellerman broadly discusses the differences between historical and modern collectivist societies (which prioritize group identity and values) and Western individualistic societies (which prioritize personal over group identity), alleging that collectivist behavior saturated the world of Jesus and the apostles (14). Chapter two presses deeper into the collectivist versus individualistic divide by examining sibling relationships. Hellerman argues that in Mediterranean antiquity, the bond between blood siblings was considered more important than even marriage. Marriages were primarily seen as a means to strengthen the extended family and produce offspring (38). Chapter three explores how Jesus advocated both pro-family and anti-family sentiments, concluding that Jesus elevated relationships in the church above blood relations (75). Chapter four serves the book by summarizing Paul’s use of familial language about the local church. Four familial traits emerge: affective solidarity (i.e., brotherly affection), family unity, material solidarity (i.e., the sharing of possessions), and family loyalty (78). Chapter five illustrates how some post-apostolic churches lived out strong-group priorities, seen especially through the lens of Cyprian (99). Chapter six roots Hellerman’s argument for the utmost priority of church community in salvation itself, where he connects the dots between joining oneself to a community of believers and joining oneself to Christ (129). Chapter seven gets very practical by outlining the contours of what such commitments may look like in local churches today. He digests these as follows: we share our stuff with one another; we share our hearts with one another; we stay, embrace the pain, and grow up with one another; and family is about more than me, the wife, and the kids (145). Chapter eight concludes the book by describing how Hellerman and others have sought to apply the idea of the church as their surrogate family. Showing how the church is God’s primary means of providing Christians with collective wisdom, he illustrates the role that a tight-knit church community plays in life’s most significant choices and challenges.
Critical Evaluation
Hellerman leaves little room for doubt regarding his main objective. Deeply concerned that radical individualism has distorted how Western Christians view the Christian faith, Hellerman “compare[s] our individualistic way of doing things with the strong-group, surrogate family relations of early Christianity,” which he calls “the central focus” of his book (6). By simultaneously exposing the individualism that compromises Western believers’ relational commitments to one another and providing readers with a New Testament portrait of the church as an intimate family, he writes to shape the church today more into the image of its original charter (9). He contends:
“Jesus viewed His followers as a surrogate family, challenged them to reconsider their loyalty to their families of origin, and modeled surrogate family values in His own life by publicly distancing Himself from His own natural family” (205).
Strengths
The book has several strengths worth noting. First, it effectively reinforces the supreme place Christ demands of members in his kingdom over even the closest of familial relationships. By spending a few chapters elucidating the collectivist, strong-group mentality of Jesus’ world, Hellerman heightens the sense of what it cost the early disciples to follow Jesus. As a case in point, he reframes for the average reader the story of the call of James and John, whose abandonment of their father would have ranked “right up there with . . . the ultimate in betrayal for a descent-group society” (68). Jesus was not asking to be a mere add-on to the disciples’ lives. He was calling the generational fishermen to scandalously abandon the family business and their traditional roles in their father's house.
A second strength is that Hellerman not only lobs allegations of hyper-individualism at the lowest common denominator of churchgoers today; instead, he identifies just how baked-in individualism is in even respected theological truisms. For example, he spotlights the reductionistic yet popular precis: God saves sinners from the past penalty, present power, and the future presence of sin (136). In this overview of salvation, there is alarmingly no acknowledgment whatsoever of the crucial role of Christian community. Salvation may as well be accomplished in a relational vacuum. While technically true, the maxim reductionistically reflects the individualism that is normative today but foreign to the storyline of Scripture. Hellerman attributes the idea of Jesus as merely personal Lord and Savior with much of Western Christianity’s myopic vision of salvation lacking a horizontal dimension. He suggests instead, “When we get a new Father, we also get a new set of brothers and sisters” (124).
Third, the author makes a strong case for the crucial role that collective wisdom from the family of faith can (practically) and should (biblically) play in the major decisions most people face (31). His insights, especially those on choosing a career and a spouse, were first formed by a decade of labor as a youth pastor, watching the emotional toll taken on college-aged adults in North America: “The choices we possess in our radically individualistic society have come at a tremendous emotional price. We pay dearly in the stress department for our freedom to decide for ourselves, and as a result, many of us are now emotionally bankrupt” (25).
Weaknesses
Hellerman’s work is not without weaknesses, however. First, he builds his argument too heavily on the pagan world of the New Testament. His logic is simple: “Since family was the primary group for people in Mediterranean antiquity, the church represented the primary focus of group loyalty and solidarity for a Christian in the first century” (51). Chapters one and two are foundational to his ethic, both delving into the world of Jesus and the apostles. He cites mostly pagans who valued their sibling relationships above even their marriage partners (41). Crucially, he reasons, “Jesus did not resist the collectivist outlook on human relationships that characterized life in Mediterranean antiquity. He unequivocally affirmed it, for He established His group as a family” (75). For Hellerman, the mere fact that Jesus appropriated for his disciples the familiar terminology of “brothers and sisters” means that the collectivist world Jesus inhabited aligned with God’s vision for all societies and, henceforth, is binding on the church in every society. He does not adequately consider the possibility that Christ and the apostles were contextualizing the gospel to their native culture, not sanctioning Greek or Jewish family mores, per se. Borrowing Hellerman’s logic, farming ought to be elevated as a preeminent profession among Christians since Jesus and the apostles frequently used planting and farming metaphors. The biblical authors were speaking into their world using commonplace imagery, not endorsing its potential excesses.
Second, he inadvertently undermines the institution of marriage and the nuclear family. His thesis denigrates even marriages between believers by valuing marriage unions below relationships between biological siblings, in general, and “spiritual” siblings, in particular. How is this so? The collectivist society of Jesus’ day valued sibling relationships above even marriage partners; Jesus assumed and appropriated this fact when he called his disciples to value their new spiritual siblings above even biological siblings; therefore, spiritual siblings (i.e., a believer’s relationships in his church family) should take priority over his own parents, siblings, spouse, and children. He alleged, “Central to this chapter—and to Jesus’ vision for authentic Christian community—is the priority of sibling relationships in the strong-group family model. The blood bond between siblings—not between husband and wife—is the most intimate, nurturing, and ultimately satisfying relationship for persons in collectivist cultures” (39, italics mine). His insistence that Jesus shared the collectivist vision leaves the conclusion unavoidable. He explains himself plainly enough: “in the New Testament world the closest family bond was not the bond of marriage. It was the bond between siblings” (50). Interestingly, Hellerman never mentions or comments on how his ideas accord with Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This verse in Genesis at once (1) reproves the tendency of a husband in a collectivist society to prioritize his blood family over his spouse, and it (2) establishes the utterly intimate bond forged before God when two lives become “one flesh.” Notably, Hellerman avoids any treatment of Paul’s words on the high meaning of marriage in Ephesians 5:25–33. At least he acknowledges the question and his avoidance of answering it: “Does God truly want us to prioritize sibling relationships over the bond of marriage in our natural families? . . . When the Church Was a Family . . . is not a book about our natural families. It is about the family of God” (41). For such a provocative book, it seems unacceptable to refuse to provide even cursory qualifications or justifications for the problematic implications to which his claims give rise.
Third, When the Church was a Family lacks needful nuance, at times. For example, by exalting church relationships over familial relationships, it theoretically lumps together scenarios where disciples have unbelieving parents, siblings, or spouses with disciples having believing parents, siblings, or spouses (114). Christians with unbelieving parents may be forced to dismember themselves from their biological families, and they may find in their communities of faith surrogate parents of sorts, but what of Hellerman’s prioritization of the local church over one’s believing parents or believing spouse? At what age do such relationships ensue? Does the community of faith overshadow the godly and God-ordained family structure of believing parents and children? Must a believing man have a higher loyalty towards an unrelated brother in the church than towards his own believing father? Should he have a more intimate relationship with a sister in the church than with his believing wife, since church trumps family? Without nuance, some of the implications of Hellerman’s claims are unfeasible.
Conclusion
I appreciate Joseph Hellerman's call in When the Church Was a Family, urging the family of God today to live up to its name. His arguments from Scripture and church history—that God intends churches to be surrogate families—have bruised my individualistic tendencies and deepened my sense of obligation towards the local church. Nonetheless, I have found his vision of church relationships trumping in every respect the priorities to which I am also called as a Christian husband and father to be, at times, not only biblically untenable but practically unnecessary. Hellerman’s aim is not to be chided. His chief argument, however, functions like hyperbole. Believers can, in fact, participate in the fullness of transformative, intimate church life without undermining the nuclear family or the institution of marriage. Hellerman’s claims are fresh and provocative but need nuanced to be acted upon in many cases. Readers, tolle lege, if you desire to be challenged to repent of the consumeristic, personal autonomy that insensibly dims our vision for the priority of the family of God. ❖
