Family Church... Church Family

What relationship did Ellen White see between the home and church?

As almost everyone knows, many Seventh-day Adventist families in North America are in trouble today. Our divorce rates differ little from the society around us. We have fallen prey to many of the same causes of division and disharmony that wrack the homes of our neighbors. Many of our families seem to lack a sense of structure and of harmonious, cooperative roles.

At the same time we are being influenced by the society around us to make changes in our church leadership structure to reflect more closely the changing values of our culture. Some urge that leadership role distinctions between men and women be eliminated in the church. They urge that women be chosen for the headship roles of elder and pastor. Even some church members who support role distinctions in the home fail to see a relationship between the home and the church.

Ellen White cared deeply about the family, a concern that is attested by The Adventist Home and Child Guidance, and many passages scattered in her other writings. Indeed, she saw the family as a model, a type, a counterpart of God's worldwide church, the apple of His eye. In this article we will examine some of the relevant things she wrote that indicate the relationship between the home and the church.

The Foundation of the Church

Origin in the Home

Mrs. White traces the church back to its origin and finds it in the very first believing family. "God had a church when Adam and Eve and Abel accepted and hailed with joy the good news that Jesus was their Redeemer. These realized as fully then as we realize now the promise of the presence of God in their midst" (The Upward Look, p. 228).

In our time, too, she sees the church and the family inextricably identified. "Every family is a church, over which the parents preside. The first consideration of the parents should be to work for the salvation of their children. When the father and mother as priest and teacher of the family take their position fully on the side of Christ, a good influence will be exerted in the home. And this sanctified influence will be felt in the church and will be recognized by every believer" (Child Guidance, p. 549).

Family Church and Church Family

The home church today is to be the foundation of the larger church in the world. The family church is still the basis of the church family. "It is the Lord's design that the church shall stand as His representative in a revolted world. There is a constant work to be done in the church. Fathers and mothers, begin this work in the church in your own home...

"The members of each home are to reveal the transformation that has been wrought by this grace. When parents will remember that they are to begin with the church in the home, the true work of reform for which God calls will be carried forward" (Pacific Union Recorder, December 15, 1904).

"Every family in the home life should be a church, a beautiful symbol of the church of God in heaven."

Symbolism

The family church is also symbolic of the heavenly church. "Every family in the home life should be a church, a beautiful symbol of the church of God in heaven. Parents are to consider that they are in the place of God to their children, to encourage every right principle and repress every wrong thought" (Child Guidance, p. 480).

The family church is to reflect the heavenly condition. "Parents, you have a church in your home, and God demands that you bring into this church the grace of heaven, which is beyond computation, and the power of heaven, which is without measure" (Reflecting Christ, p. 178).

So in Ellen White's view, the home, the church and the life in heaven are all comparable parts of God's unified plan for the relationships of His created beings.

Roles in the Family Church

Ellen White sees specific roles assigned to fathers and mothers in the family church, roles which find corresponding functions in the church family. She encourages them to fulfill their appropriate roles, without blurring the distinctions between them.

Father Representative

She describes the father's role in representative terms: as priest of the household. The priest represents his people (in this case, his family) before God. But he also represents God to his people. Mrs. White calls the father in the family the lawmaker, representing the divine Lawgiver. She considers these roles of priest and lawgiver his "sacred trust," which the father is not to give up to anyone.

"All members of the family center in the father. He is the lawmaker, illustrating in his own manly bearing the sterner virtues: energy, integrity, honesty, patience, courage, diligence, and practical usefulness. The father is in one sense the priest of the household, laying upon the altar of God the morning and evening sacrifice. The wife and children should be encouraged to unite in this offering and also to engage in the song of praise. Morning and evening the father, as priest of the household, should confess to God the sins committed by himself and his children through the day.... The father represents the divine Lawgiver in his family.... The father must not betray his sacred trust. He must not, on any point, yield up his parental authority" (The Adventist Home, p. 212). The manuscript from which the last sentence comes continues: "He is to be the priest and houseband of his home" (Letter 9, 1904).

This arrangement, with the father as priest of the household, is not just a nice custom, but is ordained by God. "It was God's plan for the members of the family to be associated in work and study, in worship and recreation, the father as priest of his household, and both father and mother as teachers and companions of their children" (Child Guidance, p. 535).

Where the father daily exercises the right kind of spiritual leadership and the wife and children respond to it, Jesus is present to bless. "Like the patriarchs of old, those who profess to love God should erect an altar to Him wherever they pitch their tent.... Let the father, as priest of the household, lay upon the altar of God the morning and evening sacrifice, while the wife and children unite in prayer and praise. In such a home Jesus will love to abide" (My Life Today, p. 33).

Home Roles Equip for Church

Though we are focusing on the role of the father, Mrs. White recognizes the important role for the mother as well. Both mother and father are described as teachers and companions of their children. The roles they fill in the home will equip them to fulfill their responsibilities to the church and to the world: "As you faithfully do your duty in the home, the father as a priest of the household, the mother as a home missionary, you are multiplying agencies for doing good outside of the home. As you improve your own powers, you are becoming better fitted to labor in the church and in the neighborhood. By binding your children to yourselves and to God, fathers and mothers and children become laborers together with God" (Counsels on Health, p. 430).

"By faithfully doing their duty in the home, ... [parents] are becoming better fitted to labor in the church."

The Sphere God Would Have Them Fill

In a similar statement, Ellen White describes the faithful exercise of these roles as fulfilling the sphere God has intended for men and women. "In forming a relationship with Christ, the renewed man is but coming back to his appointed relationship with God. He is a representative of Christ....

"As parents faithfully do their duty in the family, restraining, correcting, advising, counseling, guiding, the father as priest of the household, the mother as a home missionary, they are filling the sphere God would have them fill. By faithfully doing their duty in the home, they are multiplying agencies for doing good outside the home. They are becoming better fitted to labor in the church" (Our High Calling, p. 304).

Mrs. White is not limiting the wife's sphere to her own home. Rather, she is saying that the faithful exercise of the wife's role in the home will prepare her to work in a similar way in her sphere outside the home, in cooperation with her husband as he fulfills his roles. "The husband is the houseband, the husband, the priest of the household, and the wife is the teacher, as she shall fill her place in the household, whatever may be her employment. If she has children to nurse and take care of, let me tell you there is a lesson there, Oh, such a lesson, that God wants everyone to learn. The wife, united with the husband in the fear of God, is to be a strength and power in the church. God can make them thus" (Manuscript Release #814, p. 1 [Manuscript 170, 1905], emphasis supplied).

Full Service

Mrs. White consistently supports the full use of the talents of both men and women, but not in identical ways. Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 6, published in 1900, has an article, "Women to Be Gospel Workers" (pp. 114-118). In it Mrs. White encourages women to work for the Master, emphasizing the importance of personal work. "The Saviour will reflect upon these self-sacrificing women the light of His countenance, and this will give them a power which will exceed that of men. They can do in families a work that men cannot do, a work that reaches the inner life. They can come close to the hearts of those whom men cannot reach. Their labor is needed" (pp. 117-118). She does not, however, indicate that women should seek to fill the roles of pastor or elder.

In the same volume, the opening article in the section "Calls to Service" is entitled, "Young Men in the Ministry." In it are such statements as, "Let not our young men be deterred from entering the ministry....

"God calls for you, young men. He calls for whole armies of young men who are largehearted and large-minded, and who have a deep love for Christ and the truth.

"God calls for men who will give themselves to Him to be imbued with His Spirit. The cause of Christ and humanity demands sanctified, self-sacrificing men, those who can go forth without the camp, bearing the reproach. Let them be strong, valiant men, fit for worthy enterprises, and let them make a covenant with God by sacrifice" (pp. 411-412).

Her statements about the ministry here are gender-specific to the men, though she could easily have included women here if she had wanted to or felt it was appropriate.

"Women...can do in families a work that men cannot do.... Their labor is needed."

There are a few statements in Mrs. White's writings that some will point to, claiming that she supported interchangeability of roles between men and women in the church. But the statements in their context do not support that claim.1 While all have a work to do, it is not the same work for all. Mrs. White encouraged each to work within the appropriate sphere. The home roles of priest and home missionary/teacher would equip men and women respectively for further service outside the home.

The Representative Role in the Church Family

Apostles First Representatives

Jesus took the initiative in the formal organization of His church when He appointed the twelve apostles to represent Him before the world. "It was at the ordination of the Twelve that the first step was taken in the organization of the church that after Christ's departure was to carry on His work on the earth...

"Their office was the most important to which human beings had ever been called, second only to that of Christ Himself. They were to be workers together with God for the saving of men. As in the Old Testament the twelve patriarchs stood as representatives of Israel, so the twelve apostles stand as representatives of the gospel church" (The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 18-19). In these twelve, Christ gives to the whole church the responsibility of taking His gospel to the world.

But the twelve are representative in another way, as well. Through them and those who would follow them, He would superintend His work for the church. Not every church member would carry that responsibility. In the apostles we see the first appointment of those who, under Christ, would be looked to as being at the head of the church family.

Mrs. White addresses this aspect of the representative nature of the church leadership: "Jesus was given to stand at the head of humanity, by His example to teach what it means to minister. The great Head of the church superintends His work through the instrumentality of men ordained by God to act as His representatives.... Christ's ministers are the spiritual guardians of the people entrusted to their care. Their work has been likened to that of watchmen" (The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 359-360). Men ordained of God stand in Christ's stead to direct the church in its outreach and to guard its spiritual growth and purity. It is the role in the church family that corresponds to the father's role in the family church.

"The great Head of the church superintends His work through men ordained by God to act as His representatives."

Minister Shepherds Two Flocks

Paul focused on the dual shepherding role of the overseer of a church: "He must manage his own household well,... for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God's church?" (1 Tim 3:4-5). Mrs. White draws the same lesson as Paul does, stressing the parallel nature of leadership in the family church and in the church family. "God designs that in his home life the teacher of the Bible shall be an exemplification of the truths that he teaches. If properly carried on, the training of the children of a minister will illustrate the lessons he gives in the desk. But if, by the wrong education he has given his children, a minister shows his incapacity to govern and control, he needs to learn that God requires him to properly discipline the children given him before he can do his duty as shepherd of the flock of God" (The Adventist Home, p. 353).

"He who fails to be a faithful, discerning shepherd in the home will surely fail of being a faithful shepherd to the flock of God in the church" (Reflecting Christ, p. 179). The two positions are parallel. A man's faithfulness to his fatherly role in the home church is an evidence that he is prepared to deal faithfully with the responsibilities of the larger church.

The Church a Preparation

The Family a Model

Ellen White saw a unity among the family, the church, and heaven. The lessons learned here in both the family church and the church family would help to prepare and equip one for fellowship in the eternal family at Christ's coming. "Parents are under obligation to God to make their surroundings such as will correspond to the truth they profess. They can then give correct lessons to their children, and the children will learn to associate the home below with the home above. The family here must, as far as possible, be a model of the one in heaven" (The Adventist Home, p. 146).

One Church Below and Above

The church family here is part of the same church family that inhabits heaven. "The church of God below is one with the church of God above. Believers on the earth and the beings in heaven who have never fallen constitute one church" (Testimonies for the Church, Volume 6, p. 366).

"No candlestick, no church, shines of itself. From Christ emanates all its light. The church in heaven today is only the complement of the church on earth; but it is higher, grander—perfect" (God's Amazing Grace, p. 95).

The church Jesus established, both at home and in the wider circle, is the place where His people learn to live His life and follow His directions. In both the Bible and the writings of Ellen White, Christ's direction for the leadership of His church is given. Then, "Let God's people set a perfect example, honoring Christ in every place, in every difficulty following His directions. Then at last they will be received into the family of the redeemed, and there will be given unto them a crown of immortal life" (Review and Herald, July 21, 1904, p. 8).

So we see Mrs. White asserting the essential unity of the home and the church. The home roles of the husband and wife, mother and father, are preparations for corresponding roles they are to fill outside the home, particularly in the work of the church. These roles are complementary, equally important, but not identical. Both the family church and the church family will be strengthened when men exercise their priestly role, their "sacred trust," in the right manner and spirit, and when women work together with them in unity and harmony.