Connecting
With
Non-Traditional Families
We have experienced first–hand the response of the church to the brokenness of divorce. When there is a tragedy, the Church is right there to help and pray. When there is a divorce, no one is there. Here are a few things we have come to believe about how you can connect with the non-traditional families in your church.
1. Stepfamilies and Single Parent families are real families. The church must become a family of families, especially to those who may feel disenfranchised. The family, in its many forms, becomes the crucible for the faith formation of our children. Jesus came to liberate, but all too often we marginalize. We must not shoot our wounded.
2. The average stepfamily member is emotionally and spiritually wounded. Woundedness is pervasive; it prevents us from bonding or growing spiritually. It makes it difficult to do the things necessary for a stepfamily to work. The first two years or so, are really turbulent. We present as if we are fine in order to avoid raising attention so that we will be accepted; but most of us can’t pull it off well. Therefore, we move to the periphery or go away. As a stepcouple, we need support from the church in three areas: nurturing our marriage relationship, developing a realistic vision of marriage and family grounded in the community of faith, and with stepparenting issues.
3. Since stepfamilies begin with loss, grief is a constant companion and it is easily reactivated. Every event, a holiday or birthday, has the potential to reactivate grief. Successful stepfamilies become experts in handling grief. They learn how to bring it to conscious awareness and understand the role it plays in their lives. We need a faith community that can hear our stories of loss and grief, not judge or shame, and help us write new stories of hope.
4. If you just see stepfamilies as broken, you miss the incredible work God is doing and you won’t really hear our stories. Stepfamily stories do not fit nicely into the narrative stories of our faith, but there are powerful stories about lives that have been changed, of stepcouples who have committed marriages and strong families.
5. Stepfamilies are messy, but we are not contagious; we believe in marriage and family. We are the embodiment of second chances. Divorced people are not morally suspect or relationally ambivalent; they are wounded and their woundedness plays out in their inability to either sustain a relationship or pick emotionally and spiritually healthy partners. It should bother us more that we are not adequately equipping people for life-long marriage than it does that the people we marry are divorcing.
6. If we get stuck on the theology of divorce and remarriage, we can become like Pharisees –arguing over points of law and missing the big picture. We treat divorce as a special sub-set of sin. Some see it as the unforgivable sin. Where theology meets reality is at incarnation-God truly meets us where we are and He redeems and restores us. If we are truly going to make a difference and be connected to non-traditional families, the Church must be incarnational.
7. We as the church need to enter into critical dialogue with non-traditional families. We must create environments of grace and trust where hard issues can be discussed without judgment or shaming. Life in single parent and stepfamilies homes is messy AND it is messy in the Church. It has been tough for some churches to embrace single parents and stepfamilies and to maintain a strong stand on divorce. The answer is relationships. We can’t just know about stepfamilies, we have to know them personally and listen to their stories. We must learn to live in the vital tension between God’s standard and love for those who do not keep it.
8. We need to be committed to helping people get healthy- before, during and after they get married. Marriage is not a cure-all. Our friends in stepfamily and single parent ministry believe strongly in divorce prevention. From first-hand experience, we know that divorce is devastating, especially to our children.
Mark Buchanan writes in his book, Your God is Too Safe, “There is one soil that usually withers pride. It is brokenness. Brokenness "molds our character closer to the character of God than anything else. To experience defeat, disappointment, loss—the raw ingredients of brokenness—moves us closer to being like God than victory and gain and fulfillment ever can."
The theme verse for our ministry is II Corinthians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort we received from God. “ Our prayer is that you too are able to go and comfort the non-traditional families in your church and community.
