When Christ said that He will build His church, He intended to use living stones, people who’ve been hewed from different families. However, on this side of eternity, these stones may tend to friction together, hence, in order to ensure that all these families function properly in the family, it’s imperative for a local church to come up with a strategy which will enable all these families exhibit the one true family Christ desires. In this article, I’ll try to come up with a guideline that a church may use.

Guidelines

1. Proclaim the Gospel: It is the gospel of Christ which necessitates the coming and joining together of people from diverse backgrounds for the purpose of worship. Therefore, as a church, we should always strive to proclaim it by showing the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the justice and wrath of God, and the substitutionary place/work of Christ who thus enables us to find mercy and grace from God.
2. Healthy church: A church’s health has great influence on how members relate to each other in that local body. Consequently, as a church, it’s imperative to enable the members what a biblical church is and its purpose. Thus, as a church, we have to; preach expositionally from the Bible since the Bible is God’s word to us and thus we should here what He wants us to hear, embrace biblical theology, proclaim the gospel, biblical conversion, practice evangelism, church membership and discipline, being concerned with discipling and growth of the church and lastly practice biblical church leadership. This will have a far reaching effects since it will turn around how the different families view the one family, the church, and how it has effects on their lives.
3. Biblical leadership: The church will only go as far as its leaders are. If a church really wants to mature, it should ensure that its leaders, elders and deacons, are qualified as per the standards given to us in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1:5-8. By embracing this, the leaders will model how to the families in the church how they should also be following and leading their families.
4. Biblical home leadership: Since the fall of man, our homes are broken, and loved ones usually don’t see eye to eye, and all this is due to sin. Fortunately for us, the gospel does not promise for us spiritual healing, but amongst one of the benefits that we accrue from it is a restoration of physical relations. Thus, as a church is orthodox in its teachings, (see point 2), it should lead to an orthopraxy, i.e. practical living of our beliefs as it will show that we are bearing fruit of repentance and thus bring assurance of faith. Therefore, as a church practices biblical leadership, it will lead us as individual families to practice the same at home. Therefore, as a church, we should strive to help husbands, wives and children to understand their biblical roles as ordained and pray that they’ll fulfill them. Therefore, men should be the spiritual leaders of their homes since if they lead well their homes, it will result in transformation of the entire church family.
5. Meaningful membership: As a body, the church is made up of different parts and each has got a role to play. Therefore, in order to serve the entire body well, as a local church, we should strive to help members understand their roles well, and spur them to play that role for the good of the church by edifying others just like they too are edified by others in the body. Believers should be meaningfully engaged in the local church activities by attendance of services regularly, partaking the ordinance of the Lord’s supper, consistent attendance of the members meeting, praying for, and giving regularly to the church, know different members in the community, and doing the different one another’s such as encouragement, praying, submit, etc. as commanded in the Bible. Thus, there has to be a total commitment in church membership. In the same way, when one member strays away, as a church, we should strive to bring him back to the right away of the family he professed to join, thus the need of church discipline.
6. Discipling: For the larger family of the local church to be healthy, and also for it to influence the smaller families within it, the local church should be concerned for discipling its members so that they made able to know what is expected from them as parts of the larger family in terms of faith and practice, and also be outward looking in terms of missions so that they may proclaim the wonderful news of the gospel to the unreached as it is God’s desire to see others become His children, and Him their Father. This will be achieved using all the marks of a healthy church as proposed by Pastor Dever in His book 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, since expositional preaching will lead to proper understanding and application of Biblical Theology, that will then enable the members to have a proper grasp of the gospel, leading to a biblical understanding of evangelism and conversion, then culminating in a right grasp of membership and church discipline, and all this will ultimately be relied upon by a biblical understanding of church leadership. This will give us hope in growth of the members individually, and corporately, and also will help maintain good growth. As the church members are being discipled, they will grow up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and thus affecting how they relate to others in the body of Christ and in their own families as they adorn the gospel as Paul urges Titus to remind the churches. Through discipleship, as members in the families, older women will be encouraged to disciple younger women, and older men will teach the younger men in the family, and this will result in the name of God being glorified.
7. Encourage family worship: Church leaders, elders and teachers are a gift from God to His church for the purpose that the members may be equipped for the task of ministry, (Ephesians 4:11–16). Ultimately, ministry should commence at home so that we may be able to raise a godly seed. Therefore, as part of having biblical leadership, we should encourage husbands in the church to have, practice and lead a moment of family worship and/or devotions in their homes. By doing this, they’ll ensure that their families will be enriched spiritually and strengthen their bonds as this can be a means of discipleship, and also a means to prepare their kids to lead their future families and church.
8. Encourage community life: As a church, we should encourage community life in the church so that we may know each other better, and see how we may be of help each other. This will help us to pray for each other, encourage each other, rejoice with each other, weep with those who weep, amongst other things. Though some events such as weddings and funerals easily bring us together, the church should come up with a program that will bring the church community together, and such a program include small groups, hangouts, get-togethers, amongst other activities.
9. Practice hospitality: Hospitality is one of best ways for a church to encourage community life, and hence we should encourage our members to open up their homes and meaningfully engage in it as it can be means of helping others see how believers live and model their lives, get to know other people, means of evangelism and discipleship, amongst others.
10. Prayer: This should be the first. The prophet of old tells us, “…not by sight, nor power, but by my Spirit.”. This is a candid reminder to us especially whilst we live in this pragmatic world whereby we tend to try other approaches we’ve come up with, forgetting God, who created us, and thus knows better how we should live and approach life. Since both of these two families are God’s institutions, and the only ones of which He has directly blessed in order to fulfill His purposes, thus, as believer, we need to rely more on Him and thus we should faithfully trust Him to lead us in every way, and as a church, we should teach our members on how to properly pray in a biblical manner and exemplify it by actually praying for the members of the church. Additionally, in order to encourage prayers for each other, the church should come up with a prayer guide that incorporates all members.

Conclusion

As a church, we trust God we’ll help us to use these various means in order to facilitate communion within the church family, however, we should be aware not to use these methods pragmatically as they can easily turn into ‘works righteousness’. Instead, we should arm these in reliance to God as He has promised mold us and thus trust Him in His work of sanctification.