Does My Family Have to Suffer for the Mission?
A key question for church-planters and those in missional communities is how we give our best to our neighbourhoods, while making sure our families don’t end up with the scraps. We likely all know someone walking with the wounds of a family where the care of the church always came first.
This week, Jas Robinson reflects on her experience of growing up in missional community, and a third way where mission and family don’t need to come at the expense of one-another.
I had an unusual childhood. Unlike some of my peers, who discovered the revolutionary message of Jesus later as young adults, I grew up in a whānau committed to community, justice, and a radical outworking of faith. During my early childhood, my parents’ ministry was centered around refugees in central Wellington, then later it became prison ministry. Throughout my entire life we were part of Urban Vision; an intentional community spread across Aotearoa committed to loving on and living in poor neighbourhoods. This meant seeing all kinds of people around my dinner table, having a flexible conception of whānau, and anticipating exposing conversations with friends from school about the way my family had chosen to live.
My life has been both colourful and complex. The radical decisions my parents have made has completely shaped who I am. I have often been asked what this was like - did ministry come at the expense of my childhood? While it is true that it brought challenges and struggles, it is also true that family life and ministry need not militate against each other nor compete against one another. The two can be integrated. A sense of family can be built around the people we love and open our home to. I can confidently say that I believe integrating ministry and whānau is the best way to reflect the radical way of Jesus.
Doing it together
What I appreciate about the way my parents navigated our lifestyle was that they constantly communicated big decisions with us and gave us autonomy. As a family, we had a collective sense of ownership over the ministry we did and had a shared love of the dozens of people who entered our lives. In the early years of my parents’ church leadership in Naenae, I was part of the worship team and ran Sunday School in our lounge. When our church occupied vacant land to protest about the housing shortage, we all took part in one way or another. During highschool when we had two young kids live with us, my sister Ruby and I would play with them and look after them, letting the kids experience some safety and normalcy in their disrupted childhood. In my family, ministry always revolved around doing it together.
Sharing our space
A lifestyle like this meant that I had to learn to share my space and my parents from a young age. I have plenty of childhood memories that I can appreciate the hilarity of now, but that were certainly sacrifices at the time. There was a short period while I was at primary school where we had 8 people in a house of only a few bedrooms, and were soon to have a man come out of prison and move in with us. Without enough rooms to accommodate everybody, Ruby and I had to sleep in a kitchenette beneath our house, and my parents in a small adjacent room. In retrospect, I think I was young enough to not take it too seriously, but old enough to let it instil resilience in me. When I was older and we had shifted from central Wellington out to Naenae, I found the sharedness of our home much more difficult, so had to negotiate with my parents to have my own space.
Growing up different
There were a couple of fairly violent events concerning people in our neighbourhood that my siblings and I were exposed to at a young age, and there were periods when it felt isolating living so differently to my friends at school. When bringing people around to my house as a teenager, I would dread having to introduce them to whatever member of the neighborhood was staying with us at the time. It was only in my final few years of highschool when I learned to celebrate the beauty of our radically different way of living, and no longer felt the need to hide it. When I began to properly embrace it, a few of my close friends, intrigued and inspired by my life, came to know Jesus over those years.
A family who makes family
I’ve been blessed with the idea that the boundaries of family should be stretchy and welcoming, and I’ve gained new siblings (and now nieces) along the way. I can proudly say that I’ve played games of mafia with gang members, and have them cheer me and my siblings on at cross-country and school productions. I’ve shared my toys and my childhood with South Sudanese refugees, and spent evenings discussing poetry and a shared concern about fast fashion with men fresh out of prison. I’ve shared a table and a home with so many different kinds of people, while also being reminded by my parents how much of a priority my siblings and I were.
I’ve also had periods of feeling resentful about doing life so closely with others. In my adulthood I’m having to learn to have grace for myself, and teach myself to continue falling in love with the idea of community and ministry. However, the blessings and lessons I’ve received are far greater than any sacrifice I made growing up. I’ve learnt that God is a God of justice who loves people on the margins. I’ve been shown that our lives should reflect simplicity, generosity and extravagant grace. I’ve been taught that we should not consider resources as ours, but that they are to be shared. My life has been so rich.
Ultimately, my upbringing has shaped my worldview and theology in every way. I’ve had demonstrated to me a faith that is outworked in more than just actions but is a lifestyle. What’s beautiful is that I think children are often the best teachers of how to love people. By doing ministry alongside them we can both shape them and be shaped by them. I truly believe that to combine and integrate ministry and whānau is possibly the best way to reflect the radical and abundant love of Jesus.
Jas Robinson
Jas studies and lives in community in Pōneke, doing youth work and helping Scottie out with Catch Network.