Categories: uncategorized
Date: 19 January 2008 16:27:34
Dave has posted over at Cartoon Church for ideas relating to family or all age services.
As anybody gets as far as his comments section will see it started me off on one, but not as a bitter as one as Jack seems to have gone off on. In our comments both of us reflect on how painful the contemporary useage of the term family is/ has been in churches for some people. Now regular readers will know that this is one of the main reasons I strongly advocate the concept of household rather than family being used in church.
During my MA research into lone parents I became aware that what I thought may have just been one of those things that niggled with me was actually an issue for other people aswell. It also got me looking at some of the academic theology relating to this area (for a start try any of the following: The Family In Theological Perspective by Stephen Barton (ed), Theology and Families by Adrian Thatcher, Family Fortunes by John Drane and Olive M. Fleming Drane) and again seeing, how this is a neglected area of research. What I am beginning to see is that in our search for inclusiveness in churches there is an important link between the language which we are using and the experience people are having. I strongly believe that in order for churches to be inclusive they need to be taking more of a household centred approach than a family centred approach.
Anyway this is an area I would love to explore further, particularly by trying to see what good, inclusive practice is already going on in broadly evangelical churches in relation to lone parents, single people and non-heterosexual people, (amongst others), where a broadly household approach is being used. In terms of doing this I am have put together an initial, brief research proposal and am hawking it around with a view to doing a PhD on this subject. Being realistic I think it is unlikely I'm going to manage to get a studentship, although there is always that hope. I'm also going to be applying (if this comes to fruition) to the arts and humanities research council, but if anybody else knows of anybody who may be interested in funding this type of research please get in touch.
As it is, whether I do the research or whether it is somebody else I passionately feel that this is an area which does need researching. Too often the view is either that evangelical churches, particularly, aren't welcoming to certain groups when they actually often are, or that they are totally welcoming through their family ethos, when this family friendly ethos is infact acting as a source of exclusion and pain to some people.