Perhaps the hardest part of being in this intentional community is the intentional part. Depth and intimacy with one another does not happen naturally. Unity must be nurtured by reordering our lives. We take actionable steps to unify what has tragically become a fragmentation of Christ’s body. Our submission to one another out of reverence for Christ means that this church is our organizing principle of life. We cheer from the bleachers when one of our kids has a baseball game, we discern whether or not to take higher paying jobs that take us away from the body of Christ, and we attend one another’s adoption hearings, funerals, baptisms, etc. We are a family. The spiritual family of believers is supposed to be closer to us than our own biological families (Matt. 12:46-50, Luke 14:26). How do we know if we are part of a family? Author Andy Crouch says you have a family “if you have someone who knows where you are today and at least some sense of how it feels to be where you are. If you have people who know things about you that you don’t know about yourself — including things that if you did know you would seek to hide.” That’s what we’re pursuing. We believe this metaphor of family is grounded in scripture. In the Old Testament, this is a literal picture. The people of God are presented largely as the biological children of Abraham, and to join these people you joined Abraham’s biological family. In the New Testament, this picture is less literal but equally central. God is our father, who loves us and whom we love, and Jesus is our elder brother and other Christians are our sisters and brothers whom we love.

We don’t think this talk of a family is merely metaphorical; we believe rather that it’s crucial to the Bible’s overarching narrative of restoring the world through, not one biological family called the Israelites, but now many spiritual families called ekklesia (or “churches”) who, empowered by his Spirit, are to be communities of sign-post makers who point others to the New Creation. This spiritual family seems to be the primary way the Bible intends to give flesh to the love of God. Church shouldn’t be just a series of meetings; rather, it should feel like a family. We want to become a family—a family that we love, gladly receive correction from, suffer with, rejoice with, fail with, fight with, and grow old with. We and the world need to see that reconciliation and love among God’s people are possible. Our calling as a family is to be a demonstration plot where the world can see God’s love at work.