For generations, the refrigerator door has been the family bulletin board. Since everyone in the family comes through the kitchen at least several times a day, the refrigerator was the most central family gathering place. Before post-a-notes were invented, Scotch tape was used to stick notes and information to the door. Masking tape replaced Scotch tape since it could easily be removed. Magnets soon dominated the adhesive duties which worked quite well unless someone slammed the door too hard. With the introduction of nonmagnetic doors, I guess we are back to masking tape!
You can usually tell what stage of development a family is by simply looking at what is on the fridge door. Initially, it is shopping and do lists along with pictures of the dog. These are eventually replaced by sonograms and baby pictures. Eventually, these too are replaced by children’s version of modern art followed by school progress reports and team sports pictures. Then comes the bitter-sweet phase when we post graduation announcements and senior pictures.
Then there seems to be a lull when it is back to do lists and pictures of the dog, who is now so old he can no longer stand up for his picture. Excitement returns to the fridge door once grandkids start arriving. Once again it’s sonograms and pregnant mommy on the door as the dog pics get moved to the side of the fridge.
The fridge door is a place to announce what we are celebrating; what we wanted others to celebrate with us. More than once our kids would ask, after giving us their recent Crayola drawing, “Are you going to put it on the refrigerator?”
So, what does the door to our spiritual refrigerator look like? What are we celebrating? Is it covered with Bible study schedules and missionaries we support or pictures of our spiritual children and grandkids? Celebrating physical generations is so natural we take it for granted. Why not spiritual generations?
The Old Testament model of spiritual expansion was through family relationships.
He commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children, so the next generation might know them—even the children not yet born—and they in turn will teach their own children. (Psalm 78:5-7)
Fathers were to teach their children who in turn would teach their children. The temple and priests were a complement to the family strategy. It seems that Paul had this same relational strategy in mind when he told Timothy to invest in faithful men who could teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2). Early believers during the first centuries expanded the kingdom through this relational model.When Paul wrote to the believers in Thessalonica, he commended them for the way their faith story had made its way into the areas of Macedonia and Achaia without him. Without access to public forums, these new believers just “gossiped” the gospel where ever they went. They didn’t wait for a public crusade or a captivating orator. They took serious Christ’s commission “as you are going, make disciples
For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place the news of your faith toward God has gone out, so that we have no need to say anything. For they themselves report about us as to the kind of reception we had with you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God (1 Thessalonians 1:7-9).
But at some point, after Constantine made Christianity fashionable, we lost the relational, generational model in favor of an institutional one. As a result, instead of families, we created orphanages. Spiritual refrigerator doors no longer celebrate spiritual generations but organizational activities.
Recently my wife and I attended a “Grandparent’s Open House” for our kindergarten grandson. As we huddled with our grandchild admiring his artwork and his box of Crayolas, I heard a boy in the middle of the room, sitting all alone, shout out, “Where are my grandparents?”
I recently met with a college grad who had come to faith at the University of Missouri during his freshman year. He is now living and working in the Marketplace in Kansas City. When I asked him about his faith story, he pulled out his smartphone and showed me a picture of his spiritual family tree. He could trace his spiritual family back multiple generations. Then he told me about a student he had led to Christ before he graduated who was now growing and learning to share his faith. He had a keen awareness of his continued responsibility to help the next generation not be the last link in the chain.
Jesus instituted a relational and generational strategy when he passed on to his disciples his kingdom mission to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:19). The great commission strategy was disciples who make disciples. I don’t think that his strategy was solely for the exponential potential of multiplication over addition. I think it was also because he knew what would happen in the lives of his people when they became spiritual parents and grandparents.
Children have a way of challenging our self-focus and teaching us how to love sacrificially. They expose our weaknesses and demand our attention. They cause us to rethink what we know so we can pass it on in an understandable way. Children help us mature, up close and personal.
Today, couples in America are increasingly opting out of having children. Maybe they are scared off by the composite cost of raising a child in today’s economy ($310,000). Or maybe it’s the reluctance to forfeit the pursuit of the “good life.” The reasons are many and varied. The result, however, is that refrigerators are void of family pictures, displaying only schedules and pictures of the dog.
But what about spiritually? What’s posted on our spiritual refrigerator door? The Apostle John wrote in 3 John 4, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my (spiritual) children walk in truth.” There is a God-designed joy that comes from our children and grandchildren’s pictures hanging on our refrigerator door. The concept goes back to the original command in the Garden of Eden. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Sin made the job harder but it didn’t change the strategy.
What would it take to make “family” the celebrated focus of our spiritual refrigerator door?
For reflection
- What barriers do you see that prevent us from a relational, generational approach to expanding God’s kingdom?
- What does your own spiritual family tree look like? Who played the role of your spiritual parent? Siblings? Who would look to you as his/her spiritual parent?