"How Big is Your Family?"
Dan Johnson
Sunday, September 21st, 2003

Greetings. It is both a pleasure and a privilege for me to be here at St. Joan of Arc this morning. It is good to be back in my old neighborhood. I lived just a few blocks from here and delivered the morning Tribune around this neighborhood, back when they had both the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. I’ve been working with Kinship, a faith based mentoring program these past 20 years.

This morning I will challenge our modern day definition of family, explore some of what the Bible has to say about family, and then invite you to consider enlarging your family, particularly to include more children.

About ten years back I took a rambunctious group of 8 boys to a fishing camp near Hackensack, Minnesota. Having barely survived the van ride up things got better when we were out fishing. While fishing I was visiting with the kids to learn more about them. I asked the guys about how many people were in their families. After some quick responses from most of the boys, Victor hesitated. Most of the others listed only their moms and a sister or brother or two. After a few minutes Victor got back to me, he announced there were 74 in his family. You see he began counting aunties and uncles, and numerous extended family members, not all of whom even lived in the state.

I had a chance to visit Victor a couple of times in his home on the northside of Minneapolis. During these visits I saw many people coming and going from their sparsely furnished home. One of the most interesting people I discovered living with his African American family was an old, disheveled, gray bearded white man. You see, despite living in what we would define as extreme poverty, they had room for this street person. Their hospitality and generosity both astonished and humbled me.

Victor’s expansive family reminds me of the Hebrew concept of family, which was much larger and more inclusive than our modern day families. In the Old Testament family structure was often designed to protect the oppressed. The Hebrews had a name for this act of protecting one another. It was called “go'el” and we sometimes find it translated as Kinsperson. When scripture speaks of families it uses language such as sons of Abraham, the tribe of Judah or the house of David. Into this family outsiders could even be adopted, thus resulting in very large groups, numbering into the hundreds. It was on these expansive Hebrew "families" that God's blessings were placed.

Then Christ came and again challenged us to have an even more expansive view of family, one that even went beyond the large Hebrew families. Christ challenged us to break down our class, gender, racial and religious barriers, recognizing that all are created in God’s image. And in response to this broader classification of family, we then are called to care for all others in their times of need. We are called to be “Kinspeople”. Now there is no difference between Jew and Gentile, urban and suburban, black and white, male and female. All are brothers and sisters. As followers of Christ we all now the responsibility of being go'el or a Kinsperson to others.

Margret Mead, the anthropologist, commented on the modern western family structure… “Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put it in an impossible situation.” It is a huge struggle for what we might call traditional family units, with two adults and children. Take away one of those adults to support the children, and it becomes vastly more challenging. It is expected that roughly half of the kids in the United States will at sometime live only with a single parent.

In today’s reading from Henri Nouwen, he speaks to us about the more expansive families that he witnessed on a trip to Mexico, of how children were cared for by all of the community. This reminds me of hearing from a church youth group who had recently returned from a mission trip to Mexico. They marveled at how joyful and generous the people were, despite living in what we would call “poverty”. Coming from a wealthy suburban environment I sensed they felt relationally impoverished in comparison. Paradoxially, it seems that our financial affluence has moved us to a more spiritually impoverished state. When we no longer feel compelled to rely upon our neighbors, church or extended family for support, we can easily become isolated, rich in things, but poor in spirit.

Mother Teresa once commented, “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.” This is true for adults and children alike.

In a national study done by Search Institute two years ago, called “Grading Grown-ups”. They found there was a serious gap between adult beliefs about how they should aid in children’s development and their behaviors. For example, though 75% of adults say that it is important to have meaningful conversations with children and youth, just 34% of adults surveyed said that the adults they know follow through in that action. Similarly, though 77% of adults reported that it was most important to teach respect for cultural differences, just 36% were doing so. On Nov. 2nd a Search Institute workshop will be provided here at St. Joan of Arc where you can learn about the building blocks necessary to help develop healthy community family and youth.

I strongly believe that every kid needs a caring adult friend in their life that doesn’t have to ask them if they made their bed in the morning. Even with strong two parent families, children need additional adult support. Sometimes the skills and interests of parents don’t align with their children. A Hagar the Horrible comic strip in the newspaper this week points this out. Hagar’s son comments to his father “Dad, I’ve decided not to become a Viking warrior when I grow up!” Hagar then retorts, “What do you want to be?” His son then replies, “I want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher.” Hagar then turns his head and we see him thinking “Sigh, you have such high hopes for your kids and they always seem to let you down!”

Unfortunately there are too many kids whose lives are being claimed by gangs and the streets. With an absence of caring community often they are being redirected toward violence. Sadly over half of the kids in our Minneapolis 9th grade class fail to graduate with their classmates in four years. This number is significantly higher among people of color.

We still don’t mix as well as we ought across racial lines. One of the unique benefits of mentoring programs such as Kinship is that it helps us to foster meaningful relationships across racial, economic and neighborhood lines. As I’m sure you have heard before, Sunday morning is perhaps the most segregated hour in America. One of our Kinship mentors commented to me about when he calls up his Kinship kid in North Minneapolis he will sometimes hear on the other end, “It’s that white guy callin’”. As Christians we need to foster more genuine relationships across the races. One means of doing this is through mentoring and tutoring programs, where the community is inviting our participation.

By befriending kids in need, not only do we help these kids out, we ourselves also benefit. In our reading this morning from Mark Jesus told the disciples” Whoever welcomes in my name one of these children, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not only me but also the one who sent me.” Wow, a chance to welcome God is in our very midst. Through giving of ourselves we will be blessed.

Pastor Wertin mentioned it would be helpful if I not only shared the good news and challenges of the scripture, but also some practical responses to these challenges. Some of the action items for adults suggested in Search Institute’s Grading Grown-ups Report include the following:

• Be bold and introduce yourself to the young people who live around you. Then write down their names to help yourself remember
• Find out about the interests of the kids in you extended family, neighborhood, and social network. Find opportunities to connect with them around those things. For example, clip and send them newspaper or magazine articles about their favorite sport or music group.
• Send cards or e-mail greetings to young people you know to mark holidays, birthdays, and other important milestones in their lives.
• Tell parents when you see their child doing something responsible or generous. Try to find opportunities to do this more often than you report misbehavior.
• And lastly I will add, consider becoming a friend to a child in need of additional adult support. We currently have 115 such kids awaiting Kinship friends from Minneapolis and the surrounding area.

Thank you for allowing me to share with your church family today! May your lives be richly blessed as you reach out to young people from within your church and the greater community. Let’s all celebrate and recognize our place as valued members of God’s vast family.