Can local churches help people find and form “chosen families”?
By Mark A. Taylor
One way my wife and I coped with our yearlong pandemic isolation was meeting with two other couples in a group we came to call the Campfire Six.
It started with Zoom calls with these longtime local friends we couldn’t see in person because of Covid restrictions. The 45-minute screen-staring sessions, with insufficient lighting and undependable technology, proved unsatisfactory after only two or three tries. This was April a year ago, and it was getting warmer outside here in Cincinnati.
“Maybe we could find a church parking lot central to our three homes and sit six feet apart from each other in folding chairs,” someone suggested.
Maybe, but how long would we really want to sit in a semipublic spot with the chance of rain and a cool-to-chilly breeze? And then one of our group of sixty- and seventy-somethings remembered, “Oh yeah, what about a restroom?”
A party outside?
So we accepted the invitation of one couple to meet around their firepit in their park-like backyard, sitting distanced on lawn chairs and bringing our own take-out food. The hostess had a coffee station with a one-cup brewer and mugs and add-ins set up at a distance, and we vowed to use it one person at a time, not congregating around the decaf. We took turns using the bathroom inside.
As it worked out, our first meeting was the Saturday before my 70th birthday, and the other couples brought hats and treats to make an enthusiastic celebration (in place of the larger, more typical family party that had been scuttled a few weeks before).
We had so much fun we decided to meet again, and again, and then virtually every Saturday night all spring and summer and fall—always outside, always sitting at a distance, always carrying in our own food.
Call it family?
When cold weather came, we moved to our cathedral-ceilinged living room and agreed to wear masks except when sitting in three separate corners to eat our dinners out of paper sacks and cardboard boxes. I ran the ceiling fan, the furnace fan, the fireplace with its fan, and a box fan aimed at an open window across the room from another open window. We had ventilation, distance, masks, safety—and something you could call family.
Some would say our fellowship, growing from a foundation of friendship that had existed for a couple of decades, was better than family. Better because we chose it.
Reflecting a trend?
We had no idea we were reflecting a national trend. As it turns out, the term “chosen family” has been around for several decades. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, the label was first used by LGBT individuals who found support with each other after being rejected by their birth families. Since then, “voluntary families” have developed among folks not estranged from biological or legal families but, according to a 2010 study by Dr. Dawn O. Braithwaite, were “supplemental” for folks who sought additional connections or support.
The article also quoted Margaret K. Nelson, a sociology professor in Vermont: “The pandemic heightened our awareness that the nuclear family is insufficient to meet all of our basic needs,” she said.
That was the case for all of us in the Campfire Six, with parents deceased and siblings and adult children living far away. According to the Journal article, our need for extra-family close support is not unusual. In fact, "Fewer than 20% of American households reported following the traditional family structure,” it said, quoting analysis of 2020 Census Bureau data by the Center for American Progress.
What about church?
The statistic shocked me, and then I thought of the local church. If that figure is accurate, that means 8 out of 10 people in the average community are not in traditional families. Even if the statistic is only half right—if even half of my neighbors are not living in traditional arrangements—how does the church engage them with its conventional line-up of family-oriented programs?
And beyond programming, what is the vibe inside any of our church gatherings? Do two women living in the same house feel comfortable in our fellowship? Do two single men and one single woman sharing an affordable apartment feel at home in our college ministry? What family do we offer a divorced or widowed dad—and so many struggling single mothers—amid our sea of married couples?
Who has the answers?
Frankly, I have more questions than proposed answers. I don’t envy church leaders trying to bring gospel help and hope to our constantly changing society. But if the Journal is any indication, individuals in need everywhere are finding each other for the physical and emotional support all of us need. The article told a dozen such stories. And not a one of them said they’d found their chosen family in the church.
“Chosen family” seems like a trend likely to grow and essential to address. I’d love to hear stories from local churches, or even individual Christians, who have found a way to do that.
Maybe we’ll talk about it tonight when our Campfire Six group gathers again. Post vaccines, we’ll eat together without masks, for the first time in more than a year. I’m pretty sure moving forward, even without the problems of the pandemic, we’ll continue to know we need each other.
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Photos by Jon Tyson and Helena Lopes on Unsplash