Who has a Place in the Family of God?
And that time I got kicked out of Youth Group
You may or may not know that I was kicked out of church at thirteen years old.
I grew up in two Southern Baptist churches in the Austin area: one mega-church in North Austin and another suburban church just south of the city. The vibe and understanding of God I got from each was simply this: God liked you when you performed.
If you demonstrated yourself to be good and righteous enough, there was acceptance from God and the church body. Conversely, if you did not meet the agreed upon standard of behavior, you were not accepted by God or the church body. That was my understanding of God for a really long time.
I started attending youth group when I was in middle school. The way our youth group worked was probably similar to what some of you experienced—we all met together in a large room where we sang and listened to a sermon before breaking into smaller groups for discussion. Problematically, I often didn’t agree with what was being taught.
At this point in my life, I would not qualify myself as a Christian. My parents were Christians who required me to go to church in a loving attempt to show me the right way. But I didn’t buy into most of it.
Honestly, when you’re presented with a god who likes you when you’re good and doesn’t like you when you’re bad, there are only two options:
Pretend to be good. You pretend to be good and put on your best face in order to be accepted by God and the church.
Quit. I very vividly remember thinking, “This is stupid. This is ridiculous. I could never live up to this and I would never want to. I’m out.”
I clearly took the second path; I just didn’t buy into any of it. I stayed up late, looking up arguments on atheism and then brought them to youth group with me on a weekly basis.
So one Wednesday night like any other, I sat listening to the youth pastor talk about Jesus on the cross. He read the passage in scripture where Jesus quotes a Psalm and says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). I remember reading this story and blurting out, “So God is just this terrible dad, huh?” I couldn’t understand how a father could look upon his son enduring such suffering and bail on him. How could a perfect God do that? And, if he did, why should we follow such a God?
I’ve come to understand that passage more holistically; I no longer believe that God is abandoning Jesus in this moment. Instead of sitting me down and talking me through the scripture, attempting to connect with me and help me process through this difficult text, the youth pastor looked at me and said, “Get out. I’m tired of this.”
I went to my usual spot in the hallway and waited for the service to end. When it did, the youth pastor came into the hallway and told me I needed to wait for my parents to come get me, that he needed to talk to the three of us together. When they arrived, we filed into the youth pastor’s office where he told my parents, “Your son is no longer welcome at any of our youth group functions.”
My dad just kind of nodded; this was not his first conversation with another adult about my defiance. But my mom, ever on my side, asked, “Why not?” He replied, “He’s causing the other kids to doubt their faith. He’s asking too many questions.”
From that point on, I was convinced that I didn’t have a place in the church. I believed I simply wasn’t a good fit in God’s family. That belief was confirmed by the leaders of my church for the next four years.
A lot of you have been made to feel the same way. In a 2010 survey done by the Barna Group, 4 out of 10 Americans who do not attend church reported doing so because of “negative past experiences in churches or with church people.”
One of the most tragic parts of all of this is that when people are told they don’t have a place in the Family of God, it usually comes from someone quoting a Bible verse.
This is why I so firmly believe that understanding the purpose of the Bible is absolutely vital to properly understanding the truth of God’s Story. Unfortunately, many Christians’ primary interaction with the Bible is ripping verses out of their context and using them to prop up their personal worldview.
This is why so many Christians and churches have constructed a god that looks, votes, and acts just like they do.
“The greatest lie in the world is the idea that God is like us. We cannot imagine Him, but we try to reduce Him to something we can understand, often by ascribing to Him human qualities.”
C.S. Lewis
It’s why their version of God likes the same people they like and hates the same people they hate.
“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
Anne Lamott
And it’s why so many churches are shockingly homogenous.
“We must face the sad fact that at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning when we stand to sing 'In Christ there is no East or West,' we stand in the most segregated hour of America.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
When we pull verses out of context:
we pervert the meaning of the individual verses
we completely miss the point of God’s Great Story
we exclude people we deem to be unfit, causing severe (and sometimes permanent) damage to other humans who, like us, were made in God’s image
So many people have been made to feel like they don’t have a place in God’s family for a variety of reasons. I have a feeling that many of you reading this fit squarely in that category, and some of you may never grace the doors of another church because of it.
I want to start by asking the simplest of questions:
Who has a place in the family of God?
“The Family of God” and “The Church” are synonymous. Not a church but the church.
The church isn’t a building.
It’s not a ministry program.
It’s not led by a pastor.
It’s not relegated to any particular location, context, or denomination.
“The Church” is anyone who is a part of God’s Family. In order to answer, “Who has a place in the family of God?”, we have to take a look at how God’s Great Story, the Bible, describes The Church.
Just before the upcoming passage in Acts 1, Jesus, God in the flesh, came to earth as the Savior. He lived an incredible life marked by sacrificial love and service. His life ended by a horrific death on a cross and a miraculous rising from the grave three days later.
After He rises from the dead, he appears to his disciples. During his last moments with them, he says this famous line:
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Acts 1:8
These are the last words he speaks to the disciples before, moments later, ascending into heaven. An angel then tells the disciples that just as he went up, Jesus will come back again someday to complete his work of restoring all the broken people and places in the world.
At this point, there are about 100 people who are still loyal to Jesus. Led by Peter, Mary, and a few other disciples, they start getting together every day to pray and wait for Acts 1:8 to come true.
Then, one day, it happens - the Holy Spirit comes to indwell them and begins doing incredible things through them. They spill out from the house, go into the streets, and begin praying, which causes thousands of people to come and see what’s happening.
Upon the gathering of the crowd, Peter gets up to tell them about Jesus. This is essentially the very first church sermon and Peter starts it out by going back to a prediction about that very day from the Old Testament book of Joel:
This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
“In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.”
Acts 2:16-18
Did you catch that? The Holy Spirit is poured out and given to everyone - regardless of age, gender, or status. This would have been outrageous in their context and culture. The first century Near East was a patriarchal society where only men of a certain age and class had rights.
Peter says that the Family of God isn’t like their culture and context; it’s something completely new. The Church is a family where everyone has a place. He leaves no doubt about it:
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Acts 2:21
Everyone who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved.
Not “everyone who looks like me” or “everyone who sins the same way I do” or “everyone who believes exactly what I believe.”
No! It’s God’s party. He gets to make the guest list. He gets send out the invitations. And his invitation could not be more clear: everyone who places their faith in Jesus is welcomed into his family with open arms.
God’s family is a radically inclusive and diverse group, including people of all ages, races, genders, lifestyles, backgrounds, ethnicities, languages, education levels, and classes.
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Galatians 3:28
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, welcomed into the Family of God, and given the Holy Spirit. The role of the Holy Spirit is vitally important as it is the great equalizer, unaffected by who you are, what you’ve done, or where you’ve come from. The Holy Spirit isn’t deterred by your age, race, gender, socioeconomic status, or sexual orientation.
The Holy Spirit comes to live inside of everyone who places their faith in Jesus.
This has been a cornerstone of Orthodox Christian belief for thousands of years. God’s Great Story could not be more consistently clear about it. Over and over and over again, scripture clearly states that everyone who places their faith in Jesus is welcomed into God’s Family with open arms.
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:9
Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.
Acts 16:31
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.
John 3:36
Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
1 John 5:12
Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.
John 6:47
But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
John 1:12
For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:26
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9
We are a part of the Family of God by the grace of God and through faith in Jesus. It’s that simple.
I’ve said this before and I’m sure I’ll say it again:
Making anything more than faith in Jesus necessary for inclusion into the family of God is heresy.
It’s antithetical to the truth of God’s Great Story and in direct opposition to the teaching of Jesus. I know this might sound strong, but acting as gatekeeper to the Family of God is evil. I can’t think of many things that God hates more than convincing someone he loves that he actually doesn’t.
In his letter to the Galatian church, Paul calls it “a perversion of the gospel which is really no gospel at all.” I think it really comes alive when we remember that “gospel” literally means good news.
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel [good news] - which is really no gospel [good news] at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel [good news] of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel [good news] other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!
Galatians 1:6-8
What is this perverted, not so “good news” that Paul is talking about? He explains a few verses later.
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard?
Are you so foolish? I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ.”
Galatians 2:21-3:5
The “good news” is that God loves us so much that He stopped at nothing to make a way for us to be in His family. Making it anything other than that is a perversion of Jesus’s love and not good news at all.
Trying to build fences around God’s family or walls around God’s church is not only wrong, it won’t work. God won’t let it. God will not allow anyone to put restrictions on His family. Everyone who places their faith in Jesus is welcomed into God’s Family with open arms.
The Church, God’s Family, is the most radically inclusive and diverse community of people in the history of the world. That’s who they were in the first century, as we see throughout the book of Acts, and it’s who we should continue to be in the twenty-first century.
So let me say it as plainly as I can:
If you’ve been told you aren’t welcome in The Church, you’ve been lied to.
If you’ve been told that something about you prevents you from being loved by Jesus, you’ve been lied to.
If you’ve been told you don’t have a place in the Family of God, you’ve been lied to.
Everyone who places their faith in Jesus is welcomed into God’s Family with open arms. Anything else is a lie.
So good. When I began attending a charismatic church during the mid 1970s, I suffered serious mental health issues. The teaching was that if you are "saved," then you can ask for anything and God would do that for you. I went forward every single Sunday to be prayed for. I wanted to be released from terrible anxiety, major depression, suicidal ideation. When I didn't get better, I was convinced it was because I wasn't really "saved" at all. God had rejected me. I just wasn't good enough. Thank God He kept his hand on my life and brought me out of that dark time.
I love this! In the spirit of "young Zach" and because you and Amy gave us permission to ask "hard questions", the verses quoted bring up a hard question for me. I am always struck by the seeming exclusivity of "salvation" for other faith traditions. One of the study groups I lead has been learning about other faith traditions so we can better understand and respect each other in this hateful time in our history. We read a quote by C.S. Lewis,“The world does not consist of 100 percent Christians and 100 percent non-Christians. There are people who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name…There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by him that they are his in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religions which are in agreement with Christianity and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it.” (C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity”) as well as some of MLK's quotes about our "world house". How are we, as Christians, to understand the unconditional love of God for all his image-bearers, and yet hold to the idea that only those who "confess Christ" are I"saved" and in God's family? This one really eats at me! Thanks for this space to even ask this question!