How the church hurts normal people, and why family services don't help.

About four or five years ago, I can't remember exactly, at my church we stopped advertising a family service. We still have the same number of families, we just don't advertise a family service.

This might sound odd to many churches who want nothing more than nice, happy families filling their pews, but it's quite unhelpful. You see, I only have one 'family' at church, mam, dad, three kids. So what does that make all the others who come?

Family is a loaded term, it implies a normality of a nuclear family which doesn't always exist.

What of the single mums? What of the ladies who bring children of their partners who aren't their own? What of the unmarried parents? The never married singletons? The divorced who might not want to be reminded that they are separated from their family?

If only there was a term which showed their position without the connotations (I am not going to say positive or negative) associated with family. They are still families, but they feel excluded by much of what churches preach.

If I take myself and my wife as an example. We have been together almost quarter of a century and married over twenty years. Because we've chosen to be childless, does that mean that we aren't a family? I don't think so, but for some reason churches seem to think that we are incomplete. That two people who love each other very much, who enjoy taking mini breaks to visit museums and art galleries, who pursue shared and separate interests, are somehow less of a family just because we don't have children; that bothers me.

At many churches, while we wouldn't be excluded from a 'family' service, we rarely find ourselves catered for. Neither would most of my congregation. We get it, children are important, and we would love to have families come, what we aren't prepared to do however is normalise the nuclear family to the extent that all others feel excluded.

And this is a real issue. As a pastor I have had to deal with many cases of people excluded from church, not deliberately, but because of the intense focus on how important families are.

Dysfunctional families (what a horrible phrase) used to be an oddity. I remember the trepidation my mother faced church with when she turned up as a single mam. But that was in the late 80's and early 90's. The church should be equipped to deal with this by now, to accept that just because they are used to the 'normal' of the 1950's that we are dealing with people several generations later, for whom there is a whole new normal.

There's another danger with the ruthless praise of the nuclear family by churches. Not only are we marginalising those in new-normal lifestyles, but the unspoken idea has pressured wives to remaining in abusive relationships. The pressure to present as a happily married couple with two point four children has made couples rush into parenthood when they simply weren't ready for it.

I have had to pastor far too many people who have had their lives ruined by the constant peer pressure of well meaning churches.

To those of you who have been directly affected by this, please take my heartfelt apology. This is not what Christianity is. It's not a stick to beat you into submission with. And if you're currently in a church and you feel this way, please do note that those doors swing both ways. No young woman or man should ever feel pressured into marriage by their church, just to 'fit in'. Neither should any couple feel pressured into starting a family just so that your pastor can add to the youth group.

To those of you who are living in the new-normal, you are not dysfunctional. You are who God planned you to be. You may be making a go of it on your own, or with your children. And you're amazing for doing so. You've got enough on your plate and church should give you the space, and the support, to breath freely.

And to churches. It's easy to accommodate everyone. We just accept that while we were busy with our noses in the past, the whole world moved on without us. And if that seems scary, just think that it's going to happen again tomorrow, and the next day too. Our society is more fluid in many ways than it ever has been.

So let's get with the flow. Let's stop pressuring people that men should be the bread winner and women stay at home. Let's stop assuming that every woman wants to be a wife. Let's acknowledge that many people are complete as one.

Let's shift our focus from one that was, to the wonderful people who have been brought into our care by God. Our role is not to change them into conformity, but to allow them to experience the great love of Jesus in their new-normality.

Amen.