My 300 aunts, uncles, and cousins (and what I learned from them)

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

I have three cousins.

Just three.

My wife, Tracy, has so many cousins she has a hard time counting them all or recalling their names.

She feels sorry for me when she remembers that I have only three.

Not only do I suffer a severe lack of cousins (as Tracy sees it), but my cousins and I never lived in the same state.

Since I grew up in Ohio and my extended family was in Tennessee, I saw aunts, uncles, and cousins about once a year (at most).

Tracy, however, tells stories about her childhood among her aunts, uncles, and cousins. When she was growing up, most of them lived in her neighborhood. They popped in to visit almost every day.

I love that Tracy’s family lived close by and that she grew up feeling close to them. But I don’t feel like I missed out on that, even though I rarely saw my family because they lived so far away.

That is because I grew up in the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. The people of that church were aunts, uncles, and cousins to me.

My dad was the minister to the Steele Avenue Church of Christ from the year I started kindergarten until I was 27 years old.

Over the last few weeks, Dad and I have been recording his memories from Steele Avenue Church of Christ for a podcast we are making together. In our latest session, I asked Dad to talk about what he remembered about conflict in the church.

Conflict happens in every church, just as it happens in every family, just as it happens in every marriage.

The conflict that happens in congregations, however, can get hot in a hurry. That is because, in church, people can (and do) make minor matters into matters of heaven or hell. In the Church of Christ, my branch of the Christian family tree, it is common for conflict to break congregations apart.

When conflicts happen, leaders often have to suffer through a lot of emotional hard work to keep a congregation together.

I assumed that, from almost 23 years with the Steele Avenue Church of Christ, Dad had some stories about conflict.

I assumed wrong.

He could only come up with two stories. Both were short. Both had happy endings. Even people who ended up on the “short end” of conflicts didn’t leave the congregation. They stuck around. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Steele Avenue Church of Christ doubled in size while most Church of Christ congregations in America shrank.

As a Church of Christ lifer, I find this to be a marvel.

Since I moved away from Ashland in 2001, I have been a member at three Church of Christ congregations. In every one of them, conflicts always led to people leaving. Sometimes a lot of people.

I thought about the two conflicts that Dad recalled from his years at the Steele Avenue Church of Christ. If those conflicts happened at the other three congregations I attended over the last 20 years, I am sure that those congregations would have broken apart or lost many active members.

How was the Steele Avenue Church of Christ so good at keeping peace and keeping its people together?

I asked Dad to explain.

He came up with two ideas.

First, he gave a lot of credit to the elders of the Steele Avenue Church of Christ. They handled every conflict firmly, gently, and quickly.

Dad said that he did not have a role in handling conflict. In fact, he often only found out about conflicts after the elders already took care of them.

What those elders did is, straight up, excellent leadership.

The second idea Dad gave for why conflicts cleared up at the Steele Avenue Church of Christ is the most important: The members of the church wanted it that way.

They wanted to be together more than they wanted to be right.

Anyone who ever spent a few years in a Church of Christ congregation knows that people form different opinions of what the Bible allows or teaches. Sometimes, people get fired up about those opinions.

Dad pointed out that several outlier groups found a home in the Steele Avenue Church of Christ over his years as minister. By “outlier,” I mean they believed the Bible taught something very different from what the majority of members believed. Or they had different tastes in worship style (which is a common point of conflict in a lot of congregations).

In many congregations, outlier groups are the source of conflicts that lead to breakup or the loss of members.

That did not happen in the Steele Avenue Church of Christ.

Why not?

Because even the “outlier” groups valued being together with the whole congregation more than they valued having their way or winning an argument.

This is why the Steele Avenue Church of Christ felt like family to me.

This is why I didn’t miss my real aunts, uncles, and cousins. I was with more than 300 aunts, uncles, and cousins several times a week.

I grew to believe that, for better or worse, they would love me and stick with me no matter what. And I grew to expect that, for better or worse, I would love them and stick with them, too.

The Gospel itself is that God would rather be with us than right without us.

Isn’t that our hope and salvation?

I learned that growing up at the Steele Avenue Church of Christ in Ashland, Ohio. If you were there, you know it was someplace special.

Grace and peace.