Church at the Centre

Why build our lives around our church family.

Last week, I wrote about the natural desire for communal rhythms and how they are inevitable and healthy. The church has both the opportunity—and the mandate—to create a context for those rhythms. More to the point, if the church doesn’t help shape rhythms for a community, people will inevitably seek them elsewhere.

We have six “rhythms” that we build life around. One of them is church at the centre. To build our lives with church at the centre is to use our church family as the primary organizing force around which we arrange the other dimensions of our lives—family, career, hobbies, or sports.

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Why Not Family, Work, or Hobbies at the Centre?

Family Is Beautiful—but Limited

The biological family is beautiful and God-ordained. To elevate the value of church family is not to diminish biological family, but rather to anchor our family in a wider, more expansive family.

However, if the biological family becomes the central organizing principle of our lives, two challenges emerge. First, it is exclusive by nature and therefore lacks a missional impulse. Second, if our lives center around our biological families, it becomes difficult to integrate people who are different from us—those in other ages, stages, or rhythms of life. Families naturally attract people who are at similar life stages and share similar cultural backgrounds. These limitations mean we need to zoom out. The church transcends these barriers.

Work Is Good—but Insufficient

Similarly, work and career are very good things. We were made to work. Yet there are two core issues with orienting our lives around work.

First, work alone cannot supply sufficient clarity of purpose for most people. For the majority of the world, work is a necessary means to meet the needs of life, not a primary source of meaning. Even when we are blessed with meaningful work, we still need something beyond our vocation into which we can invest our whole selves.

Hobbies Bring Joy—but Can’t Carry the Weight

Lastly, hobbies and sports are also good gifts. Fun, joy, and recreation are integral parts of the human experience. However, if we build our lives primarily around recreation, those rhythms often fragment our lives rather than integrate them, pulling us into parallel communities that rarely intersect.

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The Integrating Power of Church at the Centre

Only when we build our lives around our church family are we compelled to relate to strangers with whom we have no natural affinity, engage in purposeful work regardless of vocation, and enjoy rest, recreation, and joy-filled relationships at the same time.

To build our lives around our church family, the core idea is integration—that all the parts of our lives connect with and reinforce our relationships within the church, while strengthening our reach into the community we’ve committed to.

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Relational Capacity and a Shared Hub

We have limited relational capacity. There are only so many people we can build meaningful relationships with at one time. Discipleship relationships require significant time and energy, as do relationships with those who do not yet follow Jesus.

By placing church at the centre of our lives, we seek to integrate all of our relationships into our church family. By way of metaphor, the church becomes the hub to which all the spokes of our relationships connect.

Normally, we silo our relationships. Our work, school, church, family, and hobby relationships may never interact. By placing church at the centre, we intentionally bring our primary day-to-day relationships together within the life of the church. This does not mean avoiding relationships with non-believers—quite the opposite. We seek to integrate our lives so that our non-Christian friends regularly interact with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

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Three Additional Benefits of Church at the Centre

1. People Will Know Us by Our Love

Jesus says that people will know us by the love we have for one another (John 13:35). By living in intentional community with our church family, those around us are naturally exposed to our love for one another—and therefore to our love for Christ.

2. Our Witness Is Collective, Not Individual

When we try to introduce people to Jesus on our own, our witness is always incomplete and flawed. However, when we witness alongside our brothers and sisters in the faith, our impact is stronger and more faithful.

By placing church at the centre, the entire community becomes a witness. When we fail or are broken, we demonstrate that even in our weakness, Jesus is still good—and that the gospel is bigger than any one person.

3. The Context for Conversion Is Safe

For many people, following Jesus is profoundly risky—especially for those from backgrounds or cultures where the gospel is not prominent. Accepting Jesus may mean being disowned or rejected by family.

If we are going to see people come to know Jesus amid such risk, we must offer a new family—one that supports, encourages, upholds, and resources those who take that step of faith.