Feels Like Home: How Rediscovering the Church as Family Changes Everything

"Feels Like Home" makes the case for seeing church as a family to nurture rather than as an organization that leaders are primarily trying to make grow. The author helps us see how prominent this family viewpoint is in the New Testament and gives plenty of practical counsel on how to build family values into our churches.The author is a warm-hearted, story-telling soul who will warm your heart as well. Many pastors who have felt like failures as organizational leaders will discover that they have been huge successes as a head of household. They as well as pastors of growing, “successful” ministries will find much encouragement in the biblical values of "Feels Like Home."If you are a pastor, my hunch is, as you read "Feels Like Home" you will be feeling, "When I answered the call to become a pastor, this is what I signed on for."

Many years ago I was a young hippie and spent a lot of time traveling by van across my homelands of New England. One weekend I was just off on a wander and didn't have much money beyond gas money and I ended up parked for the night in a small church parking lot in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom because I didn't want to waste money on a campground. Around sunset time I was making a cup of tea on a camp stove and a nice gentleman walked up and started to chat with me. He told me that he was the pastor at the church and told me I was welcome to camp there for the night and then he invited me home for dinner. I didn't want to seem ungrateful, so I accepted. That night I had the best talk with this man and his wife about life, churches, vans, camping, Steinbeck, etc.I ended up going to his service that Sunday morning and there were only about 30 or 40 people there but they all seemed like one happy family. I wasn't big on religion (I'm still not that big on any particular religion, though i like to think I'm pretty spiritual) but I never felt so at home on the road. These were farmers and small-business owners and husband and wives and kids and they made me feel wanted and protected, it was great. I was even invited to camp on several farms whenever I wanted. You have to love New Englanders, on first meeting they take you home in every sense of the word.Anyway, this book by Lee Eclov and Collin Hansen reminded me of that weekend a lot. Sometimes preachers (even in the country) get so caught up in raising money to keep a church alive and so orchestrated in their message that they forget that what people are looking for (especially in smaller rural churches, but all churches--even great cathedrals, and I've been in many of the world's grandest) is a family. They are looking for a second (or even a first) home where they feel not only spiritually uplifted by welcome--really welcome. Trust me, I felt that need when I was 17 and I still feel it now in my 60s. The anecdotes and stories in this book tell me that the authors know exactly what this feeling is like, what this need is all about.I am still reading it but I wanted to review it because I think that more preachers need to read this kind of book and if you're thinking of a career as a pastor or if you happen to be one already, this message needs to come home to you. The church should be your family--whether you're passing through for a weekend or just looking for a church in your hometown. Great read, nicely written, too.

If you are a churchgoing person, do you ever wonder what church leadership should be like and what your particular function might be within a particular congregation? FEELS LIKE HOME takes the angle that a congregation, whether larger or smaller, is like a family, not like a business model, and that everyone has a “homemaking” function within that family. Eclov uses citations from the Bible to support his points, and I continually came back to the Biblical comparison of the faithful as parts of a body, each with his/her function and each equally important. Eclov’s primary audience may be church leadership (pastors and elders), but this book is very readable for those not/not yet in leadership positions and helps even the “worker bees” understand that they are an important part of a church family. I would definitely recommend this book for church libraries.

Let me say this up front, this belongs in every pastor’s library and should be read regularly. Pastor Eclov has given the Church a necessary corrective to the attractive, grow bigger at all costs attitude that can become the dominant outlook in your church. This was not the intent of the Lord when he handed Peter the keys; we were not to adopt the worlds values and methods in the hope that we might be able to ‘share’ the gospel with those who come to the show. The Lord’s plan was to live the gospel, joyful and sacrificially, showing (not telling) what Jesus has brought about in our lives together.Eclov emphasizes the community of believers over the show. The Church is to be family, celebrating and worshipping and bearing one another’s burdens, all in testimony to what Jesus has done for us. This is the picture of church St. Francis had in mind when gave that famous proclamation to ‘Preach the Gospel at all time times, and if necessary use words.’ Though unsaid in the book, Eclov’s guidance reminds the church that the Gospel is not just for evangelizing, it is for us to give to one another to lift, to calm, to encourage, to love.Church as home, church as family. Reminders of the sometimes forgotten nature of ministry that Pastor Eclov walks through in encouraging chapter after convicting chapter. Growth for growth’s sake is not a biblical guiding principle, church as family is. Read this excellent book (ignoring the mid 70’s cover art) and then prepare to read it again, little by little. Thank you Lee.

This beautiful and Biblical vision of church a family, is so simple yet something we can get so wrong. We are flawed I know, but when church does ‘feel like home’, it has power. When a church is loving God and loving one another, welcoming others in, then suddenly we discover that the Holy Spirit is at work. One doesn’t need to talk about growth models because the Holy Spirit is moving in power.I loved this short and practical book. If I could write one book in my life it would be this one (I’m off the hook!). There’s nothing complex, it’s the basics, read this and be reminded of the power of beauty of a Church that looks like family.