As we think about future, and our potential for growth, I encourage the reading of a report by C. Kirk Hadaway. In his report, FACTs on Church Growth, Hadaway summarizes the results of a study that included over 14,000 religious congregations.

I found it surprising that congregations with less of a sense of being a "close-knit family" are more likely to grow than congregations whose members described themselves as a family. It's impossible to read the New Testament and see the first generation of Christians calling each other, "brothers and sisters," as anything other than a family. It was also a growing family.

Intimacy is necessary to that fullness of life which Jesus Christ promises. Are there risks to such intimacy? Most certainly. Betrayal for one. That too is in the New Testament. Another risk of intimacy is the failure of inclusion. I suspect that it is the tendency of church families to become as closed as biological families that lies behind Hadaway's finding.

What is the answer to this tension between intmacy and inclusion? More intmacy. More openness to each other amid conflict, trusting that if we invite Jesus into our conversation, then mutual understanding and reconciliation will bloom and grow. That kind of open intimacy will always make room for new brothers and sisters in Christ.