40 Bicycles

The Church reinvents the family. The Church gives foreigners a place in the house that is better than that of sons and daughters. The Church gives eunuchs a name that will not be cut off. The significance of the Christian family only exists as it participates in the reality of the true Christian Family that is the Church. We must all turn our back on our earthly families, our relatives and our own lives as they exist in the old dying world in order to find them again in the new world of the Church where the exclusivity of the old world family no longer exists — where we are all siblings to each other, children of our Mother the Church and, as part of that Church, entrusted with the spiritual nourishment of each new babe in Christ. Single people have just as worthy a vocation within the Church as physical parents. Whilst single people cannot become biological parents they can become godparents, which is arguably an even higher calling. In many traditions birth parents cannot become godparents of their own children, nor spouses the godparents of the same child. I believe that a renewed appreciation of godparents and their significance (in the case of both biological adult and infant baptizands) would help to counter the familialism and partiarchalism that thrives in many evangelical and Reformed churches and grant the single people in our congregations a participation in the parenthood of the Church.