Last week we welcome Matthew to our family. Matthew is our 4th grandchild and the second child of our son and his wife. Their first born is two and still making up her mind about her new brother. All I can say is that they are both great children born to great parents. Of course, I would say the same of our other two grandchildren who belong to our daughter and her husband. They also have a boy and a girl. Not wanting to put anyone down but there is no doubt that we have been blessed with the four best grandchildren, two best children, and two best children-in-laws in the world. I know that is hard for some people to accept but the truth is the truth.
However, Matthew does carry a little extra burden than the other grandchildren. He is the only boy destined to carry my family name at this point in time. With a name like mine, it does carry a burden. Afterall, it is long, often mispronounced, and easy to make fun of.
But before we put too much pressure on him, I must remind all of us that a family name is not the burden or responsibility of one person to carry. It is the responsibility of the entire family to carry that load.
I think that is also true in a church. It is not the responsibility of the pastor to bear the full load. It is the responsibility of the entire congregation. Too often a church will shift all blame to a pastor because there is a lack of growth or because finances are tight. I have always wondered why the manager or coach of a sports team gets fired and replaced when it was the players who played lousy and lost the games. Churches do that a lot. The members refuse or fail to participate and so the pastor is replaced. Somehow we seem to have that quite mixed up.
Our family is not going to do that to Matthew. He is one of us. We will bear the load of the name together. That is what families do. Maybe churches and sports teams should try the family approach.
