How Ecclesiocentricity works in a Family

You might be thinking, after reading some of these posts, "Well, wait a minute. I have always heard that God would have me put my family first, before everything else. And here you come, propounding this view that the church is to have the priority. How do I reconcile these
things?"

I'm glad you asked. These are good queries.

What will follow is a demonstration of how ecclesiocentricity essentially works in the context of a typically traditional family. Assuming that all the family members are baptized members in good standing in a local church, the father of this family would view his wife as his first and primary "disciple." He would consider her a fellow church member, a wife, and a co-laborer in the gospel, and in the family. The wife would view her husband as her initial head (in the church), recognizing that her husband also has headship over him, in the eldership of the church, (which also serves her as a headship covering, too). The children in the family would be the parents' first line of "disciples" in the church. Though they are family, they are not conceived of outside the context of the church. The children would see their parents as their first line of authority in the church, (though they are also under the authority of church officers, too).

So, a truly Christian family cannot and does not even exist apart from the context of the church. To imagine such, it would matter not how religious, zealous, or passionate they were--they would not be a Christian family. It might be a nice family, a big family, a well-ordered family, a well-behaved family--but not a "Christian" family.