“One Big Family”
Premier Family Life Ministries International
Piscataway, NJ
By Gregory Louis
“We give you all the glory, we worship you our Lord, you are worthy to be praised,” sings a colorfully dressed duet, ushering the congregation into Sunday morning worship at Premiere Family Life Ministries International (PFLMI) in Plainfield, New Jersey. The congregation joins in the chorus, and the range of voices tastefully texture the sound. It is a relatively temperate morning in late October. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this service is streamed live from a public park not too far from the usual indoor place of worship. PFLMI has been figuring out how best to adapt to restrictions against indoor gatherings for about 6 months, since the spread of the COVID-19 virus in the US. This Sunday morning, they have set up a stage on a flat plot of land adjacent to a wall of relatively tame shrubbery. Audio systems line the back corners of this makeshift stage, which include a keyboard, speakers, microphones, an audio board, drums, and a podium. In the background, there is a blandly colored municipal building, likely bathrooms for park guests. Everyone, including the singers, the musicians, and a man who seems to be responsible for troubleshooting the audio systems is wearing a mask and following social distancing protocols.
A member of the duet, a young woman in her late teens, invites Brother Malachi on stage for prayer. She is the officiant of the service and governs the congregation with an unexpected authority. After her invitation, she recedes from the stage, and a small healthy boy, about 10 years old enters the frame and makes a beautiful, passionate prayer. He is charming, familiar with the common vernacular of Christian prayer, and has nearly mastered the mannerisms modeled by his older counterparts.
In this church of over one hundred people, “the youth” make up a significant portion of the church. However, the best frame for understanding the demographic composition is to consider their most distinctive feature of congregational life: the family. Demographically, families are represented at each stage of life, from the adolescent to the elderly.
If asked to illustrate a thriving church congregation, most might produce images of large mega-churches with large buildings, thousands of people, and maybe a wealthy endowment. Few, if any, would associate thriving with a resourceful, relatively small, family-oriented church. Nevertheless, PFLMI is most certainly thriving, and the substance of its capacity to succeed is located within its ecclesial imagination, or how it thinks about church. Its special and uncomplicated conception of church produces adaptability and permission to reinvent itself as necessary to endure the many challenges that come with ministry. The church thrives simply because it imagines and strives to function as a healthy family.
“Family Life” are their focal words. The founder, Bishop Dr. Euton Laing, repurposed the name of his private medical practice “Premiere Family Life” to title and orient this church. This was not a passive, impotent decision, as many names tend to be. PFLMI is deeply “family-oriented” and prioritizes family because it believes family is the divinely ordered framework by which we ought to consider relationships with one another. At the church’s inception, they congregated at the home of Bishop Laing and his wife, Pastor Sharon Laing, with relatives and other close familial friends. Even though many churches share this origin story, they have managed to maintain a particular familial quality that is deeply seated in their ecclesial imagination.
This family identity manifests in subconscious ways among congregants. In a conversation with Bishop Laing about the size of his church, instead of simply noting the individual number of congregants, he accounted for the composition of the church by identifying how many family units made up the church. Another unconscious evidence of the family-oriented coding of PFLMI’s DNA I observed was when a teenage member who has been attending since she was a child referred to Bishop Laing as “uncle,” as if he were her biological family. Slightly flustered and embarrassed, she quickly sought to correct her blunder; however, it was abundantly clear that outside of the formal context of our interview she would indeed refer to Bishop Laing as “uncle.” Amongst insiders this intimate way of interacting with fellow congregants was not uncomfortable or uncommon but assumed. This type of familial familiarity is what PFLMI strives toward.
PFLMI is not merely striving to create familial relationships between congregants but trying to strengthen the nuclear families that populate the church. Their family-oriented ecclesial imagination was cast as its defining characteristic by their founder, and within the church familial connections are the standard. The familial texture is acutely assisted by the reality that the church largely consists of blood-related family.
The shape of the church’s ecclesial imagination, according to a senior clergy member integral to founding of the church, has been influenced greatly by the teachings of Jamaican-American minister and Pentecostal bishop Noel Jones. Jones teaches that churches should abstain from hosting so much programming that clergy and laypersons sacrifice quality time with their families. According to this clergy person, PFLMI adopted his teaching, sensitive to the needs of the nuclear family.
This tangible family orientation manifests in the fact that the church does not meet as frequently as other churches. Sunday morning and Tuesday evening are their flagship events, other programming occurs but does not bear the same expectations regarding church-wide attendance. Furthermore, the church has concretely centered family by ensuring that each of its ministries directly supports or carefully considers the cultivation of familial bonds. Their men’s, women’s, marriage, and youth ministries seek to contribute to the strengthening of the family unit by offering particular attention to its component parts.
PFLMI’s denominational affiliation and West Indian heritage also contribute to the familial texture of this church. And like a family has religious, national, and cultural distinctions, the church does as well. Also like a family, these factors begin to compound so that the family unit develops a character that is distinct from other families. Take for example that PFLMI identifies as Pentecostal, which seems to manifest in the belief that the Holy Spirit’s presence is palpably active in our lives. In the biographies of the clergy on the website, I observed a theme affirming their charismatic Pentecostal character. These biographies outline the distinct vocational journey that has brought each of the clergy members. Curiously, each of these narratives note that the leaders “surrendered their lives” to God in their youth. Furthermore, these descriptions discuss the families which the pastors lead. These narratives imply that these members were called by God in their youth, have served since without interruption, and now lead functional families where the expectation is that they will seek to reproduce these distinct qualities in their children. This idealistic Christian rhetoric is not unique in Christian culture, and the church employs this language with sincerity; however, this romantic language creates subtle expectations for congregants for what qualifies as their ideal member.
These expectations ensure that individuals function well at PFLMI; however, they also inadvertently exclude. Take for example the subtle exaltation of being able to confidently identify the call of the Holy Spirit from early on in one’s life–the notion of having been called in “one’s youth.” In the same manner that traumatic experiences cultivate familiarity – for example, the camaraderie between cancer survivors – ecstatic experiences like those which charismatic Pentecostals espouse also bond people together. In this way, PFLMI’s congregation is strengthened by its denominational affiliations to the Pentecostal tradition. However, this also means that those who don’t share these charismatic experiences are inherently excluded.
Another contributing factor to the church’s distinct character is its West Indian, specifically Jamaican, flavor. In a focus group conversation, one lay person openly acknowledged that despite PFLMI’s renunciation of the notion that it is a church reserved for Jamaicans, the church does, indeed, have a distinct Jamaican identity that is undeniable. This assumption about PFLMI’s inclusivity seems to be a reoccurring issue that the church recognizes and acknowledges. Multiple clergy persons noted their aversion to the idea that PFLMI is a Jamaican church. However, despite PFLMI’s embrace of non-Jamaicans and non-West Indians, the concern seems to resurface. PFLMI’s family-orientation may conspire against its desire to be welcoming towards people not uniquely suited to join its family, i.e., people who can’t testify to encountering God in their youth and people who have no West-Indian or Jamaican background.
PFLMI’s ecclesial imagination was initially molded and shaped by a family-oriented vision that has since been nurtured, affirmed, and concretized by compounding factors such as its family-filled congregation, Pentecostal identity, and Jamaican heritage. This way of thinking about church has the potential to exclude those that struggle to identify and latch onto these distinct characteristics at PFLMI. In light of the challenge of becoming hospitable to “outsiders,” PFLMI has adapted by doubling down on its commitment to family and seeking to manufacture familial bonds. In a conversation with Pastor Sharon Laing, who among many things seeks to ensure that the church remains hospitable, she noted that a large part of her process for helping new or potential members acclimate to is giving congregants an opportunity to “let their hair down,” that congregants might truly see one another and thus be better equipped to serve one another.
Another strategy that PFLMI employs to engage members and facilitate familial bonds is to encourage its members to take on roles and responsibilities. To begin a focus group, I asked congregants to share their role, if any, within the congregation. Here was one lay-person’s response: “I’m newly drafted into the choir. And I’m a greeter. And I’m also a part of the hospitality committee.” At PFLMI it is common that members of the church also serve the church in myriad capacities. Like the physical members of a body contribute to the life of an individual, the members of PFLMI contribute to its welfare. As this layperson suggested, these contributions are not always volunteered. Later in our conversation she shared how exactly she was “drafted” into the choir. One evening Pastor Sharon simply called her up one evening and said, “Listen here, I’m going to send you some songs, and you’re going to practice them. And you’re going to be a part of the choir. Okay? How does that sound?” Some might perceive this as manipulative because such an appeal from a spiritual leader could seem like a command rather than a suggestion. However, that is far from the case. Congregants spoke about their various involvements not with dread and obligation, but with pride and enthusiasm. Later, the layperson drafted into the choir confessed, “I love to sing, I always did. And I’m just happy that we have leaders that can see these things in us without us having to even say it to them.” Leaders at PFLMI aren’t manipulative or coercive when they nudge congregants to serve, instead the leaders of this church are paying close attention to its congregants, looking for ways to loop them in because they understand that engagement is an essential for the welfare of their congregants and the quality of their experience at PFLMI.
PFLMI has coped with COVID-19 by leaning on the sheer strength of the connections they have fostered by keenly attending to the needs of the family unit. PFLMI is well suited to continue to thrive because this church does not gauge its own success by the number of people that enter the church walls. Instead of quantity PFLMI has set as its objective to develop organic quality connections between people. PFLMI is like a tree whose roots develop deep and wide and resilient because it has all the resources and nourishment necessary to endure the storms when they come. PFLMI seeks to embody the loving communion that God wishes for human relationship, and the sweet fruit produced by this congregation is a direct result of their family-oriented ecclesial imagination.
