Claim. The church should be structured as a three-generation family — grandparents, parents, children — and a community composed only of one age-cohort is sick; one attends church for God, not for one’s relatives.
Elaboration. SMM rejects youth-centric church demographics: “Some say they must witness to those who are handsome and young, but that is absurd. The church is the extension of our family. There should be grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, and young people. If there were only young people in the Unification Church, it would be sick” (1.2. The church is an extension of the family, 70-149, 1974.2.9). The three-stage four-position-foundation is the model: “Your grandmother and grandfather represent God; your mother and father are your parents; and with you and your children this makes four stages in all.” The motive for attending church must be vertical, not sentimental: “Those who say they go to church for someone else’s sake, for their beloved sons and daughters or for their beloved husband or wife, will not be able to go further. They should go to church for God’s sake” (ibid, 8-162, 1959.12.6). Denying elders (ibid, 56-38, 1972.5.10) violates the same family structure. The church, like the family, is a four-position-foundation expressed in worship.