How would you describe finding “belonging” in a church?
Some of you have a rich experience of finding deep relationships at a church. That might include a small group or one friendship that significantly invited you to stay in community.
I know for many of you that church represents the opposite. It took you multiple trials and errors to meet people. At times, the church seemed like everyone fit in a group except for you. Belonging became an arduous task.
The message of the Gospel gives us a vision for belonging. The same Jesus who brought you near through his death and resurrection calls you to bring others near.
Scott Sauls offers a vision for the belonging in his chapter on family in Befriend:
So then, what if the church became the first place people went looking for family? What if the church were filled with unmarried people but had no “single” people, because unmarried people were as family to each other and surrogate brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters to the rest of the church? What if the church were the place where no parent felt the burden of having to raise children alone and where every child had hundreds of mothers and fathers and grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles and big brothers and big sisters? What if it were true that God sets the lonely in families? What if the church were the place where anyone in the world could find refuge and solace from the age-old malediction that it is not good to be alone?
That vision for a church to belong matters to all of us. Each of us plays a part in welcoming the misfits and lonely. I wonder if in our journey to find belonging at church, we find it through helping others in their journey.
How can you be part of helping people belong at church? What might God be calling you to do?
Photo by William White