Belonging comes before believing.
For nearly two decades, I’ve heard this statement bandied about in Christian circles, prompted by a desire for seekers to feel like they’re part of the church before they embrace Christ. During one session at the Fourth Lausanne Congress, the saying came up in a presentation on strategies for reaching Gen Z. “They’ve got to feel they belong before they will believe!”
Noble Sentiment
There’s something clearly right about this sentiment when it comes to the Christian call to radical hospitality and the authentic atmosphere of welcome that should characterize God’s people.
Consider our ministry to children who grow up in church. Regardless of its position on infant baptism, every congregation incorporates children into the rituals and rhythms of church life, making them feel a part through Sunday school classes, or vacation Bible school, or special moments in the worship service. I once served at a church that assigned senior adults as “guardian angels” to neighborhood children in attendance, and I watched with delight as those elderly saints saved seats for the kids during the service, helped them feel welcome, gently instructed them on how to behave, and became a source of spiritual wisdom and guidance. In terms of chronology, children often feel they “belong” before they “believe.”
Or consider the church’s role in becoming a living, worshiping witness to the truth of the gospel, so that unbelievers who see and experience God’s family in all its glory begin to find the gospel more plausible than before. The church is, in Lesslie Newbigin’s memorable phrase, “the hermeneutic of the gospel”—our life together displays the gospel’s credibility.
It’s one thing to share the gospel with a stranger on the street; it’s another to share the gospel with someone after they’ve encountered the scandalous grace of God on display in the Christian community and have tasted of Jesus’s radical hospitality in dining with tax collectors and sinners. The latter is generally more effective than the former because it’s the entire church, not just a Christian, who commends the gospel, providing an alternative to unbelief. It’s possible, then, for an unbeliever to be drawn to the promise of belonging to God’s family before they put their faith in Christ.
What’s Missing
But there are some problems with the “belonging before believing” mindset.
In discussing the concept with my tablemates at the Lausanne Congress (from India, Kenya, Korea, and Hong Kong), the difference of context came up. In restrictive countries where following Jesus will result in family rejection or government persecution, the experience of “belonging” to the church (in the sense of developing close relationships) before making a public profession of belief is vital. Baptism cuts someone off from their past, leading to a very real “trading of families.” It’s important for someone in a restrictive country who professes faith to already have personal experience of the proven dedication of God’s people. When the wrath of family members comes, or the shunning from friends, or the potential for government persecution, the new believer will rely on the belonging they’ve already tasted within the family of God.
In other contexts, however, the mentality of belonging before believing downplays the distinctiveness between the church and the world, making the line between unbelief and faith fuzzy. The emphasis can fall so strongly on making people feel they belong that it’s not clear why belief would be necessary at all. In the end, the church turns into a sociologically religious community marked by friendly feelings rather than a confessional people marked by what the members believe.
Not Fully Belonging
Throughout history, the church has found ways of bringing unbelievers into the community so they experience an appetizer of Christian fellowship, even while recognizing the whole meal is only possible for those who belong through belief. Today, belonging before believing too often settles for appetizers as the end-all of Christianity. If an unbeliever feels they belong to the church just as much as a believer does, then what’s the point of believing? And what does belonging even mean anymore?
A friend of mine expressed the paradox this way: “When I invite an unbeliever, I want to pull them into the church so deeply they feel they don’t fit.” The desire should be to show such genuine welcome and hospitality that the unbeliever is taken aback, compelled by the welcome and sense of belonging they feel and by their uneasiness at recognizing they cannot truly belong to this community until they believe.
In the early centuries after the New Testament, the church made the lines clear in ways that sound awkward today. Unbelievers would be welcome in the homes of Christians and were present in worship services, but only up to a point. When the service would shift to the taking of the Lord’s Supper or instruction only for church members, the unbelievers would be dismissed. In this way, there was still a sense of belonging and welcome but also a clearly defined line marked out by belief and baptism.
Belonging Through Belief
In the end, I hope our churches will be places where people feel welcomed and loved. But if we’re to follow the New Testament pattern, where belonging to a church really means something beyond being the recipient of hospitality, we cannot in the fullest sense belong before we believe. That’s impossible. We belong through believing.
It’s our belief that unites us to brothers and sisters in Christ, our common confession of Jesus our King. We belong to God through our belief in his Son. Remember the opening to the Heidelberg Catechism: our only comfort in life and death is that we are not our own but belong—body and soul—to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ. We belong to Jesus by faith, and we belong to one another in the church by faith also.
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