Belonging Before Believing

At Community Life Church, we are making a conscious effort to put “belonging before believing”.  We think that perhaps churches sometimes put the emphasis in the wrong place: “get your beliefs all lined up and make sure that they are perfectly aligned with ours and then you can belong”.

We’ve all heard the saying “Birds of a feather flock together”.  Making sure we all believe the same before we can belong together is a sure way to be  “birds of a feather” church.

People who believe exactly the things we believe make us feel better about ourselves.  A “birds-of-a-feather church” is a comfortable church, in which we can feel secure and pat each other on the back because we all think and believe the same way.  A “birds-of-a-feather church” doesn’t take kindly to having among them people who don’t think and act just the way they do; a church which doesn't readily accept others who might think and act differently.

Romans 15:7 - “Accept one another, then, just as Christ has accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”

Look at Romans 15:7 again.  Key here is “as Christ has accepted you”.  Jesus didn’t say, "get your beliefs right and then I will accept you".  But that is what many of our churches have done in the past (and perhaps some still do). Acceptance of others comes directly out of having been accepted by Christ.  When we know He has accepted us, we are freed from the need to prove to ourselves and to others that we are right.  This frees us to accept others. Because we are accepted.

At Community Life Church, we want to be able to make this statement:  “Christ has accepted me, as I was, as I am, and as I am striving to become.  No matter how differently you and I may look at things, I accept you”.

And to back this up, we put in our doctrinal statement that it is okay to have questions and doubts as we dig deeper into our faith.  The purpose of this is to try to create a safe place within our fellowship for people to ask questions and wrestle with their doubts, for that is the way to build a stronger faith, to move forward on the journey each of us is taking.

In his book “More Ready Than You Realize”, Brian McLaren summarizes the approach of a “birds of a feather” church: “We’re on the inside, but you’re on the outside.  We’re right and you’re wrong.  If you want to come inside, then you need to be right.  So, just believe right, think right, speak right and act right and we’ll let you in.”

At Community Life Church we want to be motivated by acceptance, to be the kind of a church that McLaren describes in his book like this:  “We are a community bound together and energized by faith, love and commitment to Jesus Christ.  Even though you don’t yet share that faith, love and commitment, you are most welcome to be with us, to belong here, to experience what we’re about.  Then, if you are attracted and persuaded by what you see, you’ll want to set down roots here long term.  And even if you don’t you’ll always be a friend.”

Everyone believes in something; and for a lot of people that something is not really very clear. At Community Life Church we want you to feel that you can belong, even if you haven’t yet sorted out just what you believe.

At Community Life Church, we want to welcome “birds with different feathers”.

Mother's Day

When God chose to show us what we should be, in the ultimate human, the ultimate image of God, God came into the world in Jesus, through a young woman who would have the awesome responsibility of raising a little boy to become a man who would show us what God is like and what a human, the image of God, should aspire to be.

We don’t know very much about Jesus’ childhood, or his teen years.  We know he was a pretty bright young man, confounding scholars with his understanding; but we know little about how he dealt with all the angst and confusion of being a teen.   I expect he dealt with all the struggles that any teen boy faces, and I expect that the unconditional love of his mother helped him grow and mature to be the brilliant expression of being human that he would demonstrate in his brief years of healing and teaching.

Richard Rohr noted this morning: “Most people (though not all) have experienced unconditional love not through the image of a man, but through the image of their mother. She therefore became the basis for many people's eventual God image, presuming it was a good God image. (I am convinced that many people sour on religion because the God they are presented with is actually less loving than their mother and/or father!)”

He continues: “For much of the human race, the mother is the one who parts the veil for us. She gives us that experience of grounding, of intimacy, of tenderness, of safety that most of us hope for from God. However, many people also operate from a toxic and negative image of God. For those people, little that is wonderful is going to happen as long as that is true. Early growth in spirituality is often about healing that inner image, whether male-based or female-based.”

When you think about it, for the past 2,000 years, the male dominated Church has done a gross disservice to humanity by projecting God as violent, vindictive and totally male; a god in the image of the rulers of this world.  We would do well to see mothers as the image of God too, showing God’s unconditional love, tenderness and safety.

Richard Rohr continues: “Most of us know that God is beyond gender. When we look at the Book of Genesis, we see that the first thing God is looking for is quite simply “images” by which to communicate who-God-is (Gen 2:26-27)”

He concludes: “God is just looking for images—“images and likenesses” of the Inner Mystery. Whoever God “is,” is profoundly and essentially what it means to be male and female in perfect balance. We have to find and to trust the feminine face of God and the masculine face of God. Both are true and both are necessary for a full relationship with God. Up to now, we have strongly relied upon the presented masculine images while, in fact, our inner life was more drawn to our mother's energy. That is much of our religious problem today.”

Something to think about, especially today, as we honour mothers, who can teach us a lot about what God is really like.