Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list No. 1-195 (Leadership Issues)

Which will come first in the 21st Century . . .

BELONGING OR BELIEVING?

by Gil Cann

Recent research amongst new Christians in the United Kingdom reveals a trend which 21st century churches must take very seriously. Most people who have become Christians there in the last five years said they 'belonged' before they believed.

This is a reversal of a long-time pattern in which, for the most part, Christians have believed before they belonged. In the past it has been typical for a person to be converted through attending an evangelistic event, reading a Bible, being led to Christ by a Christian friend (ie believe) and then seeking out, or being introduced to a church to which they could belong.

Nowadays it is common for people to 'belong', i.e., be loosely associated with a church for several years before coming to personal faith in Christ. It is very important that churches consider the implications of this change. Evangelical churches in particular, ironically, have not related easily to the 'fringe dweller', the undecided, the long term enquirer. We have felt uneasy about such people. We like clear-cut situations, things to be 'black and white', people to be in or out. The presence of such an uncommitted 'fringe' makes us feel there is something wrong with them, or even worse, something wrong with us, or our message or methods!

Furthermore having uncommitted people associating with us long term can be an embarrassment. We are not really geared up, as churches, to relate to them. We don't have a 'department' for them! We may find ourselves wishing they would make up their minds one way or the other, so that we can 'get on with the job' of winning people who are either more desperate or more decisive.

Most disturbing of all is that the presence of such people 'on the edges' of our congregation, groups, and ministries to the community suggests they are looking for relationships. This is exactly the case. Sometimes this is what we fear the most! Also, they want to observe us, at close-range, month after month. And ask deep, searching and personal questions about our own relationships with God and these people with whom we may feel we have little in common might want to become our friends. All very disturbing!

It is not hard to find explanations for this wistful hunger for some form of welcoming 'extended family'. Amongst these people the divorce rate is approaching fifty per cent. Families are shattered, broken relationships are almost the norm. Consequently loneliness, isolation and depression prevail even amongst people living in busy suburbs and cities. In Melbourne, the average dwelling occupancy rate is only 1.9 people. If the present trend continues, by 2006, there will be more people living 'solo' than in any other family or social grouping. Our population levels are static. The birth rate is falling, and now 30% of Australian women declare they do not wish to have any children at all.

As you will notice on many church notice boards it is common for churches to promote themselves as 'a church for families'. By all means let us be supportive of marriage, good parenting, and stable family life. But to pursue that goal for your church is to automatically exclude nearly half the unchurched population! Forty eight per cent of unchurched people don't live in what Christians think of as families i.e., the original husband and wife, living together with their own natural offspring. They live in a bewildering array of broken, single-parent, adopted, adapted, blended, divided, second or third time round, grand-parent led and even same-sex parent families.

In the twenty-first century, (ie tomorrow!) we must see our churches not as 'churches for families' but as extended families for people of all kinds. Many of these people have no experience of healthy-family life. Even those whose marriages, first or otherwise, are still together, are in desperate need of 'extended family.'

The nuclear-family is very fragile. It is a pathetic substitute for true family, yet throughout the western world it is idealised by most people including millions of Christians. Even the vast amount of Christian literature on marriage and family unquestioningly accepts the 'norm' of the small nuclear family. But its smallness, independence, desire for privacy and 'fortress mentality' make it incredibly vulnerable, as the statistics tragically show.

An old African proverb declares 'it takes a whole village to raise a child'.

Likewise it takes a whole church, or at least part thereof, to make a marriage work, to enable good parenting, to grow in our relationship with God and to become more authentic followers of Christ. Modern western individualism has wrought havoc in evangelical churches, justifying private faith, consumerism, independence, and resistance to sharing resources, being discipled and receiving correction and advice.

God never intended us to 'make it on our own' at any level, or in any area of even our private lives. We all need to be part of an 'extended family'. Churches, by their very nature, are potentially such families, desperately needed by Christians and non-Christians alike properly understood churches are incredibly well - placed to meet a large and rapidly growing need in our communities - the need to 'belong'.

At the conclusion of a recent weekend church family camp in which I was involved a young single-parent, with his four-year-old daughter by his side, stood and said to the hundred-plus church members, 'as you know, I am not a Christian, but I want you people to know that this is the best weekend my little girl and I have ever had in our lives'.

A strange 'testimony'. Not the kind to which we are accustomed at such times. But quite a few tears rolled down several evangelical cheeks! Because it was just beginning to dawn on these people what enormous potential there is in a local church to be an 'extended- family' for people of all kinds.

There is a desperate need for churches to which it is easy to 'belong'. This does not require any compromise of membership standards but it does require a church community to be welcoming, easily related to, accessible, 'open', in various forms seven days a week, 'user friendly', readily contacted, with open boundaries'. It requires we set aside ways, habits and customs which are intimidating, exclusive and threatening.

Our approach to programs and activities needs to change, we need to be more flexible, less hurried and fun to be with. We must abandon the idea that we should always have a solid, advertisable, evangelically 'legitimate' reason for every occasion of meeting together. There is great validity in meeting at times primarily for the sake of being together. Those who 'don't belong' are far more aware of this than we are.

I will not be surprised to hear that the little girl and her father who does not believe, but who feel they belong in that local church, have become believers. Would they feel they 'belong' in your church? We must act quickly, because there are hundreds of thousands more people like them.

- Gil Cann <>

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Gil Cann is Minister at Large for the Australian Evangelical Alliance and edits their quarterly journal 'Working Together', where this article originally appeared. Gil is involved in a ministry of church renewal and leadership training in Australia and overseas. The author of 'Liberating Leadership', he is currently writing a book about crucial issues for churches in the 21st Century.