Belonging Preceeds Believing

Before Jesus indoctrinated... He invited. Before He gave his disciples the sermon on the mount, He went to a party with them. Before He sent them out to heal the sick, cast out demons and raise the dead, He paired them up. Jesus made sure that no one in His new Kingdom would be alone.

This morning I was teaching a class at church, and 2 sets of parents talked about their 20 something children walking away from the faith. I resonated with them, because when I was 20 something, I walked away too. The general idea for the class was Solomon's hopelessness in Ecclesiastes 1 and Christ's gift of hope from Matthew 20.

The parents cried as they read Ecclesiastes, because they said that it sounded just like what their kids would say. I encouraged them to take heart that the scripture was validating their experience, and encouraged them to keep reading the story, because even Solomon finds a better answer under the sun.

But we ended early and I had a chance to talk pretty pointedly with these parents and one of the elders in our church who happened to hang around. This is really exciting for me, because I truly believe that the emerging church/postmodern mindset isn't just a fabrication, but it's a reality that will inreasingly be borne out in the generations to come. Today I had the chance to represent these postmoderm minded kids to their thoroughly modern parents, and I may not have ever felt as blessed to be used by God.

I wrote on the white board the phrase, "Belonging preceeds Believing." I asked them to take the phrase apart and see what they thought. Each of the people in the class was a mature believer who had been in the church for their whole lives. The elder has raised 3 of the most amazing children I've ever known, and is one of the most humble, godly people I know.

My skin tingled as I watched lightbulbs come on in these people. This was their kids, this was where they were. It didn't take long to piece together the puzzle of pretty sharp, observant kids standing back and watching their friends become overchurched. As kids who were thinkers, they realized that the message they were hearing wasn't being fleshed out. They felt, and feel, that the problem was with the message... so they got rid of it in search of something better. Rather than dismissing the belonging, they dismissed the belief.

It was amazing to watch these grown men and women wrestle with this. "But where does knowledge fit into this whole equation? It's the Truth that sets us free?" and on and on it went in defense of attacking unbelief with information. They weren't antagonistic at all, not in the least, they just hadn't ever thought about it from this angle. At the end of the discussion, one of the parents named Mark came up to me and said, "you know, I believe what you said about belonging preceeding believing. It just wasn't that way when I was growing up."

I think Mark walked out of the class understanding something about his kid that he didn't understand before. He and I spent a little bit of time talking about what that might mean in his relationship with his kid and how it might all play out. I didn't give him any answers where none were due, but I told him that it worked out in my case.

Today my philosophy took form and became real to someone else. Just by my nature, my tendency will always be to remain in the philosophical and theoretical. I will coast by on autopilot while I think about how to do what I'm doing. But today the stuff that I put into my head and mull over hopefully built a bridge for someone else to cross over to their kid. What a cool thing to see. What a cool thing to be a part of.