Helping People Find a Place to Belong

So He told them this parable: ‘What man among you who has 100 sheep and loses one of them does not leave the 99 in the open field and go after the lost one until he finds it. When he has found it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders, and coming home, he calls his friends and neighbors together, saying to them “Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.”

Luke 15:3-6, Holman Christian Standard Bible

It seems everywhere I look lately, I see the people who don’t fit into ANY church. One seems too needy and makes people around her uncomfortable. Another is a single dad who thinks he has too much baggage to be a part of any gathering of believers. Another is a graduating college student who can’t seem to find a serious group of Christians to help disciple him and grow him as a believer. And then there are the hundreds of people you meet in a worship gathering once and then you never see them again.

I think Jesus was talking about these people, specifically, when he was telling the parable of the lost sheep. He was calling out to us, begging us to find the people who don’t fit and help them to belong to His Church. Great. But just how do we do that?

I have been reading a book entitled The Search to Belong by Joseph Myers. This book contains a ton of great food for thought for Young Adult leaders and church leaders in general surrounding the topics of community and belonging. Where I spent the majority of my thinking time was in a discussion of what Myers calls the ‘Four Spaces:’

• Public Space—a worship gathering, a movie theater, mall, etc.
• Social Space—a small group, your neighbors or maybe your local biking group
• Personal Space—your good friends, people you share private experiences, thoughts and feelings
• Intimate Space—your best friends, your spouse, people you share the complete truth with, no holds-barred.

Can we create all four of these spaces inside our churches and help people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and help them to grow to become mature believers in Christ?

We’ve got to. I am not sure there will ever be a concrete path to developing these spaces in the church, but we have to make decisions and move a direction with some end in mind.

Not every person is going to find connection in every one of these spaces, but if the church does its job effectively, we ought to be able to hit .750 or surely .500 with some degree of regularity in these spaces.

Here’s the key: We need to let the people who come to us pick which of these spaces they want to engage, where they want to do it and when they want to do it. Our job is not to push them into these spaces on our timetable, but instead, for us to create inviting environments where they feel free to choose a space.

In our church parking lots, in our hallways and in our worship gatherings, we need to make the public spaces friendly and inviting, allowing people to engage as much or as little as they want to, remembering that’s a public space. If you need help at a good movie theater, friendly people are clearly identifiable to help you if you have questions, but they don’t necessarily badger you into buying tickets for a movie that’s opening in two weeks or ask you to sign up for their email newsletter. If the visitor asks to sign up, that’s fine, but not the other way around.

When it comes to social space, do we have multiple ways for people connect to the church? Are they available at all different times to accommodate all kinds of people working in all kinds of jobs at all hours? Do we have support groups (they can be social, personal or intimate)? Recovery groups? Single dads groups? A singles moms group? Affinity groups that meet around biking, cooking, quilting, Bible study, disaster relief, parenting, softball, or social action?

It gets a bit trickier in the next two spaces. Most of the time, personal space happens organically as people get to know each other naturally in the church. They meet for breakfast once a week to talk about the challenges of life. They grill out together every weekend and ask each other the hard questions of life.

Some churches set up mentoring programs or discipling programs where this happens more formally, but most of the time it happens on its own or through the mystery of God’s hand on our lives.

The intimate space is wonderful, rare and just as big a mystery. But we know it happens in churches and we know it happens frequently between believers who are joined together by the greatest intimacy one can know - an intimacy with God.

So, that’s leads us back to where we started: The Lost Sheep. If you’re serious about reaching them, you will create spaces in your church for all of these people.