WOO(ing)...

in case you are not familiar with WOO: Winning Others Over...

we have five values at campus house that we use as a guide in both what we do and what we do not do. one of those is belonging. we want for people to belong...to belong to us as a community and as people. not because we want to be popular or cool or trendy or to be able to boast about big numbers. but because we believe that, in today's culture, belonging comes before believing. that when people feel like they belong with us and around us, this will allow them to truly encounter Christ and to, in turn, come to a place of believing.

i have been thinking this summer about how we can improve our value of belonging. particularly, i have been thinking about those new people that slip in, in say the 9th week of the school year, and we don't ever realize they were here. how do we work on creating belonging with them? (there have been numerous thoughts and ideas to go along with this, but i will save the details unless you are really interested in hearing about them)

in thinking about this, i have been processing thoughts with our staff and our leadership team. the conversations have been good, challenging and enlightening.

last week, i was talking about it with one staff member, and she pointed out something that was both convicting and inspiring. she said that in all of the talking and brainstorming about how we could improve on this aspect of belonging, she hadn't heard me mention God at all. hadn't heard anything said about how this was going to connect people back to God.

this was convicting because i know that it is incredibly important that i am always operating in a way that makes it clear, verbally and explicitly, how what we do is connecting people back to God. it is not okay to leave it assumed and unspoken. maybe i have become a little too relaxed with that.

however, it was inspiring, because it is my hope and prayer that in everything we do and in everything we are as a community of individual's who are finding our way back to God, that "winning" someone to us as a community is the same as "winning" someone to the opportunity to truly encounter Christ. i want that to be our drive and our goal. it needs to be directly stated and laid out. but i do firmly believe that there is a way for us to be operating that will allow people to truly encounter Christ as they first find a home with us.

and on a broader scale, isn't this the life that God is calling all of us to every day? faith and following Christ has become such a compartmentalized thing. something that is delegated to just a corner of life. but that is never the way it was intended to be. following Chirst is meant to be, as Paul talks about in Colossians, a death and burial of the old self, and a being raised to new life in Christ. not part of a new life, but a totally new life. which gives us this great opportunity to tangibly be Christ to people in every moment of every day. largely through them simply belonging with us.