Belonging Before Believing?
By Some recent comments from a talk Mark Dever did on conversion at a recent secret cabal meeting of the Gospel Coalition (or something like that, I'm not clear on the particulars):
Tim Conder says in his 2006 book, A Church in Transition, “A doctrinal approach to community formation also has significant missional liabilities. One common axiom of emerging culture ministry is the declaration that emerging culture persons will join a community before affirming the beliefs of that community. In other words, emerging culture persons place belonging before believing. Using doctrine as the doorkeeper essentially slams shut the front door of the church in the face of spiritual seekers. These persons need to enter and participate in community as part of their search for spiritual truth and goodness. In fact, they are far more likely to make their spiritual discernment based on the quality and characteristics of a community, rather than its doctrinal propositions.” (p. 149).
I both appreciate what Tim is saying, but also question his assumption of the necessary antithesis of believing being foundational to community formation over against persons feeling loved and in some profound senses accepted and even belonging in a community.
Let me present a different way to come at this. If Jesus Christ came to save sinners (I Tim 1:15) and if people must, as Jesus said, realize they’re sick before they see their need of the doctor (Mark 2:17), then don’t people have to be aware of some doctrine—God’s right wrath against us for our sins—before they understand the One who creates our community—Jesus Christ—and how He does it—by His work on the cross?
I think that one way we can help each other in a church is by having what you could call “high expectations” for each other, as people who claim to be converted. By high expectations, I simply mean that if you’re a member of our church we will treat you like you’re converted. We’ll assume that you increasingly love God and hate sin, and that you are living accordingly, and wanting us to help you live accordingly.
Many churches compromise at just this point in order to gain a sudden influx of members, but by so doing, they usually doom themselves to losing the gospel, and finally to extinction. Think carefully, taking unconverted persons into membership in a Christian church will inevitably tend to obscure the Gospel. If the Gospel is downplayed or confused, the very lifeblood of the church is cut off, and the church increasingly loses any distinction from the unbelieving world. “And if the salt looses its saltiness, it’s good for nothing . . . .”
... Brothers, I think that this raises some questions about the idea of belonging before believing. We must be careful of giving non-Christians the theological lie that is that they, in the most profound sense, belong. In the most profound sense they don’t and we serve them if we tell them that. Of course in our churches we can and should be DELIBERATELY inclusive of professing Christians and non-Christians in some senses. And yet we are also DELIBERATELY and OPENLY exclusive in another sense. We should show them that there is something more than horizontal community or a vague sense of God’s presence in our congregation’s life.
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I could really see that being true. I think that everyone wants to belong somewhere in life. I think that if it coverts them into believing that it would be a great thing.
Mel
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