Recently, I ran across a Facebook post from someone who was feeling like they just didn’t belong in their church. It was easy to enumerate ways they were different – skin color, education level, and a number of other aspects. This post grabbed me, as I know that feeling well, and I know how big an issue it can become for some of us. Most of us can easily identify ways we’re different from people around us, even other Christians in our church, and that can impact our sense of belonging. Here’s part of what I wrote in response:

I think you might be surprised how many people of whatever color and background in ANY church end up feeling like they don’t belong. Sometimes I’ve found myself having to remind people that it is the fact that we are DIFFERENT from others which might mean we DO belong in a given church. If everyone in a church looked the same, acted the same, and had the same gifts and education it would not be the church God intended.

1 Cor. 12:14f addresses this directly: For the body is not one member, but many. 15 If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.

One of us gets to be the foot, another a hand, another an ear etc., and if we look around and see a whole bunch of fingers and conclude, “well, I’m not a finger so I don’t belong” then that’s a huge loss for the body. Sometimes the differences are precisely why we DO belong.

I’ve had to learn to hold firmly to this idea, from the Bible itself, that my church is supposed to be different from me. A church where everyone is like me would not be a healthy church. Yes, when I run into how different it is, there are times I might feel like I don’t belong and ought to go somewhere else. But sometimes, those very differences are what God intends to use to help me grow, or what he wants to use to help someone else grow. Sometimes, we think that if we found a church where more of the people were like us then we’d be content and feel like we belong, but 1 Cor. 12 tells that such a church would go against God’s design for church, even if it did exist.

I wrote about this once before on my blog. In that post, I concluded:

…it’s these differences that should remind me that I belong. They are part of why God has me here. If my church had many other members just like me, with the same approach, priorities, and skill set, would I be an important part of the body? No. No body needs 100 hands or 100 ears. I’m not a clone of the other church members. I’m different, so I belong.

In a post in the near future, I hope to look at some specifics of how these differences have helped me grow.