Ben Sternke

Field notes on life and mission with God after Christendom

Search To Belong

Helping People Belong

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Joseph Myers finishes The Search to Belong with three main ideas. I’m still working out implications for our community, so I just want to throw them out here on the blog and invite some conversation around the ideas.

Environmentalists Instead of Programmers
Myers suggests that in order for churches to cultivate real community church leaders need to stop acting like “programmers” and start acting like “environmentalists.” Programmers attempt to control people and results (“putting” people into small groups), while environmentalists simply seek to cultivate environments where people can connect spontaneously, in all four spaces (public, social, personal, intimate).

Trading Spaces
“No relationship survives in one space for the entire life of the relationship.” In other words, all relationships will at some time experience “phase shifts” from one space to another, which usually causes tension. Additionally, one relationship can exist in all four spaces simultaneously. For example, the way I am “with” my wife is different when we are watching a movie on the couch than it is when we are having a party in our home.

Searching For a Front Porch
Myers indicates that the main need in our culture seems to be a “front porch” type space, an environment that isn’t as intimate and personal as being in someone’s home, but isn’t as public as just being out on the street. Some churches have made their “foyer” into this kind of space, but many people are still look for this kind of social space in which to spend time and see what connections develop spontaneously.

So those are the ideas, in a nutshell. I’d love to hear what y’all think about this stuff, especially as it relates to church communities.

The Four Spaces of Belonging

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Chapter 3 of Joseph Myers’ book The Search to Belong is all about the four “spaces” in which we have a sense of belonging (public, social, personal, and intimate). Myers says that in all four spaces:

  • We connect.
  • We are committed and participate.
  • We find the connection significant

So it’s not that we go from public to intimate in a journey of ever more valuable “belonging.” Rather, having a sense of belonging in all four spaces is essential for relational health. So what does it mean to belong in these four spaces?

  • Public belonging is like being a Mac owner, or playing bingo every week with 200 others, or being a Hoosier basketball fan. It occurs when people connect through an outside influence, and these kinds of relationships can carry great significance in our lives.
  • Social belonging is like knowing the barista at the local coffee shop or a neighbor you might ask to pick up your mail while you’re away on vacation. It occurs when we share “snapshots” of ourselves, of what it would be like to be in personal space with us. “Best foot forward” and “first impression” are operative words here. This provides space for “neighbor” relationships to develop, and a “selection space” for those with whom you’d like to develop a “deeper” relationship.
  • Personal belonging is like a good friendship that just picks up where you left off no matter how much time you may have spent apart, or like a close friend with whom we share more about ourselves than we would an acquaintance, but not so much that they’d be uncomfortable.
  • Intimate belonging is like marriage, or a very few close friends with whom we share “naked” experiences, feelings, and thoughts. These are people who know the “whole truth” about us and accept us nonetheless.

Myers asserts that “a healthy strategy for those working to build community entails allowing people to grow significant relationships in all four spaces–all four.”

Pushing people to get “intimate” isn’t necessarily the best way to cultivate community, in other words. Relational harmony means more public “belongings” than social, more social than personal, and probably very few intimate.

So, a few questions:

  1. Do you think churches try to push too hard for personal and intimate belonging, to the neglect or denigration of public and social belonging?
  2. As a church leader, do you trust people enough to allow them to belong in the space they choose?
  3. In your community, what spaces are well represented? What is lacking?

Longing to Belong

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The second chapter of Joseph Myers’ The Search to Belong focuses on the deep longing all human seem to have to “belong.” But defining what it means to belong, and what it means for others to belong to us, turns out to be more complicated than you might think.

It all comes back to the fragmentation of family and community that has characterized American life for over 50 years now, and Myers seems to present this crisis as the issue the church must address if it is going to be salt and light in the West.

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Myths of Belonging

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I’ve just started reading Joseph Myers’ book The Search to Belong, and I’ve found it really helpful so far in helping me think through issues of community and belonging in the church we’re planting. I want to blog through the book to generate some more conversation around the issues.

Myers takes the first chapter to outline several “myths of belonging.” These commonly-held beliefs about what creates intimacy and community among people are:

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