7. WITH: Jesus’ Better Answer
7
WITH: Jesus’ Better Answer
Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don’t belong. You will always find it because you’ve made that your mission. Stop scouring people’s faces for evidence that you’re not enough. You will always find it because that’s your goal. . . . No one belongs here more than you.
Brené Brown
What does it feel like to live as if “no one belongs here more than you”? To know you are welcomed, accepted, and embraced as “one of us,” no matter what?
Despite rejection in other circles, sixteen-year-old Sue found the answer in her church youth group and on her swim team. As an Asian American in a predominantly White suburban community and church in the South, she doesn’t always feel like she belongs. When we asked, “Where do you feel like yourself the most?” she responded enthusiastically:
Oh, with the youth group definitely. When I’m with my youth group, I can be that person who doesn’t care about what other people think. There was this one day when I walked into youth group and all of my friends were there, and they all turned around and yelled, “SUE!” And that just made me feel like these are the people who care about me and support me. Because I’ve been left out before and I know how that feels, and so the difference—I can see it and feel it. I can still be myself, because I know that no matter what I say, they’ll still like me.
Sue contrasted these experiences with feelings of not belonging: “I guess there are times when I just get down and feel like nobody likes me. Like when I’m in a group of friends and I feel sort of left out or something. Then I get really sad, like, ‘Nobody wants to hang out with me.’”
When asked to describe God, Sue immediately connected God with a sense of belonging. She shared, “The first word that comes to mind is ‘safe.’ I feel safe and I feel comforted. And then I would describe God as a father figure. He is there to support you and to be there for you whenever you need it. And somebody who is always by your side—a best friend and father.”
Sue’s youth group has embodied the kind of holy safety that frees her to be herself without having to earn a seat at the table, and this embrace from her faith community has helped her say an everyday “Yes” to Jesus. Like most of the teenagers we interviewed, Sue is being formed through belonging with God’s people.
The Christ-Centered Answer in One Word: WITH
Young people like Sue are hungry to be accepted, known, and welcomed for who they are. As they search for an answer to the big question “Where do I fit?” we can help them discover the Christ-centered answer: I belong with God’s people.
God has created us to be in community WITH God and WITH others through Jesus. We don’t have to earn love, acceptance, or our place in the body of Christ. We belong to God and to one another. We are not alone.
We are family.
WITH is our core word for belonging because it symbolizes the heart of God to be near us, among us, and close to us as beloved children for whom God’s heart beats. God is WITH us and our young people—no matter what.
This is better news than just feeling “safe to be me.” Safety is fleeting, conditional, and subject to how others make us feel. Make no mistake: safety is critical for relational connection. But our truest belonging is not dependent on the success or failure of others to live it out. It has already been decided by the unconditional love of God.
As many of our teenagers have painfully discovered, those who initially make us feel like we belong can (and have) regularly let us down, making belonging perhaps the most complicated of the 3 big questions.
God Is WITH Us—We Are WITH One Another: John 13–17
Jesus’ entire life on earth put flesh on God’s commitment to be WITH us and is a model for how we are to be WITH one another. But perhaps no other portion of the Gospels captures WITH better than John chapters13–17. The introduction for this entire section is framed in love, which is the heart of belonging: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).
It’s Passover. The small band of disciples gathers with Jesus for the meal. This would all be as usual—but Jesus disrupts the pattern. Taking these chapters as a whole, we see that Jesus gives us a better answer to the big question of belonging.
We Are Friends Who Wash Feet and Share Tables
The Master takes on the physical job of a servant, washing dirty feet. Jesus had spent a few years with his closest followers doing all kinds of things together, but this was new. It was absurd. In this profoundly physical, humble, even humiliating act, Jesus kneels with the posture of a servant and pours water over each road-weary foot.
Then he tells the disciples to keep doing this for each other (John 13:14–15). That extends out to us—an invitation to take the same posture of being WITH one another by serving one another.
Without missing a beat, Jesus sits at a table with his friends—even friends who would betray and desert him—and hands out bread. This meal, which we often repeat as the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, is a meal not only for those whose faith is strong but also for the struggling, a meal for the broken and uncertain. A meal for those who would be Jesus’ imperfect friends.
While both washing feet and eating with his disciples, Jesus talks about friendship and love and how he’s going to be WITH them even when he is absent. Fuller New Testament professor Tommy Givens links all of this to the power of friendship to connect us.
If the gospel is especially about the way God empowers people to love one another, then friendship names this power at its most intimate. Friendship is what Jesus told his disciples he was teaching them when he washed their feet and then loved them to the death. Friendship is not simply something modeled for us in a few stories of the Bible or one of many topics covered in the Bible. It is the way God has drawn near to us, through much suffering, so that we are able to draw near to God and to one another.
Christian community is fundamentally marked by a relational God who is willing to be WITH us—stinky feet and all.
We Are Known by Our Love
The best testimony to the truth of the gospel is the quality of our life together.
Christine Pohl
John puts this foot washing and eating in the context of the fullness of God’s love through Jesus. Then Jesus roots all of our belonging in unconditional love, declaring, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34–35).
Jesus uses strong language here—the language of command. He draws on his authority to say something unpopular and hard to live out.
Unconditional love is not only the signature mark of our relationships in the community of Jesus; it’s also magnetic to outsiders. Unlike what teenagers normally settle for, unconditional love is not earned and is not based on performance, sharing the same experiences, or fitting in. Willie James Jennings writes, “What will you do if I join you at the body of Jesus and fall in love with your God and with you? . . . This is the most terrifying aspect of interruption: love.”
We Belong WITH the Triune God
Continuing in John’s account of Jesus’ last night, in chapter 14 Jesus promises rooms in God’s house that his disciples will share with him. Jesus isn’t very descriptive about what this will be like or when it will happen, but he makes it clear that no one will be alone while they wait. The Spirit is promised as the comforter and advocate who “lives with you and will be in you” (v. 17).
Catholic writer Carl McColman draws on the early Christian image of the members of the Trinity in a dance to illustrate how the Spirit inhabits us.
God is in us, because we are in Christ. As members of the mystical body, Christians actually partake in the divine nature of the Trinity. We do not merely watch the dance, we dance the dance. We join hands with Christ and the Spirit flows through us and between us and our feet move always in the loving embrace of the Father. In that we are members of the mystical body of Christ, we see the joyful love of the Father through the eyes of the Son. And with every breath, we breathe the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is God WITH us every moment. Jesus assures us of this union: “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you” (v. 20). He repeats this imagery of interconnectedness over and over, driving home the point: stay connected, remain, abide in me (John 15:4–10). This WITH-ness is an avenue for joy (v. 11), friendship with God (v. 15), and peace in the face of adversity (16:33).
We all come from very different backgrounds, but we all still love each other. And we might argue sometimes, but at the end of the day, we are like a family. —Natalie
Even when the earthly community of the church fails us, we can hold to the promise of God’s Spirit WITH us and in us. But Jesus hopes the church will be something more.
We Belong WITH One Another as the Church
In John 17, as Jesus begins to pray, he looks ahead to the future—that all of us may be one and that this oneness would be evidence to the world that Jesus loves us and that God sent Jesus to be with us. Through the church, we choose to move toward one another in Jesus’ name.
This unity creates a sign to the world through the ways we live and treat one another as brothers and sisters, strengthening one another rather than tearing one another apart. As my (Brad’s) friend Warren is fond of saying to our church, this means we are much more than “just a loose association of the independently spiritual.” We are one body. We depend on one another and experience God through one another.
That’s what it means to be God’s people.
This radical version of belonging reinforces our worth. During the course of this research, I (Brad) talked at length with a therapist who works with teenagers. She told me that in her practice, she sees the following pattern over and over: if young people feel belonging, they feel worthy of love. Our inclusivity confers value to the teenagers among us.
It’s important to note here that unity is not the same as uniformity. Our unity in Christ does not erase diversity. Rather, it affirms and even demands diversity for the flourishing of the world. Our distinctive voices allow God’s truth to be told in more than one way. Jesus stands against and overcomes exclusivism—whether by race, ethnicity, gender, or age. We need all of us in order to be fully formed in the image of Christ.
Big Question
Focus
Description
Current Answers
Christ-Centered Answer
Who am I?
Identity
Our view of ourselves
I’m ENOUGH because of Jesus.
Where do I fit?
Belonging
Our connection with others
I fit . . .
I belong WITH God’s people.
WITH Gets Practical—Conversations and Connections
We settle for the illusion of separation when we are endlessly asked to enter into kinship with all.
Gregory Boyle
How can we help young people move from knowing God is WITH them in some mystical way to saying an everyday “Yes” to belonging WITH God’s people concretely? Try these conversations and connections with the teenagers in your life.
Conversations about Belonging
A Conversation Exploring Belonging—No Matter What
Help a teenager evaluate belonging in different contexts and identify where they feel like they belong, no matter what.
NOW
GOD
HOW
A Conversation for When a Teenager Doesn’t Want to Go to Church
“I’m not going to church.”
We’ve all heard these words from a teenager in our family or ministry. The last thing we want is to say or do something that pushes them further away from the faith community. Here are some prompts to help you make headway in what’s often a dead-end conversation.
NOW
GOD
HOW
Conversations about Repair WITH One Another
A friend once confided, “In a family like ours, we say it’s all about repair.”
This friend and her husband both grew up in dysfunctional families. Despite doing a lot of work on healthier relating and conflict management in adulthood, they still experience mistakes, blowups, and catastrophic moments in their marriage and parenting. They’ve made “It’s all about repair” a mantra in the wake of these waves.
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa
Repair is a critical skill: knowing how to mend fractured relationships before they become deep breaks; knowing how to confess our mistakes to one another and ask for forgiveness. While some relationship problems need space or outside intervention—particularly when emotional or physical abuse is involved—we can help teenagers process and walk through their typical struggles with a little support.
NOW
HOW
Conversations about WITH Elsewhere in the Bible
Scripture sings of belonging, particularly as the New Testament makes a turn toward answering the question “What—and who—is the church?” Along with John 13–17, the following passages can be compelling to meditate on, memorize, send by text, or compile into a small group or youth ministry teaching series.
Hospitality-Focused Connections about Belonging
Our lives are knit together not so much by intense feeling as by shared history, tasks, commitments, stories, and sacrifices.
Christine Pohl
Hospitality is a term we often reduce to mean “having someone over for dinner” or maybe to refer to the hotel or restaurant industry. But in our rich Christian tradition of discipleship, hospitality means so much more. It means making room for others. Welcoming the stranger. Saying “you belong here” to someone who doesn’t expect it.
Or as our colleague Scott Cormode likes to say, hospitality means giving the privileges of insiders to outsiders.
Hospitality is offering community to those who haven’t earned it. In fact, all of human life begins with God’s act of hospitality—with God making a place for us in the newly created world. Theologian Miroslav Volf says we practice hospitality because we were made to emulate God. He writes, “Having been embraced by God, we must make space for others and invite them in—even our enemies.”
Deuteronomy 10:19 instructs God’s people: “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (NRSV). And later in the Old Testament, God’s prophets remind the people that God will judge them by their care for widows, orphans, and immigrants—that is, by their treatment of outsiders.
In the New Testament, Jesus both practiced hospitality and received it. He ate with “sinners.” One of the primary reasons the gospel spread was because Christians practiced a new kind of hospitality—welcoming not just important people but even the most marginalized. This was how the early church developed a reputation of love.
Christian hospitality is reciprocal—the blessing flows in both directions, not just from host to guest. Sharing food is certainly part of hospitality, but in our relationships, homes, and churches, we’re invited to lean into a vision of hospitality that is much greater. Here are some ways we can foster hospitality-focused connections with teenagers as part of our everyday “Yes” to God.
Hospitable Connections WITH Church
It’s hard to belong to any community—including a faith community—without shared context and shared experience. Few corporate activities hold power to hospitably connect us to one another like the rituals associated with worship: singing, praying, reciting creeds, taking communion, witnessing baptism, kneeling, raising our hands, giving and receiving hugs.
These interactions can be hard for introverts or young people with social anxiety. Showing up can also be risky because of race, culture, gender, lifestyle, or other background. Here are a few ideas to help you practice hospitality to teenagers in worship.
At our church, we call each other by “brother” or “sister” because we are all brothers and sisters in Christ—because God made us all equal. We treat each other like family. That’s how the church should be, being a whole family in Christ. We’re very connected. —Daniel
a “Data & Statistics on Autism Spectrum Disorder,” June 16, 2020, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html.
b Adapted from Amy Fenton Lee’s two-article series, “Refusing to Ignore Teenagers with Special Needs,” Fuller Youth Institute, September 14, 2014, https://fulleryouthinstitute.org/articles/special-needs; and “Sticky Faith and Special Needs,” Fuller Youth Institute, October 14, 2014, https://fulleryouthinstitute.org/articles/sticky-faith-and-special-needs.
Connections through Hospitable Tables
Just because you’re sharing a meal doesn’t mean teenagers feel like they belong. Whether with one student or a group, try asking the following questions:
Read this passage from the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus just after the resurrection: “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’” (Luke 24:30–32). Then ask:
Work with teenagers to create some shared ground rules for when you share tables. Start by asking:
If students have a hard time getting started, here are some examples:
Practice your new ground rules through an actual meal together and debrief what’s different and how this way of eating might help with hospitality and belonging.
Connections WITH One Another through Our Stories
This may seem obvious, but sharing and listening to stories are acts of hospitality. Whether one-on-one or in a group setting, take time to exchange stories by asking questions like the following:
a Though similar to other social safety nets, socioeconomics shape access to technology and support in navigating it. Given that one out of two US adolescents lives in poverty or in a low-income household, many young people experience gaps in the digital world. Candice L. Odgers and Michael B. Robb, Tweens, Teens, Tech, and Mental Health (San Francisco: Common Sense Media, 2020), 11.
Deeper Connections within Small Groups
It’s no secret to youth ministry leaders that small groups play a critical role in connection. But the secrets to great small groups can seem elusive.
Carrie is a youth pastor in a White, high-pressure, affluent Minneapolis suburb who was wrestling with how her students seemed to be stuck in relationally shallow waters. She knew there was much pain hidden under the surface, but the environment in her community pressed pain and struggle down anytime it emerged. Students were barely treading water, and sometimes drowning in despair, but kept up the appearance of perfection—even in their weekly small groups.
Dissatisfied with this pattern, Carrie and her team decided to experiment with small group practices that might reveal more honesty and foster deeper connections. They started by replacing the typical “highs and lows” prompts during small group time with more vulnerable ones. For the first few months, students and adults alike in small groups shared their responses to the following:
If you really knew me, you would know . . .
If I could say anything to God, I would say . . .
The leaders hoped students would engage in more transparent conversations with one another and God as a result. And they were right. Carrie said, “This practice really helped us break ingrained patterns and open up vulnerability in our small groups.”
Whether you are training leaders to be better facilitators or introducing new sharing practices, as Carrie’s team did, use the ideas in this chapter to help your small groups become places of deeper belonging.
From Half-Belonging to True Belonging
The story of fitting in is everyone’s story. On some level or another, we’ve all experienced not belonging or only half-belonging. We have felt on the edge of outside, half-included but not really “in.”
The season I (Brad) most experienced half-belonging was in middle school. I’ve already shared in chapter 2 about a teacher who noticed and walked with me during that tough period. Her acceptance was so important because I was experiencing rejection on many other fronts.
I tried a lot of things to fit in. Thankfully, I didn’t try anything very harmful; my most desperate attempts were through the channel of fashion. (Feel free to chuckle.)
I belong where I belong. If that needs to be helping people some other place, if that needs to be some other country, if that needs to be across the street, if that needs to be anywhere but where people think I need to be, then that’s where I belong. I belong where God feels I need to belong. I belong where God sets me. And I feel like, at the end of the day, I belong where I choose to belong. —Simone
I’ll never forget my first Coke shirt. This was a real thing in the late ’80s in the South, if nowhere else. The shirt in question was a thick pullover rugby featuring a solid white horizontal stripe across the chest, emblazoned with the red Coca-Cola emblem.
How Coke managed to break into the fashion world remains a mystery, but I sure wanted in on the trend. The kids I hoped to fit in with regularly sported their branded attire at school, and that’s all that mattered. I remember trying to figure out how to ask my mom for one of the shirts. She was (and still is) probably the most no-nonsense person I know, so this was no easy feat.
Eventually, I landed one of these prized possessions. I proudly wore it to school at least once a week. That shirt became my marker of belonging. Finally, I had the right clothes to hang out with the cool group. I wanted to feel like these were my friends, that this was where I belonged.
But it also felt like I was just faking it. After all, it wasn’t true belonging—it was temporarily fitting in.
Not until later in high school did I really experience belonging in friendships. But I grew to understand that everyone feels that sense of half-belonging sometimes. Maybe much of the time.
Perhaps you too remember begging a parent to buy a particular clothing brand so you could fit in. (For Kara, it was neon T-shirts. She’s definitely a by-product of the ’80s.) Or maybe it was something else for you—being part of a team, joining a club, or listening to a certain type of music. What you and I really needed to know then and what we need to know now is that regardless of whether we’re wearing the right clothes or saying the right things, we belong to God, we are loved, God is WITH us, and we belong WITH God’s people.
True belonging starts when we end the tyranny of just fitting in, which is really a tyranny of exclusion. When our church becomes the kind of community that embodies the bold message of inclusion and belonging, we fulfill this yearning for young people—and all generations.
Christ-Centered Belonging Recap
In this chapter, we provide a handful of summary phrases for you and your teenagers. We’ve geared these statements to serve not just as a recap but also as reminders of your conversations and connections. Once you have chosen a belonging message you want to remember, the next step is to create a system that reminds you of that truth every day.
You and your young people might want to set a daily alarm on your phones—to go off perhaps in the morning as you’re getting ready or in the evening as you’re winding down—to remind you to think about one or more of these divine truths.
Or maybe go “low tech” and write God’s better message on an index card you display on your bathroom mirror, car dashboard, or office bookshelf.
Perhaps you and your students can take turns texting important messages to each other, strengthening your mutual commitment to being WITH God’s people.
Whatever you choose, make sure you also do whatever you ask of your young people so you too can share your progress in realizing your true belonging.
Here is a list of messages you can draw from:
REFLECT and APPLY