“Our desire to feel like we belong is so powerful that we will go to great lengths, do irrational things, and often spend money to get that feeling.”

-Simon Sinek, ‘Start with Why’

Churches everywhere struggle with the idea of creating or injecting new life into their congregations and communities (commonly called ‘revitalization’). There are a multitude of reasons churches struggle to ‘revitalize’. One of the biggest barriers to adding new life to a church is actually one of the churches intrinsic strengths; a sense of belonging.

The above quote highlights the deep desire that we as human beings have to ‘belong’ somewhere. That desire to belong is why groups, clubs, gangs, and organizations form. We all want a place to “fit in”. And every group has it’s own culture to determine who ‘fits in’. For example, there are organizations where the only criteria to ‘fit in’ is wearing a red hat.

The challenge with revitalizing a church is that to add new life means that you are inviting people who haven’t ‘fit in’ before into the culture. For example, let’s say for decades you only had to wear a red hat to belong to the church (it’s clearly more complicated than this). Over time, the church loses attendance. It turns out that people in the community like wearing green, yellow, and blue hats, so they don’t fit in at the church. (If you change ‘hats’ for any number of things like worship style, service projects, or theology, you can see this principle more clearly).

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