Connection Is Not Enough

It took me six months to walk into a dinner group.

Six months of showing up on a Sunday, liking it, going home, and having no intention of giving up a weeknight for it. I got to this church a month after it started. Chris had planted it in 2008 by asking people to meet over a meal, and he kept asking. I kept saying no.

So if this is your first year and somebody’s already turned you down, or you’re ten years in and you spent last spring getting left on read, you’re in good company. He got told no for a long time. He asked anyway. That’s the only reason I’m here.

What finally changed my mind wasn’t a better pitch. Nobody sat me down and explained community to me. It was a guy on the setup team named Jeff. I liked him. I wanted to hang out with him more. That was the whole reason.

Underneath it I was tired. I had a friend group at the time and I couldn’t keep up with their lifestyle. I said yes when I got tired enough.

That’s usually when people say yes. Not when the argument gets better. When they want connection.

We’re really good at connection

Brené Brown puts language to the thing they’re actually saying yes to.

Connection. The energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.

The Gifts of Imperfection, p. 28

Read that and you’ll see your group night in it. Seen, heard, valued. Give and receive. Strength from each other. We knock this out of the park, and I’m not saying that to be nice.

Here’s the problem with being good at connection.

Everybody in Hoboken has a running family. A book club family. A rooftop family. An everything family. Nobody here is starved for connection, they’ve got more of it than they can schedule. So connection isn’t the thing that makes us different. If connection is the goal, we’re one more good option in a city full of good options, asking somebody to give up a weeknight for something they already have.

They’re not failing at community. They’re succeeding at connection and calling it the whole thing.

The other definition

Belonging. The innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.

The Gifts of Imperfection, p. 36

Put those two side by side and the difference is right there. Connection is the energy between people. Belonging is being part of something larger than us. Two people can make connection. Nobody can make something larger than themselves.

Then read her last sentence again. Your belonging can never be greater than your self-acceptance.

So how’s that going for us? This is a city of people who are extraordinary at self-improvement and have no idea what to do with self-acceptance. We can optimize anything. We can’t accept ourselves. Give a Hoboken professional the assignment “accept yourself” and they’ll turn it into a project with a deadline.

Look at the two things she says we reach for instead. Fitting in. Seeking approval.

That friend group I couldn’t keep up with is exactly what she’s describing. There was plenty of connection in it. I was seen, heard, and valued in that room. And I was exhausted, because staying in it meant keeping up, and keeping up is just auditioning. I didn’t have a word for that back then. The word is fitting in.

Both of those are behavior modification. Change first, then you’re in. Religion loves behavior modification. Behave, then belong. Which means for years people have walked into churches, and into our groups, and been handed a ceiling and told it was good news.

Nobody accepts themselves into belonging. It can’t be done from the inside.

What that group actually did

Here’s the other thing I didn’t have words for at the time. That dinner group helped me find a place to belong, and the cap came off. Not because I finally accepted myself. Because I’d already been accepted.

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family… So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.

Ephesians 1:4-6, NLT

The word is sitting right there in the text. We belong. Chosen before the world was made, holy and without fault in his eyes, adopted into a family. Not one of those is something I produced. Every one of them got decided before I’d done anything worth deciding about.

So self-acceptance isn’t the entry fee for belonging. It’s what happens downstream, once you find out you were accepted a long time ago. Paul says it plainly in Romans 15:7. Accept each other just as Christ has accepted you. Read the order on that. Not once they’ve earned it. The way it was done to you, which was first, and before you had anything to show for it.

I walked into that group because of Jeff. I stayed because of how they made me feel. But somewhere along the way they did something connection can’t do on its own. They changed my gospel.

I walked in believing that if you surround yourself with good people, good things happen. That was my whole theology. Be around good people, become a good person. I walked out with something else. I’m not good because I’m good. I’m good because he is good, and he’s good with me.

They were champions at telling me who I was, and just as good at telling me what to let go of, because it wasn’t who I was.

You can’t change them

Here’s the pressure I want off you.

You can’t change the people in your group. You never could. What you can do is remind them who they are, and maybe more importantly, who they’re not. Accepted, chosen, without fault in his eyes, belonging to his dear Son, before they got anything right. Not the version of themselves they perform to fit in, not the person who has to earn a seat at your table, not the one who has to have a good week to be welcome at it.

Reminding, not fixing. That changes a few things about how you lead.

It means nothing is required to stay. Connection runs on give and receive, so when somebody stops giving, the energy drops, they drift, and we let them go, because the group runs smoother without the drag. Belonging holds the person with nothing to bring. Paul says if the foot decides it isn’t part of the body because it isn’t a hand, that doesn’t make it any less part of the body. People disqualify themselves all the time. It has never once worked. So when somebody goes quiet on you in October, there’s a voice telling you to write them off and a voice telling you this matters to them more than they know. Listen to the second one.

It means this is bigger than your group. Psalm 68:6 says God places the lonely in families. God places. Not you. You’re not the source of anybody’s belonging, you’re the room where he does it. So it outlasts your group night. Somebody can move to Ridgewood, stop answering the group chat, and still belong, because the family was never yours to hand out. It also means a hard year doesn’t cost anybody their place. Not theirs, and not yours.

And it means you have to say it out loud. A connection group feels it and never names it. Nobody knows they belong until somebody tells them. Paul told the Gentiles they were no longer strangers and foreigners, that they were citizens along with all of God’s holy people and members of his family. That’s true of the person sitting on your floor with a paper plate this week, and there’s a good chance nobody has ever said it to them.

You get to be the one who says it.

I don’t think about those six months much anymore. I think about Jeff. He wasn’t trying to get me into a group. He was just somebody I wanted to be around, and then a room full of people kept telling me who I was until I believed them.

That’s the job. It’s smaller than it sounds, and it’s the only part of this you were ever able to do.

Discussion questions

Use these with your group, your apprentice, or in your next huddle.

• How have you witnessed belonging in community? What did the person do that made the difference?
• Where is your group strong at connection and quiet about belonging?
• Who in your group is most likely to disqualify themselves this fall? What would it look like to reach out one more time?