Believing Together
Part 5 of 5 - Being the Church Together
From gatekeeping certainty to shared trust in Jesus
TL;DR: Belief matters. But belief was never meant to be a weapon at the front door, deciding who deserves love and who does not. Faith becomes truer when it is centered on Jesus, carried in community, honest about doubt, and spacious enough for people still learning how to trust.
“The Kingdom of God is not in the wisdom of the world, nor in eloquence,
but in the faith of the cross and in the virtue of dialogue.”
— St. Cyprian, quoted in The Virtue of Dialogue by C. Christopher Smith
Belief Belongs Inside Beloved Community
“The Christian of the future will be a mystic
or will not exist at all.”
— Karl Rahner
Belief matters, but it was never meant to be the condition for love.
This whole series has been moving toward this.
We began with our belovedness. You are loved before you are useful.
Then belonging. You do not have to earn your place at the table.
Then becoming. We become more fully human in Christ, together.
Then blessing. Love grows outward into shared care, justice, healing, and public mercy.
And now, belief.
For many of us, belief has always stood at the front door of the church.
Believe the right things.
Say the right words.
Pass the test.
Then you can enter.
Then maybe you can belong.
But what if the church has often put belief in the wrong place?
Not because belief does not matter. It matters deeply. What we trust shapes how we live. What we confess shapes what we love. What we center shapes who we become.
But belief belongs inside beloved community, not before it.
There is also mystery wrapped up in faith. Our beliefs change as we encounter and experience the God of Love. No one holds exactly the same beliefs for an entire lifetime. We grow. We let go. We ask better questions. We see things we could not see before. We are changed by suffering, by grace, by Scripture, by community, by prayer, by the living presence of Jesus.
That is part of why I call myself a mystic.
And honestly, I think we all are, at least a little.
There is mystery at the center of faith. That does not make belief meaningless. It makes belief alive. And if belief is alive, if it grows and deepens as we grow and deepen, then requiring an exact statement of belief before belonging can begin feels like asking people to freeze what God may still be forming.
Faith is not a tribal sorting mechanism. It is not a fixed test people must pass before love begins. It is a communal act of trust, wrestling, confession, and centering on Jesus together.
Certainty Can Become a Gate
“Doubt is not the enemy of faith, a solely destructive force that rips us away from God, a dark cloud that blocks the bright warm sun of faith. Doubt is only the enemy of faith when we equate faith with certainty in our thinking.”
— Peter Enns
When belief becomes a test of belonging,
the church often confuses certainty with faith.
I understand why churches do this.
Certainty feels safe.
Clear boundaries feel safe.
A checklist feels safe.
And when the world feels confusing, it can be tempting to build a version of church where everyone knows who is in, who is out, who is right, and who is dangerous.
But certainty can become a gate. Certainty can become a way of keeping people at a distance until they sound enough like us to be trusted. Certainty can become a way of avoiding real relationship.
Preston Ulmer writes that “connection and condemnation can’t share the same space.” That line feels painfully true. When we are busy deciding what is wrong with someone, it is hard to truly see them. It is hard to listen. It is hard to love.
And maybe that is one reason so many spiritually wounded people do not experience church as good news. They are not met as beloved people. They are treated like problems to solve.
Doubters become threats.
Questions become rebellion.
Difference becomes danger.
And faith becomes less about trusting Jesus and more about proving we are not one of them.
Jesus Made Room For Unfinished Faith
“Certitude can be an incubator for cruelty.
Perceived infallibility can lead to brutality.”
— Brian Zahnd
Jesus did not shame people for coming slowly.
Jesus kept making room for trust to grow.
This is one of the things I love most about Jesus. He does not seem nearly as anxious about people’s unfinished faith as many churches are.
Jesus asks questions. He tells stories. He eats with complicated people. He welcomes those who are curious, confused, afraid, wounded, skeptical, ashamed, and still becoming. He does not flatten faith into agreement. He invites trust.
Ulmer says Jesus was “persuasive, not argumentative,” “curious, not critical,” and “connected before he corrected.” I would not build a whole theology on those phrases, but they do name something tender and true about the way Jesus moves through the Gospels.
Jesus did not treat people like projects.
He met them.
He listened.
He asked better questions than the religious gatekeepers knew how to ask.
And he kept opening a way toward the Father.
That matters for how we imagine belief. Faith is not the absence of questions. Faith is the trust that lets us keep walking with Jesus while the questions are still with us.
Thomas Was Carried By The Community
“Doubt is one of the grandest birthing experiences on your quest,
signaling that you are on the verge of growth.”
— Robert Taylor
Sometimes the church believes for us until we can believe again.
Thomas was not there the first time the risen Jesus appeared to the disciples. Thomas missed Easter.
He missed the moment everyone else would talk about for the rest of their lives. He missed the breath of resurrection in the room. He missed the peace Jesus spoke over their fear.
And when they told him, he could not receive it.
Unless I see, he said.
Unless I touch.
Unless I know this is not wishful thinking.
Many churches would have known what to do with Thomas. Correct him. Warn him. Make him an example. Maybe ask him to step away from leadership until his theology improved.
But the disciples do something more beautiful. They keep him.
A week later, Thomas is still with them. Still in the room. Still held by the community that believed what he could not yet believe.
That may be one of the most important pictures of church in the whole New Testament.
The church is not a room full of people who never doubt. The church is a community where the doubting are not abandoned.
Sometimes faith is personal conviction. Sometimes faith is being carried by people who stay with us until we can breathe again.
Even Peter Struggled at the Table
“Put differently, we’ve made the church into the American dream for our own ethnic group with the same set of convictions about next to everything. No one else feels welcome. What Jesus and the apostles taught was that you were welcomed because the church welcomed all to the table.”
— Scot McKnight
Belief becomes distorted when fear makes us leave the table.
Peter knew the gospel. Peter had seen the Spirit fall on Gentiles. Peter had learned, painfully and beautifully, that God was drawing people into the family who did not fit the old boundary markers.
And still, in Galatians, Peter pulls back from the Gentile table when certain people arrive.
That story is so Peter. Three steps forward, two steps back. Even full of the Holy Spirit, he still stumbles. We all do.
Peter believes the truth, but fear interrupts his practice. He knows grace is wider than the old lines, but pressure pulls him back into separation. His theology is ahead of his courage.
I know that feeling. Maybe a lot of us do.
This is why belief cannot stay abstract. The question is not only what we say we believe. The question is what our belief does at the table.
Does it make room?
Does it cross lines?
Does it tell the truth about grace?
Does it help us stay in fellowship with people we were taught to avoid?
Or does it give us religious language for pulling away?
Peter needed correction, yes. But he also needed community. He needed the body of Christ to help him live the truth he already knew.
So do we.
The Creed is a Song We Carry Together
“I believe in Christ and confess him not like some child;
my hosanna has passed through an enormous furnace of doubt.”
— Brian Zahnd
The ancient faith is not a weapon to swing at people. It is a story we learn to inhabit together.
I still believe in creeds.
I believe in the old words.
Not because they answer every question.
Not because they remove mystery.
Not because everyone who says them understands them the same way.
I believe in them because sometimes the church needs words older than our fear.
The creed is not an entry exam.
It is more like a song the church has carried through time.
I believe in God the Father Almighty.
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord.
I believe in the Holy Spirit.
The communion of saints.
The forgiveness of sins.
The resurrection of the body.
The life everlasting.
Some days, we sing those words with confidence.
Some days, we borrow them.
Some days, the words carry us.
And that is okay.
The church does not confess faith because every person in the room has achieved perfect certainty. The church confesses faith because together we are trying to center our lives on the God revealed in Jesus.
That is enough.
Maybe more than enough.
Conversation is a Practice of Faith
“Conversation becomes the way that our churches discern together
who our members are, how we will care for our collective body,
and how we strive to embody Christ together.”
— C. Christopher Smith, The Virtue of Dialogue
Believing together means learning how to speak and listen without fear.
If belief belongs in community, then conversation becomes holy work.
C. Christopher Smith says conversation is central to congregational formation. Churches learn to share convictions, hopes, and stories together, and through that shared practice they discern how to embody Christ in their particular place.
That sounds simple. It is not.
Conversation can be hard because people are messy. We carry wounds, assumptions, fears, histories, family systems, theological baggage, and old defenses into the room with us.
But conversation is one way the Spirit teaches us to become the body of Christ.
Not by forcing everyone to think exactly the same thing.
Not by letting the loudest voices win.
By making space for truth and love to meet.
Smith and Pattison say Slow Church requires “a broad and long and even slow conversation” about what faithful life together means. They are right. Fast church wants quick agreement. Slow church learns to listen long enough for trust to grow.
Faith needs that kind of slowness. So do people.
Sacred conversation forms a church as a place of true belonging in a way a written statement of belief never can by itself. Statements may name what we value, but conversation teaches us how to love.
It is in sacred conversation that a congregation becomes family. We listen as our siblings share stories of life, love, suffering, doubt, and trauma. We begin to hear what they have carried. We begin to see the image of God in them more clearly.
And the more we listen, the more we realize something holy and humbling:
We are not as alone as we thought.
We have more in common than fear told us.
And even where we are different, Christ can still meet us there.
Jesus is the Center, not the Fence
“There is, however, something odd about this pattern. Other than joining a political party, it is hard to think of any other sort of community that people join by agreeing to a set of principles. Imagine joining a knitting group. Does anyone go to a knitting group and ask if the knitters believe in knitting or what they hold to be true about knitting? Do people ask for a knitting doctrinal statement? Indeed, if you start knitting by reading a book about knitting or a history of knitting or a theory of knitting, you will very likely never knit.”
― Diana Butler Bass
The question is not who is far enough inside the line.
The question is whether we are moving toward Jesus together.
This is where centered-set language has helped me.
Some churches imagine faith like a bounded set. There is a line. Some people are inside. Some are outside. The work of the church becomes managing the line.
Who is in?
Who is out?
Who is safe?
Who is suspect?
But what if church is more like a centered set?
Jesus is the center.
Some people are close to the center. Some are far away. Some are moving toward him with clarity. Some are stumbling. Some are circling. Some are not sure what they believe, but they are drawn to his mercy, his courage, his welcome, his way.
The question becomes different.
Not, “Have you crossed our line?”
But, “Are we turning toward Jesus?”
That does not make belief smaller. It makes belief more Christ-centered.
It means we are not asking people to become like us.
We are inviting one another to behold Christ and follow his way.
And honestly, that may be harder.
Because gatekeeping can happen at a distance.
Following Jesus requires our whole lives.
Jesus is Still Knocking
“They reminded me that Christianity isn’t meant to simply be believed; it’s meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. They reminded me that, try as I may, I can’t be a Christian on my own. I need a community. I need the church.”
― Rachel Held Evans
The most frightening possibility is that Jesus could be outside the church asking to be let in.
There is a haunting image in Revelation 3.
Jesus says, “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking.”
I grew up hearing that verse used as an evangelism verse, as if Jesus were knocking on the door of an unbeliever’s heart.
But in Revelation, Jesus is speaking to a church.
That is a whole different story.
Jesus is outside the church, knocking.
Not because the church has no beliefs.
Not because the church has no religion.
Not because the church has no activity.
Because somehow a church can become so self-satisfied, so certain, so secure in itself, that Jesus is no longer at the center.
How did Jesus get kicked out of the church?
or Did Jesus leave because he wasn’t welcome there?
Either way, Jesus never gives us, he continues to knock,
Because he desires a relationship with us around the family table.
That image should humble us.
Would Jesus be welcomed in many of our churches?
Would his table practices disturb us?
Would his mercy feel too loose?
Would his truth feel too disruptive?
Would his love for the people we call “them” make us nervous?
Would we recognize him if he came to us through the doubter, the stranger, the wounded, the poor, the queer kid, the migrant, the agnostic, the person who has no interest in church but still hungers for love?
I ask because I think it is possible to defend Christian beliefs in ways that make us less available to Christ.
Believing Together
“Christianity did not begin with a confession.
It began with an invitation into friendship, into creating a new community,
into forming relationships based on love and service.”
― Diana Butler Bass
Faith becomes truer when it is centered on Jesus and carried together.
So yes, belief matters.
But maybe it matters differently than we were taught.
Belief is not the front gate where we decide who deserves belonging.
It is the shared trust that grows as beloved people keep turning toward Jesus together.
It is Thomas staying in the room.
It is Peter being called back to the table.
It is the creed carrying us when our own words fail.
It is conversation shaped by humility.
It is doubt held without shame.
It is confession spoken with the whole church, not as a test of certainty, but as an act of hope.
We believe together because none of us can hold the whole thing alone.
We need one another’s courage.
One another’s questions.
One another’s songs.
One another’s memory.
One another’s faith.
And above all, we need Jesus at the center.
Not our tribe.
Not our certainty.
Not our institutional survival.
Jesus.
The Human One.
The crucified and risen one.
The one who keeps meeting us behind locked doors.
The one who keeps breathing peace over frightened people.
The one who keeps setting tables where the wrong people become family.
The one who keeps standing at the door, knocking.
Maybe the final word for this series is not complicated. Maybe it is simply this:
What if the church’s first calling is not to get bigger,
but to become a people who are truly together in Christ?
Beloved together.
Belonging together.
Becoming together.
Blessing together.
Believing together.
Being the Church Together.
Let’s Talk
When has doubt made you feel excluded, and when has it been held with love?
What would change if belief belonged inside beloved community instead of at the front gate?
Where do you sense Jesus knocking on the door of the church today?
Series Conclusion
Being Church Together has been a series about recovering the church as a beloved community of love, belonging, healing, formation, blessing, and shared faith in the way of Jesus.
The thesis has been simple: church is not meant to be a place where people learn to perform religion. It is meant to be a people through whom Christ’s love becomes visible.
We are loved before we are measured.
We belong before we have everything figured out.
We become human and holy with other people.
We are blessed so we can become a blessing.
And we believe together, not because certainty comes easily, but because Jesus keeps meeting us in the room.
That is the hope I am carrying from this series.
Not a bigger church first.
A truer one.
A people truly together in Christ.
Yes, centering on Jesus together.