Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand

Believing without belonging: Yeah Right

The day before Christmas I was rung by a New Zealand Herald reporter to comment on a poll they had just run which showed that while 70% of New Zealanders believed in God only 20% attended church regularly. Why the big difference I was asked? My first comment was that it was not only an issue for belonging to religious communities but all kinds of voluntary communities. For example while rugby was still incredibly important in New Zealand, whereas in the 1970s 400,000 belonged to rugby communities (called “clubs”) by 2000 that was down to 100,000. I have just run the Christchurch Marathon, which had record numbers of participants (3,300). But involvement in organised running through athletic and harrier clubs has consistently fallen, and very few of the participants belonged to clubs.

Why is belonging out of fashion so much?

• One reason often given is the increasing individualism of our society. Belonging in a sense requires us to put the good of group before our individual needs, but increasingly the pursuit of individual needs has become the only goal for many.
• Another is that anti-institutionalism has become a basic value for many under about 50, and all kinds of measures show this is increasing.
• Finally in one sense we don’t need official groups to do things anymore. In a previous era you had to belong to a club to be involved in sport – you no longer do for most. Likewise to access religious or spiritual resources you had to be part of an organised group, but now you can access them for yourself anywhere anytime.

If you are just in it for yourself then for so many things you no longer need to join up. It’s all available on line or elsewhere.

Can we believe without belonging?

So how do we respond? Join in because you can’t beat it, and after all doesn’t Jesus promise to meet our every need…? Well I think we may need to begin at that point. God in his grace through Jesus does offer to come to us to meet our deepest needs. But the gospel is so much more than that. It is also a call to commitment to a greater cause, a call to belong to a community in which we seek no longer our own needs but to serve others in the community and the world. So we need to begin where people may be at, but we dare not leave them there because that would be to sell the gospel short. Also we are told in the scriptures, and I believe it to be completely true as evidenced by the lives of many, that it is only in serving rather being served, in giving rather than receiving, that we find true satisfaction. And that can only be done when we belong to community.

When he’s not breaking records running marathons, Kevin teaches at the School of Ministry in Dunedin and writes interesting spiels – which you can read here: www.knoxcollege.ac.nz/staff