Why belonging requires boundaries—and clear ways to cross them
This week in Substack Seminary, we’re asking questions about membership and belonging:
What does “membership” mean in your community? Or, to ask it more bluntly, how does someone know if they are in or out?
It reminded me, perhaps strangely, of Christian summer camp.
The strange power of belonging
I was recently watching the 2021 Netflix movie A Week Away to kill some time one evening—and relive the glory days of ’90s CCM music.
What I’ve always found fascinating about youth summer camps is the team aspect. Teenagers arrive at camp and are divided into rival teams that may have little connection to anything outside that particular week.
And yet, almost immediately, people begin developing surprisingly strong allegiances to their team—and opposition to the others.
There is nothing particularly unique about summer camp here. Human beings are remarkably good at creating groups and identifying ourselves as part of them.
We saw the same thing during this summer’s World Cup. Millions of people passionately cheered for teams based, ultimately, on where lines have been drawn on a map.
We want to belong to something. And belonging inevitably creates some distinction between who is inside and who is outside.
The problem isn’t boundaries
Understandably, there has been a tendency in some church circles to respond to the destructive ways boundaries have been used by acting as if boundaries themselves are the problem.
I understand that impulse.
Churches have used boundaries to exclude people for all kinds of terrible reasons.
But I don’t think the answer is pretending boundaries don’t exist.
As Fr. Cathie Caimano and others have noted, the ubiquitous church phrase “all are welcome” can become so vague that it tells people almost nothing. Welcome to what? What does belonging here mean? How would I know whether I actually belong?
People want to know how they can get in.
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Jesus doesn’t eliminate belonging
This is where I think an important distinction gets lost.
The problem isn’t having an inside and outside. The problem is creating unjust qualifications for who is allowed to cross the boundary.
A country club saying only white men can join is obviously exclusionary.
But saying, “Here is what membership means, here is what we commit ourselves to, and here is how you can become part of it” is something quite different.
Sometimes Christians say that Jesus erases boundaries. I’m not sure that’s quite right.
Jesus radically broadens who is invited to become an insider.
That’s a significant difference.
The Christian story is filled with language about belonging: body, family, citizenship, covenant, community. The invitation is expansive, but there is still something we are being invited into.
'We can start something new, but we need to stay connected'
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Why this matters for Substack Seminary
This is the kind of question we’re wrestling with in Substack Seminary—not simply how to make ministries more welcoming, but what exactly we are welcoming people into.
A healthy ministry doesn’t need to eliminate its boundaries.
It needs to make its invitation clear, its expectations meaningful, and the path toward belonging genuinely open.
If you’re building or reimagining a ministry and trying to figure out what belonging should actually mean, join us.
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I get the distinction between good boundaries and bad boundaries, but I still can’t shake the feeling that boundaries are bad when it comes to the spiritual life and belonging.
There’s nothing wrong with clearly stating aspirational goals, but I don’t believe that any spiritual community (i.e. church, congregation) should put forth any boundaries to entry, other than simply the need to WANT to be “in.”
Even to tell someone, a spiritual “seeker,” for instance, that to be a part of our community, you must be willing to “stop doing x” seems antithetical to the nature of god. If god desires all to come to him, then we must let god do the drawing.
Our part is to remove any boundaries, which appears to be exactly the opposite of what is being argued here.
Now, if we are talking a Christian “ministry” with a particular function versus a congregation, I can see how some boundaries, even rules might be helpful.
What am I missing?