Editor’s Note: We couldn’t think of a more authentic voice to speak about the complicated and fraught topic of millennials and their participation in both traditional and nontraditional churches than Erin Lane. The author of Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe, Lane’s story is a trenchant look at what it’s like to be a part of generation searching for meaning and connection without hypocrisy and judgment. The summary of Lane’s book describes the tensions millennials live with most succinctly when it says, “Erin Lane’s church experience might be better described in two words: ‘It’s complicated.’ Having grown up in a church, she has an appreciation for liturgy and covenant community. Having graduated from divinity school and taken a job in spiritual formation, she appreciates the structured, shared pursuit of theological and spiritual integrity. Having married a pastor, she sort of had church coming. Yet she wasn’t always sure how to belong.”
In the spirit of welcoming Lane to these pages, we thought we’d start with a short conversation of sorts (since that’s what we’re all about) so that we could get to know each other. After that tête-à-tête, you’ll find a short excerpt from Lessons in Belonging, where Lane speaks her own heart and the heart of her generation about what it means to long to belong and yet find herself unsure of what that really means. In it, Lane talks about her new hometown of Durham, North Carolina, and what it’s like to search for a place to be vulnerable in a location both foreign and intriguing like the South.

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01.  Interview with Erin Lane

With thanks to Alisse Wissman of InterVarsity Press, for conducting the interview on behalf of Conversations Journal.

Conversations Journal: Why did you write Lessons in Belonging?

Erin Lane: I wanted to write a book that explored why anyone my age would be “about” belonging to the church and the gifts we could offer it if we chose to stick around.

 

CJ:      You write that disillusionment is a good thing. Why do you think this is so, and what role can the church play in this?

EL:     Disillusionment has gotten a bad rap. We use it as a way to describe disappointment. I want to recover its most basic meaning as the process of being “stripped” or “freed” from our illusions. Illusions are what keep us from living in reality, and if there’s one thing that’s been made clear to me in writing this book, it’s that God’s reality is better than any fiction I know. It follows then that the church should be a place where we regularly go to get our “reality check,” a place where we can act out who we really are and to whom we really belong.

 

CJ:      Why do you think belonging is so important for the millennial generation? What do you hope they’ll take away from reading about your journey?

EL:     I think belonging is so important to my generation because we feel overwhelmed by the world and the need to find our place in it. We have more options for connecting with one another than ever and more pressure to make the most of them. Further, the institution that previously brokered these connections are losing influence in places like North America. The path to belonging is more confusing than ever. My hope is that readers will feel less alone after reading about my own foibles in belonging and take some small steps—the lessons of belonging, if you will, toward realizing their identity in a community of faith.

 

CJ:      How does your spiritual story, from being raised as a Catholic to being a Methodist pastor’s wife, play a role in how you personally found a place where you feel at home?

EL:     I don’t have a lot of hope that I’d be committed to the church today if my faith identity weren’t so tied to the lives of those I love most. Granted, I’m not someone who really likes the “church as family” metaphor, since I think encountering strangers is one of the best parts about going to church. But having a familial connection to the church helps a commitment phobe like me narrow her options and focus on choosing one place at a time to call home.

Still, I don’t think I’ll ever feel at home in any one tradition. I’m a wanderer, and instead of seeing that as a character flaw (or symptomatic of my generation), I see that now as the gift of going where the Spirit leads.

 

CJ:      What’s the most important thing you’d say to someone who is spiritual but can’t find the motivation to be at church each Sunday?

EL:     I’d say, “Me, too.” I can’t find the motivation to be at church each Sunday either, but I still try to do it. Going to church has to depend on something more than motivation. It has to be a habit that you practice—or want to practice—because at some point you had a revelation that this is where real life is found. A mentor of mine has a quote on her desk that reads, “Discipline is remembering what you want.” Do you want to go to church each Sunday? If not, I can’t convince you. But if so, I’ll be right there with you.

 

CJ:      What’s the number one thing you’d say to folks already in the pews trying to bring in this “none” generation?

EL:     I’d say, “Be yourselves.” There’s nothing more important for the “none” generation than finding a community that’s authentic, transparent, and honest. Don’t try to be something else than you are, but also know that you might have to stretch your comfort zone to welcome the unprecedented diversity of my generation.

 

CJ:      How do you think readers can find belonging through activism and outreach programs beyond the church doors?

EL:     Each of us belongs to a variety of communities in which we find identity and purpose. Although I consider the local church to be “ground zero” for shaping my beliefs on belonging, the nonprofit I work for, the Center for Courage & Renewal, has been more influential in my understanding of how we practice belonging. I think the church has a lot to learn from life outside its doors and can only benefit from those with enough wherewithal to journey between the two.

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02.  Excerpt from Erin Lane’s Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe

Excerpt from Erin Lane’s Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015). Reprinted with permission. All Rights Reserved.

There are bad excuses for not joining a church, but there are good ones, too, like “I don’t trust their version of God,” or “I’m becoming a version of me I don’t like.” Sometimes the reason is more severe, such as, “The humanity of my neighbors is being systematically threatened here,” but often it isn’t anybody’s fault for the bad match. No one is being malicious or manipulative. The relational dynamics are off. A church whose strength is preaching falls flat on the congregant burnt out on intellectualism. A church whose weakness is diversity wounds deep the congregant hungry to be included.

I’ve often assumed that if something’s hard, it must be worth doing. Call it my own version of the Christian folk-wisdom “If the last thing you want to do is be a missionary in Africa, then that’s probably what God’s calling you to do.” I like a challenge. I like to succeed. I like to believe that anything is possible with God and an extra set of hands. This strikes me now as a delusion particular to twenty-somethings but by no means limited to us. Easy is suspicious. Hard is how we prove ourselves. We like to earn merit badges for our perseverance; we think this makes us good, strong, disciplined. Don’t get me wrong; the biblical writers are clear throughout Scripture that this life brings suffering. But must we go looking for it?

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03.  A Kingdom Outpost

A local legend in Durham, North Carolina, Pauli Murray was raised in a mixed family some hundred years ago, her body marked by the violable boundary between slave and slave owner. In her book, Proud Shoes, Murray reflected on the place she called home: “Durham

was a village without pre-Civil War history or strong ante-bellum traditions. In some ways it was like a frontier town. There was considerable prejudice, of course, but there was recognition of individual worth and bridges of mutual respect between the older white and colored families of the town which persisted into the twentieth century.” Reading her words, I wonder whether Durham could be considered an outpost for the kingdom, too.

A frontier town [like Durham] is an exciting place to be. There are innovators, and there are vigilantes. One can make a new name for himself. One can also forget where she came from or who

came before her in this strange land. I remember when we first moved to Durham, part of what we liked about the place was how many other transplants lived here. They made us feel less out of place. But so, too, was it comforting to meet long-timers like Jeanette Stokes, who started the Resource Center for Women in Ministry in the South in 1977 when she was just a few years

out of divinity school, or Marcia, who ran the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham after growing up a race-conscious white girl in Duke Forest during the 1960s. We needed the gifts of these people, too, to show us the way. On the frontier there is a temptation toward rugged individualism on the one hand or native-centric community on the other. It is the same in marriage as we flip flop between arrogantly asserting our will as an individual and passively losing ourselves to the relationship. It is hard to discern a third way.

 

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04.  The Path of Belonging

Soft individualism” is the term suggested by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck to describe the middle path of belonging. It’s the kind of disposition one needs to hold the paradox of self and community. He explains it this way:

 

While rugged individualism predisposes one to arrogance, the “soft” individualism of community leads to humility. Begin to appreciate each other’s gifts, and you begin to appreciate your own limitations. Witness others share their brokenness, and you will become able to accept your own inadequacy and imperfection. Be fully aware of human variety and you will recognize the interdependency of humanity.

 

Healthy community, says Peck, is ultimately a realistic community—or to put it another way—a community in which we can be real. I think of my community of college girlfriends who make me feel nothing less than myself when we’re together. . . . I take space for myself when I need it without worrying I’ll be left out. I speak accurately about my life, and in detail, without fear that they’ll think I’m bragging or wallowing. I’ve spazzed and cussed them out and trusted that at the end of it all they’d chalk it up to a blip (or one of my hypoglycemic meltdowns), because they have a whole history of evidence that makes up this sketch of “Erin.” I trust their version of me.

It has been harder since living in Durham to find friends whom I feel this ease around. I think there’s part of me that will always feel a little lost in the South— where bluntness is considered rude and barbecue is considered food. Sometimes it’s petty things that leave me feeling left out: like how girlfriends who wear sundresses get more “oohs and aahs” than I do on my boyish, oversized button-downs. Other times it’s more distressing, like the unspoken code that we “don’t go there” on impolite topics like religion, sexuality, or how I’ve been in a funk since February. I feel sure I’ve already lost a handful of friends because I wasn’t able to swallow my words like the rest of them. “Tell me when this friendship is getting unhealthy,” I say to [my husband] when I come home from yet another coffee date or girls group feeling worse about myself than when I left. We need to regularly ask other people for perspective on where and with whom we come alive; we can’t always see things clearly when we’re feeling cloudy.

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05.  Self in Community

Christians are often cloudy about the distinction between losing our life to Christ and losing one’s self in community. Losing our life to Christ means letting go of the illusions that alienate us from God. We lose a false life to find the real life.See Matthew 16:24 and John 10:10. In the same way, a healthy community should help us shed the false selves we’ve constructed—the facades of pride, privilege, and protectiveness that keep us alienated from one another—and uncover the person we are by God’s design. Losing one’s life should not mean losing all sense of one’s self. Instead, in real community we come to find out who it is that we really are, what is it that we can offer, and how it is that we belong to this beloved body of believers.