Practicing Belonging: A Recap of Community Night
This past week, we gathered for our Community Night —a space we hold a couple times a year to pause, reconnect, and explore what it means to belong together in a Jesus-centered community.
Why We Gather
Community Night is a rhythm we return to as a church. We come together to think about our values and vision, share stories, ask questions, and co-create the kind of community we want to be. It’s where our shared vision becomes real.
This season, we’re asking:
How do we stay rooted in love and belonging, especially when we differ?
Rooted in Love Through Disagreement
Jonny led us through a thoughtful session on navigating disagreement and tension within community. We reflected on the ways disagreement—especially around identity, politics, and theology—can feel personal and painful. But instead of avoiding it, we explored frameworks for moving through it with grace:
Centered-Set Community: What if our unity isn’t based on agreement, but shared direction—toward Jesus?
Mutuality over Power: Can we make space for one another’s voices without needing to convince?
Values Beneath Views: What shared value might be beneath someone else’s opposing stance?
We also gained tools like Curious Conversation questions and a Disagreement Covenant, rooted in presence, understanding, and returning to joy—even when resolution feels far off.
Practices That Help Us Belong
After a time of silent reflection and prayer, Heather shared the direction for this fall. We’ll be exploring a set of biblical practices that help us become people who can truly belong together—not just in ideas, but in real, embodied ways.
These practices include themes like belonging, friendship, peacemaking, trust, forgiveness, and restoration. They’re not abstract ideals, but habits we can choose—especially when relationships get hard. They don’t erase our differences; they give us a path for staying connected through them.
Imagination for the Future
We were reminded that the kingdom of God is both already and not yet—breaking into our lives in glimpses, even as we long for its fullness.
When we pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we’re not just saying words—we’re inviting that prayer to become our lives. That imagination of the kingdom emboldens us to live differently now: when forgiveness feels costly, peacemaking feels risky, or trust feels fragile.
As we closed the night, we turned toward that imagination with one final question:
“What comes to mind when you imagine a Jesus-centered community?”
Our conversations gave voice to a collective imagination:
The need for Jesus. Collective participation. Being wanted. Agreeing on how we disagree. Returning to love. Restoration. Safety. Vulnerability. Reciprocity. Service and community care—in our community and the community around us. Knowing Jesus. Shared values. Repairing our way forward.
Hope That Shapes Action
We closed with a prayer discovered by Jordan Moss—a perfect fit to help us stretch our imagination toward what’s possible. It invited us into the practice of intercession—not as escape, but as spiritual resistance grounded in hope.
Walter Wink writes:
“Intercessory prayer is spiritual defiance of what is in the way of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current forces. Prayer infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present.”
The full quote is available in the slide deck, but the heart of it is this:
When we pray, we don’t just ask—we imagine. We participate in shaping the future.
Looking Ahead
This fall, let’s be people who:
Show up and stay present
Practice the habits of community
Hold onto the future Jesus has promised—especially when it’s hard
We’re excited to journey together. Join us in Home Church—new groups launching in October—Sunday class, or sign up to serve (at The Inn Between, on Sundays, or through Know Your Neighbor).
Together, we can continue becoming the kind of people who belong together—even in our differences.
Thank you to everyone who came.
We hope this recap is helpful for those who weren’t able to make it. The slide deck is available below—for those who want to revisit it, and for those who may benefit even if they couldn’t be in the room.
[See the Canva slide deck here]
