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October 5, 2026
Beloved in Christ,
Once, when I was home during a college vacation week, I attended a service at my childhood church. There was a new family who had started attending, with young children - the son would have been about five, the daughter perhaps two. I saw them at coffee hour, and mentioned to an older member how nice it was to see them looking so comfortable in the church already. The older member didn’t smile, but commented on how the boy would always wear a costume instead of “real clothes” to church. It wasn’t right, in this person’s opinion - church was a place where one should wear one’s nicest clothes in order to show respect to God and the Church.
Their response didn’t sit quite right with me, though at that age I couldn’t quite articulate why. So I took my discomfort to another person in that church, one I’d turned to for advice many times. “A church where everyone looks alike doesn’t give glory to God,” she said, “because God didn’t make us all alike. This little boy is telling us who he is. We respect him, and God, by honoring the many ways God made us all. It isn’t respectful to insist people change to match our expectations.”
I thought of that response, thirty years later, when I heard researcher and author Brené Brown say “The opposite of belonging isn’t exclusion, it’s fitting in. Because fitting in is what happens when we change ourselves to be what we’re expected to be, rather than what we are.” And I realized that my whole lived experience of church, including my encounter with that little boy, had given me the foundational belief that church should always be a place of belonging, rather than fitting in. We show glory to God when we enter into community with people as God made them.
When we find the places where we don’t have to pretend - where we can simply be ourselves - we have found something precious. These are the places we care for, with our time, talent, and treasure, because they are the places where we practice being honestly and authentically ourselves. These are the places we care for, because they are the places we practice giving glory to God for the fullness of all that God has made; they are the places where we worship our God, who made this complex, expansive, beautiful Creation and still decided that the world was not complete without each and every one of us, exactly as God made us… including a little boy who grew up knowing he was made in God’s image, costumes and all.
In the past few weeks, we’ve heard the faith stories of several of our own community members, and below the surface I keep hearing that gratitude for being met where we are, with grace and compassion. It gives me hope that together, we are creating a church of belonging - of honest and authentic care. And I can think of no greater joy than this, because a church that becomes a place of belonging gives glory to the God who created us, and who loves us, and who calls us to love one another just as we are.
In this Stewardship season, I hope we will reflect on the value of being in a place where we don’t have to change ourselves to be worthy of love and belonging. And I hope we will consider what it takes to create that place of honesty and grace for one another and for those who are still seeking the belonging that we get to have together. None of this happens by itself, but requires our support and our faith. Together, let us give glory to the God who made us all, and calls us all into beloved community.
Yours in faith,
Eliza
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