Belonging Matters

Welcome to an audio teaching from Windsor Park Baptist Church in Auckland, New Zealand.

If you would like to look at the message notes or see some questions for reflection that take their lead from today's teaching, head to our website winterpark.org.nz and head to the online tab where you'll see services and series, and you can download different resources from there.

Thanks for joining us, and we hope you're encouraged by today's teaching.

This morning it's my privilege to bring a message on belonging matters from Welcome to Family, referencing First Corinthians chapter 12, 12 to 27, and Ephesians chapter 2, 19 to 22.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

But firstly, let me introduce myself.

I call Michael Aho, I call Mangri Temana, call Manakao Timuwana, called Duchess of Argyll Towaka, I call Douglas Clan to Iwi, I call Albert Briggs, called James Douglas to Tipuna, call New Zealand Army Temurai, I call Melissa Takua Heni, call Joshua Caitlin Hannah, Natamariki, call Michael Tokuwingua, call Equip, CEO to Mahi Noor, Aida Tena, Koto Tena, Koto Tena Tato, Akatoa.

Thank you for the opportunity to share with you this morning with a message that connects closely with this week's annual mental health awareness week theme, which is belonging matters.

Look, by way of further introduction of me and my own early life, it was shaped by my father's alcoholism and significant violence in our home.

My parents separated when I was young, about six years old.

But the fear and anxiety and disruption to my life continued for many years afterwards into my late teens.

As a young person, I carried a lot of anger and hurt.

And when I was about 16, we actually moved next door to the Salvation Army Corps in Otahahu.

And I started attending the youth group there.

I arrived at that youth group as a very skinny back then, uncertain and fairly broken young man from a troubled home.

Yet the young people there welcomed me in, made room for me, and invited me into the life of their community as one of their own.

Before long, that youth group became a family to me.

Through the influence of that community of young people, I came to faith in Jesus Christ and began the lifelong journey of following him.

A few years later, completely changed by the grace that God had extended to me, I found myself extending grace towards my dad, tracking him down, living in a boarding house in Newmarket, and slowly we began rebuilding our relationship.

I guess to my surprise, at the same time I was doing that, I was also the one being set free.

That experience taught me something really important about grace.

Grace is relational.

Forgiveness can present the opportunity to change not just to the person who chooses to receive forgiveness, but also to the person who chooses to offer that.

Eventually, God led me and my wife into full-time ministry with the Salvation Army, both in church and social service settings and roles.

And today I find myself having the privilege of serving as the CEO of Equip, having started there in December last year.

As many of you may know, Equip is a really important expression of the ministry and mission of Windsor Park Baptist Church.

My exceptional colleagues at Equip support people experiencing mental health and addiction challenges through a range of community-based services focused on well-being, recovery, connection, and hope.

These include adult and older adult community support services, transitional housing, Coromiko House respite services, and the Totora Club Dementia Programme.

Over the past year, Equip has supported 1,364 Tangitva Auder, delivered close to 30,000 hours of direct community support, provided 1,500 respite bednights at Coromako House, nearly a thousand transitional housing nights, and nearly 3,000 people have attended Totora Club.

But behind every number is a person with a name, a story, hopes, dreams, strengths, and gifts.

And if my own life, together with years spent in ministry and leading social services, has taught me anything, it is this.

People flourish when they experience connection, purpose, support, and belonging.

Belonging matters.

And this year's Mental Health Awareness Week campaign is built around the fukatoki ko-o koqui, koqui, ko-o.

I am you and you are me.

It's a really deep word picture, reminding us that our well-being is interconnected, that we are shaped by each other, and that by becoming part of a community where we are known, valued, and able to contribute, we can flourish and live well.

For a moment, I would like to reflect on how it is God's grace that gives us a place to belong in God's family.

I think we all know instinctively that belonging matters.

We see it in children finding their place at school, and we see it in workplaces, neighborhoods, sporting clubs, and families.

People looking for connection, meaning, and community.

The Bible speaks into that longing.

In Genesis chapter 2, verse 18, we read, The Lord said, It is not good for the man to be alone.

Genesis 2:18

I will make a helper suitable for him.

In its immediate context, God is speaking about creating a suitable companion, yet it also reveals something broader about humanity.

We were created for relationship with God first and foremost, however, with one another as well.

Perhaps that is why loneliness can hurt so deeply.

Perhaps that is why exclusion can be so painful, and perhaps that is why belonging can be so life giving.

Paul writes to the church in Ephesus, and we read in his writing in Ephesians chapter two and verse nineteen Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household.

I love that image.

No longer strangers, no longer outsiders, no longer standing on the edge, looking in, wondering whether there is a place for me.

Instead there is welcome into God's family, there is home, there is belonging.

Paul continues by saying, Built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone, in him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord, and in him you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.

Ephesians two verses twenty to twenty two.

Notice those words being built together.

Christian faith is deeply personal, of course it is, but it was never intended to be private.

God was always building a community and creating a family, and it all begins with grace.

John Wesley referred to this as provenient grace, grace that goes before us, before we seek God, before we understand God, before we have everything sorted out, God is already reaching towards us.

God's grace is there first, and that is great news, because if belonging depended upon having life sorted out first, I certainly would not qualify.

Belonging begins with grace, not achievement, not perfection, not performance, God's grace.

Perhaps the greatest calling of the church is simply helping people just to discover God's grace.

Not creating it, not controlling it, simply reflecting it, becoming a community that says there is room for other people here.

Many people can spend years wondering where they fit.

Some carry loneliness, some are navigating grief, some live with anxiety, depression, or other complex mental health challenges that can be debilitating.

Some are recovering from addiction, others are simply tired from the pressures of life, and often there is a quiet question beneath all of that, where do I belong?

I have discovered over the years that belonging can grow in all kinds of places.

One of those places for me has been around the subculture of motorcycles.

For many years I have belonged to a motorcycle club.

Nobody joins a motorcycle club because they need another membership card.

People arrive because of their shared interest and passion for motorcycles, but they stay because of the people that they meet there.

Before long, you know the names of the other riders and their stories, you get to know their family, you ride together, help one another, and share life together, and somewhere along the way, a collection of people interested in motorcycles becomes a community.

The church offers much deeper connection because our belonging is grounded not simply in a shared hobby, but in the grace of a living and a loving God.

The gospel answers the question of belonging with a wonderful invitation.

You are welcome, you are seen, there is place for you here.

Grace gives us that place.

Now, if we take this a step further, even the human body reminds us that we are all needed.

And in Corinthians, Paul shifts us to think about a new image of a household, a new image different from a household, but to the image of a body.

Because belonging is about more than having a place, it is about having a purpose.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 12, the body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts, and though all its parts are many, they form one body, so it is with Christ.

1 Corinthians 12:12

If you're my age or older at school, you would have learnt the song Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes, Eyes and Ears, and so the song goes on.

Different functions, different contributions, yet every part of the body belongs.

Paul understands something about our shared humanity and nature here, I believe.

We compare ourselves to each other.

It's like we can't help ourselves, looking at other people's gifts, abilities, and experiences with a bit of a side eye.

And sometimes we quietly wonder whether we measure up compared to others.

That is why Paul imagines the foot saying, Because I am not a hand, I do not belong.

But Paul says that is not how belonging works when he goes on to say in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 18, but in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.

1 Corinthians 12:18

Difference is not the problem.

Difference is a part of God's plan by design.

Different personalities, different experiences, different stories, all contributing to the richness of the body of Christ in the church family, the church community.

Paul then turns the picture around and speaks.

No leader has every gift, no ministry has every answer.

The family of God flourishes because every part contributes and belongs.

That is something I also had impressed upon me during my service in the New Zealand Army.

During basic specialist officer training at Waiuru, we all arrived from very different backgrounds, having very different abilities and personalities, some of us coming straight from Civvy Street.

Yet throughout the endless marching before dawn, the ridiculous physical training, the study and constantly being yelled at, individuals became a team.

People encouraged one another, supported one another, carried one another through difficult days, and everyone had something to contribute.

When I couldn't climb the high wall, I was literally dragged over by my brother in arms by the scruff of the neck.

When he needed support with the laws of armed conflict exam, I studied with him.

When we failed individually, we failed altogether.

And when we marched out, we all marched out as one, from being strangers in the beginning to being family in the end.

That is exactly what Paul was describing.

Paul goes on to say even further in 1 Corinthians 12 22, on the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.

Paul is challenging how we assign value.

The world often values success and visibility and achievement.

Paul points us somewhere very different.

Every person matters.

The whosoever will may come to the foot of the cross and receive the grace and forgiveness offered through the cross of Christ, a place of belonging in God's family.

Every person brings something valuable.

Every person brings something unique.

One of the greatest privileges of working in mental health and addiction services is seeing this repeatedly.

I have met people whose journeys have shaped extraordinary compassion, extraordinary wisdom, extraordinary resilience, people whose stories bring hope and encouragement to others.

Belonging is more than being welcomed.

Belonging is knowing that we are family.

And it is our love for others that creates space for participation and belonging.

Paul goes on to say in 1 Corinthians twelve, verse 26, if one part suffers, every part suffers with it.

If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

This is such an awesome description of community, of family, of belonging, shared joys and triumphs, shared burdens and hardship, shared life together.

John Wesley described this with the phrase, The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social, no holiness but social holiness.

Christian growth happens in relationship.

We learn to love and extend grace towards others by practicing love and grace together.

John Wesley also spoke about the means of grace being prayer, scripture, communion, Christian fellowship through which God shapes us together in love as a family.

Thinking back now, that is exactly what happened for me in that Salvation Army Youth Group in 1987.

Nobody sat down with me and formally announced that there was a particular day in which I all of a sudden had belonged or belonged.

Instead, they invited me to join in, to go to Easter camps, to attend youth group events, to participate, to serve, to laugh and to be stupid.

Fireball soccer was perhaps one of the more dangerous activities.

But we did life together.

Looking back, belonging grew through my participation.

That is one reason I think the church is at its very best when people move beyond being just spectators and become participants in the life of the family.

Because belonging deepens when life is shared.

That is one of the great gifts the church offers to the world.

Authentic community, a place where people encounter God's grace, a place where people discover friendship, a place where people discover purpose, a place that moves from merely welcome to family.

As we finish, let us return to where we began.

The theme of Mental Health Awareness Week, belonging matters.

We were created for relationship, firstly with God and with it with and with each other.

Grace gives us access to a place in God's family, and every person belongs.

Everybody brings something valuable to the life of the community and the family.

So perhaps the invitation this morning is simply this: to see, to notice the people around me, to notice their stories, to notice their gifts and abilities, to make room, to create space for conversation, create space at the table.

Sometimes belonging begins with something very simple, perhaps a coffee, a willingness to notice someone who may have otherwise gone unnoticed, and to share life together, to journey together.

The people who helped shape my faith did not simply welcome me in.

They shared their lives with me.

Looking back, that is what transformed a church I attended into a family of people I came to know and love, a community that reflects the heart of Christ.

May Windsor Park continue to be known in this way.

A place where people can say, I'm known here, I'm valued here, my presence matters here, I have something to contribute here, and I belong here.

Amen.

Thank you for joining our audio teaching today.

If there are ways that we can continue to support you or help you in your journey, please reach out to us.

Head to our website windsap.org.nz and you'll find various ways to contact us.

God bless.