Belonging before believing

Rhiannon Goulding encourages us to warmly welcome the ‘outsider’, and patiently show God’s love 

A worship leader I know once told me that, in her teens, coping with the effects of a difficult childhood, she longed to be in a band. When a friend introduced her to a church band without a worship leader, she offered her singing voice immediately. As a result, for several years this Christian band had a non-Christian worship leader, until at last she heard the call of Jesus in her life. What drew her in was the fact that she felt she belonged in that worshipping community, and gradually she began to listen more and more closely to the message being preached, taught, sung and lived around her.