In Search to Belong:

Sounds like a good name for a book. After moving to back to Oklahoma, Pam and I are looking for community. We have found ourselves talking about this occassionally, Pam talking about missing friends in Michigan (and me too) and me carving out relationships and praying that God will create a local community with us involved. It's in the back of my mind in a lot of my conversations around town. Is this person connected to community? Would they be interested in belonging to a local community?

What is also interesting about Tulsa, is how often people ask "Where do you go to church?" and few times we have been invited to go to church. In other words, people want to know where Pam and I go, (People in Tulsa often ask this the first time you meet them.) But no one is inviting us to come.

Now. I've served in ministry in this town for several years and I have many friends in ministry who don't ask out of respect. Which is very nice of them.

But others we don't know as well, generally ask, "where do you go to church?" and when we say no where, or we've visited __________ and _______________ they don't follow up.

Jeff Dunn from Believers invited me to Believers church a few months ago and I've been invited to speak a few places, but no other invitations that I know about.

Now. I should also say that, just because we would be invited, doesn't mean we would go and church isn't actually what we are interested in. Community is. community where we can serve along side other folks who are either searching for jesus, skeptical of jesus, following jesus and one dealing with real issues.

We are going to create something in the Broken Arrow area... but we are still getting to know people around town.

Regardless, life without community is hard.