Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe, by Erin S. Lane

"I don’t think I’ve ever looked forward to going to church for the people.” You have to love a book that makes this declaration. Erin Lane tells a good story about her curious condition as an incurable introvert who nonetheless loves the church—and is married to a pastor to boot. Part church history, part spiritual memoir, part theological treatise on Christian community, Lessons in Belong­ing suggests how we might shed “illusions of how belonging should happen.”

Lane, who blogs at holyhellions.com, works at the Center for Courage and Renewal in Seattle. The center was founded by Parker Palmer, who wrote the book’s foreword. Lane grew up with a devoted Catholic dad and a determined seeker mom nicknamed Perk. Her dad modeled the importance of the sacraments, and Perk was “the binoculars” through which Lane “understood the shape of God.” They eventually divorced, and Lane reports that the “concept of a church home feels as fleeting to me as that of a stable family.” She has developed her understanding of commitment to her husband as she has wrestled to make a livable commitment to church. (Full disclosure: I taught Lane at Davidson College.)

A millennial herself, Lane hopes to explain the reluctance of people of her generation to join a church. “Soft on responsibility. High on narcissism. . . . I say we’re scared out of our minds to be disappointed.” She defines the local church as a “vehicle of disillusionment.” Intimate community works when it pries us away from the illusions of difference, control, scarcity, and separateness. But millennials, who have “forgotten how” to belong, occupy a middle place between “the hyperreligious, who sometimes belong without questioning, and the nonreligious, who often question without belonging.” Lane asks readers to imagine what congregations can be for such a population.