We don't want people to just feel welcome, we want them to feel like they belong

It's the difference between a hotel and a home. Both provide shelter, sustenance, rest. A hotel... a good hotel... will make you feel welcome. You can even live in a hotel for long periods of time and be comfortable and secure. But there's no place like home. Home is different for different people. But home is where you belong.

Now here's the flipside. Wanting people to feel like they belong means knowing that the sol cafe is not going to be a home for everyone. We will be nothing more than a hotel, a rest stop, an overnight stay, for many of the travellers we encounter. We will do all we can to be welcoming to all, but we know we won't be the new home for all of Christendom. Not everyone will feel like this is where they belong. God willing, we can help point them home, to where they do belong, to the place God has set out for them.

But for those of us who call the sol cafe our home church, we feel welcome many places, but we belong no where else.

We disagree, but....

This is a good one. We don't all agree on things. We agree on faith basics to be a Christian. Some are not Christians that come to sol cafe, which is good they feel comfortable coming, but generally we agree on what faith in Christ means. But -- big but -- we disagree on much of the other stuff and we verbalize it. Let's take communion for example, is it a symbol or is it something more? [webguy's note: see some of that discussion here and here] We can't even agree on what the word 'symbol' even means, there is no way we could agree on how to define what communion is.

But, we pray and worship Christ together anyway.