Are We Inviting People Into A Kingdom Or A Club?
Kingdom or Religion? Part 1 of 3
By S. Crawley
This series is adapted from an article first published in Mission Frontiers, Jan/Feb 2026.
"Are you a Christian?"
When I lived in a fairly remote and very non-Western part of the world, that question usually came in the first few minutes of a conversation.
And I learned not to answer it straight away.
The people around us had a specific picture of what a Christian was: basically, a white person living the kind of lifestyle they saw in movies — wealthy and immoral. Christians believed disturbing things about God, like the idea that He had taken a woman as His wife. And their lives did not reflect godliness or an attractive spirituality.
The word ‘Christian’ had a lot of emotions attached to it that were not positive.
If someone were to “become a Christian”, our friends assumed, they would need to adopt all of it: the immorality, the Western lifestyle.
Some found this appealing. Others, distasteful. But the implication was the same - becoming a Christian meant leaving your own people to join a foreign tribe.
So I learned to answer with a question of my own: "What do you mean by 'Christian'?"
I wasn’t avoiding the question. I just didn't want to be associated with things that weren't true of me — or of Jesus. Under the surface, a deeper question was at work: when people hear our invitation, what do they think they're being invited into?
What Holds a Group Together?
I recently explored what sociologists observe about how religions work.
One of their insights is important: what holds religious groups together is often not shared belief, but shared belonging. A common identity. Familiar norms. Knowing who's "us" and who's "them."
That's true of every religion. And if we're honest, it can be true of churches too.
Think about what my neighbours were rejecting. It wasn't Jesus. Most of them knew very little about Him. They were rejecting a social identity — a "Christian" tribe with its own lifestyle, its own culture, its own loyalties. To them, following Jesus meant switching teams.
In many Asian cities, the same thing happens in quieter ways. "Becoming Christian" can sound like turning your back on your family, your ancestors, your festivals, your community. And sometimes it's not just perception.
Sometimes we really have attached our own religious culture so tightly to the gospel that people can't see one without the other.
Jesus and Paul Didn't Ignore Belonging
Belonging isn't the enemy. Jesus and Paul both worked with the way people naturally belong.
Jesus focused His early ministry on His own people: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 15:24). Paul went first to the synagogues — "Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures" (Acts 17:2).
When there was no synagogue in Philippi, he looked for where people already had rhythms of gathering: "on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer" (Acts 16:13).
They also adapted to each group. Jesus spoke one way with Nicodemus, a religious leader, and another way with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 3–4). Paul communicated differently in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch than to the crowds in Lystra or the philosophers in Athens (Acts 13, 14, 17). His principle was clear: "I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22).
Jesus and Paul both went where people belonged, and adjusted their communication to fit the language and thinking of the group they were speaking to. But they didn't stop there.
The Kingdom Goes Further
Jesus didn't invite people into a new club. He announced something far bigger: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15).
The Kingdom creates a new shared identity — but its centre is not a culture, doctrine or traditions.
It's a Person.
We belong because we relate to God through the Messiah. "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12). God "has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13).
That identity is strong enough to hold together people who would never normally belong together: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).
And notice: in the first century, this new belonging usually cost people status rather than adding it. It created tension with family, synagogue and city. Paul said of his own impressive religious credentials, "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ" (Philippians 3:7).
People weren't drawn by the social benefits of joining.
They were drawn to a King.
Interestingly, the word "Christian" appears only three times in the New Testament. The first is in Acts 11:26: "in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians." It was most likely a label outsiders gave them. The disciples themselves were simply followers of Jesus. The label was never the point. Their new relationship with the King and His Kingdom was.
That's what my question — "What do you mean by 'Christian'?" — was trying to unpack. I wasn't trying to distance myself from Jesus. I was trying to clear away a social identity so that people could see Him.
Kingdom or Club?
Here's the question every urban disciple-maker needs to ask: what is really holding our groups together?
Is it Jesus as our living King? Or is it a shared church culture — our songs, our vocabulary, our style of meeting, our way of dressing, our programs, our denominational loyalties?
A few questions can help:
Could a new disciple stay in their family and community and still be fully part of us? Or do we expect them to switch tribes?
When people join, what changes first — their relationship with God, or their social habits?
If our cultural forms were removed, would anything still hold us together?
None of these cultural forms are wrong in themselves. But when they become the glue, we may have drifted from Kingdom to club. And clubs don't spread well across the vast diversity of a city. A club only grows among people who like that club.
The Kingdom can take root anywhere — in a Pilates class, a migrant workers' dormitory, a family business, a university society — because its centre is not our culture. It's Jesus, and He is able to engage with any community.
What holds us together?
Religion >> Social identity and norms
Kingdom >> Embracing Jesus as our living King and living as God's beloved children
In Part 2, we'll ask the next question: what actually makes the Kingdom grow?
Getting Practical
1) When people in your city hear the word "Christian," what do they think they would have to become? Ask a few people this week who don't follow Jesus, and listen carefully.
2) Look at the group you're part of or leading. What really holds it together? List what a new person would need to adopt to feel they belong. Which of these are essential to following Jesus, and which are your culture?
3) Read Mark 1:14–15 together. How could you invite someone to experience the Kingdom this week without inviting them into your club?
S. Crawley serves leaders and teams in Asia carrying a vision for their cities and is passionate about helping people grow in authentic relationships. He also knows how to make nachos.
© 2026 S. Crawley. All rights reserved.
One article a week
For anyone who carries a hunger for the lost and broken in their city.