A practical guide for those struggling to build a community of believers in a culture that wants to experience belonging over believingWho is my neighbor? Who belongs to me? To whom do I belong? These are timeless questions that guide the church to its fundamental calling. Today terms like neighbor, family, and congregation are being redefined. People are searching to belong in new places and experiences. The church needs to adapt its interpretations, definitions, and language to make sense in the changing culture.This book equips congregations and church leaders with tools to: • Discern the key ingredients people look for in community • Understand the use of space as a key element for experiencing belonging and community • Develop the “chemical compound” that produces an environment for community to spontaneously emerge • Discover how language promotes specific spatial belonging and then use this knowledge to build an effective vocabulary for community development • Create an assessment tool for evaluating organizational and personal community health

Step into a journey toward liberation, belonging, and a faith that makes you whole again. We need belonging to survive and thrive, but too often the church is an impediment. For Christians who know the pain, isolation, and loss of identity that comes with the ongoing struggle to be seen in churches and institutions full of barriers to belonging, you are not alone. Sometimes it can feel easier to walk away from faith completely. But there is another way. When it feels as though there’s no place left to belong, Jesus invites us into a love that knows no bounds and a community that truly liberates. In this hope-filled book, author Rohadi Nagassar brings the margins to the center to help readers rediscover a reality of love, belonging, and beauty through the journey of deconstructing, decolonizing, and reclaiming faith. For those on the margins struggling to find belonging, for everyone who wants to join in building radically inclusive communities where all people can live fully in their own skin—now begins a journey to find this freedom.

A leading expert shows how, by learning from refugee teachers and students, we can create for displaced childrenÑand indeed all childrenÑbetter schooling and brighter futures. Half of the worldÕs 26 million refugees are children. Their formal education is disrupted, and their lives are too often dominated by exclusion and uncertainty about what the future holds. Even kids who have the opportunity to attend school face enormous challenges, as they struggle to integrate into unfamiliar societies and educational environments. In Right Where We Belong, Sarah Dryden-Peterson discovers that, where governments and international agencies have been stymied, refugee teachers and students themselves are leading. From open-air classrooms in Uganda to the hallways of high schools in Maine, new visions for refugee education are emerging. Dryden-Peterson introduces us to people like JacquesÑa teacher who created a school for his fellow Congolese refugees in defiance of local lawsÑand Hassan, a Somali refugee navigating the social world of the American teenager. Drawing on more than 600 interviews in twenty-three countries, Dryden-Peterson shows how teachers and students are experimenting with flexible forms of learning. Rather than adopt the unrealistic notion that all will soon return to Ònormal,Ó these schools embrace unfamiliarity, develop studentsÕ adaptiveness, and demonstrate how children, teachers, and community members can build supportive relationships across lines of difference. It turns out that policymakers, activists, and educators have a lot to learn from displaced children and teachers. Their stories point the way to better futures for refugee students and inspire us to reimagine education broadly, so that children everywhere are better prepared to thrive in a diverse and unpredictable world.

In a world overcrowded with labels, don't allow your identity to be defined by other people. Learn how to take back your power, choose to feed the aspects of your identity that serve you, and let go of those that don't. Everyone feels like an outsider at some point in their life-when we walk into a room and think to ourselves, I don't belong here. To avoid these feelings of exclusion, many of us hide our authentic selves and allow others to define our identity. You Belong Here offers a new framework that allows each of us to define how we want to be seen, heard, and valued on our own terms so we feel a sense of belonging in any situation. Further, it serves as a launchpad for organizational leaders and culture builders to create safe spaces for individuals to show up as their authentic selves. Readers will explore our four identities: Our Lived Identity is made up of the aspects of our identity we inherit when we are born into the world. Our Learned Identity includes the parts of our identity that we've chosen or claimed as we make our way through the world. Our Lingering Identity is the identity we default to when we feel like an outsider and fall back into as a survival mechanism. Our Loved Identity is where we find our authentic selves and see ourselves through a lens of empowerment. In the journey to understand our past experiences and how society has established barriers to entry, we can design our own future, rooted in our Loved Identity. We learn to rewrite the stories that aren't serving us and embrace the ones that do. Rather than look for a seat at someone else's table, we find the tools to build our own. When we fully leverage this and live with authenticity and purpose, we can be seen, heard, and valued in a way that gives us a sense of belonging at home, at work, and in society. Belonging is realized when we understand everyone is an outsider and it's the power to create space for those differences that unite us all.

The Sacred Harp choral singing tradition originated in the American South in the mid-nineteenth century, spread widely across the country, and continues to thrive today. Sacred Harp isn’t performed but participated in, ideally in large gatherings where, as the a cappella singers face each other around a hollow square, the massed voices take on a moving and almost physical power. I Belong to This Band, Hallelujah! is a vivid portrait of several Sacred Harp groups and an insightful exploration of how they manage to maintain a sense of community despite their members’ often profound differences. Laura Clawson’s research took her to Alabama and Georgia, to Chicago and Minneapolis, and to Hollywood for a Sacred Harp performance at the Academy Awards, a potent symbol of the conflicting forces at play in the twenty-first-century incarnation of this old genre. Clawson finds that in order for Sacred Harp singers to maintain the bond forged by their love of music, they must grapple with a host of difficult issues, including how to maintain the authenticity of their tradition and how to carefully negotiate the tensions created by their disparate cultural, religious, and political beliefs.

Has anyone ever asked you to do something, and it felt impossible? For years, my brother urged me, "Naomi, you need to write a book and tell your story!" But facing my past—my shame, my guilt—was something I didn't have the courage to do for a long time. Growing up as a multiracial woman of color, raised by a teenage single White mother who battled mental illness, childhood trauma, abusive relationships, and a life skirting the law, left me questioning my identity, my body, and my worth. This is more than just my story—it's the journey of a heroine finding her way out of darkness, driven by a desperate search for God and answers. It's also a tender exploration of a fractured mother-daughter bond, two broken souls longing for love, healing, and redemption. This book invites you into that journey to witness the struggle, the survival, and the hope of choosing to belong.

What role did the parish play in people's lives in England and Wales between 1700 and the mid-twentieth century? By comparison with globalisation and its dislocating effects, the book stresses how important parochial belonging once was. Professor Snell discusses themes such as settlement law and practice, marriage patterns, cultures of local xenophobia, the continuance of out-door relief in people's own parishes under the new poor law, the many new parishes of the period and their effects upon people's local attachments. The book highlights the continuing vitality of the parish as a unit in people's lives, and the administration associated with it. It employs a variety of historical methods, and makes important contributions to the history of welfare, community identity and belonging. It is highly relevant to the modern themes of globalisation, de-localisation, and the decline of community, helping to set such changes and their consequences into local historical perspective.

Unsere sozialen Interaktionen werden von komplexen biopsychischen Prozessen angetrieben, die dadurch verkompliziert werden, dass der Mensch ein Individuum ist und gleichzeitig Mitglied eines oder mehrerer sozialer Systeme, wie bspw. der Schule. Dieses Buch trägt dazu bei, die sozialen Mechanismen des „Bedürfnisses nach Zugehörigkeit“ bei Schüler*innen in Schulkontexten zu erklären. Der theoretische Rahmen basiert auf einem Verständnis von Bedürfnissen als kognitive Mechanismen neuronaler Prozesse, die menschliches Verhalten und Körperwerte regulieren. Die Feldforschung wurde in zwei Sekundarschulen in Österreich und Australien durchgeführt. Handlungsleitlinien, die Schüler*innen dabei helfen sollen, sich zugehörig zu fühlen, werden von den Ergebnissen abgeleitet.

The promises of new adventures in love and in life are on the horizon for a young mother, but sabotage is also just around the corner... A heart-warming and thrilling sixties London saga from much-loved author Pam Evans, Where We Belong is a reminder of the powerful consequences of love, hope and jealousy. Perfect for fans of Dilly Court and Lindsey Hutchinson. One day in 1964 Rachel West's husband walked out on his wife and two young sons, leaving them nothing but pain and heartache. Now, two years later, struggling in a poorly paid job, Rachel feels her luck will never change. So when she finds herself the new owner of her late Uncle Chip's Hammersmith boat-building business she wonders if it's too good to be true. Why would Chip have left it to her when he has a son himself? The business is only just afloat - thanks to the hard work of Chip's charismatic assistant, Ben - but Rachel is determined to restore it to its former glory for the sake of her sons. And before long, she realises that she's falling in love with the kind-hearted and handsome Ben. But her good fortune doesn't last for long - someone is maliciously plotting to sabotage her plans... What readers are saying about Where We Belong: 'This is a wonderful story and I found it hard to put the book down, the author has a wonderful knack of telling great stories' 'Another great book by Pamela Evans. A lovely storyline and great characters. It's great to know that whenever I buy a Pamela Evans book I'm in for a good read'