Even the casual observer of church life in Nashville , TN would take notice that something unique is taking place at The Belonging Co . It is a fast growing and vibrant body . As a worship leader searching for new songs , you can also sense there is “ something in the water ” when you hear the refreshing ministry songs coming forth from this church and see the community of well-known worship leaders and songwriters that are gathering there and calling TBCO their home church . We wanted to find out more , so we sat down with co-founding Pastor Henry Seeley .
[ WM ] We are honored to have you here with us today Pastor Henry , and we ’ re excited what you ’ re doing at The Belonging Co in Nashville , TN . Your banner statement on your church website to me says it all …
Presence over presentation , intimacy over industry , people over position , encounter over entertainment , Jesus over everything .
Walk us through this … why you state that , and why it ’ s so important ?
[ Henry Seeley ] Yeah . When we first started gathering together as our church community , back in 2014 , we didn ’ t have a staff , we didn ’ t have a team . So I ( thankfully square space was a thing ) was trying to build this website for our church . And then there was a space basically where it was like , “ Insert inspirational quote here ”. And I honestly just sat there . I remember sitting at my kitchen bench thinking about what was important to us . And just really started to type what I feel like God led me to type ( without making that sound too weird ). These are the things that , especially for our people in the town that we are in , these feel like significant statement declarations for us .
It ’ s become what we ’ ve entitled our manifesto , over the last eight years , since we ’ ve been gathering together as a church … that ’ s become almost the framework for what we do and how we do it . A presence over a presentation , I have grown up in church , I ’ ve grown up as a creative . I love to create , and I love to do things well , hopefully as good as we can do them , but also our presentation is nothing if we don ’ t have the presence of God there . It ’ s nothing if that ’ s not the thing that we ’ re worshiping . Everything that we ’ re doing is obviously to make space for God to come and meet with His people . It ’ s these kind of statements that really have had an impact for us .
We talk about intimacy over industry , which I think is especially crucial in a town like Nashville , where it ’ s tempting for churches and worship leaders to use church as a showcase of , “ Here ’ s our latest thing , here ’ s our latest song . You can go listen to this on iTunes ”. And there ’ s nothing wrong with letting people know about things . But I think when that becomes the driving force of what you ’ re doing , then you ’ ve lost that ability and I believe you rob people of that ability to have that intimate connection with