Editor's Note: It's easy to focus on what we don't like about the lifestyle and songs of pop singer Lady Gaga. But this story reveals why millions of young people identify with her, and why the church might be missing an opportunity to love the world's "misfits."

Lady Gaga has sold over 64 million singles and won five Grammy Awards. She's one of the most popular social media voices in the world with more than 33 million Twitter followers and 55 million Facebook fans. The pop singer has also attracted millions of fans around the globe who claim that she has changed their lives for the better. A Google search for "Gaga changed my life" gets four million results.

Marketing expert Jackie Huba argues that many of Gaga's fans identify with her concern for outcasts and "misfits." In an emotional MTV interview, Lady Gaga recounts some of the shame and humiliation from high school that helped mold her and left lasting deep scars:

The boys picked me up and threw me in the trash can on the street, on the corner of my block while all the other girls from the school were leaving and could see me in the trash. Everybody was laughing and I was even laughing. I had that nervous giggle. I remember even one of the girls looking at me like: "Are you about to cry? You're pathetic"

Out of her own feelings of being a misfit, Lady Gaga has created a community of outcasts. When old friends attended one of her shows, they told her, "Gaga, your fans are all of the misfits. They are all of the kids in school that everybody made fun of." She later told MTV: "All of the weird kids, the artistic kids, all the bad ones. And I love that, because that's who I was. We're all together and they get it. It's our own little world."