How A Trusted Source of Connection Contributed to the Loneliness Epidemic
. . . and one small step forward.
Sometime between the discomfort of late winter and early spring, I sat under stained glass windows, weak Michigan sun turning the colors gold, and listened to a panel discussion on the epidemic of loneliness in America.
The panel guests covered a myriad of contributing factors. Some findings point to the smartphone while other studies show that loneliness has increased with the rise of individualism. One contribution did not quite make it into this panel discussion: the church.
Historically a cornerstone of community, the church has stood as a central figure, integral to belonging.
For centuries, acceptance in this type of community was so paramount to daily life that in circa AD 30, two parents put their own son on the spot for fear of being thrown out of their local synagogue.1
Whether in the first or twenty-first century, belonging to such a community creates meaning and connection, the antithesis of loneliness. But like most large organizations, the church’s impact on culture is complex, and this is no less true as it relates to our loneliness epidemic.
While churches can bring individuals together across socioeconomic backgrounds and the party line, serve the impoverished and underprivileged, and engage the community at large, churches can also tear these same communities apart.
Unfortunately, though fortunately for truth, a plethora of church scandals has swept our nation in recent years. From the fall of well-known pastors to the disintegration of entire church bodies, toxicity in the church is a difficult reality—one that frequently overshadows the careful work of mature, healthy church shepherds.
The stories of fallen church leaders are often covered in detailed articles or podcasts, but what happens to those who are casualties of a toxic system? Whose exits do not warrant a headline?
It may seem their story has ended. In reality, their exit is an entrance into an entirely different story, one often marked by loneliness in three key areas.
1. Removal of self-actualization and meaning
Actively belonging to a church brings a powerful sense of purpose and the opportunity for self-actualization.
This is particularly true in megachurches, where the production value is highlighted and resources are plentiful. With the rise in production comes a rising need for volunteers and volunteer opportunities.
From ensuring the coffee machines caffeinate thousands, to capitalizing on multimedia, to featuring cohesive, concert-like services, the need for volunteers spans ministries.
This abundance of opportunity for volunteering with like-minded individuals is a direct conduit to self-actualization and meaning.
But when a church turns toxic and members leave, or falls altogether and members are left, the pinnacle of the proverbial pyramid vanishes:
For those who volunteered time, contributing in whatever ways their talent allowed, the sense of connection to a larger purpose is cut off at the knees. The healthy, self-actualization that takes place when using one’s gifts for good is stunted, if not cut off entirely.
Whether volunteering took place behind the scenes or literally on a stage, the camaraderie of teamwork shifts to a gaping hole. Talents, and the connections they brought, are packed away. This is particularly true in unhealthy churches that slander, blacklist, and shun those who leave. Rather than look ahead to a week of volunteering with friends or a weekend full of meaning, there is nothing.
The result? This sudden removal of countless volunteer hours may at first feel like relief, but over time, without something to replace it, loneliness creeps in.
The irony of loneliness by the church is that in Jesus’ Luke 14 parable, “No one was excluded, except those who excluded themselves with their own excuses.”2 All were invited into a healthy space to belong. There was a place for everyone at the table.
While inclusion is a trait of many healthy churches, in today’s unhealthy churches, individuals are often excluded via firing, shamed into leaving, or restricted from the premises.
As a result, members may choose to exclude themselves from these very churches on the principle that they have no excuse to exclude another. For each group, those excluded or those who exclude themselves based on principle, self-actualization and meaning is lost.
2. Removal of love and belonging
Alignment in eternal values should overcome earthly ones, but in many instances, this is not the case. There are individuals who, in walking away from church cultures they could not in good conscience support, lost decades of deep relationships. This presents a difficulty.
Building relationships takes time. In childhood, we’re thrown into groups with people our age who do what we do and follow similar schedules. We may or may not go on to college, still surrounded by a similarly-minded community.
But then we start a career and/or family. It’s difficult to find new friendships to build. However well intentioned, it’s hard to find friends, let alone make them.
Harper’s Bazaar shared Dr. Chand’s thoughts, a marriage and family therapist, who says, “We intend to make a new friend . . . who has common interests with us and we give it a fair shot. We try and hang in with them. We make that promise to ourselves and we try and follow it through.”
In megachurches, trying to make friends can at times yield a higher return on investment, simply because the potential friendship pond is much bigger.
Even if individuals do not have common interests (one of my dearest friends was a teenage plumber whose knowledge base I could only try to understand) there is a general alignment at a soul level: what we pursue, how we spend our lives, and why. This pond is much bigger . . . until you leave. The ensuing loss is unnatural.
Loneliness may be experienced for a holy reason, but it doesn’t make it any less hollow when another chunk of Maslow’s pyramid caves.
One cultural commentator writes, “We are all equal at the level of our souls.”3 At the soul level, we all need love and belonging. The resulting loss comes from the one place belonging should be guaranteed.
Particularly for individuals without a healthy family of origin, this impact is monumental. For those who risked trust and vulnerability and turned to the church to create a found family, where can they go?
When there is a need the church itself cannot answer, what is left? There is no application for belonging and no guarantee it will be offered, no matter how much one tries.
Without a two-way acceptance, regardless of effort, this psychological need becomes a seeming impossibility.
3. Removal of safety and security
The ability to work and care for self and others is foundational to dignity. For pastors and staff, leaving an unhealthy church equates to loss of employment, financial security, and the safety it brings, not to mention the manifestation of what they thought was their purpose.
While not every pastor is qualified on paper, many spent years in traditional study, preparing for what they thought would be a lasting career.
There are other organizations to apply to, and perhaps new callings to fill, but the security of employment and resources for daily needs vanishes. Suddenly, they’re unemployed with basic needs unaccounted for.
Add to this the loss of friendship with coworkers they served alongside in work they believed had eternal significance . . . and the resulting doubt: “Did anything I do matter?”
At each of these three levels, the pursuit of healthy belonging results in the loss of belonging altogether.
With the majority of psychological needs now rubble, what happens? Find a new church? Accept encouragement and move on? And move on to what, exactly?
When the sheepfold feels unsafe
The church is often referred to as God’s sheepfold, a place that should be safe for God’s people. But when that sheepfold proves unsafe, walking into another that may look similar, sound similar, or use similar language, can feel unsettling.
Dr. Diane Langberg says, “It’s not God’s sheepfold if it’s not safe.” When a new sheepfold uses a similar methodology to an old, unsafe sheepfold, it can feel confusing.
There is nothing wrong with a certain preaching format or music style, but it can feel reminiscent to past, unhealthy and therefore unsafe, structures.
This natural, bodily reaction to harmful cultures, or dare I say sin, flips the script. The toxic staff who stay look godly, while the honest doubts and pain of those who leave are often categorized under terms such as deconstruction or loss of faith.
In many instances, it is the very pursuit of godliness that leads people out of these church cultures.
Imagining someone survives the sudden loss of community and finds another church and a healthy community within it, it may be easy to empathize with the fear of repeating the past. This itself becomes an instigator for loneliness.
One author says, “It is the anticipated leaving that I sense . . . Better for me to never allow people to become too close so that I can protect myself the experience of being left. The result, of course, is that this part of me remains alone.”4
The question hangs: Will I have to leave again? Will this church also fall? You can never know someone until you know someone, and even then, people often have surprises.
When encouragement falls short
Many times, this is where well-intentioned encouragers join the discussion. I have certainly been one of them: Someone trying to say the right thing to another someone, not realizing that my words were likely tearing at the wound, not helping toward healing.
Like understanding, well-intentioned, encouraging words can still highlight, in all the pastels of nuance, the reason for the current lack:
“You made a brave choice.”
“Show yourself compassion.”
“Be patient with yourself.”
“You saw the truth. Well done.”
For those who have left or been left by the church, while important attributes to embody:
Bravery does not equate to belonging.
Self-compassion does not equal connection.
Patience with self does not equal presence with others.
Understanding reality does not bring one deeper into belonging.
Dissecting church culture is vital work we should value, but on its own, it cannot alleviate the loneliness that often comes after leaving an unhealthy system. Knowing the why of a situation does not change the consequences, and in many cases, highlights them.
While understanding can begin the healing process, it cannot substitute for belonging. Often, it spotlights the lack itself . . . and thus we find ourselves back at loneliness, trying to look it in the face but only finding a downcast gaze.
Heroic attributes do little to heal a fractured soul. Healing is found in connection and belonging because, “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation.”5
Sometimes it’s simpler to tell someone how to treat themselves and ignore how we are called to treat them: with welcome and in love. As one author says, “God forbid somebody needs our love, our sacrifice, our time.”6
Add to this the fact that we often refer to one’s ability to hold on to hope as the highest extent of a person’s character. Again, we do this through encouragements: don’t give up hope, look for the glimmers of hope.
While Christian circles elevate faith and hope, and rightly so, Jesus says the greatest of these is still love. In a world where we often encourage others to have a little hope, perhaps we should first encourage ourselves to show a little love.
What happens to those the headlines do not cover?
Periods of loneliness can easily swing to a hyper fixation on the self-focused mindset Herbert Hoover popularized as American individualism and what sociologist Robert Bellah described as utilitarian individualism.
This is often a natural, survival-based response, deserving of empathy:
If there is no longer belonging at a soul level, a familial level, or one that allows the contribution of giftedness, why not become irreparably independent?
If healthy interdependence cannot be attained, why not become self-sufficient, needed by no one, needing no one?
While this may protect a heart, to borrow from C.S. Lewis, it will also harden it. No one is an island. Hyper independence is not a healthy antidote to loneliness. But is there one?
For those with power . . . a step forward.
Broadly speaking, there are social and emotional layers to loneliness. Like any epidemic, there is no magic cure for loneliness. But perhaps one aid to healing is simply offering acceptance.
This is unlikely to begin at a large, corporate level, where it can be challenging to engage with people as individuals. Particularly for those who are lonely by the church, corporate belonging may feel too formulaic, organizational, and impersonal.
It takes someone willing to offer the love of Christ for another to experience it at a human level.
After all, “Christ has no body now on earth but [ours].”7 This shifts our focus from how many we impact to the one we can bring into belonging. To reframe the above, God forbid we withhold our love, our sacrifice, our time.
How we treat the one reveals how we regard the many, because everyone is ultimately a one.8 Perhaps the beginning of the answer is doing our own work of welcoming the outcast, even when the outcast comes from a sheepfold we thought was safe.
Yet it’s so easy to overlook this shift. When someone loses a family member, others often step in to fill the gap. Death prompts action on behalf of the grieving. But when spiritual family is lost, there is no funeral to signify the loss.
It’s also easy to grow too comfortable to extend dignity. At times, at least for me, it’s simpler to overlook someone’s suffering when I feel fulfilled. But this does not empower the other.
Instead, it reflects the very thing Jesus warns against: Wishing someone well when it’s within our power to meet the need. It’s like sitting at a feast and telling a starving person we hope they find bread. Sometimes to empower someone, we must first seek them out and feed them . . . when it is our ability to do so.
For those who witness loneliness and have the power to initiate welcome, lasting change often begins by inviting the one to the table for a meal or into a home simply to spend time, thereby making space, and growing in love by the act itself.
Perhaps instead of telling others to hope, we can shift the focus to ourselves: Invite them in to relationship, and by showing love, empower them into hope—and ourselves into deeper love.
For the lonely . . . a step forward.
For those who resonate with the feeling of loneliness, the answer may feel impossible. Healthy belonging must come from two directions and we only have agency over ourselves.
Perhaps part of the answer lies in choosing to believe the truth that you are created for and deserving of belonging, whether or not it is an experienced reality.
Let this belief move you to initiate connection with intention and care. Even small touch points can be the beginning of what may become lasting, healthy—though still imperfect—belonging.
Looking ahead, although belonging in this life may feel imperfect, even a dying hope, it will one day be a lived reality for eternity. The Good Shepherd will invite all to the table, and his people will make space.
National, racial, familial, and cultural borders will no longer divide us. We will be welcomed across every border, one in Christ, belonging together forever.
My favorite children’s book features a boy, a mole, a fox, and a horse. It’s a small community with nothing in common but their united commitment to help the boy find a place to belong.
Throughout their trek over snow-covered hills, they recognize small aspects about each other. They see each other, rendering each visible, important, and full of meaning.
This recognition is crucial. “Human beings need recognition as much as they need food and water. No crueler punishment can be devised than to not see someone, to render them unimportant or invisible.”9
To lack this recognition, this belonging, is to starve at a psychological level. Some psychologists even say belonging is not just a fundamental need, but a birthright.
Perhaps the core response to loneliness is to simply offer welcome, regardless of how strong or weak the voice of the other.
“The fox never really speaks,” whispered the boy.
“No. And it’s lovely he is with us,” said the horse.
This gift provides substance to the faith and hope Jesus talks about. It is a gift of love, offering belonging when someone has very little or nothing to offer back.
Faith is crucial. Hope is a gift. And Jesus still said the greatest of these is love, tasking us with offering it to the very least. Perhaps today more than ever, this is our call.
“That’s why we are here, isn’t it?” said the boy. “To love . . . and be loved.”
John 9:21, https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/ivp-nt/Pharisees-Interrogate-Mans-Parents
Dallas Willard, The Scandal of the Kingdom
David Brooks, How To Know A Person
Dr. Curt Thompson, The Deepest Place
Bell Hooks, All About Love
Jackie Hill Perry, Upon Waking
Attributed to Saint Teresa of Ávila
Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
David Brooks, How To Know A Person