The phrase lands like a thud every time you say it.
“You should come back to church.” And you watch their face close. Again.
I think of a mother. Her daughter used to lead worship in their church youth group. Now she posts about “finding her own truth” and describes organized religion as “limiting.” The mother has tried everything. Gentle conversations. Sending articles. Praying out loud together when her daughter still allowed it. Nothing’s working. “I feel like I’m watching her walk off a cliff in slow motion,” she wrote, “and every time I reach out my hand, she backs up faster.”
Maybe you know that feeling. The youth pastor watching a student they invested in for years now describe church as “toxic” while exploring energy healing. The father whose son says he “believes in God, just not organized religion” while his Instagram fills with astrology memes. The mentor who can see exactly where this road leads because they’ve walked it themselves.
You’ve said it gently. You’ve said it urgently. You’ve tried not saying it at all, hoping they’d find their way back on their own. Nothing’s working. They’re still drifting toward something that looks spiritual but seems off. And you’re running out of things to try.
If you’re a parent, pastor, youth leader, or mentor watching someone you love walk away from church toward something they call “more spiritual,” I need you to hear this: the problem isn’t that your invitation is wrong. It’s that you might be solving for the wrong problem entirely.
What if “come back to church” isn’t landing because they haven’t left God?
What if they’ve left where they believe truth comes from?
That distinction changes everything.
What “Come Back” Sounds Like to Them
This is the part that’s hard to hear: when you say “come back to church,” you’re speaking from your framework. You mean: return to community, reconnect with Scripture, submit to healthy spiritual authority, experience genuine worship again.
But they’re operating from a completely different worldview now. And in their worldview, what you just said translates to: abandon your authentic spiritual journey and submit to an institution that hurt you, controlled you, or couldn’t handle your questions.
You’re speaking different languages. And neither of you realizes it.
I’ve spent years studying the patterns of modern spiritual seekers (through surveys, social listening, and countless conversations), and one finding keeps surfacing: the vast majority of people who leave church don’t believe they’re rejecting God. They believe they’re rejecting a system that was getting in the way of God. Over 90% of them are convinced they must find their own spiritual path, not inherit someone else’s. They’ve decided that their inner voice, their intuition, their gut feeling is the most trustworthy guide to truth.
This isn’t rebellion in the way you might think. It’s a fundamental restructuring of where authority comes from.
And this should keep us humble: over a third of young believers feel they couldn’t ask their hardest questions in church. Couldn’t express doubts. Couldn’t wrestle openly without being seen as spiritually failing. The institution meant to guide them seemed like a place where honest seeking was dangerous.
So they went looking for somewhere they could be honest. And the internet was waiting with open arms.
The Pattern Worth Understanding
What you’re watching isn’t a single decision. It’s often a process. A journey with recognizable phases, though not everyone walks it the same way, and some never reach the later stages at all. Understanding this pattern helps you know what you might be waiting for.
The first phase often looks like construction. They’re building something new. Rejecting what felt controlling, keeping the parts that “resonate” (that word will show up a lot), trusting their intuition as their primary compass. This phase often seems exhilarating to them. Liberating. Finally authentic. They’ll tell you they’re closer to God now than they ever were sitting in a pew.
And they believe it. Being your own spiritual authority is powerful at first. You’re the curator of your own beliefs. You take what serves you and leave what doesn’t. No one can tell you you’re doing it wrong because the only measure of “right” is whether it rings true to you.
But you can see what they often can’t yet: this way of operating frequently has a built-in expiration date.
The second phase, when it comes, often looks like crisis. The intuition they’ve been trusting starts to seem unreliable. They can’t tell anymore if that inner voice is wisdom or anxiety. Is it guidance or just what they want to hear? Is it the Holy Spirit (which many of them truly believe they’re following) or their own fear dressed up in spiritual language?
The data on this is heartbreaking. The same people who confidently claimed they’d found their own path eventually describe crippling uncertainty. They’re “tired of life’s uncertainties.” They “don’t deal with the unknown well.” They feel “confused,” “lost,” unable to distinguish guidance from their own mental noise.
The weight of being your own spiritual authority turns out to be crushing.
I call it the Control-Surrender Paradox. The very thing that draws people to self-directed spirituality (the promise of control, of finally being in charge of their own soul) eventually leads to exhaustion. You can’t maintain being your own god. The burden is unsustainable.
The third phase is a fork in the road. Some people, when this crisis hits, find themselves unexpectedly open to surrender. To external authority. To something outside themselves that can hold what they couldn’t. Many return to Christianity, not because someone argued them back, but because they finally exhausted their own resources and discovered that surrender to a sovereign God becomes relief, not defeat.
Others never reach that point, at least not in ways we can see. Some cycle endlessly between confidence and crisis, always looking for the next spiritual tool or teacher that will finally make their internal compass work. And some stay in the construction phase indefinitely, content with what they’ve built. I can’t promise you which path yours will take.
What This Means for You
If you love someone in that first phase, you need to understand: they’re not ready to hear “come back.” Not because they hate God, but because their entire belief system says that returning to church means abandoning their authentic self. In their current operating system, institutional religion equals control, and spirituality equals freedom. You’re asking them to choose a cage.
I know. Every instinct says to intervene. To correct. To argue them back before they drift too far.
Your job right now isn’t to convince them. It’s to stay in relationship without compromising your own faith. Those two things can coexist, even though it doesn’t feel like it.
Listen without rushing to correct. Ask questions that help them feel seen, not grilled. Let them talk about what they’re exploring. (I know. This is excruciating when you can see where certain paths lead.) Share your own wrestling when invited, not your arrival at certainty. The goal is to be someone they trust when the crisis comes.
The hope embedded in the research is this: many seekers do return. But they don’t return because someone won an argument. They return because their self-constructed system failed, and someone who loved them was still there. Still anchored. Still not panicking. Still reflecting something steady when everything else was shifting sand.
Scripture speaks to this in ways that still catch me off guard. “A servant of the Lord must not quarrel but must be kind to everyone. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:24-25, NLT).
Gently instructed. Not debated into submission. Not guilted back to the pews. And notice who grants repentance? God does. Not you.
Your job isn’t to be the Holy Spirit. Your job is to still be there, full of grace and truth, when He does His work.
But What About Truth?
I know what you’re thinking. “If I just stay in relationship without saying anything, aren’t I condoning their choices? Aren’t I compromising?”
No. Staying connected isn’t endorsing every choice. It’s trusting that your consistent presence will matter more when the crisis comes than any argument you could make now.
Let me be direct about something: staying in relationship doesn’t mean you never share what you believe. It means you share it differently. When they describe what they’re exploring, you can say “That’s not what I believe, and I’d love to tell you why when you’re curious” without making it an ultimatum. You can disagree with their path while still showing up for their birthday.
Jesus was described as “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14, NLT). Not grace instead of truth. Not truth at the expense of grace. Both. Together. In the same person.
You can hold your convictions without weaponizing them. You can know what you believe without demanding they believe it before you’ll have dinner together.
This isn’t soft. It’s harder than drawing a line and walking away. It requires holding tension, staying present in discomfort, trusting God’s timing when you’d rather force a resolution.
What the Father Didn’t Do
Think of the prodigal son’s father. He didn’t chase his son to the far country. He didn’t send weekly lectures about how wrong the son’s choices were. He didn’t withdraw love conditionally, demanding the son apologize first before he’d welcome him home.
He didn’t send scouts to report on his son’s failures. Didn’t make updates about how disappointed he was. Didn’t post passive-aggressive reminders about what the son was missing back home.
He watched. He waited. He stayed close to home so he’d be ready when his son returned.
And when that moment came, he ran to meet him (Luke 15:20, NLT).
The running is what gets me. Not walking. Running. As if he’d been watching the road every single day, hoping. Positioned and ready, but not forcing. Patient but not passive.
I need to be honest with you about something. I know what it’s like to be the one who drifted. I spent years building my own spiritual blend, mixing Christianity with practices that seemed more “authentic,” more “me.” I was so sure I’d found something better than what the church offered. And if someone had told me to “come back,” I would have heard it as an attack on my journey, my growth, my hard-won spiritual independence.
What I couldn’t see then, but can see now: the people who kept loving me without demanding I agree with them? They were watching the road. They didn’t chase me to the far country. They didn’t lecture me into returning. But when the crisis came, when my self-constructed spirituality started crumbling under its own weight, they were still there. That mattered more than I can tell you.
(There’s something about that daily discipline of watching the road. The father didn’t know when or if his son would return. But he positioned himself to be ready. He didn’t let bitterness keep him inside. He didn’t stop looking just because it had been a long time. What would it look like for us to watch the road like that? To stay positioned for reconciliation even when we can’t see any evidence it’s coming?)
You might be watching the road for years. The running-to-meet-them moment might not come until long after you’ve stopped expecting it. God’s timing rarely matches our panic. His patience operates on scales we can’t see.
What keeps me anchored is this: the same God who pursues prodigals hasn’t lost track of this one. He’s working in ways we’re not privy to. Our job isn’t to force the timeline. It’s to be ready when He moves.
What I Wish I Could Promise You
I wish I could tell you there’s a solution. Say these words, do these things, and they’ll come back by Christmas. But spiritual journeys don’t work like that. Some people return quickly. Others take years. Some never do, at least not in ways we can see.
What I can tell you, based on everything I’ve studied, is that confident phase-one spirituality often contains the seeds of its own crisis. Being your own spiritual authority frequently fails because we weren’t designed to carry that weight. The burden is too heavy. The isolation too complete. The uncertainty too relentless.
And when it fails, they’re going to need someone who hasn’t given up on them. Someone who still loves them without the relationship being conditional on theological agreement. Someone who embodies what they’ve been told doesn’t exist: authentic faith that can handle their questions.
“Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:7, NLT). Always. Not “until they make choices I disagree with.” Not “unless they take too long to figure it out.” Always.
A Different Kind of Invitation
Maybe the invitation isn’t “come back to church.” Maybe it’s “I’m still here.”
Maybe it’s “I don’t understand everything you’re exploring, but I want to.”
Maybe it’s “My door is open. No agenda. Just dinner.”
Maybe it’s praying for them in a way that doesn’t demand a timeline. Asking God to meet them wherever they are, in whatever form He chooses. Trusting that the same Spirit who pursues prodigals hasn’t lost track of this particular one.
I don’t have a neat conclusion here. The grief you’re carrying is real. The fear is real. The helplessness when nothing you’ve tried works? That’s real too.
But so is the God who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one. So is the patience that outlasts our panic. So is the truth that love, real love, the kind that looks like Jesus, perseveres.
Even when we can’t see where the road goes next.
Even then.If you’re carrying someone in your heart who’s drifting: Consider spending five minutes today simply praying for them without asking God to change them. Just hold them before Him. And read Luke 15 again slowly, noticing what the father did during those long months of waiting. There’s something there about the posture of love that doesn’t give up. Something I’m working on myself.
