I know what it’s like to feel lonelier in a room full of Christians than in my own bedroom talking to Jesus.
That’s the part I need you to hear first. Because if you’re reading this and your chest is already tightening at the idea of “going back to church,” I’m not going to pretend that feeling isn’t real. I’m not going to spiritualize away the Sunday mornings you sat in a pew surrounded by people singing songs you didn’t feel, making small talk that never went anywhere honest, wondering if anyone would notice if you just… stopped showing up.
I felt that too. The performance. The disconnect between what was preached and how people actually treated each other. The sense that everyone else had something you didn’t, or worse, that they were faking it and you were the only one who noticed.
So when I eventually stopped going altogether, when I spent years building my spirituality without a church community, without any kind of spiritual covering, just me and books and writing into what felt like a void… it didn’t feel like running away.
It felt like finally breathing.
The Hunger We Don’t Talk About
Here’s what I’ve been wrestling with lately, and I’m genuinely asking, not preaching:
What if some of what we’ve been calling “spiritual maturity” is actually just… coping?
Because you didn’t leave the church because you lost your faith. You left because you were hungry. You wanted more of God, more depth, more presence. And your church experience felt like it was focused on reaching unbelievers (which matters, genuinely) but wasn’t feeding those of you who were already in the building, already saved, already desperate for something deeper than announcements and three-point sermons.
The private study and solitary prayer weren’t about running from community. They were reaching for something your church experience wasn’t providing.
And if that’s your story (if you left not because you stopped believing but because you wanted more and felt like the institution was offering you less), I need you to know that hunger is legitimate. The desire for authentic connection with God, for depth over performance, for presence over programming… that’s not pride. That’s not rebellion.
That’s a soul doing exactly what souls are supposed to do.
But it gets complicated.
The Thing I Didn’t See Until I Lived It
I spent years in theological study outside any faith community. Reading voraciously. Processing privately. Convincing myself this was spiritual advancement, not spiritual survival mode.
And some of it was formative. I’m not dismissing that season entirely. Jesus Himself retreated to pray alone. There’s a difference between solitude and isolation.
Solitude is intentional time with God, going deeper into Scripture, wrestling with questions in the quiet. That’s necessary. That’s good.
But what I was doing had slowly become something else. I was operating completely outside the body of Christ while telling myself I didn’t need it. I had absorbed the cultural value that says spiritual independence equals spiritual strength. That not needing “organized religion” or other flawed humans is proof that my relationship with God is genuine and personal.
I had, without realizing it, made myself the final authority on my spiritual journey. Taking what resonated, discarding what didn’t, constructing a faith that felt authentic precisely because it was accountable to no one but me.
(And this is where someone reading this might feel their defenses go up. I get it. I’m not saying your desire to seek God alone came from a prideful heart. But I am asking us both to consider whether there’s a difference between retreating to go deeper and retreating because we’ve given up on community altogether.)
What I couldn’t see in that season was that my ability to sustain faith alone wasn’t necessarily strength. It might have been survival mode. And survival mode isn’t the same as thriving.
The Loneliness That Isn’t An Accident
There’s something about funerals that strips away all our carefully constructed defenses.
You can be surrounded by people who loved the person you lost, all experiencing the same grief, and still feel utterly, devastatingly alone. Chronic illness does this too. So does financial crisis that won’t end. So does rejection by someone you loved. So does standing for truth when the entire culture mocks what you believe.
Loneliness of some kind is the universal experience of people living this side of eternity.
Sin brought alienation into the world. First between God and humanity, then cascading outward into every relationship we have. It shattered fellowship. It created the possibility (the near inevitability, really) of profound isolation.
This aloneness is spiritual, emotional, relational, cultural.
Nearly impossible to escape.
But…
The Movement Paul Describes
What strikes me about Ephesians 2 is the specific trajectory Paul traces. Not just “you were lost, now you’re found.” Something more communal. More embodied.
He writes about being “separated from Christ, excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and living as strangers… without God and without hope” (Ephesians 2:12, NLT). And then, the pivot: “But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13, NLT).
Brought near. Not just to God. Read what comes next.
“Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:20-22, NLT).
Together. Carefully joined. Made part of a dwelling.
That’s not just individual salvation. That’s corporate belonging.
Paul isn’t saying “you were alone, but now God loves you personally.” He’s saying something far more uncomfortable for those of us who’ve constructed our spiritual lives around independence: you were aliens and strangers, but now you’re being built together with other living stones into something that can only exist in community.
The reconciliation isn’t just vertical (you and God).
It’s horizontal (you and the body of Christ).
And both appear to be necessary.
(Please, stay with me here, because if you’ve been hurt by “the body of Christ” this is where you want to click away. But honestly… I think this is the part we need to sit with.)
The Experience That Doesn’t Match The Theology
I know what some of you are thinking. Because I thought it too.
“That’s nice and all, but I felt more spiritually alive studying and praying alone than I ever did in certain church environments.”
I hear you. Your experience is valid.
Some church communities are genuinely toxic. Places where spiritual language is weaponized for control, where vulnerability is punished, where leadership operates without accountability. Where “community” has meant judgment, manipulation, hypocrisy, or worse.
If that’s been your experience, the call isn’t “go back to the place that wounded you.” The call is toward healthy community, not harmful community. Those are different things. And finding healthy community sometimes requires time, discernment, and maybe even geographical distance from the spaces that hurt you.
I’m not minimizing the damage. I’m saying the damage done by toxic churches doesn’t mean the design is wrong. It means those churches failed the design.
The “fanbase” might suck. That doesn’t mean Jesus got it wrong about how we’re supposed to do this together.
What Reconciliation Actually Looked Like
When I finally joined a church after 14 years of wandering, I was terrified.
I worried I’d be judged. I worried whether I’d be accepted with my complicated past. I struggled with what I now understand as a deep judgment wound toward myself… I felt I deserved condemnation. Not because anyone at the new church was actually condemning me, but because I was condemning myself and projecting that onto my brothers and sisters in Christ.
But I went anyway.
And what I found was: a vicar who affirmed my journey. A rector who connected with my husband and me as if he genuinely wanted to know us. And a spiritual director who helped me see outside of my wounds.
For the first time in a long time… I wasn’t alone.
Not just “not alone” in the theoretical sense. Not just “God is with me” (which is true, but when you’re in a dark night, feels about as comforting as telling someone drowning that water is wet).
Actually not alone. With people. In flesh and blood community. Being known. Being seen. Being healed.
This is what community might mean for you: someone noticing you’ve been quiet and checking in. Confession, actually saying out loud to another person the things you’ve been wrestling with alone. Receiving communion, that physical reminder that you’re a part of something ancient and ongoing. Hearing the promises of God when you’re convinced you were permanently disqualified.
These are things that couldn’t happen in your isolated study. Not because God wasn’t there, but because certain kinds of formation only happen in friction with other people.
The Question I Can’t Stop Asking
So here’s what I keep coming back to: How many of us are trying to survive spiritually in a way that God never designed us to function?
How many of us are treating “alone time with God” as the destination instead of understanding it as preparation for being built together with His people?
How many of us are experiencing the devastating consequences of spiritual isolation but calling it “maturity” or “independence” or “not needing organized religion”?
What if the aloneness you’re experiencing isn’t God’s will for you, but the natural outcome of trying to be spiritual without being part of the body?
What if the reconciliation Christ accomplished wasn’t meant to leave you floating in isolated individual spirituality, but to build you into something corporate, something communal, something that only works when we’re together?
(There’s this whole section in Ephesians about being “fellow heirs” and “members together of one body” that keeps pulling at me… it’s not just about church membership as an administrative category. It’s about something far more mystical and necessary. Something about how the Spirit actually inhabits the corporate body in a way that doesn’t fully happen when we’re isolated. But that’s a whole other conversation.)
If You’re Not Ready Yet
If the thought of walking into a church still makes your chest tight… please don’t force it. That resistance might be telling you something important about the pace at which you need to move.
But maybe there’s a smaller step that isn’t nothing.
Find one person. Not a pastor, not a counselor necessarily. Just one human being who won’t try to fix you, who can simply witness your struggle. This could be a friend who also wrestles with faith. Someone from a former church you actually trusted. A therapist who understands spiritual questions. The bar isn’t “someone who has answers.” It’s “someone safe enough to hear you.”
Consider spiritual direction. This isn’t counseling and it isn’t discipleship in the programmatic sense. It’s someone trained to listen for where God is moving in your story. Many spiritual directors meet virtually now, which removes the “walking into a building” barrier entirely.
If online feels safer, start there. A virtual small group, an online discussion forum where people are asking honest questions. Not to replace embodied community forever, but as a bridge.
The call isn’t to return to the specific community that wounded you. It’s toward the possibility that there might be a community out there that could actually see you, invest in you, and walk with you.
Never Alone Again
We have gone from being hopeless and alone to being reconciled and inhabited by God, and therefore never alone again.
Never alone again.
Not because we’ll always have people around us. Not because we’ll never experience the sensation of loneliness. Not because suffering will stop or funerals will become less devastating or chronic illness will magically resolve.
But because if you’re God’s child, “alone” is a redemptive impossibility.
You are reconciled to God, yes.
But also… you are built into His household. You are a living stone in a temple made of other living stones. You are grafted into a body where you’re not just tolerated but necessary. Where your specific function matters. Where your presence is not optional.
The loneliness you feel might be real. The isolation might be crushing. The sense that you’re going through this spiritual crisis completely by yourself might be overwhelming.
But it’s not the ultimate reality.
And maybe you’re not supposed to carry this alone anymore.
If You Need Help Taking A Practical First Step: Open your Bible and read Ephesians 2:11-22 slowly. Read it as someone who knows what isolation feels like, and let yourself sit with the movement Paul describes: from being “separated from Christ, alienated… having no hope and without God” to being “brought near” and “built together.”
Notice the phrase in verse 19: “You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household.”
That word. Members.
Not visitors. Not tolerated outsiders. Members. As in, you belong to this household. As in, this is your family whether you feel it or not.
And if you’re not ready for corporate worship yet, if the thought still feels like too much… maybe just start by telling one person about what you’re going through.
Not to get advice. Not to be fixed.
Just to not be alone in it anymore.
Because honestly? That’s often where it starts. With the terrifying vulnerability of letting one other person see you in your struggle.
I’m still learning to receive community instead of performing for it. Still working on being a member of the body, not just a resource for it. Still discovering what it means to be built together rather than constructing my faith in isolation.
Maybe you’re not supposed to be building alone either.
And remember, if you don’t have a Bible, you can read Ephesians 2 free online at BibleGateway.com.
