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It’s been a couple weeks since I first read this piece but want to make sure I don’t forget it. Kenneth B. on Substack wrote “Another Bible Study Night Will Fix It… Really????”, and boy did it ring true to me.

Why is Christian community in America so often based on church meetings? Have you ever noticed that churches tend to organize social life around structured gatherings, rather than around the kinds of unplanned, natural friendships that unfold throughout the ordinary rhythms of daily life?

Here is a sample of recurring meetings I’ve seen in various churches: “Bible Study,” “Men’s Group,” “Women’s Group,” “Young Married Couples’ Group,” “Sunday School,” “Vacation Bible School,” “Youth Group,” “Promise Keepers,” “Wednesday Night Service,” “Divorce Recovery Group,” “Alcoholics Anonymous,” “College and Career Group.”

The list is virtually endless. And while there is nothing inherently wrong with organizing groups like these, there is something telling about our need to program fellowship so meticulously.

During my adult years in evangelicalism I was so deep in this I hardly noticed it. It was the water we were swimming in. All of our community interactions were centered around church activities. The furthest we got out of that stream was an occasional lunch or coffee invite - usually initiated by me, and almost never reciprocated. I still haven’t figured out why this was such a struggle.

In my youth this was a thing our family and community seemed to do a lot better. We seemingly constantly had friends over in our home or were over at their homes; youth hangouts were frequent, families would come over for an evening meal… maybe it’s larger in my memory than it was in reality, but it was definitely more frequent than it has been in my adult life. (Was this a product of having a very outgoing father who initiated these meetups? Maybe that’s the difference?)

One of the big consequences in adulthood of having all of our friendships and community built around church activities is that when we left the church, the community (such as it was) went away as well. As in, we left the church and never heard from almost any of them again. Ever.

Kenneth has a vision for what it could look like instead:

This is not meant to be an indictment of the entire Church in America. There are wonderful communities doing beautiful work. But it is an invitation to all of us—myself included—to rethink what we mean when we say we want to “make disciples.” Are we imagining coffee shops, mentorship books, and curriculum? Or are we imagining homes with open doors, unglamorous errands, shared laughter, and long nights of prayer?

I would love to have more friends where the relationship was built around just… being friends. To have around for whatever is going around in our lives. Saturday work project? Sure, let me come over and help for a few hours. Slow weekday evening? Come over for some food and let’s hang out. No event required. Eventually I’d like to be comfortable enough friends that I’m comfortable having you visit without feeling like I have to clean house for an hour beforehand. (Now there’s the true test of a friendship!)

“Normal” Friendships Look Different

Another voice popped into the discussion in my inbox today via Stephanie Jo Warren’s slightly more aggressive post “The Myth of Christian Community”.

If you’ve never been part of a fundamentalist Christian church, here’s what you should know: We were raised to believe that connection was made through confession and that love was shown through pain. Jesus expressed his love by dying on the cross for us, and God demonstrated his love by watching in anguish as his son Jesus was crucified. Because of this, it was natural for us to associate love with pain.

We were told, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” but in practice, that love often appeared as emotional monitoring. Oversharing was seen as a sign of holiness, boundaries were regarded as selfish, and privacy was interpreted as hiding something sinful. As for friendship, it was unconditional; everyone in the church was considered a brother or sister. Yet, in reality, no one truly was.

Now that I’ve left the movement, I’m still learning how to be a person, let alone how to be a friend.

This also rings true to my experience. Emotional monitoring. Oversharing as a sign of holiness. Boundaries regarded as selfishness. She goes on:

There is a distinctive longing experienced by former evangelicals, ex-cult members, and those raised in environments where control replaced genuine connection. It’s a craving for friendships that don’t come with religious or spiritual expectations, for love that isn’t contingent on loyalty tests, and for invitations extended simply because someone enjoys your company- not because they’re trying to ‘pour into your life.”

It’s the pain of realizing that everything you believed about outsiders was wrong. Surprisingly, those who were meant to love you, your church community, were often the ones causing the most harm. Meanwhile, the perceived “enemy” out there can be much safer than the person sitting next to you in the pew.

I resonate with this, too. The past five years outside of Evangelicalism have been a real adventure in learning what it looks like to build relationships - can we use easier terminology here? - to make friends outside of the facilitation of church activities. Unsurprisingly, but jarringly, this only happened when we started getting involved in activities that weren’t church activities. (We never had time for those before!)

Going Forward

My kids have had to learn this post-church friend-making sort of mid-stream in their childhoods. I am happy to see them slowly figuring out how it works and finding their own communities at high school and college. My wife and I are now just a couple years from becoming empty nesters, which means the challenge of community morphs yet again as we work out what our lives look like when they’re not largely structured around kids at home.

Whatever community we find and whatever friends we make, I hope that we can end up eventually with friends who are friends to spend normal time with, doing normal life things. (The evangelical phrase “do life together” came naturally to my mind but the experience of decades puts the lie to it.) Humans need community, need friends to thrive. I hope I’ve still got some years of thriving ahead of me.