Loving Your Spiritually-Homeless Neighbor

How you can better care for the church refugees in your world

by Michelle Van Loon

They were the ones filling the pews, attending the Bible studies, teaching Sunday School, serving on committees, and cleaning the church toilets. But they’ve either stopped attending their former churches or they’re currently eyeing the exit doors, plotting their escape. There are a whole lot of spiritually homeless people right now.

A generation ago, some church leaders had a ready palette of ways to shame and blame people who left their congregations. These narratives included implying that church leavers had “fallen away” from the faith, suggesting that leavers might never have been part of the family of God in the first place, or intimating that leavers had experienced some sort of gross moral failure. These storylines placed all the blame on those who exited their local church home, which had the bonus effect of exempting too many church leaders from doing much reflection about what role their leadership and/or the congregation’s culture might have played in a person’s decision to depart.

Those shame and blame reasons do not reflect the reality that a significant portion of those who are leaving local churches are in fact those who are deeply committed to God but no longer find spiritual nurture and sanctuary in an instituional church. These include committed believers like these:

• Marcy’s daughter had been sexually abused by the youth pastor at their church. When she went to her church leaders with evidence, they protected the youth pastor and told her she was making too big a deal out of it. She eventually reported the crime to the police and hired a lawyer at her own expense. The youth leader eventually went to prison, because of course there were other victims besides Marcy’s daughter. How could she trust any church after all her former church had put her family through?

• Carmen’s midlife battle with chronic illness had left her feeling like a second-class member of a congregation in which she’d served previously for years. Well-meaning church friends had offered everything from herbal and dietary remedies to the business cards of various alternative medicine practitioners. The prosperity gospel that bubbled under the surface of the church culture implied to them that anyone who was sick as much as Carmen had deficient faith or unconfessed sin in their lives. Why bother with church when she felt so many were judging her for something she couldn’t control and God had chosen not to heal?

• Kim’s faith convictions led her to support a political party that her fellow congregants talked about as if it was the Antichrist. She was sad to realize over time that the “love” she felt as a member of the church was conditioned on her being a part of their political tribe. Maybe it wasn’t love after all. She quietly slipped out the doors once Sunday after one excruciating coffee hour too many, never to return. What was the point of church if it is just an outpost for partisan culture warring with a splash of Bible mixed in for good measure?

The questions these women are asking are asking are not the questions of those weak in their faith. I believe it is more accurate to describe them as spiritually homeless people who are deconstructing their toxic church experiences. You may have a friend or family member who has left their congregation. Or you may be wondering about how to best connect with a person with whom you once attended church who seems to have disappeared into the ether.

If you’re thinking of someone you know, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, remember that so many people with church hurt have experienced their relationship with a congregation primarily in terms of a transactional relationship: members attend, give, and follow the written and unwritten rules of the church culture and receive the benefits of belonging to a community in return. When the cost of that transaction is more than they are willing to pay, leavers usually lose their community, as transactional as it may have been. The majority of those I’ve known who have left a congregation say this loss is the hardest thing they face.

Second, your willingness to offer hospitality to your spiritually homeless friends is to offer them a non-transactional taste of community. I’m not talking about a Martha Stewart or Joanna Gaines version of hospitality here. Instead, I’m using the word ‘hospitality’ in its historical sense. The word has its roots in the Latin hospitalitem and the Old French ospitalité that meant both the compassionate welcome of guests and the healing care of a hospital. The word originally referenced both guest and host, which for the purpose of this discussion is a good reminder that hospitality happens in relationship. If you view a church leaver as a project to fix, you will not be able to offer them true hospitaility in your relationship with them. God doesn’t need you to be his PR department for the church. He is asking you simply to be a friend, no transactional strings attached.

If the spiritually homeless person is you, I am praying that as you read these words, you’re discovering that God’s love for you is not transactional. It is unconditional. He doesn’t love you more because you attend a church service, and he doesn’t love you less because you don’t. Hebrews 10:24-25, the Scripture passage some have used as a goad to encourage people to attend Sunday worship services, is not about attendance but about the kind of hospitable relationships believers are supposed to have with one another seven days a week.

I hope you can also recognize that the statement you’ve probably heard one time too many – “There is no such thing as a perfect church” – does not excuse a church that has become toxic. Most of us understand from reading the New Testament that there is no such thing as a perfect church, but believe there are churches committed to pursuing health as a community. It is likely you may be carrying some trauma if you’ve left a toxic congregation. You deserve the same kind of compassion the victim in the parable of the Good Samaritan received – someone who will carry you to a place of safety, others around you who will minister to your wounded soul. You deserve the hospitality of Jesus.

Those of us who have experienced spiritual homelessness know there are no easy answers, quick fixes, or magical formulas to bring comfort and clarity to what can be a disorienting experience. A single article like this is simply a discussion-opener. I’m sharing some resources below that may be of help whether you’re seeking to be a friend to someone who has left a church or whether you are the leaver.

We covet your wisdom on this topic, Sages. If you’re currently attending a church, what practices and resources have you found helpful as you’ve reached out to people who have left? If you’re the leaver, what things have been helpful to you?

Additional resources for caring for your spiritually homeless friend…or for yourself

Here are a few recent titles that touch on topics relevant to those who’ve left church. These are Amazon links so you can read the book’s description, but you should be able to order any of these titles from your favorite bookseller if you prefer not to order from Amazon:

Church Refugees: Sociologists reveal why people are DONE with church but not their faith by Josh Packard and Ashley Hope

When the Church Harms God’s People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded by Diane Langberg

Othered: Finding Belonging with the God Who Pursues The Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized by Jenai Auman

When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat

Invisible Jesus: A Book About Leaving the Church and Looking for Christ by Scot McKnight and Tommy Preson Phillips

What books, websites, podcasts, or newsletters would you add to this list?

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One more book for you to consider: My newest book, Downsizing: Letting Go of Evangelicalism’s Nonessentials, is slated for release August 19th. I wrote it to be a provocative conversation-starter about the occasionally good and too frequently awful movements within Evangelicalism during the last half-century. This is a conversation that includes those who are still in the Evangelical world, those who’ve shaken the dust from their feet as they’ve exited it, and everyone else who is trying to make sense of how we got to this crossroads moment in the church. There are compelling reasons a lot of people are spiritually homeless right now.

If you preorder, you can get an advance copy of the book. Click here to find out more. Read it now and be ready to jump into the conversation later this summer!

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Sage Forum contributors are writing:

Sharla Fritz’s new Bible study entitled Divine Directions: How God Guides Your Path is available now!

You can now preorder Dorothy Greco’s For The Love of Women: Uprooting and Healing Mysogyny in America, which releases in October.

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O Lord, you who put all the pieces of my life back together, make me brave, I pray, to open up the book of my heart to your eyes, so that you might rewrite the text of my life, showing me the story of my truest self and freeing me to live into my God-given calling this day. I pray this in the name of the True Storyteller, Jesus Christ himself. Amen.

From Prayers for the Pilgrimage: A Book of Collects for All of Life by W. David O. Taylor

Photos by Daria Trofimova, Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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