When Not Belonging Seems to Make Sense
Throughout my life, I’ve met various individuals and couples who chose not to belong to a congregation. They had faith in Jesus, but for various reasons, they were not part of a congregation. Some even maintained a devotional life, professed their faith in Jesus to others, but were not part of a congregation. Occasionally, they would visit a local or distant church, but they did not maintain fellowship with any congregation.
The reasons are varied. And many of them are quite understandable.
There were those who had been deeply and unjustly hurt by a pastor, a deacon, or a group of people from the congregation they belonged to. This reminds me of Psalm 55:12-14, which we can summarize as saying those who live with me are not trustworthy. Other texts in this sense might be Ezekiel 34:1-6 and John 10:11-13.
For others, the liturgy stopped making sense. It no longer communicated anything significant to their lives.
I also remember cases where they felt they no longer fit in anywhere. They would go here and there and always feel like a fish out of water.
I recall others who simply became exhausted from so much internal conflict and weariness.
And I know of cases where they succumbed to the arguments of friends, family, ideas from outside where being a Christian was a reason for mockery and ridicule.
We could also mention other cases like periods of transition, illness, changes, and other circumstances that can distance someone from the community.
I think, then, that it is perfectly understandable for someone not to be part of a congregation for a while for various reasons.
The problem begins when a circumstance turns into a conviction: “I believe in Christ, but I don’t need to belong to His people.”
Sometimes You Need to Leave That Church
Not every departure from the institutional church means a departure from Christ. There are pastors who wound, sick communities, and environments where staying may mean continuing to be subjected to manipulation or emotional and/or spiritual violence.
Ezekiel 34 resonates with me in this regard.
If this were a sermon, there would be several divisions: 1-6; 7-10; 11-16; 17-19; 20-24 and 25-31.
For the purposes of this article, we will only consider two parts: 1-10 and 17-31.
In the second part (Ezekiel 34:17-31), it speaks of the responsibility of the sheep themselves, and the prophet says that God Himself will “judge between one sheep and another” and “I will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.” In other words, part of the congregation is responsible for the weakness of another part.
However, I am interested in the first part (Ezekiel 34:1-10). The shepherds were tending to themselves while the sheep were scattered. And worse, this dispersion distanced them not only from the congregation but from the Creator Himself.
Ezekiel 34:6 says, “”My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill.”” To the casual reader, this means they went looking for other pastures or other places. And—while this is true—when we see mentions of high places in the Bible, it is an indirect reference to places of worship distinct from the places of worship to God.
See Numbers 33:51-52, where God commands the destruction of Canaanite religious implements “among them the high places.”
Or the wisest king recorded in the Bible who succumbed to earthly desires. 2 Kings 11:7 tells us that Solomon built “high places” for Chemosh and Molech, foreign gods.
Personally, I know people who—for perfectly understandable reasons—left the congregation but later associated with beliefs contrary to the Christian faith grounded in the Bible. This is what the “high places” are talking about.
But what makes the text vehement in its line of argument is that the reason for all this is that the shepherds care only for themselves. Verses 4-5: “You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not care for the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally.“
This is pastoral violence. Abuse. Violence. Manipulation.
So, leaving a congregation may be necessary; concluding that we no longer need a community is another matter.
The wound explains the isolation. The new conviction explains the self-protection.
If you are a pastor who scatters sheep, return to your original calling (if it is real). Take a look at Acts 20:28-30.
Isolation Can Cease to Be Protection and Turn into Autonomy
Being alone brings certain immediate emotional advantages. One of them is that no one contradicts me. There is a certain tranquility in realizing that there is no one else looking at me, meddling in my life, asking personal questions, correcting some attitudes and beliefs.
I can also—with all modern resources—create my own menu of preachers I like since they say what I like. (2 Timothy 4:4) I can choose the spiritual diet to follow and even have my own definition of which sins I consider important.
I then set up a personal “church” on the internet where all the “pastors” say exactly what I like to hear.
I have achieved peace. I have reached Nirvana. My soul has nothing more to worry about.
But the New Testament presents a faith in which I not only know others (as on the internet) but am also known. In this faith, we serve and are served; we correct and are corrected; we bear with and are borne with.
In these times, such a place is very uncomfortable. And you don’t have to physically leave the congregation to not be—in fact—in fellowship. It is quite possible to enter and leave all the services throughout the year and not know or be known by anyone. Society—increasingly individualistic—teaches and encourages us to isolate ourselves more and more and calls it “full life,” “empowerment,” etc.
On the other hand, it is wrong to think that all this is only due to modernity.
The epistle to the Hebrews, written during the second generation of Christians, still largely linked to the Jewish religion, which was a legal religion for the Roman Empire, raises a particularly uncomfortable point: there are people who watch over us and before whom there is some form of submission (Hebrews 13:7, 17).
Evidently, this does not grant absolute authority to any pastor. The freedom of conscience, belief, and practice continues to exist because we are fully responsible for our actions. Even for those that are a reaction to an explicit violation of our person.
But it also does not allow for a completely autonomous faith. And that is the point that hurts so much for those who—justifiably—decided not to belong anymore.
Following Christ Means Identifying with His People
The letter to the Hebrews is particularly interesting in this context.
The first to believe in Jesus as the Messiah (Christ) were Jews. They did not see themselves as a separate project from the Jewish people but as a continuation. That is, participating in the chosen people by believing in a Messiah who had been promised since ancient times fit very well with the Messiah now revealed and proven resurrected by many witnesses.
On the other hand, the Jewish religion—as we mentioned earlier—was a legal religion within the Roman Empire. And there were some special characteristics worth highlighting: it was the only monotheistic religion, and there was a form of covenant between the Romans and the Jews in which the former tolerated their religion, provided they made prayers for the emperor. All this in a region (the eastern part of the empire) where there were already provinces that had requested permission (29 BC) to build temples linked to the cult of the ruler. This practice would consolidate throughout the empire by the end of the first century.
The epistle to the Hebrews is written at least by the end of the first century. The author himself declares that both he and the readers are not eyewitnesses of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. (Hebrews 2:1 “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard”. Hebrews 4:2 “For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us…”) That is, they are at least the second generation of believers in Jesus as Christ (Messiah).
These Jewish believers in Jesus did not want to separate from Jewish fellowship. And this, in the time they lived, made a lot of sense. Enrolled in the Jewish religion and being tolerated by the Jews themselves, they became untouchable by the Roman Empire.
But if they identified as followers of Jesus as a divine being, and therefore outside the Jewish religion, they could be classified as rebels, pagans, and subject to all sorts of punishments, potentially leading to death. That is why the author says in Hebrews 12:4-5, “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement…“
If we trace a timeline, the first persecutions of Christians date back to 70 AD, when—after the war between Jews and Romans—tensions between Jews and Christians increased, and this often also affected Christian communities. After that, the Christian movement began to be perceived more frequently as separate from Judaism, which affected how local authorities treated the groups.
And things worsened with Domitian (81-96). It is common to find references to repressions under his rule. There is ancient tradition, such as that of Eusebius, associating the period with suffering and exile of Christians.
It is around this time that the epistle to the Hebrews was written. Things were getting tense for Christians. And these Jews who had believed were abandoning the congregation (Hebrews 10:24-25), and they did so seeking to avoid death (Hebrews 12:4-5), which is a perfectly understandable reason.
Every Christian (Jewish or not) knew that things were getting worse. By the time of Trajan (98-117), there were already judicial persecutions and well-established procedural policies. There was not yet widespread mass killing, but we can affirm that by the beginning of the second century, there was real repression by imperial decision implemented in the provinces.
So, the recipients of the letter clearly knew the cost of being publicly associated with the faith and the Christian community. Some Christians had suffered, lost possessions, and been publicly exposed. What we would today call cancel culture but in a cruder version.
In this context, the “not giving up meeting together” of Hebrews 10:25 means much more than regularly attending worship. It is public community identification.
Some might see here a call to collective martyrdom. But nothing could be further from the truth. As Christians, we love life. But the truth that the gospel reveals is much greater than any social religious scheme. And precisely for this reason, it cannot enter into relations of compromise or convenience with any other type of spiritual manifestation.
A careful and contemporary parallel can be drawn.
Today it is socially comfortable to say: “I have my spirituality.” Advancing a little further, someone might say, “I follow Jesus” or even “I follow Jesus with my own convictions.”
More difficult is to say: “These Christians are my people. Yes, I belong to a concrete and imperfect community.” That indeed requires courage and full conviction beyond the status quo.
Christ does not call only individuals. He incorporates people into a body. His body, of which He is the head. (See Hebrews 2:12 and 12:23; Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:18; 1 Corinthians 12:12-27)
Congregation Is Not Attendance; It’s Shared Life
The solution to “I believe, but I don’t belong” is not “then go to church on Sundays.”
There is a tremendous superficiality and lack of fellowship in merely attending worship. Someone can do this without missing a single Sunday for forty years and still not be part of the congregation. Continuing practically alone. The only variant of the expression “I believe, but I don’t belong” is that the person believes but—in fact—is not part of the congregation.
My maternal grandmother lived in the capital, and with my mother, we would occasionally visit her. On the perpendicular street half a block away, there was a karate school. I must have been about 9 to 11 years old. I loved going and watching them practice this martial art. The shouts. The synchronized movements. The kimono. The tatami. The environment. The smell. Everything was etched in my memory. Years later, when I was 17, I taught programming classes in a neighboring city to ours. We had a twenty-minute break between one class and the next. I would run to see one of two things: karate training or a game of bocce.
Needless to say, I didn’t learn karate or how to play bocce.
No one becomes physically healthy by entering the gym once a week, wearing the appropriate exercise clothes, bringing a liter of water, and sitting for an hour watching other people exercise and then going home. Health requires a life in which certain practices become habitual. And that is difficult.
The Christian community works similarly, only much deeper.
But first, let me present some ideas about the word communion. This word of Latin origin (communio) derives from com (meaning “together”) and munis (meaning “charge” or “obligation”) and is used in the sense of “common participation,” “having something in common.” An easy way to remember the meaning would be “common union” or “common charge.”
Those of us who believe in Jesus as God incarnate and Messiah (Christ) share many things. Obviously, due to the nature of this faith, it excludes any other type of similar, resembling, or analogous faith. Christians share the exclusive faith in Jesus as the only and sufficient savior. Christians (regardless of institutional label or Christian tradition) are part of the same body and have one mediator (1 Timothy 2:5; Ephesians 4:4-6; 1 Corinthians 12:12-27).
There is no possible way to practice communion alone. It only serves to avoid the hardships of the disapproving looks of non-believers.
We pray together. We bear burdens. We share. We confess. We teach. We are corrected. We learn. We forgive. We celebrate. We weep. We serve. We are known.
These are things that society has always taught are not appropriate for the individual.
Salvation, therefore, is not just an individual thing, as much as it begins there. It is—above all—communal.
It is significant that much of the New Testament’s instructions contain the expression “one another.” There is no way to practice them alone.
(Acts 2:42-47; Galatians 6:2; James 5:16)
Perhaps the Question Is Wrong
When we ask if a Christian needs to go to church, we may have reduced the issue too much. As if we had placed a magnifying glass over only one part of the subject.
There may be times when we cannot belong. There may be churches from which we need to leave. There may be wounds that take time to heal. And none of these situations should be treated superficially or with indifference.
However, there is another question: “Is it possible to follow for a long time the one who made us part of a body while deliberately refusing to live as part of that body?“
The Christian life described in the New Testament does not seem to know a permanently solitary faith.
Not because God is taking attendance on Sundays, but because there are entire dimensions of the Christian life that simply do not exist when we are alone.
I cannot bear the burden “of one another” alone.
I cannot forgive “one another” alone.
I cannot confess “to one another” alone.
Nor can I easily discover where I am wrong if all the voices I hear were chosen by me.
Perhaps belonging is not simply an obligation of the Christian life.
Perhaps it is one of the ways Christ keeps alive and healthy the faith we claim to have in Him.
