The Church Keeps Creating Programs; But People Are Still Lonely

The Orthodox Secret to Building Community

Since walking away from my career of twenty-six years last year, we have found ourselves living between two worlds.

From Sunday night through Thursday we are at our family property in a remote corner of South Carolina. Then, come Friday, we return to the city where our adult children live.

We move each week from dirt roads to traffic lights, from quiet evenings under the stars to crowded parking lots and busy schedules.

It has been a strange year, to say the least.

Voluntarily stepping away from an income that had carried our family through good times and bad for nearly three decades was something of a shock to the system.

The business had been passed down to me by my father shortly before his death in 2008. Through it,

• I was able to spend evenings counseling at a rehabilitation clinic, helping many who were struggling with addiction to drugs, alcohol, and the like.

• It afforded us the opportunity to open a small independent coffee shop that served as a gathering place for artists, philosophers, musicians, and neighbors who simply enjoyed being together.

• It also gave me years of freedom to volunteer in a ministry at the county jail, helping inmates earn their GEDs, providing counseling, and leading religious studies.

Looking back, I am not sure we had ever taken such a large step of faith as we did last year. Yet after decades of working on the periphery of academia, speaking at more university conferences than I can count, and now both teaching at a school and teaching catechism classes to the many inquirers entering the ancient church, it seemed that a new chapter was opening before us.

The stream of people finding their way into the ancient church throughout North and South America has been remarkable to witness, and I increasingly sensed that my work needed to shift toward teaching, writing, and serving in a different capacity.

What has surprised me most about this new season is not the financial adjustment, nor even the dramatic change in lifestyle. Rather, it has been the opportunity to observe our culture from two very different vantage points.

The country is slower. The city is faster.

The country has fewer people. The city has more.

Yet in both places I have noticed the same thing.

There is a profound lack of hospitality and community.

This observation is not offered as a criticism so much as a lament. For whatever else may be said about humanity, God created us for fellowship. The opening chapters of Scripture tell us that “it is not good that man should be alone.” We are social creatures by design. Solitude has its place, but isolation was never intended to be our normal condition.

I had known to a certain extent over the years that it was my time spent sitting at coffee shops, whether the independent family coffee shop we previously owned, or simply sitting at a chain coffee chop in the community, that people tended to gravitate toward my table where I would be studying because I was present and available and they were longing for someone to connect with.

It wasn’t because I was anything special that people would seek me out, but simply because I was available.

In much of modern life people seem increasingly sealed away behind doors.

In both rural communities and urban neighborhoods, it is uncommon to see neighbors sitting together on porches.

Rarely do people wander across the street merely to visit.

Hospitality, once woven naturally into the fabric of everyday life, has become something unusual enough to merit comment.

The irony is that we know something is missing.

Churches, particularly suburban churches, have recognized this hunger for connection and have attempted to address it through organized programs. Men’s groups, women’s groups, couples’ studies, youth groups, college ministries, service projects, and every conceivable variation of small-group ministry have emerged over the past several decades. The names differ from congregation to congregation, but the purpose remains the same: to create community.

There is much to admire in these efforts. They are noble in design and often beneficial in practice. I would never suggest otherwise.

But after many decades of observing friends and acquaintances attempt to build meaningful relationships through these structures, I have come to suspect that something essential is often missing.

Programs can create opportunities for relationships, but they cannot manufacture fellowship.

Perhaps the distinction is subtle, but it matters.

There is a type of connection that arises organically which cannot be replicated through scheduling alone. When people gather freely rather than formally, when conversation emerges rather than being facilitated, when friendship develops naturally rather than being assigned, something deeper often takes place.

This is not unique to church life.

Consider romantic love. Scheduled date nights can be valuable, especially amidst the demands of work and family. Yet if you ask most married couples about their most cherished memories, they are often not the carefully planned evenings. They are the spontaneous moments.

• A walk taken at sunset with no destination in mind.

• An unexpected road trip that turned into an adventure.

• A conversation that lasted far longer than either person intended.

The same principle appears throughout life.

Modern parents often schedule their children’s lives from one activity to the next: sports practices, dance classes, gymnastics, lessons, camps, and tournaments. Yet when I reflect upon my own childhood, it is rarely the organized events that come most vividly to mind.

I remember my father unexpectedly picking me up from work and taking me and my coworkers out to lunch.

I remember my Uncle Ken, my namesake, announcing that he was going for his evening constitutional and asking whether I wanted to come along. Lighting a cigar, which my aunt could not stand and therefore required him to smoke far from the house, he would stroll down quiet streets telling stories of growing up in Chicago decades before I was born.

Those walks shaped me more deeply than any organized activity ever could.

There is something about unhurried fellowship that allows people to reveal themselves. We tell stories. We share memories. We confess struggles. We learn one another’s peculiarities and strengths. Friendship grows not because we intended it to grow, but because we spent time together long enough for it to happen.

This past week I’ve been reading the biography of Saint John of Kronstadt, I was struck by how seriously he took this reality of fellowship.

The book traces not only his spiritual development but also his gradual embrace of human fellowship as an essential part of Christian life. Early on, social interaction did not come naturally to him. Yet over time he came to see that relationships with others were not distractions from spiritual growth but one of the very means through which God accomplishes it.

As he wrote in 1872:

“We should not disdain visiting guests: during their visit it becomes revealed how much we are obliged to one another and how much we respect one another... In general our virtues and our passions become known through our relations with others.”

What a profoundly Christian insight.

Many of us imagine holiness as something cultivated in private. We picture spiritual growth occurring primarily through prayer, study, and personal discipline. These things are indispensable. Yet we often fail to recognize that our virtues and our passions become visible only when we are forced to live among other people.

Patience is easy in isolation.

Forgiveness is unnecessary when one is alone.

Hospitality requires guests.

Generosity requires neighbors.

Love itself requires another person.

Father John eventually expanded this insight into a broader vision of Christian fellowship:

“It is also good to go out as a guest in others’ houses because this is a part of the work of Christian sociability. By observing others we appropriate each other’s good qualities, noticing spiritual treasures and gathering them for ourselves... Nothing disposes one to virtue as much as good, living examples.”

That phrase stayed with me: nothing disposes one to virtue as much as good, living examples.

We become like the people with whom we spend our lives. Not merely through formal instruction, but through observation. We learn how to pray by praying beside those who pray. We learn generosity from generous people. We learn patience from patient people. The Christian life is not merely taught; it is caught.

Perhaps this is part of what our culture has lost. We have unprecedented access to information, yet diminishing access to one another. We can watch sermons online, listen to podcasts, and read thousands of books, but none of those can fully replace sitting around a dinner table with friends, lingering on a front porch, or taking a slow evening walk with someone whose life quietly teaches us how to live.

As I move back and forth each week between country and city, I find myself increasingly convinced that one of the simplest acts of Christian witness today may also be one of the oldest: opening our homes, sharing meals, visiting neighbors, and making time for one another. Not because it is efficient. Not because it can be measured. But because God has designed us for communion.

~ Kenneth

Furthermore

Due to the transition of going from a career of nearly thirty years to being a full-time teacher and writer, there was this profound sense of unease. “How will we pay our bills?” I kept asking.

After all, my income was being slashed a hundredfold. For the first time in decades, there was no predictable paycheck arriving every week. There was only faith, uncertainty, and the conviction that this was the direction God was calling us to walk.

Then something unexpected happened.

Substack readers began subscribing. A few dollars here and there started to add up. Before I knew it, there was enough to pay for my coffee to meet with people, then there were a few extra dollars and we were able to pay our electric bill. What had seemed impossible only months before slowly became reality.

It was not only the paid subscribers who helped us in this new season of life. It was also those who subscribed without paying, who clicked the little heart button beneath an essay, who left a thoughtful comment, or who shared an article with a friend or family member. Every person who has engaged with these writings in some way has contributed to what this community has become.

So before bringing these thoughts to a close, I simply want to say thank you.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for sharing these essays with others. Thank you for the emails, the comments, the prayers, and the encouragement. Whether you have been here from the beginning or arrived only recently, you have played a role in helping make this new chapter of our lives possible.

We are diligently working toward a grand announcement that we will be making public soon, of how we are going to return our gratitude toward each of one you in a real and tangible manner. Stay tuned!