Dear Church, I Still Want to Belong

Dear Church,

You and I have not communed as of late. At least not without gritted teeth.

It’s not that I don’t want us to be close. I know God has a glorious design for our relationship. You and I are meant to belong to the same body, the same bride, awaiting the day Christ returns for His Church.

I want that.

I want to swim in the beauty of the family that could be.

Maybe that’s part of why this has hurt so much.

I came to you already carrying wounds from my first family—the one unchosen and born into—with a deeply felt sense that I don’t belong, I’m not understood, I can’t quite get comfortable. I stretched out hope with a lick of promise that entering your gates might fulfill some of what had been lacking. A place and a people who might quench my thirst for trusting relationship, safety, worth, and value.

Instead, I often found myself lingering at the surface.

Nothing catastrophic. No singular injury I can hold up as the moment everything changed. There are others who have endured terrible abuses beneath steeples and Scripture. That is not my story.

Mine is harder to point to.

It is more about what wasn’t there.

Depth. Intimacy. Being known. Room to bring all of myself rather than only the parts that knew how to color inside the lines.

Sometimes neglect leaves no incision to show anyone. Just the lingering ache that something you needed never arrived.

And so I retreated.

I waved my white flag as though you and I stood on opposite sides.

Though we don’t.

We have the same mission. Our ways of pursuing it have simply felt at odds.

I desire truth, authenticity, and a faith willing to descend into the deepest theological places. Yet sometimes what I have experienced from your hands has felt like lip service, empty promises, shallow teaching, and “soul harvesting”—more bodies brought through the doors while the people already sitting inside them remain hungry.

I know it’s more complicated than my anger sometimes allows. Churches have buildings to maintain, staff to pay, ministries to fund, communities to reach. Outreach matters. Growth is not inherently corrupt.

But institutions develop appetites.

Attendance can become affirmation. Growth can become proof of success. More people mean more giving, more programs, more capacity. Eventually the machinery can become difficult to distinguish from the mission it was built to serve.

And I wonder: when did getting people through the doors become easier to measure than the depth of what happens to them once they’re inside?

Where is the depth my soul longs for?

I have tried to bring some of it myself—my experience, education, talents, my spirited zeal.

At times, I’ve wondered if you simply haven’t known what to do with me.

I have felt quieted, though rarely in ways obvious enough to confront. No direct rejection. No conflict where we could sit across from one another, say the difficult thing, wrestle, repair.

Instead, strange looks. Hollow smiles. A slow backing away. Doors that never quite open.

Nothing substantial enough to defend myself against.

Just enough to leave me buzzing with fury.

But I don’t like who I become when I am perpetually angry with you.

So I excused myself.

I needed space.

Because somewhere along the way, it became hard to know what was me and what was you.

How much of the fire between us belonged to what I had experienced? How much was I continuing to feed with coals of my own?

I became defensive with every worship song, every biblical misstep, every uncomfortable smile. I entered already braced, scanning for evidence that you would disappoint me again.

That isn’t the heart posture I want to bring into relationship.

So I have been cooling.

Not extinguishing discernment. Not pretending the wounds aren’t there. Just tending to the inflammation in my own heart so there might someday be a path between us again.

Still, I wonder:

How do I know which doors to walk through without setting that sense of betrayal ablaze again?

How do I allow something rooted and secure to grow when I enter feeling so insecure?

How do I extend enough grace to experience grace? Enough forgiveness to receive forgiveness? Enough acceptance to recognize acceptance when it is offered?

Not out of blind obedience.

An olive branch.

Because families fight. They disappoint one another. They misunderstand. Healthy families are not families without rupture. They are families where rupture does not automatically threaten belonging—where there is enough safety to disagree, enough humility to repair, enough security to return.

I think that is what I have wanted from you.

And perhaps what I am slowly becoming willing to offer you, too.

My time away has given me space to ponder. To read. To become curious again.

I have never really wondered whether I still believe.

My Lord has remained my refuge. In Him I feel safe, comforted, known.

My questions have been about you.

How does my belief become embodied in community? What does it mean to belong to the body of Christ when I have struggled to experience His body as home?

You are not God. Perhaps separating the two has been part of the work.

You are an imperfect people meant to embody something of Him—to nourish, gather, teach, serve, challenge, comfort, and become family to one another.

I have struggled to experience you that way.

Maybe I always have.

And yet there have been seasons, particularly when I have been deep in the trenches, when you have been a source of life to me.

That matters too.

Distance allowed me to study you without having to participate in you. For a while, I needed that.

I read Sacred Pathways and was reminded that worship and connection with our Creator are not one-dimensional. I read Introverts in the Church and discovered that some of what I had experienced as I don’t belong here may also come from church cultures built around particular personalities and expressions of community. The Blue Parakeet challenged me to recognize the traditions, assumptions, convictions, and questions we each bring to Scripture. Other books led me into questions about unhealthy leadership, narcissistic dynamics, power, and how church culture is shaped by those participating in it.

Somewhere in all that reading, my certainty loosened.

Not my faith.

My certainty.

I gained knowledge and, inconveniently, more confusion. I reconsidered convictions I once held rigidly and discovered places in my theology where I simply don’t know.

I also realized I don’t fit neatly into a particular Christian tradition or denomination. I find myself flirting with and rejecting tenets of many, trying to discern which differences matter enough to determine the doors I eventually walk through and which I can hold loosely enough to remain in relationship.

Perhaps maturity has looked less like becoming certain and more like becoming curious.

But there is only so much I can learn about relationship from outside of one.

At some point, observation must become participation.

If I want to know whether safety is possible, I will eventually have to become vulnerable enough to discover it.

That doesn’t mean walking indiscriminately through any open door. It doesn’t mean calling dysfunction holy or silencing discernment in the name of forgiveness. God’s design for His Church and every human expression of church are not interchangeable.

Choosing wisely matters.

But eventually, so does choosing.

Because relationship cannot continue without connection.

And perhaps the church I need isn’t one that will never disappoint me.

Perhaps I need one where disappointment does not require silence. Where disagreement does not threaten belonging. Where rupture can lead to repair rather than exile.

My separation from you has allowed for necessary growth.

But I don’t think it was ever meant to remain permanent.

I thirst for community.

I have recreated it in other places, collecting sips of refreshment through friendship, family, shared meals, and people with whom I can think aloud and be known.

Still, the desire for belonging has not quite been quenched.

I want to believe there is a place within you where I can belong without abandoning myself. Where conviction and humility can coexist. Where questions are not mistaken for rebellion. Where depth matters as much as attendance. Where I can bring my gifts without needing them to make me valuable.

Perhaps that is asking a great deal of imperfect people.

Perhaps it is also worth searching for.

I am learning that God has not become less trustworthy because His people have sometimes disappointed me. Nor does His perfect design require me to pretend every human expression of it is good.

One day, I believe, the distance between what the Church is and what she was created to be will disappear.

We are not there yet.

Neither am I.

I am not ready to come back. Not quite.

There are questions I still want to follow and waters I still want to wander.

But something has changed.

I am no longer sailing away from you.

You are there in the distance now.

A lighthouse on the horizon.

Not dragging me toward shore. Not denying the rocks beneath the water. Not demanding that I dock before I am ready.

Just there.

Steady enough for me to orient myself toward home.

And when I am ready, I think I will.