Now that Covid restrictions have eased, there are so many ways to connect with people. You can go to a sporting event and cheer on the local team. You can play a sport yourself – like doubles pickle-ball at Farnsworth Park. Alumni gatherings may beckon, as may events put on by your children’s school. You can check out a music concert, attend a political rally, or take a ceramics class. Nonprofit organizations abound, offering opportunities for volunteering and in-person meet-ups. And right at your fingertips are options for digital connection: email, text, chat groups, videoconferencing, social media, and the list goes on. The number of ways we can bond with others is staggering.
And yet, Americans report alarmingly high levels of loneliness today. Even before the pandemic hit, a 2019 Cigna health study showed fifty-eight percent of American adults sometimes or always felt nobody knew them well. In 2023, following the impact of the Covid restrictions, the surgeon general declared loneliness an epidemic. He compared its health consequences to that of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And loneliness persists in 2024. A recent American Psychiatric Association survey showed that 1 in 3 American adults feel lonely at least once a week, and 1 in 10 feel lonely daily. Young people, ages 19-29, reported feeling the loneliest. What’s going on?
A host of factors have been cited for the crisis, including an individualistic culture, declining participation in religious and civic institutions, the impact of social media, and the ubiquity of digital devices. Some blame a highly mobile society in which extended family and local community no longer offer the level of long-term relational support they once did.
However, one cause that is invariably cited is the lack of meaningful relationships. Lonely people may be connected with others by a common interest, political party, or sports team affiliation. They may have more than 1000 friends on Facebook. But their relationships lack depth. They do not feel sufficiently bound with people such that they can be held up when a life crisis strikes. Their relationships do not imbue their lives with a sense of purpose. They lack ties that bind.
In a lonely world, the church has something vital to offer: relationships of depth. First and foremost, we offer the gospel message. We proclaim God’s great invitation to a rich relationship with the source, guide, and goal of all things – a God who promises to never leave our side or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). Such a connection with our creator, redeemer, and sustainer is freely offered to all, we proclaim, by the grace of Jesus Christ – and is a gift we receive by faith (Ephesians 2:4-10). The church has this good news to bring to a people plagued by isolation.
And yet we have still more to offer: the chance to be in relationship with others bound together by Christ. As the great hymn puts it, “Blessed be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love: the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.” Rather than pointing to a mere private or personal spirituality (which can prove a lonely undertaking), the church promises spiritual community.
Our common faith in Christ binds us with others in such a powerful way that Scripture calls it akin to each being integral body parts with one common head: Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 13). We get to share life not just with the God we know in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We get to share life with others bound together in that triune God.
As a new fall season and school year approaches, I invite you to unpack this gift waiting for you at your local church: meaningful relationships. Sure, such relationships take time, commitment, work, and sacrifice. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously put it, discipleship comes with a cost. But the reward is so rich, Bonhoeffer noted. As he wrote in Life Together, “Let the one who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of their heart. Let them thank God on their knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that I am allowed to live in community with Christian sisters and brothers.” As Bonhoeffer reminds the church then and now, “the ties that bind our hearts in Christian love” truly are blessed—and right there waiting for us.
~Pastor Matt