Outsider in the Church

I struggle to write this post because I don't want my words to be misunderstood. I don't want somebody to read this as a means to put down the church or ever give it a chance, as that's the last thing I want. I'm not willing to say that the institutional church as we know it today is a failure.

But for as many drafts as I've written about this topic, I couldn't not publish it.



I've always had a really weird relationship with the church. And when I mean the church, I'm not just talking about the one I currently attend but more so the conglomerate that is basically any Protestant Christian church. I've never gotten along all that well with my peers, and I always felt like an outcast.

I thought that that would change when I grew up and left home for the first time to attend a Christian university, but it didn't. I thought again that would change when I joined a cross-country internship working with many churches in many contexts, but it didn't. And I thought it would change again when I actively pursued plugging myself into multiple ministries at my current church, but... it didn't.

I still feel like an outsider.

At this point, you probably wonder why I'm part of the church at all anymore, and that's a question I sometimes struggle to answer myself. I suppose the answer for me is that my free thinking self doesn't see a logical reason why not to have faith. I have put my faith to the test, and while I, by no means, have all the answers, my faith has remained unshaken over time.

My purpose in writing this post, then, is to let you know that if you feel like an outsider like me, you are not alone. While I have never had a direct conversation with somebody that has conveyed these same feelings, I have a strong inclination that other people like me exist. People that feel misplaced in the institutional church setting but aren't willing to compromise their faith.

And maybe you're like me, too, in the fact that you tend to blame yourself for this weird relationship. I am a person who feels the need to own their problems, so I can't help but look at myself as being the weirdo who caused this strained relationship. As much as I absolutely despise unjust blame shifting, this is honestly one area that I'm changing my thoughts on. Maybe I'm really not the problem. Maybe there is a problem within the institutional church.

I'm delving too much down a hole that I'm not willing to go yet. At least not publicly. I concede that there are still folks, like my wife, that love the church as it stands today and does not have that same outsider mentality. To that end, maybe it is me that's the problem.

Regardless, I think vulnerability ultimately draws people and ideas closer together, and I want you, my fellow outsiders, to see that the church doesn't have it all figured out. But that's not to say this faith isn't worth it. That's the absolute last thing I would want you to take away from this post.

If you've been burned by the church, know that I have too.
If you feel like your opinion isn't heard or is undervalued, know that I feel that same way.
If you've been told you need to get in a small group and have failed multiple times to do so, know that I'm right in that same boat.

Let the solidarity of our failure draw us closer together and rediscover what it means to hold onto this faith.