When "This Isn't Church" Becomes a Wound

I write this with care, hoping to speak alongside Christians who are living on the edges—not because they lost faith, but because faith became hard to live inside certain church spaces.

I’m writing for those who have not stopped believing, but who have lost access—to belonging, to safety, to being taken seriously as people of faith. For those who were pushed out, edged out, or quietly signaled that their questions, needs, wounds, or ways of being were too much. For those who did not leave casually, but who realized that staying had begun to cost them their health, their honesty, or their sense of God.

I know I’m not alone in sensing this. Many Christians today are trying to make sense of their faith after harm, disillusionment, or loss of trust in church spaces that once promised safety. The language around this moment varies, but the need underneath it is clear: people are searching for ways to stay connected to God without being retraumatized by the structures that wounded them.

I want to begin with an affirmation.

You deserve to be seen.
And your faith deserves to be recognized.

If your faith had to change just to survive—if it took shape outside official church spaces because staying there was unsafe, impossible, or came at too high a cost—what you have practiced is not lesser faith. It is not watered down. It is not “almost church.”

Scripture does not call it “almost church.”
Christ names it through his presence.

Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). He did not tie that promise to a building, a title, or a schedule. Presence—not permission—was the condition.

In the early church, this wasn’t just an idea. It was how people actually lived. Believers gathered wherever they could—often under threat, often without protection—meeting in homes, sharing meals, praying together, and caring for one another (Acts 2:42–47). Church existed before buildings, worship teams, or organized services. It took shape wherever faith had to be lived out in real, difficult conditions.

I believe that same church continues today in places that are often overlooked or dismissed. In prisons where people sing and pray together. At hospital bedsides where fear and hope sit side by side. In recovery and self-help groups—sometimes meeting in rooms next to church buildings—where people tell the truth about addiction, relapse, shame, and what it takes just to stay alive. It happens in homes, on sidewalks, under open skies, and online, wherever people show up for one another in faith.

These spaces are not competing with the church.
For many, they are the only places where faith can be lived honestly.

At the heart of this is something simple and clear in scripture. Believers are named a royal priesthood—not a special few, but all who belong to Christ (1 Peter 2:9). God’s presence is no longer controlled by rank, titles, or special roles. Through Christ, everyone has access to God. Each believer is filled with the Holy Spirit, and each body is called a temple—not because of moral perfection, but because God chose to live there (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19).

This is how I understand the church taking shape now. Not mainly through buildings or official approval, but through people who carry God’s presence into real life. In a time when many church spaces have become unsafe or unlivable, faith has not disappeared—it has moved.

This matters because excluding people from practicing their faith has always caused harm. There is a long and painful history of Christians being denied access to official church spaces because of who they were, how they lived, or what power structures found threatening. Enslaved people in the United States were often forbidden from gathering freely for worship and were punished for doing so. Many practiced their faith in fields, woods, and hidden gatherings because sanctioned church spaces were bound up with control and violence. When people are told where they are not allowed to worship, or that their way of gathering “doesn’t count,” something sacred is taken from them. Faith is not only restricted—it is wounded.

What we are seeing now belongs to that same lineage. When people are excluded, dismissed, or told their gatherings aren’t really church, the harm is not abstract. It lands in bodies. It deepens shame. It reinforces the message that some lives, needs, or ways of believing are less worthy of God’s presence.

So when someone knows—through shared prayer, shared grief, shared care—that Christ was present, that knowing is not naïve. It is deeply biblical. It is grounded in real life.

What troubles me is a pattern I’ve seen among Christians speaking to one another using the language of “boundaries”—words that can quietly carry more weight than intended:

“This isn’t church.”

Often, what is really being said is something more personal:

“This isn’t how I do church.”
“This isn’t a space I can participate in.”
“This isn’t what feels right for me.”

Those are real boundaries. And they matter.

Scripture makes room for different needs, capacities, and callings within the body of Christ. Not everyone is meant to participate in every form of community. No one should be pressured to stay in a space that doesn’t feel safe or true for them.

The harm begins when a personal boundary is treated like a rule for everyone else.

When “this isn’t church” is said in response to someone’s genuine longing for shared faith, what is often heard is:

What you’re experiencing doesn’t count.
Christ isn’t really there with you.
Your gathering isn’t legitimate.

For Christians already carrying grief, exclusion, or spiritual betrayal, that doesn’t land as clarity. It lands as erasure.

Choosing not to participate is not the same thing as defining what church is.

A boundary sounds like:
“This isn’t how I participate in church.”

A boundary becomes harmful when it sounds like:
“This isn’t church.”

One names limits.
The other claims authority.

And if we remember who named and defined church, we humbly remember that authority does not belong to us.

At the center of this tension are two real human needs. One is the need for relational, responsive community—faith that can meet people where trauma, addiction, grief, and vulnerability are present, without asking them to perform or clean themselves up first. The other is the need for structure and boundaries—ways of creating order, safety, and stability. Neither need is wrong.

The harm comes when structures meant to support faith are treated as the only way faith can be real—and when people whose faith grows outside those structures are pushed aside.

I want to be clear about where I’m speaking from. I am not a pastor, theologian, or clergy member. I am a person of faith whose calling has drawn me to mental health spaces sometimes touched by religious or spiritual trauma. I have paid close attention to what harms people and what helps them heal. What I’m offering here is not a final answer, but an honest naming of what has come to feel true to me over time—through lived experience and through reading the words of Jesus again and again, listening for what rings true deep down. Others may see this differently, and I want to leave room for that.

Jesus himself resisted tying worship to approved places. Speaking to the Samaritan woman, he said, “The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… true worshipers will worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:21–24).

If you need or prefer traditional church spaces, you don’t need to apologize for that. Those spaces can be meaningful and life-giving. Scripture simply invites care in how those preferences are spoken—because words shape belonging.

It is possible to honor your limits without shrinking God’s presence.
It is possible to say “this isn’t for me” without saying “this isn’t real.”
It is possible to protect your boundaries without wounding someone else’s faith.

And if you have been told—directly or indirectly—that your experience “wasn’t church,” hear this clearly:

You are not outside God’s dwelling place.
You are not overreaching.
You are not confused.
You are not imagining things.

Your experience of God does not need permission to be sacred.

Church does not belong to those with the narrowest definition.
It belongs to God.

And God, in scripture and in lived experience, has made it far wider than we often dare to admit.