What Can Faith Communities Do about Loneliness?
By Mary Kay DuChene.
Do you remember the before times? Before the Pandemic, that is? It was 2018 and the LeaderWise staff were in a staff meeting. We asked the question, What patterns are you noticing with your clients? To a person, whether therapist, assessment psychologist, or consultant, staff members talked about the sense of loneliness they were seeing with their clients.
It caused us to pause and wonder. And then take action. We created a survey with the help of our own research psychologist; we held focus groups; we offered a small group experience on the topic of loneliness, we read the research that existed at the time; and my colleague Mark Sundby and I got to work writing a book (A Path to Belonging: Overcoming Clergy Loneliness) and speaking on the topic. As you can imagine, the pandemic only exacerbated the sense of loneliness and isolation people in our country are feeling, and even today there seems to be an ever-increasing conversation about the topic since we first began our research over 5 years ago.
As you might glean from its title, our book focuses on clergy and their unique sense of loneliness. It also fits the general public, so I recommend non-clergy read it too (especially if you are a non-clergy person involved in a faith community!). The third part of the book asks the question, What can congregations and judicatories do? As in, what if congregations could be the cornerstone of lessening the sense of loneliness and isolation in our country? That sounds like good, holy work to me!
With that in mind, I offer here a brief list of actions congregations can take. While these actions, in particular, are aimed at communities of faith, if you are involved in another type of community group, please consider how you might adapt this list to that setting. Loneliness is pervasive, and all kinds of community groups can be a part of needed change.
If you’re a clergyperson, offer a sermon series on the topic. One of the issues about loneliness is that the subject is taboo. No one wants to admit they are lonely, and yet it is an emotion that everyone feels at different times in their life. But chronic loneliness is literally detrimental to health, so normalizing the experience and emotion can help us take steps toward remedies. A sermon series can begin the conversation.
Start having conversations within your faith community about loneliness. Bring groups together to have caring conversation, with a focus on listening to each other (not problem solving). Being able to talk about one’s experience is healing in and of itself; problem solving isn’t necessary. Perhaps conversation happens around a soup supper, coinciding with the sermon of the week (see #1).
Offer gatherings around a dinner table with structured conversation. You don’t have to discuss the topic of loneliness; just be together and connect! As an example, see The Family Dinner Project; they offer conversation starters you can have at the ready. And if you want to think really big on this one, organize a non-profit, like what’s been done in Maine, or check out Recipes for Connection (you can download a booklet from this website), started by Vivek Murthy, two-time surgeon general who called loneliness an epidemic in the US.
Establish a pop-up living room and take it on the go. Pop-up living rooms are living rooms set up in public spaces with signage to invite people to “come on in and stay a while.” Consisting of some living room essentials and limited only by your imagination, these fun spaces, found in public parks or anywhere there’s a bit of space and enough traffic walking by, beckon people to sit and chat for a while. Make your living room portable enough so you can take it to a variety of spaces in your community, and ask the extraverted people in your faith community to take turns hanging out in the living room to receive guests.
Start a Men’s Shed or create the equivalent for other identities. Research shows that male-identifying people feel more isolated than female-identifying people. As the Men’s Shed website says, “men don’t talk face to face, we talk shoulder to shoulder,” that is, while doing a project together. Their website can help you find a Men’s Shed or tell you how to start one. Perhaps your community is in need of a “shed” (or equivalent) for another type of identity. Your inspiration starts here.
Brainstorm with your community. After having compassionate conversations about the topic of loneliness, brainstorm what your community can do to lessen the sense of loneliness and isolation in your broader community.
This list is not definitive nor complete. As a matter of fact, I’d love to hear from you too. What has your congregation done to curtail the epidemic of loneliness in your community? Please drop me a note to let me know!
And of course, LeaderWise is always available to be a resource for you regarding loneliness, whether it’s to give a talk, lead a retreat, or provide one-on-one accompaniment. Above all …
May loneliness be mitigated quickly when you feel it, and may you always feel a sense of belonging in some facet of your life.
