When Following Jesus Alone Leaves You Empty (Why Christian Community Matters)

Do you ever do all the "right" Christian things - reading your Bible, praying, even serving at church - and still feeling like something's missing? Like you're somehow gasping for air even though your spiritual lungs should be working just fine?

This week at Crowd Church, Matt Edmundson tackled the topic of Koinonia - the Christian Community and asked, "What if the emptiness isn't a sign that we're doing faith wrong? What if it's actually pointing us toward something we've been designed for all along - something our hyper-individualistic world has quietly convinced us we don't really need?”

The Loneliness Epidemic

Social isolation increases your mortality risk by 29%. That's equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. We're more connected than ever - wifi beaming through the walls, social media at our fingertips, video calls on demand - yet somehow more isolated than any generation before us.

And this thinking has crept into the church, too.

We've become really good at focusing on our individual relationship with God. "It's me and Jesus" becomes the whole story. Personal quiet times. Personal devotions. Personal faith journey. And while that relationship matters - it's absolutely essential - Matt suggested that by being so one-sided, we may have learned to live with just one lung.

Which might explain why it sometimes feels like we're struggling to breathe.

The Two Lungs of Faith

Matt shared an analogy that really helps him. Back in Genesis, God breathed life into Adam's lungs. Now imagine that this divine life - life as God designed it - runs on a pair of lungs.

The first lung is your relationship with God. You are breathing in grace, forgiveness, and love from God through Christ. This lung is essential. When it's strong, you feel like you're breathing the very life of God. We talk about this a lot in church, and rightly so.

But there's a second lung. This one isn't directly about your relationship with God. It's about what the early church called koinonia - this divine fellowship, this community with others.

Both lungs are meant to work together. That's the design.

"My relationship with God and my relationship with the community are equally essential to living the abundant life Jesus calls us to."

When the second lung collapses - through wrong attitudes, approaching church like a consumer, past hurts, or pressure to perform - we can't expand and breathe as we should. But when we address those things, and both lungs start working? Life functions as it was always meant to.

What the Early Church Actually Did

Let's rewind to Jerusalem, about 50 days after Jesus's resurrection. Three thousand people have just been baptised. The city is packed with Jews from all over the Roman Empire - different languages, cultures, economic backgrounds - now all following Jesus, who was executed just weeks earlier.

Acts 2:42-47 tells us they devoted themselves to four things:

1. the apostles' teaching,
2. fellowship,
3. breaking bread, and
4. prayer.

But don’t see this as a religious checklist; see it as a story.

A wealthy widow from Ethiopia sits in a small Jerusalem home, sharing a meal with a struggling Galilean fisherman's family. She's just sold a piece of property and given half the proceeds to cover their rent for the year. Not because she had to. Not because anyone asked. Because they're family now.

Across the street, a tax collector - the kind of person everyone despises - is teaching teenagers about what Jesus said. His home is open. There's bread on the table. Anyone can come in.

Down the road, believers are praying for a sick child. Some are wealthy merchants, some are day labourers, some are slaves. But they're all on their knees because one of their tribe is hurting.

And the Bible tells us that they did all this "with glad and sincere hearts." They genuinely loved it.

That's koinonia. Not just hanging out. But a shared participation in divine life. Becoming family with people who are nothing like you because you all share in something bigger than yourselves.

Why Christian Community Is Different

So what's wrong with gym classes or book clubs? Honestly, nothing. If you've got friends who show up for you, that's brilliant. Plenty of people outside the church have deep, meaningful friendships.

But the Christian community has a different foundation.

Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus: "Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people. In his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us."

All those barriers that separate humans - ethnicity, class, past, political opinions - the cross has demolished them. There's now one new humanity.

The Ethiopian widow and the Galilean fisherman would, under normal circumstances, never share a meal. Different countries, different social classes, different everything. But Jesus adopted them both into the same family. When the widow sold her property to help the fisherman, she wasn't earning God's favour. She was living from the overflow of favour she'd already been given.

That's what makes koinonia - the Christian Community - audaciously different.

When Church Has Hurt You

Of course, churches fail at this—all the time. Maybe you've experienced it and left because it was toxic, judgmental, or cliquey. That's real. Some churches have turned community into a place of performance or judgment rather than one of grace and belonging.

Matt shared his own experience of wanting to leave the church and feeling rejected, hurt, and angry. His instinct was to protect himself by withdrawing - build walls, do life alone where it's safe.

"I didn't want to need anyone. I didn't want to be vulnerable. I didn't want to risk being hurt again. Independence felt like strength."

But he also realised he'd be taking the hurt with him. And wondered whether the next church would be any better when he hadn't dealt with what was happening in his heart in this one.

The failure of churches around community doesn't invalidate God's design. It means we need to fight for what koinonia is intended to be. And the good news and bad news wrapped into one? That's our responsibility - yours and ours - to make it happen.

Conversation Street

How do we actually do community in a digital age?

Anna observed that our modern world keeps us digitally connected but physically separate. We tend to live as single people, small friend groups, or nuclear families - quite different from the extended households of Jesus's day. Building community takes intentional effort now because our culture isn't set up for it.

Sharon and Matt shared how they've had lodgers for almost their entire 27-year marriage, opening their home as a way of life. But they emphasised that this isn't for everyone. The key is knowing yourself, your boundaries, whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, and finding what works for you.

What if nobody invites me?

Matt talked about how, quite often, people don't know how to build community. So the default is waiting for someone else to make the first move. When no one does, the church becomes the loneliest place - because you expect that somebody should be talking to you.

Rather than waiting, you can start it yourself. It doesn't have to be complicated.

He shared his football example when Liverpool play on TV, he texts a WhatsApp group of mates and they come round to watch on his 75-inch screen. The guys bring crisps and Maltesers. 90% of the conversation is football. But 10% isn't. And that wouldn't be happening if he hadn't started the group himself.

How do we take relationships deeper?

Anna highlighted the difference between breadth and depth. It's easy to know lots of people quite superficially - neighbours, work colleagues, people you chat to on Facebook but rarely see in real life. The challenge is deepening some relationships.

Her advice? Start small. Ask one or two people for a coffee. It doesn't matter if you don't click, and it doesn't go anywhere. But you might find the start of something that draws others in. Take the pressure off - not every coffee has to become a lifelong friendship. Most of the time, when you take that risk and invite someone, they're delighted to say yes.

What Real Community Looks Like

Matt shared three moments when both lungs worked for him:

When he became a Christian at 18, he had grown up in a single-parent home without seeing what a healthy family or good marriage looked like. Church families invited him for Sunday dinner. No one sat him down with 14 scriptures to study. He just experienced a healthy community - and it transformed how he understood relationships.

Years later, a significant accident landed him in the hospital for five days. He had a toddler and a newborn. The community sprang into action - bringing food, even giving financial assistance, because his business would be affected. They were, in effect, breathing for him.

This year, when Sharon was diagnosed with cancer, the community showed up again. Not with grand gestures necessarily, but with lots of small things - prayers, text messages, flowers, phone calls, just showing up.

Both lungs were strong and working. And God gave the miracles they needed.

Your Next Step This Week

You don't have to wait for the significant life events for the church family to show up. Koinonia is what happens Monday through Sunday:

• Invite 2-3 people to watch Crowd with you. Make it about the meal and hanging out, not the livestream. Keep it low pressure.
• Model vulnerability. If you never talk about what's going on in your life, nobody else will either.
• Ask someone, "How are you doing?" and actually want to know the answer. When they give the standard "I'm alright," ask again.
• Start something small. A WhatsApp group. A coffee invite. A play date. It won't always work out, and that's fine.
• Give yourself permission to mess up. If it's awkward, that's okay. You're not teaching - you're just sharing life.

The Question Worth Sitting With

What would change if you stopped trying to do faith with just one lung?

The early church grew explosively, not because it had better programmes. They grew because when plagues hit, the Christians stayed and cared for the sick - including the non-Christians - whilst everyone else fled.

Koinonia isn't a checklist. It's a lifestyle. The way you do it will look different from everyone else because we're all wired differently. But it should be part of life, just like breathing.

And maybe - just maybe - if that second lung starts to expand, you'll finally stop gasping for air.