Why Lonely People Should Go To Church!
© 2025 Mark McWiggins
I have been rereading these books tonight by this brilliant author Kerry Hamm and one of her main subjects is terribly lonely messed up people.
The story that got me writing was one of a guy who was “catfished” by a girl who thought it would be funny to set up a fake profile on a dating site and give a fake phone number and address, ha ha.
This guy then drove all the way across the country to the Fake address that she had given him. He was devastated.
I have advice for lonelies of both sexes: Go to church!
One thing about the lonely people in these books is that they probably don’t read much; if you’re friendly with one of them, please share this story with them.
I grew up in the deep South, going briefly to Baptist Sunday School with my Mom, who wasn’t much of a churchgoer herself, but “just thought we should be exposed to it”.
For me it was like getting a flu shot; I didn’t think much about religion except to occasionally get a giggle at some of the televangelists of the day, like Jimmy Swaggart and Oral Roberts.
But in 1995 I married a Lutheran and my views started to change. For several years I was a “Christmas and Easter” churchgoer … That was fine; nobody quizzed me about my belief (or lack thereof) and they all seemed friendly. My wife is an intellgent woman too … she has a BS in botany and reads widely. So she didn’t fit the pattern of the religious people I grew up with.
I started going every week in late 2020 or early 2021; not sure. But it was originallly boosted by a financial challenge I was facing at the time. I’ve worked as a contract programmer for much of my adult life, which inherently brings unemployment in chunks.
During one of the chunks, we started getting all these financial gifts out of the blue, it seemed to me. Some old friend of Kate (my wife) would show up and drop $600 dollars in her lap.
This happened 3 or 4 times before I decided to become a regular churchgoer.
It’s worked better than I had ever dared dream. To expand on my belief system: I believe (1) Prayer works; (2) you tend to get what you expect, positive or negative (3) death is not something to be afraid of.
I got this by watching a bunch of near-death videos on YouTube.
My experience of going to church has been better for me and for our family than I had ever dared dream.
(1) I made a number of new friends through the three churches we’ve joined since then: Our Savior Lutheran in Issaquah, WA, Shepherd of the Valley in Maple Valley WA, and Immanuel Lutheran where we live now, in Centralia WA.
Here in Centralia, they have a Men’s breakfast at 8 am most Thursdays, and other events during the week, often. I have made more good friends of both genders here than in the other two churches combined.
I also regularly get great ideas around 3–5 a.m. at night and elsewhen, the key one when I had lunch with a guy I’d worked with a few years ago and found out he was working two full-time jobs at once. I think it was the next week I read an article in a magazine about one guy who was doing three simultaneous jobs and one who was doing 6!
I decided to try it and with a few ups and downs, I had two good jobs for most of the period 2021–2024.
As for the church, I figure it got started in prehistory by tribes that got together to keep the tigers and evil tribes away, and those who belonged tended to survive and pass on their genes better than those who didn’t.
OK, lonely people has any of this gotten your attention? If you can spare some time from thinking about yourself and your own problems and just imagine yourself in a community like the one I belong to now, what would stop you?
Churchgoing friends of lonely people, you will probably have to put the (gentle, loving) arm on some of them to get them motivated. Please share this article with anyone you think may be interested.
