Soul Sustenance - Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships

 Loneliness has serious ramifications for mental health.

A recent study by the nonprofit organization, Communio, found that:

“There is also a significant finding of loneliness.  In this survey, only twenty-two percent of churchgoers, which is a much lower level of loneliness than the general population.  Single churchgoers are over three times more likely to be lonely than their married counterparts.  Only 15 percent of married  people in church are considered lonely.”

I had a chance to interview J.P. De Gance, founder and President of Communio, to learn more. Here are his comments.

Loneliness has been defined by experts in psychology as a state of mind with the perception of being alone and isolated.  Having this psychological condition for a long period of time has the same long term health effect as smoking 15 cigarettes per day.  Communio’s Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships found that the loneliest people in our society are not the elderly and the widow – instead they are young adults – particularly Gen Z and also Millennials

This feeling has become widespread in American culture -- particularly among the young -- because Millennials and Gen Z have retreated from marriage and the deep, life-long familial relationships that flow from it.  Sadly, Matthew Perry’s premature death is one vivid example of this phenomenon playing out recently.  He starred in a show that celebrated the life-long single life.  It appears that this lifestyle may have contributed to his early death. 

The reality is there would be no epidemic of loneliness today if we simply had year 2000 levels of marriage.  People are too often seeking to fill the void left behind by the absence of this life-long relationship, and they are doing so in unhealthy ways leading to shorter lifespans. Communio seeks to solve this problem by equippiung the local church to evangelize through the renewal of healthy relationships and marriage.

God made our hardware require relationship and community.  Those who struggle with loneliness ought to become engaged in a vibrant Christian church community where they can know others and be known.  Those who are seeking to help the lonely ought to find opportunities to invite heterogenous groups of friends over for dinner and social time.  If you’re married, make a special effort to include the single, the divorced and the widow along with couples to form friendships and live life together. 

J.P. De Gance is the founder and president of Communio and the co-author of the book, Endgame: The Church’s Strategic Move to Save Faith and Family in America. JP is also the author of the Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships. Communio is a ministry originally incubated as the Culture of Freedom Initiative at The Philanthropy Roundtable where he served as the organization’s executive vice president. The Initiative raised and spent $20 million over three years in three different states seeking to identify the most effective strategies to boost marital health, family stability, and church engagement. From 2016 to 2018, the experimental initiative worked with an ecumenical network of churches and drove down the divorce rate by 24 percent in Jacksonville, FL. Today, Communio serves churches across the United States helping them evangelize by applying the learnings from their successful intervention in Jacksonville. A husband and father, JP lives in Virginia with his wife and eight children.