never alone: sharing the gift of community in a lonely world

We have never been more connected--yet we have never felt more alone.

Isolation is the great soul wound of our time. As Christians, we know that the church has a unique gift to offer a hurting world: communal life in Jesus. This gift has the power to heal our loneliness and isolation. It is good news for the lonely, the isolated, the struggling. So why does it often sound like bad news to those who need it most?

Perhaps because we have misunderstood what the good news actually is--and how we ought to be sharing it. We have collapsed evangelism into offering a golden ticket to some postmortem destiny. But the goodness of the gospel we are called to share is about so much more: shalom, wholeness, and the peaceable kingdom of Christ breaking into the world. This is the gift of communal life in Jesus. A gift that re-ligaments us back together with God and one another.

Never Alone unpacks how we can be spiritual guides who help people heal, love, and unleash imagination to create better lives and communities. We all can be instruments to bring healing and wholeness to people’s lives in today’s epidemic of loneliness and isolation.

Michael Adam Beck is the director of the Fresh Expressions House of Studies at United Theological Seminary, director of Fresh Expressions Florida, and director of Fresh Expressions for the United Methodist Church. He serves as the co-pastor of Wildwood UMC, St. Marks UMC, and Compassion UMC with his wife Jill, where they direct addiction recovery programs, a jail ministry, a food pantry, and an interracial unity movement and house a faith-based inpatient treatment center. Wildwood and St. Marks are traditional congregations and a network of 13 ＂fresh expressions＂ that gather in tattoo parlors, dog parks, salons, running tracks, community centers, burrito joints, and digital spaces. Beck earned a master of divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary and a doctorate in semiotics and future studies at Portland Seminary. He is the author of 14 books, including Deep Roots, Wild Branches: Revitalizing the Church in the Blended Ecology, and a coauthor of multiple books, including Contextual Intelligence: Unlocking the Ancient Secret to Mission on the Front Lines with Leonard Sweet.