The Church’s Neurodivergent Canary: Collapse of Fellowship in the American Church

The American church has a fellowship problem. It didn’t arrive overnight, and it isn’t limited to any one congregation or denomination. It is structural, it is widespread, and by and large, the church has not recognized it — or worse, has recognized it and called it someone else’s problem.

The evidence is everywhere, if you know how to read it. Attendance has collapsed across generations. People who once filled pews now fill their Sunday mornings with theology podcasts and livestreams. The explanations offered are predictable: cultural drift, secularization, lack of commitment, worldliness. What rarely gets asked is the more uncomfortable question — what if they’re leaving because the church stopped being what it claims to be?

Look at who is leaving first, and who is left behind. Those on the autism spectrum, those with ADHD, social anxiety, and sensory challenges — they are not a fringe population. They are members of the body who cannot mask indefinitely, cannot manufacture belonging from a weekly handshake ritual, and cannot integrate into a community that does not functionally exist. Where others disengage by choice, they disengage because the structure was never built for them. They are not hijacking a broader conversation. They are the proof of the argument.

Neurodivergent Christians are the canaries. They are dropping out of church attendance. They are isolated, marginalized, and sitting on the fringes — when they show up at all. Most churches simply mark them off as the “weird quiet ones” and move on. What the church doesn’t know is that most of them never self-identify. They’ve learned that doing so is not safe. Their absence goes unexamined, their struggles go unnamed, and the church loses members it doesn’t even know it’s losing.

The church would do well to listen to what their absence is saying.

The Event of Church

Church has become an event. We come once a week, punch our card, and leave. By its very design, the event-driven church favors those who are socially fluid and talented, pushing to the side those who aren’t. We are told we must adapt to a church that doesn’t even recognize it no longer functions as the church. Herein lies the deeper indictment: the church has fundamentally changed how it operates, but continues to demand adaptation from its members as though nothing has changed. It is the institution in denial — not the members failing to keep up.

For those on the spectrum, this is especially problematic because we, by our nature, need these structured fellowship opportunities to get to know people, feel safe, and feel included — just like the rest of the church, just more so.

Church Online, Theology Podcast

Since the 2020 Pandemic, over 53 percent of Millennials and Gen Z have not returned to the church. While some church commentators would like to use this indictment against these generations, a more nuanced approach would also take an inward look: Why aren’t they coming back?

The answer is uncomfortable.

Streaming Worship Services and theology podcasts have taught us we can get the “authentic church” experience from the comfort of our own home. The critic will argue an online church service doesn’t provide fellowship and accountability. And sitting in a pew does?

The Authentic Church Experience

Walk with me.

A typical Sunday morning is as follows: Get up early. Drive to church. Stand in line at the Keurig machine. Awkwardly exchange pleasantries in the foyer while people who know each other congregate together and have their own powwows. Take my seat in sanctuary. Awkwardly exchange more pleasantries with more people I may or may not recognize. Wait for the church service to start. Spend 30-45 minutes repeating ad nauseam off-key music that’s played so loud my ears hurt. Listen to a 30-45 minute sermon. Spend 5-10 minutes performing more social pleasantries or awkwardly stand around trying to figure out who to talk to or how to start a conversation with people you don’t know.

Leave. Drive 30-45 minutes home.

Rinse and repeat week after week, month after month, year after year, church after church, for 20 years.

Where is the fellowship? And who would accept accountability from this structure? This is a lecture ritual which overzealous TheoBros online are guilt tripping other Christians into attending. This is not the structure of the church as outlined throughout the New Testament, and we’re done participating in the collective delusion it is.

Church Matters

It’s because God, people, and church matter we’ve collectively decided to stop performing a sacred show of handshakes and social grease, all for a net loss of exhaustion. The overwhelming conclusion: We can be “teached at” on our own terms, in the comfort of our homes. Let us know when the church arrives.

Online church services and podcasts from our favorite theologians in theory don’t satisfy what the local church should provide, but the disconnect between should and does is vast. The chasm has grown to the point continuing in the farce is sacrilege.

Performing 10 minutes of social pleasantries on Sunday is not Acts 2:42-47. We’ve pulled back the curtain. The emperor has no clothes.

The Cost of Playing Church

For the neurodivergent, this struggle is compounded. To survive in social situations, we mask. Masking is a mostly unconscious survival adaptation some autists learn to navigate the world. Not all masking is “bad”. Contextually appropriate social adjustment is a functional skill, not a pathology. But masking takes both a mental and physical toll on autists.

Herein lies the problem: We’re being asked to come to church, sit in a pew, perform surface level interactions, all which mentally and physically exhaust us, which we know from experience do not help us integrate into any functional community — because there isn’t one. We exhaust ourselves because we’re told “obedient Christians do this”, for what? Years of sitting in a pew being ignored? This isn’t a hypothetical. This is lived experience.

We can’t pay the cost necessary to play “church” and we have no desire to do so. Demanding we do is missing the underlying point: We can’t. This isn’t a lack of willpower, it’s a matter of how our brains are, our neurological functioning, and the limits of what we can physically endure as a result. What you can “push through” we cannot.

The church is lacking empathy on this issue. It cannot begin to put itself in our shoes.

The Parable of the Stairway

Consider a church which built a new building. This church is built on a hill and the only way into that church is a tall stairway — no ramp or elevators. Now picture at the top of those stairs, those who are able-bodied and able to climb the stairs with ease, standing at the top and yelling down below at the elderly, those in wheelchairs, sick, and on crutches:

• “You need to be more obedient, come to church.”
• “Don’t let your flesh get in the way.”
• “Just be yourself, climb the steps.”
• “Suck it up, adapt.”

And other such platitudes which ignore the fundamental issue: The problem isn’t that they aren’t attending church, the problem is that the church has created a structure which is fundamentally hostile to the attendance of some of its members. And, instead of recognizing and adapting to those members, it’s gaslighting the members for their inability to adapt to the church’s own failures.

The structure of the average modern American church is designed against anyone who experiences any type of social challenges and isn’t connected to the existing social community of the church. No matter how much they want to be included, participate, and be involved, the church is lacking empathy for their condition, and is no different than those in the parable yelling down from the top of the steps. No amount of willpower will allow those at the bottom to climb those steps if the church doesn’t first build a way for them to come up.

The Hub and Spoke

Diagnostically, part of the reason the problem isn’t recognized is because those in leadership are insulated from the challenges of those furthest from the social center of the church. Those who think church is working, that fellowship is great, and that we are “not trying hard enough”, are the ones who have to try the least: Pastors and other church leaders. It’s called the “hub and spoke” model. Let me explain.

In the center of a wagon wheel is the hub. Radiating out from the hub are the spokes. Everything is connected to that hub. The hub is the center of the wheel regardless of what’s happening around the peripheral. In this same way, church leaders, especially pastors, are the center of the church social life.

Everyone in the church is gravitating towards you, including you, talking to you, and if your view of the life of the church is purely based on your own experience, you will have a grossly inaccurate view. The same goes for your family. Your children will have other kids who will want to be their friends, and, eventually suitors. It will not be evidently clear, based on your own family’s experience there is a fellowship problem if you use your own experience as the thermometer of church life.

To put it another way, it’s like placing your thermometer by your furnace and judging the opposite end of the house is warm. It likely isn’t.

Pastors, elders, and church members must stop, slow down, and recognize there are actually people in the Body of Christ who experience life in a way foreign to them. The sheep on the outskirts may experience the flock in ways which are fundamentally different than those who are on the inside.

Fixing the Problem

The solution is far more complex than a few paragraphs can cover, but a few principles can be communicated by discussing how the church used to operate just a few decades ago. A generation ago, the church operated around structures which created natural and repeated points of contact between its members. Weekly mid-week family services. Sunday school. Fellowship meals after the service. Intimate evening services. Structured church fellowship built into the rhythm of congregational life. These weren’t peripheral programs — they were the connective tissue of the body. They created low-pressure, repeated contexts in which relationships formed naturally over time, without demanding the kind of concentrated social performance that a single weekly gathering now requires.

When I was a child, our churches had mid-week (Wednesday) night Bible study. This was a whole church event which included kids through adults at the same place at the same general times. These were some of the most socially formative parts of my childhood.

On Sunday, we had Sunday school, between Sunday school and worship, about 15-20 minutes of designed downtime. During this time, adults would check their mailbox, get situated, and talk, often about family and church business. After service, many families would stay for 30-45 minutes after service, sometimes much longer. As kids, we’d play around and in the church while our parents would commune with each other, the pastors. That’s not to say there weren’t days and times we left immediately after, but that was often the exception. Very often, following Sunday church, we would have potlucks — we weren’t even Baptist (some will get the joke.)

These were just the two major points of the church. This isn’t counting the numerous other fellowship opportunities in the church including prayer, men’s and women’s bible studies, evangelism, and other opportunities within the church. These weren’t “programs”, these were the church meeting together, being the church.

Especially within Reformed Baptist circles, it seems there is an aversion to doing anything beyond Sunday service, because of the fear of “programs.” Yet, the church’s function is not merely teaching, but also fellowship with others in the Body of Christ.

Importantly, with all of these examples, notice, how there were structured, but low friction opportunities for people to regularly meet and be around each other. There were designed downtimes between services. There were opportunities to sit down and talk. And people did not rush to leave or exit, but remain present and conduct business.

The church as a body congregated together to be the church.

I’m sure others have other ideas, and there is more to be discussed. An entire article on this subject would be fascinating. Let me know if you’d be interested.

The Neurodivergent Elephant in the Room

Notice in all of this, I haven’t mentioned anything about autism or neurodivergence. It’s because when the church properly functions as a fellowship, special accommodations for functioning autistics is fewer, though that’s not to say some individuals may have specific needs which will need your care and compassion.

Importantly, the described solution is how the church in America largely functioned since the colonial period, with some adaptations. The church was the social center of the Christian community throughout most of our 400 years of history. In reality, we’re not calling the church to do anything extraordinary, but recognize how it’s strayed.

What I Saw

The smell of old wood and carpet. Aging hymnals and late 80s additions to post-war construction. Flickering fluorescent lights.

I didn’t come to this argument from the outside.

My grandmother was the secretary of Ferndale Free Methodist Church for sixty years. That is not a peripheral detail. It means I grew up with generational standing in a functioning covenant community. People knew my name before I introduced myself. At church camp, leaders who had never met me could name my grandparents, place my parents, and tell me stories about my mother as a child. I wasn’t a visitor learning how church worked. I was embedded in it. My family was part of the connective tissue.

That is what church is supposed to produce. Not programs. Not events. Relationships that survive across generations, that root children before they are old enough to choose, that give a person a named place in a body that knows its own history.

I remember visiting my grandparents’ church as a child. It functioned like a sister congregation — the same culture, the same rhythms, the same expectation that people knew each other and stayed to prove it. I would vaguely know the kids there the way you vaguely know cousins — familiar without being close, but belonging to the same world. Because of who my grandparents were, I was received there as part of the community before I had done anything to earn it.

I haven’t been part of that world since my early teens. I have desperately been looking for it ever since

But I remember. And because I remember, I know what we’re asking for isn’t extraordinary. It isn’t a utopian vision or an unrealistic standard. It’s just the church, functioning as the church. It existed within living memory. Some of us were there — some of us are blessed to be in the few islands which remain — and I mourn for those of you who never knew this. But there is a place where we are welcome. We just need others willing to build it with us.

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