Ghosting: Why it Hurts and Why We’re Called to Respond

Ghosting has always been around because of our deep-rooted desire to avoid the awkwardness of confrontation rather than address it head-on.

At the wildlife refuge facility, the culmination of our story, my son Boston and I were recording the last leg of the journey. I was explaining that the handoff of the bird was sadly anticlimactic as they just took the box back to their facility and said thank you. I apologized that we didn’t have a sentimental recorded moment to share with our followers and shared enthusiasm that the bird was safe now nonetheless to close the story nicely. While I was saying these words, my 9-year-old son just smiled and stared at the screen of my phone. As I looked to him in the video for something—a nod, a laugh, a comment…something—he continued to just smile and stare blankly. “Boston! You can respond!” I urged him, while trying to remain Instagram-appropriate while the video was still recording. At the end of the video, he broke character, giggled, and I tried to cover up my anger with a silly smile at the camera and then stopped the recording.

Something welled up in me when my 9-year old didn’t affirm my enthusiasm as I shared and recorded the video. It’s the same emotional response that wells up in me when my class doesn’t nod along to what I’m saying, or when my friends don’t respond to my text asking if they want to hang out. It’s this little seed of insecurity that is planted from the absence of affirmation. 

This absence of affirmation or a complete lack of response is a term that has been more recently coined as ghosting. Ghosting is a term for when communication between two people just stops because one side stops responding. It’s the crickets on the other side of the stream…text stream that is. Ghosting has historically been more common after a bad first date, a non-interested job applicant who gets a job elsewhere, or a person who is avoiding texting someone back because they just don’t want to do what they’re being asked to do.  

Ghosting has always been around because of our deep-rooted desire to avoid the awkwardness of confrontation rather than address it head-on. Humans like to avoid pain, and there is something painful about having to tell someone no, or that you don’t want to hang out with them, or that you are no longer interested in their position, product, or whatever else is being presented. 

Ghosting in our communities and specifically the church community, however, has become more and more prevalent in the last two years of heightened isolation and insecurity in the midst of COVID-19, quarantining, and political disarray. As the world has experienced the polarization of political views, medical views, racial views, gender views, theological views, and so on, one of the biggest responses to the tension has been flat out avoidance. 

During this time, the church has had to implement mask mandates, moving to online-only, returning to in-person, social distancing, worship without singing, worship with singing, bringing kids services back, among many other different decisions that so many leaders in all facets of business have also had to navigate. All leaders have had to do their best to make these decisions without much support, and church community members have had to evaluate their own comforts in responding to these decisions.

It has been incredibly difficult on both sides navigating the state laws, national guidelines, CDC warnings, all the while continuing to gather as we are called to do no matter what. Gathering has looked different in this past season, and not everyone agrees on what this means. Unfortunately, it’s the disagreement of this term, different interpretations of Romans 13, avoidance, and fear that has split the church more than unified it. 

In the Bible, however, Paul speaks to what being part of the community of believers looks like when he says in Colossians 3:12-13:

Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

We are encouraged to be kind, humble, patient, and create space for others to have faults! If someone offends us, we are to forgive them and come together in harmony rather than disunity. I do not believe that as a whole this is how we, believers, and all people have responded in this last season. The church (and I mean the global Church, not just our church as I have heard this from almost every church leader I have spoken with) has experienced a mass exodus because the very people who are called up to creating unity are creating disunity through avoidance and apathy. We have become complacent in our faith and in our convictions and have stopped attending whether online or in-person or stopped responding to the call on our life to live in community with others of faith.

The convictions we once held and our urgency to respond in caring for the broken-hearted and serving our community have been overtaken by insecurity and hesitancy. At this point, many of those who have kept away from engaging in public gatherings because of safety have still kept away even after churches have provided safe alternatives to large gatherings with either socially distant policies, masks, or online services. Many have chosen to just stop. Stop listening, stop attending, and stop responding. 

As pastors and leaders, those we have had in our homes, cried with in meetings over their wayward children, counseled over disagreements in their marriages, baptized in water in front of friends, dedicated their children in our church community, and prayed for gifts and healings from cancer and depression, these are the same people who have just stopped responding. They no longer attend in-person. They no longer watch online. They no longer respond to texts. They no longer follow the Instagram account. They no longer engage with their Bibles or in worship. They have stopped pursuing their relationship with Jesus. 

This is the ghosting that those in church leadership are mourning. On one side, it’s hurtful because leaders have dedicated their entire lives to serving the community that is disappearing without even a conversation. People we have commissioned and trained and discipled to be leaders within the church have chosen to go elsewhere or stopped coming altogether suddenly and without explanation. On the other side, it’s saddening to see in the kingdom of God, a community of believers unraveling because of the fear of conflict. Avoidance keeps us from reconciliation when the gospel preaches the importance and value of reconciliation for not only ourselves in our relationship with Jesus, but between ourselves and others. In Ephesians 4:2, Paul encourages believers to be unified and “patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of [our] love.” 

The only way we can make any allowances for each other’s faults, or to be patient with one another is to hear from each other. But the only way we can hear from each other is if we engage in the conversation. The only way my friend can understand that I’m just not up for doing something tonight is if I tell her. The only way I can know if my class understands what I’m teaching is if I hear from them. We have to respond. We have to look at our text messages and see if we are typically the last to respond or if we are constantly leaving the other person hanging on our response. We have to respond to RSVP’s. We have to respond to what God has been nudging us to do. We have to respond by showing up. 

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