The Ultimate Christmas Gift: Sharing Incarnational Community Amid an Epidemic of Loneliness

Never Alone - Part One

My little brother died of a broken heart.

Sitting beside him in the hospital, his chest gently rose and fell, an eerie mimicry of life as the dialysis machine, which had been circulating fluid in his body for a week, was turned off. His skin, already sallow, took on an unnatural hue of orange. The nurse rubbed my back softly, signaling that he was gone. I held his hand, my heart broken as I stroked the tattooed tear drops beneath his eyes. Hours earlier, I had made the gut-wrenching decision to take him off life support, a choice no sibling should ever have to make.

The fatal diagnosis was an overdose. But the underlying condition was loneliness—the isolation that gripped his soul over the too-few-years of his short, hard life. McKinley died just days after his thirty-fourth birthday.

Two months earlier, he had been released from a decade-long prison sentence, following a life plagued by addiction, violence, and neglect. As a pastor and person in long-term recovery, I had prepared for his return with resources at the ready, knowing the struggle he would face. But instead of seeking a new path, he returned to old habits, old friends—and tragically, two months later, he was gone.

In those final moments beside my brother, I was consumed with anxiety by the thought of his eternal destiny. Had he found peace with God?

The toxic theology I was formed in painted a picture of an unforgiving, transactional God. It was a belief system that suggested unless you confessed the right magical formula before you died, there was no hope for mercy. You were damned to eternal torment in hell. This was a theology steeped in fear—fear of judgment, fear of everlasting punishment, and a sense that God was distant and disinterested in the real struggles of human beings.

It was a one-dimensional, transactional view of salvation: a distant God punishing the hell out of Jesus so we could get to heaven, as long as we said the sinner’s prayer. This overly-simplistic so-called “good news” often felt out of touch with the realities of life and didn’t seem to align with the compassionate, inclusive nature of Jesus’ ministry.

This was the kind of theology that haunted me in the hospital room, as the machines stopped, and I watched McKinley’s life slip away. Was it possible for someone who had lived a life of abandonment, rebellion, and rejection to enter into the arms of a loving God? Was there room for grace for a soul whose last days seemed to reject everything Christ was offering?

In the days leading up to his death, I received a vision from Jesus that shifted something within me. The peace that permeated my decision was not just a temporary comfort—it was a profound awakening to a more loving, expansive understanding of God’s grace. I began to realize that God’s grace is not confined to the boundaries we create through dogma and doctrines. The river rapids of God’s love do not suddenly run dry in the moment of death. They carry us over a waterfall, into a depth we cannot comprehend on this side of eternity. God’s grace is bigger, wider, and more deeply rooted in compassion than we can imagine.

Besides, the true “good news” is not just a future promise of heaven, an escape hatch from some eternal bummer of a post-mortem destiny. It is meant to transform our present reality—it’s about communal life and unity in Christ, right here and now, in the midst of the ordinary. It’s the invitation to embrace wholeness together in the present, living as a reflection of God’s original unity with all of creation.

This is what Christians mean when we celebrate the incarnation in this Christmas season. The word incarnation comes from the Latin incarnationem or “the act of being made flesh” or originally and more crudely, “a piece of flesh,” carne, the God who became a “piece of meat.” Compassion… a sensitivity to suffering in self and others with a commitment to alleviate or prevent it. Matter… anything that has mass or takes up space. Compassion matterized, “love came down at Christmas.” All the way down into our mess and the living hells we create—to rescue us from ourselves.

The vision of McKinley walking hand-in-hand with Jesus through a garden—whole, healed, and smiling—was not just a vision of peace for me, but a reflection of a truth that ran deeper than any theological construct. That prayerful moment of communion was a re-grounding in the hyperreal foundation of God’s graceful withness. McKinley was not alone in that hospital bed. Neither was I. God’s grace permeated that space in a way I had never experienced.

I now believe grace has no expiration date.

Grace woos, pursues, and puts on flesh to get to us in this life, and continues that effort in the next. Even in the moments where it seems like someone has fallen too far or is too broken, God’s love reaches further.

In the midst of McKinley’s death, I saw a glimpse of the God I had always hoped existed—a God who embraces the broken, who descends into the depths of our living hell, who never lets go of anyone, not even in their darkest moments. A God for whom there is grace even for the convicted criminal nailed to the cross beside Jesus. A man who was taken from the writhing torture of a slow humiliating death into God’s eternal love with a last gasping confession in the final moments of his life (Luke 23:43). Indeed, there’s a power in realizing that God’s love cannot be boxed in by the rigid doctrines we create or the artificial timeline of mortality. God’s love is unconditional, and it’s accessible even when our theology tells us otherwise.

I am not a newcomer to stories like McKinley’s. For years, Jill and I have walked alongside individuals facing the darkness of addiction, mental health struggles, and trauma. At St. Mark’s we house a holistic inpatient recovery program called Open Arms Village (OAV). Our ministry is grounded in the belief that healing comes through the graceful gift of community.

St Marks is a space of incarnation, where worship, recovery, and support intersect to offer hope made flesh to those who have often been abandoned or forgotten by society. At OAV, men and women in recovery live in the same spaces where we hold Bible studies, worship services, and meetings for mental health and addiction support. This incarnational community fosters connection and accountability, providing not only a safe place to live but a sanctuary for growth, healing, and spiritual restoration.

We are committed to being a consistent presence in the lives of those who feel like they’ve hit rock bottom, offering them the love and dignity they deserve as they journey toward healing. It’s a ministry built on the understanding that no one is beyond redemption, and that the power of communal life in Jesus can bring light into the darkest of places.

Healing takes place not just through words, but through shared experiences, relationships, and the grace we encounter in one another. It is a place where people are seen, known, and loved, as they walk through their journeys toward recovery and wholeness, one day at a time. An island of belonging in a sea of isolation.

The realization of the unlimited nature of God’s grace has become foundational in our blended ecology of church, where fresh expressions gather in tattoo parlors, burrito joints, and the local substance abuse rehab. The real work of ministry happens when we step outside the comfortable spaces of doctrinal certainty and meet people where they are—broken, hurting, and needing grace. In our shared brokenness, we find the infinite capacity of God’s love, a love that refuses to let anyone be abandoned, even when the world would leave them to die.

Yes, technically, McKinley overdosed. But he jammed a needle in his arm to escape the aching isolation. Unfortunately, McKinley’s story is not unique. It is the heartbreaking reality of a crisis too often hidden… the epidemic of loneliness. An epidemic that claims hundreds of thousands of lives every year.

Jesus’s incarnation—his coming to be with us, to live among us, and to ultimately heal the brokenhearted—offers a deep and eternal antidote to the loneliness that claims so many lives. Amid my grief, the promise of Immanuel, “God with us,” became so real. For McKinley, for me, and for all of us, God is never far away. God’s love—always near, always present—offers the community of togetherness we so desperately need.

This Christmas, as we remember the birth of Jesus, the One who came to heal the lonely and brokenhearted, I am drawn to reflect on a world that continues to be ravaged by isolation. Jesus, in his very incarnation, embraced humanity in its deepest suffering and offers us the ultimate gift of community.

The Christmas message is not just about our cute nativity plays or candlelight services. The refugee baby in the feeding trough, in the garage that smelled like animal shit, came to create a community.

Christmas is about the arrival of God with us, in the midst of our loneliness, our brokenness, and our fears. As the angels declared to the shepherds, the non-social influencers, with no followers, platform, or socioeconomic status that first Christmas night, “Good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10).

This joy, this “good news,” is not for some of the people — but for all of us, especially for those who feel unseen, unheard, and unloved. The message of Christmas is about the One who came to be with us—not in a faraway heaven, but here, in our suffering, in our struggles, and in our deepest places of isolation. The church is the continued embodiment of this incarnational gift. Communal life in Jesus is the one gift that can heal our isolation.

So, as we move through this season, let us remember that the coming of Christ was not only about salvation from sin, but also about the salvation from loneliness. In fact, I’m convinced that the word sin and isolation can be used interchangeably. Sin is not just moral failure, but the deep separation we experience from ourselves, others, and God. The Christian journey unfolds in three movements: Original Goodness—awakening to our inherent belovedness; Original Trauma—the process of healing from the fragmentation of sin to re-ligament with God and true self; and Original Unity—the realization that we are already one, living in shared communion with each other and all creation. These movements show that we are not meant to be isolated, but to experience the fullness of life together, both with God and one another.

The incarnation is about how God heals our isolation. God did not wait for us to clean ourselves up or to be worthy. No, Jesus entered our world—vulnerable, humble, and powerless—so that we could always know that God is with us—that we are never alone.

In Jesus, we find the perfect example of solidarity, the kind that heals. Just as Jesus walked with the lonely, the broken, and the marginalized, we too are called to walk alongside one another, to be the “body of Christ,” the communal life of Jesus in a fragmented society.

With all her blemishes and beauty marks, the church is God’s gift to the world, a healing community, the cure for our isolation and loneliness.

I wrote Never Alone: Sharing the Gift of Community in a Lonely World to tell every McKinley’s story. To keep his memory alive and help make his death a vehicle of healing for others.

In the midst of an epidemic of loneliness and isolation, this book serves as a practical guide for how every believer can cultivate fresh expressions of church that heal. In this series, I’ll share key insights from the book leading up to its release on February 18^th.

This Christmas, may we be reminded that we are never alone, and that together, through the love and grace of Jesus, we are made whole.

May we, like Jesus, cultivate incarnational community for the lonely, the hurting, and the brokenhearted. And in doing so, reflect the true meaning of the incarnation—God with us.

---