Why Church Can Sound Like Bad News

Today I want to talk about something that may sound uncomfortable at first.

Why can “church” sound like bad news to many nomads… and actually to many other people around the world as well?

Now before some of you panic, let me be very clear.

I’m not saying Jesus is bad news.

I’m not saying the Good News is bad news.

I’m saying that sometimes what people hear when we say “church”… is something very different from what we think we are communicating.

And if we don’t stop and listen carefully, we may completely miss why so many NOMADs and NO-ADs feel resistant, cautious, or even threatened by what we present to them.

A lot of Western Christians assume:

“If people reject church, they must be rejecting God.”

But often that is not what is happening at all.

Sometimes they are rejecting something that feels foreign… socially dangerous… culturally disruptive… or deeply individualistic.

And people from collectivist societies, not just nomads but, dare I say, the majority of the world, are not entirely wrong to feel that tension.

Because modern church culture often carries assumptions that are very WEIRD. Remember our previous episode.

When I say “WEIRD,” I’m using the term from anthropology:

Western,

Educated,

Industrialized,

Rich,

and Democratic.

In that previous episode we talked about how WEIRD culture is actually very unusual, both historically and globally still today.

But most of us who grew up inside it assume it is simply “normal.”

And then we unknowingly export those assumptions into the way we do church.

For many NOMADs and NO-ADs, this creates immediate friction.

Why?

Because NOMADs tend to think very differently about:

community,

mobility,

authority,

belonging,

family,

identity,

and responsibility.

For many NOMADs and NO-ADs, identity is not primarily individual.

You do not simply detach yourself from your people and reinvent yourself privately.

You belong somewhere.

You carry responsibilities.

Your decisions affect your clan, your network, your wider relationships.

But many modern church approaches unintentionally communicate something like this:

“Leave your people.

Leave your old identity.

Detach from your community.

Join us as an individual.”

Now think about how dangerous that sounds in a collectivist world.

Especially among peoples where survival itself depends on relationships.

And then there is the issue of mobility.

Many church models assume stability.

Fixed buildings.

Fixed schedules.

Fixed leadership structures.

Fixed geography.

But NOMADs often see mobility itself as a resource for the whole community.

Movement is not chaos.

Movement is survival.

Movement is connection.

Movement is resilience.

So when faith becomes tied to one location, one institution, or one weekly event in a fixed place… many NOMADs instinctively feel:

“This is not built for people like us.”

Are they wrong to feel that way?

Before you answer that question, hold on! Here is where things get really interesting.

Because when we go back and actually read Scripture carefully… the biblical world suddenly starts looking much more nomadic — or at least much more mobility-oriented — than what our form of Christianity seems to assume.

Take Abraham.

Modern readers often imagine Abraham as little more than a solitary man with a tent wandering around spiritually looking for God.

But that is not the picture the biblical text gives us at all.

Abraham was clearly a pastoralist leader managing a large and complex mobile household economy.

The text mentions sheep, goats, cattle, donkeys, camels, and servants born into his household.

Remember when Abraham sent his servant to seek a bride for Isaac? What else did he send? He sends him with a caravan of camels loaded with wealth and gifts.

This is not the image of an isolated poor wanderer.

And Abraham’s household was large.

At one point, when Lot is captured, Abraham mobilizes 318 trained fighting men born within his own household — along with allied groups connected to him relationally — in order to rescue his nephew.

That tells us we are dealing with something much larger than a tiny nuclear family.

This is a mobile clan network with economic strength, military capacity, and deep relational obligations.

And notice those obligations.

Lot is not merely “some relative.”

Abraham carries responsibility toward his deceased brother’s son.

Kinship mattered deeply.

Mobility

And mobility itself was part of survival.

When famine strikes, Abraham moves toward Egypt.

Modern readers often imagine movement as instability.

But in pastoral societies, movement is resilience.

Animals require seasonal access to grass and water.

Even today across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, herds cannot survive year-round in one isolated location without massive industrial systems transporting food and water.

Mobility is not accidental or random.

It is strategic.

Trade

And mobility was ALSO tied to trade.

Pastoralists do a lot more than just raise animals.

They buy, sell, negotiate, transport, build alliances, and maintain complex regional relationships.

Abraham appears in the biblical text not only as spiritually blessed, but also as an astute and highly successful mobile businessman operating within a wider networked world.

Settled?

Now yes, Abraham also negotiates wells, grazing rights, and eventually purchases a burial place for Sarah.

But, let me ask you: are we misunderstanding what this means?

Owning or controlling certain lands, wells, or seasonal territories does not automatically mean becoming “settled” in the modern industrial sense.

Many nomadic peoples — both ancient and modern — maintain long-term communal claims, negotiated access rights, seasonal territories, or inherited resource zones while still remaining deeply mobility-oriented societies.

The modern assumption that movement and land stewardship are opposites is simply false.

Settled in the Promised Land, right?

Uh, not exactly. This broader mobility-oriented world does not disappear later in Israel’s history either.

Even after Israel enters the land, mobility remains deeply woven into life.

Much of ancient Israel still operated within pastoral rhythms.

Shepherds continued moving seasonally, looking for water and good grazing.

Trade and service nomads continued moving between communities. Think about it. If you’re traveling on foot or hoof for long distances, you still need to eat and sleep. You also need to protect yourselves and the goods you are transporting. There are no Chuck-ees truck stops or highway patrols out there stopping bandits.

There were hospitality networks but intertribal dependence remained essential.

Now think about Israel’s worship rhythms. These also required movement.

Several times each year, representatives from across the tribes traveled to Jerusalem for communal spiritual gatherings.

And one of Israel’s major feasts — often translated the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles — involved people dwelling temporarily in simple shelters or tents as a living communal remembrance of mobility, dependence, and life lived under God’s care.

That is not a purely static worldview.

Levites

Now let’s focus in on the Levites.

Remember, the Levites did not receive a normal tribal land allotment like the other tribes.

Instead, they were distributed among the tribes and hosted throughout Israel.

Their survival depended heavily on shared responsibility, hospitality, and relational networks across the wider community.

And in several biblical episodes we see Levites themselves moving between regions serving communities that lacked spiritual leadership and support.

So even within “settled” Israel, mobility and relational interdependence remained deeply embedded in everyday life.

Collective responsibility

The biblical world was not organized around isolated individuals living independently on self-contained private property the way many modern people unconsciously imagine.

It was a world of clans, alliances, hospitality, movement, seasonal rhythms, shared responsibility, and collective identity.

And once you begin seeing that… many parts of Scripture suddenly start sounding very different.

The change

Well… over time Christianity became increasingly shaped by settled empires, institutions, buildings, and — especially over the last 400 years or so — by highly individualistic modern cultures.

And it didn’t really take that long.

Within only a few centuries — especially as Christianity became increasingly tied to settled empires and institutions — many NOMADs gradually stopped seeing themselves inside the biblical account at all.

Instead, Christianity began to look foreign.

Settled.

Western.

Individualistic.

Disconnected from their social reality.

Does that mean nomads are always better?

Listen, I am not saying that NOMADs are somehow automatically closer to God.

Not at all.

Nomadic societies have their own deep brokenness too.

But it does mean that many of them may hear modern church structures very differently than we expect.

And here is the tragedy.

Sometimes people who might deeply resonate with Jesus the Good Shepherd never get close enough to hear Him clearly… because the cultural packaging surrounding “church” feels like a threat before the Good News is ever heard , let alone understood.

What about us?

Now, I also want to say something important to you, my Western friends listening.

This conversation is not just about “them.”

Many people in our own societies are also exhausted, fragmented, lonely, uprooted, and disconnected.

Many are quietly asking:

“Why does modern life feel so thin?”

And maybe part of the answer is that we were never designed to live as isolated individuals detached from deep belonging.

Maybe the NOMAD lens helps us recover something we have forgotten too.

Not by romanticizing nomads.

But by helping us see parts of Scripture and human community that our modern WEIRD culture often hides from view.

So no…

the answer is not abandoning fellowship.

The answer is not rejecting gathered community.

The answer is not anti-church.

The real question is:

What kind of community actually sounds like Good News?

A community shaped by control…

or shepherding?

By institutions alone…

or living relationships?

By isolation…

or belonging?

By rigid immobility…

or people willing to move together?

These are some of the questions we keep exploring together in Let Nomads Move You!

And in the next episode, I want to move one step further.

Because once we begin stripping away some of these cultural layers… something surprising starts happening.

For many NOMADs and NO-ADs…

and let me suggest, for many of us WEIRD people too…

the Good News starts sounding like Good News again.

Thanks for joining me around the campfire today. I look forward to your comments below.