When someone you love walks away from Christianity, the hardest stretch is usually not the first conversation. It is the years after. This guide treats staying close over that long stretch as a practice you can learn. It has three repeated habits: contact without an agenda, listening for what sits under the reason they give, and handing the ending to God each day. The material comes from a Jude 3 Project conversation between Lisa Fields and Emmanuel Lambert, the Christian hip hop artist and apologist known as Da T.R.U.T.H., who has watched many close friends leave and has come near the edge himself.
You can work through it alone in one sitting and then live the practice for a month. A group can use it across three meetings. The first covers observation and Scripture. The second covers patience with people close to you. The third comes after a few weeks of practice, when there is something real to report. Nothing here requires you to name the person you have in mind or describe your situation to anyone.
Start with what you can actually see
Take ten minutes and a sheet of paper. Draw a line down the middle. On the left, write what you know: when the person seemed to step away, what reason they have given, if any, and how often you are in contact now. On the right, write what you feel when you think about them. Do not tidy it up.
Now look at the right column and ask one question. How much of what is written there do you assume they feel too?
Lambert thinks most people get this wrong. He puts it bluntly: “The people that walk away from Christianity do not feel like they’ve lost anything. In fact, they feel like they’ve gained something.” He describes what they often feel as freedom. He adds that people who have fully walked away, unlike those still wavering, usually believe their thinking is finished: “most people feel like they’ve already done the work.”
Under your two columns, write one sentence about what your loved one might feel they gained. You do not have to agree with it. Seeing the distance between your experience and theirs will change how you approach them. You can grieve honestly without waiting for them to grieve with you.
Three passages for the long haul
Read each passage slowly and work through the observation prompt before moving on. In a group, read each one aloud and give people a minute of silence before anyone speaks.
A farmer’s division of labor
“I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6).
Read 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 for context. Paul is writing to a church split into fan clubs around its teachers. Notice who does what in verse 6, and what Paul says about the planter and the waterer in verse 7. The passage describes ministry roles in a divided church, not a method for winning back family members. But its claim about who causes growth is general. Lambert reaches for this verse when he talks about the pressure to bring someone back fast, and he names one source of that pressure plainly: “I think it’s a sense of control.”
Observation prompt: in this passage, what are the human workers responsible for, and what are they never responsible for?
Works and fruit
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23).
The KJV word longsuffering is older English for patience. More literally, it means bearing with something a long time. Before reading any commentary, go back to Galatians 5:19-21, the list Paul calls works of the flesh. Several items on it, such as variance, wrath and strife, describe what happens between people in conflict.
Observation prompt: compare the two lists. Paul says works, plural, for one and fruit, singular, for the other. What does each word suggest about where the behavior comes from? Which items in verses 19-21 describe how your conversations with this person have sometimes gone, and which item in verses 22-23 answers each one?
Lambert offers his own reading of how the fruit works. Some people are naturally patient and others are not, and he suggests the Spirit’s work shows most where natural capacity runs out: “We need the spirit of God to generate stuff inside of us.” That fits Paul’s contrast between what the flesh produces and what the Spirit grows, though you may weigh it differently.
A father who half believes
“And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Read Mark 9:14-27. This is narrative. It tells us what happened, not what to do. But watch what Jesus does with a man whose faith is mixed. Lambert’s summary is that the father’s honesty “wasn’t met with condemnation or condescension.” He draws a broader point from it: “God has already created space for your questions.”
Observation prompt: what does Jesus do before, during and after the father’s confession? Is there anything he does not do that you might have expected?
Why the people closest to you get the least patience
Lisa Fields describes herself as a patient listener with strangers. Then she admits what happened when a close family member began struggling with faith: “I feel like I rushed them through the process.” Her explanation is simple: “when it’s somebody closest to you, it creates a different level of urgency.”
Lambert agrees and names the mechanism. “Proximity matters.” With people we see rarely, we can manage a patience we do not really have. But “when we’re close to people, we’re familiar,” and our natural habits surface. He is frank about where that leads: “impatience makes people mean-spirited.” It comes out as the testy sigh, or the line that amounts to you should know better than this. He does not call all urgency bad. Some of it is real love for someone’s soul. But it can also be a savior complex, a wish to be the one who fixed it.
Lisa Fields adds a less comfortable source. Some believers cannot let anyone else question because they have never let themselves question, so shutting down a loved one’s doubts protects their own faith. Her counsel is that “God can handle your questions.”
A short test: recall the last time you pressed the person you love about faith. Write down what you said, as close to word for word as you can. Then ask which of these was driving it:
- Love for them and concern for their good
- A need to settle things and stop feeling uncertain
- A wish to be the person who brought them back
- Fear that their questions might be right, or that yours would not hold up
Expect more than one. Note which you will need to watch for next time.
The practice: staying on purpose
Try these three habits for four weeks.
Habit one: one contact a week, and a tally
Once a week, make contact about something other than faith. Send a text about a game, ask about their job, show up at the birthday dinner. If faith comes up, let them raise it. After each contact, make one mark in a private tally: did it stay a conversation, or did it turn into an argument? Note who steered it toward faith.
At the end of week two, sit down with the tally. If most contacts turned into arguments and you were the one who steered them there, the habit has quietly become an agenda. Change one specific thing for weeks three and four. You might keep visits shorter, or meet them on their turf. If they were the one raising faith, that tells you something too: they may want to talk, and habit two becomes your main work.
Underneath this habit is a conviction Lambert holds firmly: “the chapters of their story are still being written.” He says it is “very difficult to make determinations about what will be based on where we are in the story.” A story that is still unfolding needs people who are still around.
Habit two: ask the second question
Lambert expects that the stated reason for leaving is usually not the whole story. Departures, he says, are “very rarely based on what they say.” The real weight is “oftentimes something subterranean,” like the hidden mass of an iceberg, and the person may not see it clearly themselves.
So when a reason comes up, do not answer it right away. Ask one more question than feels comfortable, such as what was happening in their life when this started to matter. Then listen for something you can honestly agree with. Lambert describes the aim as trying to “understand their why and stand in agreement with the things that are grievous.” If a church hurt them, you can say that was wrong. If they were only ever handed a thin faith, you can say they deserved more. Neither statement concedes that Christianity is false. Lambert also notes an advantage family members have: “And you would know this if they’re your parents.” You may already sense what they needed and never received.
If what lies underneath turns out to be abuse, especially by someone in church leadership, believe them first. Do not defend the institution or press them back toward the person who harmed them. Help them find safety and real care.
Habit three: hand over the ending, daily
Each day, pray for the person by name in one or two plain sentences. Then put the outcome down, using 1 Corinthians 3:6 if that helps. Lambert does not pretend you can produce someone’s return. He says “it does take a work from the Holy Spirit, a supernatural work from the Holy Spirit to kind of pull people back into the fold.” You keep caring about the outcome while you stop treating it as your responsibility.
If the grief starts to crowd out your sleep, your work or your other relationships, talk with a pastor you trust or a trained counselor. Getting that help is not a failure of faith.
When staying close starts to feel like evasion
A fair objection: if you never bring up faith, are you abandoning the person? And what if their reasons are serious and deserve a serious answer? Not every departure is about pain underneath. Lisa Fields recalls one man who left “for more intellectual reasons,” and she warns against assuming everyone who leaves just wants to sin. For challenges a person is trying to make sense of, Lambert’s counsel is “trying to stand with them and grapple.” That is engagement, not silence.
So the habits above are a starting posture, not a vow of silence. Two signs suggest the quiet has turned into avoidance. You may have dodged a direct question they asked you. Or they may no longer know you still believe. If either is true, say plainly what you believe and why, once, and ask whether they want to keep talking about it. If they bring a real argument, take it seriously enough to study it before responding. Lisa Fields says “the faith that can be tested can always be trusted,” which applies to your faith as much as theirs. Pressing is when you repeat the same point after they have said no. Honesty is letting them know where you stand and leaving the door open.
When gentle conversations keep sliding into debate, try one pause. Before responding to an objection, restate it in your own words until they say, yes, that’s what I mean. Then decide whether to answer, ask the second question, or say you want to think about it. Lisa Fields observes that “a shared struggle helps pull people” out of the fire, while condemnation pushes them further in. She is drawing on Jude: “And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 1:22-23). Other translations render the start of verse 22 as having mercy on those who doubt. The manuscripts differ on the exact wording here, so read it as a call to mercy and rescue rather than a detailed method.
For anyone leading a group
Some participants will have a loss that is fresh and others one that is decades old. Do not ask anyone to tell the story of their person. In the third session, ask about the habits only: what the week-two tally showed, what was hard, what surprised them. Anyone can answer without describing the relationship. If someone becomes visibly distressed, give the group a break and check in with them privately afterward.
Questions for discussion
- Looking at your two columns, where did you assume your loved one felt what you feel? What changes if you drop that assumption?
- In 1 Corinthians 3:6, Paul separates planting and watering from growth. In your situation, what counts as planting and watering, and what have you been trying to do that belongs only to God?
- Comparing Galatians 5:19-21 with 5:22-23, which contrast speaks most directly to your conversations with this person?
- Of the four sources of urgency in the test above, which is hardest for you to admit? Why might that be?
- Does your loved one know you still believe? If not, what has kept you from saying so, and what would saying it once, without pressing, sound like?
- What is something your loved one finds grievous that you can honestly agree with?
- Lambert says “The call is to persevere,” and then adds, “the expectation is not that we’re gonna do that perfectly.” How does that change what failing at this practice would mean?
Return to your first page
At the end of four weeks, take out the sheet you wrote at the start. Read both columns again, then add a third for what you know now that you did not know then. It might be something about them, about yourself, or about what kind of conversation is possible right now.
Then carry one question into the next month: if their story is still being written, what would it look like for me to still be in it a year from now?