The Church You Never Knew You Needed

For many people, the most genuine experience of “church” isn’t found in stained glass sanctuaries or under the watch of clergy—it’s in a rehearsal hall, on stage, or at a late-night set build with a group of volunteers who are simply trying to tell a story together.

The irony is sharp: churches talk endlessly about fellowship, compassion, community, and service. Yet too often they create environments of exclusion, guilt, and hierarchy. “All are welcome” is printed in the bulletin, but that welcome is usually conditional—your identity, your beliefs, your doubts, your politics, your love, your gender identity—all have to fit inside invisible lines.

By contrast, a theatre company—especially an amateur one where no one is being paid—is radically inclusive in practice, not just in words. The only requirement is that you show up, give of yourself, and respect the people around you. In that space, you are judged not by doctrine or dogma, but by the way you collaborate, how you listen, how you support the story and the team.

In theatre, everyone has a role—on stage, backstage, in the lighting box, in the costume room. No role is “holier” than another, no one is elevated on a pulpit while others remain silent in the pews. A stage manager has as much value as a lead actor; a volunteer painting flats can transform a story as much as the person delivering the monologue. That sense of equality is something churches rarely achieve, despite preaching it.

And here’s the most controversial truth: theatre delivers what churches only promise.

Churches claim to build community, but many dissolve into cliques and judgment; theatre relies on true interdependence, because if one person drops the ball, the show falls apart.

Churches tell stories that are meant to guide and inspire, but theatre tells stories that reflect the raw, complicated, unpolished truth of human life.

Churches speak of unconditional love, but theatre actually practices it—because no show survives without people picking one another up, covering for mistakes, and forgiving missed notes or forgotten lines.

Some may argue that theatre is “just entertainment,” while the church is about eternal truth. But if eternal truth doesn’t translate into real, lived compassion, then it is nothing but empty words. Theatre doesn’t claim to save souls—but it often saves lives. For people who feel rejected by religious institutions, a cast or crew becomes family, and the rehearsal room becomes a sanctuary.

Perhaps it’s time to admit that a theatre community, with all its flaws and imperfections, can embody the ideals of The Church more fully than many churches ever do. Maybe the sacred is not confined to sermons and sacraments, but found in the sweat, laughter, and tears of people working together to bring a story to life.

And that idea—that the truest “church” may exist not under a cross, but under stage lights—is exactly the kind of conversation that religious institutions don’t want to have.