What "Beleaguered" Actually Means
Beleaguered. The word means besieged, harassed from all sides, worn down by persistent trouble. It's not a dramatic word. It's a military term for what happens when you're surrounded and the attacks keep coming from every direction until you're not sure you can hold the position anymore.
That's what happens to a lot of people who love Jesus but can't be onboard with what others are doing with His name. They get hit from the institution they're leaving, from the culture warriors using Christianity as a weapon, from family who think they've lost their faith, from their own guilt about not being able to make it work, from the loneliness of stepping away. Beleaguered isn't about one bad experience. It's about the accumulated weight of all of it until you realize you can't keep going the way you have been.
But here's what matters: beleaguered believers are still believers. They haven't given up on Jesus. They may've given up on the machinery that's been built around Him, and there's a difference. Naming that difference matters because too many people are told they're abandoning their faith when what they're actually doing is trying to find it again underneath all the noise.
You Might Be a Beleaguered Believer If...
If you believe in Jesus, but left an institution or assembly because you couldn't hear Jesus anymore because of all the "church noise" you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus but are tired of being splattered with the mud that comes from mixing Christianity with a political agenda? Tired of the folks slinging it about with reckless abandon like they're in a fight they must win at all costs? You might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, go to a great assembly full of people who genuinely care, but still feel like you don't fit because you never have. And no amount of kindness and happy words will ever fix that because it's embedded. You might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but every time you tried to serve you got plugged into a slot and worked hard and smiled and did your best, and no one ever really saw you beyond what you could do for the machine, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but realized the whole thing felt like a marketing funnel where you were the target demographic and growth metrics mattered more than your actual soul, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but when you asked real questions you got treated like a problem to be fixed instead of a person who thinks, and you learned that honesty in church is more dangerous than silence, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but are exhausted from an assembly that enforces faithfulness by filling every spare moment of your time, so that finding time for rest and life tasks is impossible, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but got exhausted by the constant asks for money, the building campaigns, the tithing sermons that felt more like collection notices than worship, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but you're still untangling the shame they wrapped around your body and called it holiness, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but you've been told you have to choose between being honest about who you are and being welcome at the table, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but you're tired of being treated like you're in a waiting room until marriage fixes you, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but your heart keeps drifting toward the poor, the refugee, the outcast, the creation itself, and you keep getting told that caring about those things is "too political," you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but you were raised or led by people who quoted Scripture at you like it was a hammer and called the bruises "discipleship," and you still somehow find yourself praying anyway, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but you live with chronic illness, disability, or a mind that does not cooperate, and you are tired of being treated like an object lesson or a permanent prayer request instead of a whole human being, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, but you watch how the church handles people on the margins, and something in you knows that if they really knew your story you would not be safe there either, you might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, still, after being abused by church leaders or members. You might be a beleaguered believer.
If you believe in Jesus, still read the Gospels, still feel something right in your chest when you hear His words, but your body locks up the minute you walk toward a sanctuary because it remembers what happened last time, you might be a beleaguered believer.
What Beleaguered Believers Are (and Aren't)
A beleaguered believer is not someone who has given up on Jesus. A beleaguered believer is someone who has been worn down, pushed out, or cast aside by the ways Christianity gets packaged, sold, weaponized, and defended. You still believe. You just cannot pretend anymore.
You are not faithless. You are not crazy. You stepped back from the noise to see if you could hear Him again. A move that may not even have been a conscious one on your part. If any of this sounds like you, you are not alone. There are a lot of us out here on the edges, still holding on to Christ even when we do not fit the rooms that claim His name.
Faith Over Factions is for beleaguered believers.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The Structural Problem
The question beleaguered believers face is not whether to keep believing in Jesus. That question's been settled. The question is how to hold that faith when the institutional structures meant to support it have become obstacles instead. How do you follow someone who spent most of his time with people on the margins when the institution claiming his name keeps pushing people to those margins? How do you read "come to me, all who are weary and burdened" and then watch church become another place where people get more burdened and more weary?
There's no easy answer to that because the problem isn't theological, it's structural. The machinery of institutional Christianity has its own momentum, its own incentives, its own survival instincts that don't always align with the teachings of Jesus. Buildings need money. Programs need volunteers. Growth needs metrics. None of that is inherently evil, but it creates pressure that tends to turn people into resources and faith into performance.
The Margins Might Be the Point
So beleaguered believers end up on the edges, not because they chose to be marginal but because they couldn't stay central without compromising something essential. And here's what's worth noticing: the edges might be exactly where they need to be. Jesus spent most of his time there. With the prostitutes and tax collectors, the sick and demon-possessed, the Samaritans and the unclean. The people who didn't fit in the religious structures of their day. The people the institution said were problems.
Being a beleaguered believer doesn't mean you've lost your way. It might mean you're finding it. Not the way that gets applauded in sanctuaries or celebrated in testimony services, but the way that looks more like the actual path Jesus walked. The one that led away from the temple as often as toward it. The one that prioritized people over systems, mercy over sacrifice, honesty over performance.
The Path Without a Program
That path is harder because there's no program for it, no structure supporting it, no community automatically built into it. You're making it up as you go, trying to figure out what faithfulness looks like when you can't rely on the institutional definitions anymore. You're reading Scripture and wondering which parts were Jesus and which parts were the early church already starting to build the machinery. You're praying alone more than you ever did in a congregation because corporate worship has become one more place where your body remembers why you left.
But you're still praying. Still reading. Still believing. That's what makes you beleaguered rather than former. The siege hasn't driven you away from Jesus, it's just driven you away from what people built around him. And maybe that's enough. Maybe holding onto Christ while letting go of Christendom is exactly the work some of us are called to do. Not because we're better or more enlightened, but because we couldn't make the alternative work anymore and we'd rather be faithful than comfortable, and in that faithful discomfort, shine a light for others.
A Place for Those Who Can't Pretend Anymore
This is what Faith Over Factions is about: supporting beleaguered believers. By providing space, tools and a touchpoint to the gospel for people who are still holding on but can't pretend anymore. Who believe in Jesus but don't believe in the machinery. Who are tired of factions using faith as a weapon and want something quieter, truer, more rooted in the actual teachings of the person they're trying to follow. It's not about building another institution or creating another program. It's about creating space for people who need to catch their breath, who need to hear that they're not crazy for stepping back, who need permission to hold their faith differently than the way they were taught.
If that's you, you're in the right place. The edges have more room than you'd think, and the company is better than the system that failed you wants you to believe.
