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Talk to a Pastor About Doubt, Online

Talk to a vetted pastor about doubt on video, without being argued with or rushed back to church. 50-minute sessions, $100, charged after you meet.

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3 guides take this. Meet them

Alexis Arellano, M.Div. Messianic Jewish Studies

Takes this topic

Alexis Arellano

M.Div. Messianic Jewish Studies

Waiting and Unanswered PrayerSpiritual ConfusionWalking Through Suffering
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The doubt rarely arrives all at once. More often it accumulates: a prayer that went unanswered longer than you could explain, a passage you stopped being able to read the way you used to, a leader whose failure took more with it than it should have. You are still in the pew most weeks. You are just not sure what you are doing there.

And there is nowhere obvious to say it. The people closest to your faith are the people it would worry most, and asking your pastor can feel like handing him a problem with your name on it.

Morning light coming through a break in heavy cloud

A pastor whose job is the question, not the answer

You can book a 50-minute video call with a vetted pastor or discipleship guide and spend the whole of it on what you actually think. No statement of faith to sign first, no requirement to arrive believing a certain amount, and no case being built against you while you talk.

This is deliberately not apologetics. Apologetics answers an argument, and most doubt is not an argument. It is a person who prayed for four years about the same thing and got nothing back. Handing that person a syllogism is how the church loses them. Your guide is trained to stay with the question underneath instead.

Who tends to book these

Nobody arrives with this tidy. The common thread is not the content of the doubt, it is having nowhere safe to put it.

Takes this topic

Lauren Grieves

M.A. Pastoral Counseling - Parent and Child/Adolescent

View profile
You are still in church and cannot say this there

Serving on a team, maybe leading one, and the gap between what you say on Sunday and what you think on Tuesday keeps widening.

Prayer stopped working the way it used to

Not anger at God exactly. More like talking into a room you are no longer certain has anyone in it.

A specific thing broke it

A death, a diagnosis, a leader's failure, a prayer that went the other way. The faith held for years and then met something it could not absorb.

The answers you were given stopped holding

You were handed a reason at sixteen that worked at sixteen. It does not carry the weight you are putting on it now.

You are reading your way out and want one honest conversation first

Before you make it permanent, you want to say the whole thing out loud to someone who will not flinch or perform alarm.

You are not a Christian and have real questions

And you would rather ask a person than a comment section.

What the conversation actually looks like

It opens with you saying where you are, in whatever order it comes out. Most people apologize somewhere in the first ten minutes for not making sense. It does not need to make sense yet.

From there your guide mostly asks. When did this start. What did you believe before it. What would have to be true for this to be resolved, and is that a thing you would actually accept. That last question tends to be the one that does the work, because a great deal of doubt turns out to be grief wearing an argument's clothes, and it will not answer to evidence.

Scripture usually comes in, and rarely as a proof text. More often it is the parts of the Bible that are already doing what you are doing: Job refusing the tidy explanations of his friends, Habakkuk opening with how long, the disciples who worshipped and doubted in the same sentence on the mountain in Matthew 28.

Preview
This week Week 3 with Alexis

Alexis Arellano

M.Div. Messianic Jewish Studies

Upcoming

  • Wed at 7:00pm

    50-min virtual session

    Today

  • Friday

    Reading from Alexis: Psalm 27

  • Saturday

    Note from Alexis: "How did Wednesday land?"

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe; help my unbelief!

Mark 9:24

He is asking Jesus for help with the very thing he has just been told he needs in order to be helped. It is an incoherent sentence, and Jesus does not correct it. The boy is healed on the strength of a faith the man himself described as insufficient.

That is the posture this hour is built for. You do not have to resolve the contradiction before you are allowed to speak.

What your guide will not do

This conversation only works if the person across from you is bound by something. Here is what they are bound by.

Taylor Cruz

M.Div., Th.M.

In their own words

I want to know you, understand your story, and for you to experience being seen, heard, and understood. From there we can more effectively take steps forward in spiritual growth or spiritual questions.

Read Taylor's profile

  • No pressure toward a conclusion

    Not back to church, not out of it, not toward any particular resolution on any particular timeline. Where you land is not your guide's to decide and not their performance metric.

  • No reporting back

    If you came through a church partner, nothing you say reaches your pastor, your small group, or anyone on staff. What is in the session stays in the session, within the limits every guide is held to around imminent harm.

  • No treating doubt as a discipline problem

    Nobody is going to suggest you doubt because you skipped quiet time. That diagnosis is common, it is usually wrong, and it is one of the main reasons people stop asking.

  • No pretending certainty nobody has

    Some of your questions have good answers and your guide will give them. Some of them have been open for two thousand years, and you will be told that rather than handed something thin.

  • No clinical work

    This is pastoral. If what surfaces belongs with a licensed therapist, your guide will say so and help you find one.

Doubt, deconstruction, and church hurt overlap

Most people arrive carrying some of all three, and the same guide can usually hold more than one. What separates them is what the hour is organized around.

The rhythm

Format
Video. Fifty minutes, face to face, from wherever you are.
Cadence
Plenty of people book one and stop there, and that is a complete use of this. Others land on every two or three weeks for a stretch. There is no minimum and no package to commit to.
Who you get
A pastor or discipleship guide who has been credentialed, background-checked, theologically reviewed, and interviewed in person. Their education and approach are on their profile before you book.
Switching
If your guide is not the right fit, switching takes one message and no difficult conversation.
Cost
$100 per session, charged after you meet. Church partners and reduced-rate options are on the pricing page.

Questions people ask before booking

More on the pricing page and in the full FAQ.

Can I talk to a pastor online for free?
Yes, in places. Most churches will meet with you at no cost, and that is the first thing worth trying if you have a church and it feels safe to ask. There are also free volunteer chat lines. What they generally cannot offer is the same trained person, on a schedule, who remembers the last conversation. That continuity is what BetterFaith charges for: $100 for 50 minutes, billed after you meet, with no subscription.
Will you try to argue me back into believing?
No. Your guide is not running an apologetics case and has no quota of people returned to church. Some of these conversations end in firmer faith, some end somewhere the person did not expect, and plenty are still going. The hour belongs to your questions, not to a conclusion someone else needs you to reach.
Is it a sin to doubt God?
Scripture does not treat honest doubt as rebellion. The psalms are full of unanswered questions, John the Baptist sent word from prison asking whether Jesus was really the one, and the father in Mark 9 is commended for saying he believed and needed help with his unbelief. What scripture warns against is not doubt. It is carrying it alone until it hardens.
What if I am not sure I still believe?
Then bring that. A guide will not ask you to overstate where you are to qualify for the conversation, and nobody checks your position at the door. People come from every point on that line, including well past it.
Is this counseling or therapy?
Neither. This is spiritual care with a pastor or discipleship guide, organized around faith questions rather than a clinical concern. If what surfaces belongs with a licensed therapist, your guide will say so plainly and help you find one.

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