LIKE many other sporadically faithful, I use church when I need it but would not be available should it need me.

Because of people like myself, raised in a faith, rejecting it but not quite able to cast it off entirely, church attendance is falling, but on high days and holidays there are still spikes.

I go, from time to time, for the familiar routine and sense of belonging. No matter what you think of theism, services are a place for cross sections of society to come together and think about morality and community.

There are no social boundaries, rich mixes with poor; there is ample opportunity for charity; there is an automatic sense of bonding that comes from an assumed sharing of beliefs.

Society loses a great deal from the demise of a regular, weekly gathering, based in the heart of the community. There are few opportunities for neighbours of all ages and backgrounds to sit down together, discuss more than merely the weather, eat together, understand and know one another.

When else do the young and the old and the inbetween come together to reflect on the way humans behave? A church's beauty is that there is an opportunity for commitment but no need for it. There is no challenge or competition.

The news agenda is filled with stories about the rising number of people living alone, the epidemic of loneliness splintering society. This week the charity Independent Age released a study showing the number of men living alone in England will increase by 65 per cent in the next 15 years. Alone and lonely are very different things but they have become the topic of the day.

A deep need for connection is not just a religious thing. Non-theists participate in religious communities because they find something meaningful in doing so. The Sunday Assembly, founded last year, works on that premise, taking the communal, uplifting spirit of church and making it a place of worship for the human, not the devine. It was founded by two comedians, not unsurprising given the comedian's role as social commentator, with the motto Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More.

More people do unpaid work for church organisations than any other, contributing 23.2 million hours voluntary service each month and yet, with only three in 10 people attending regular weekly worship, that's a lot of untapped potential and it will be interesting to see what the burgeoning Sunday Assembly does with it.

Sunday Assembly, which has three Scottish branches, is not mocking religion; it is just existing beside it, keeping the bathwater but eschewing the baby Jesus.

One criticism of the Sunday Assembly is the suggestion that the majority of atheists and humanists have no interest in being involved in a congregation atmosphere. Certainly that's proved to be the case previously: the athiest church is an idea that pops up and retreats from time to time, like the ethical churches of the early 19th century that had fizzled out by the 1930s.

I wonder if it attracts the same cross section of society drawn to religious worship or if it is mainly a middle-class elite in urban centres. As the post offices, police offices and local schools close down, will Sunday Assembly make space for itself in these areas? Last month it launched new services in 35 more cities across the world. By the end of this year it expects to have 100 congregations on five continents.

Not everyone is keen to replace Morning Has Broken with air guitar to The Eye of the Tiger but, clearly, in our increasingly atomised society, there is a need for shared experience and togetherness, a chance to wonder at life. Awe is not only for the religious; nor is community, morality or faith.