Lonely Sunday: Single Christians and the Church’s Opportunity by K. Becker
(Link): Lonely Sunday: Single Christians and the Church’s Opportunity
Excerpts:
- … As a pastor who happens to be single right now, I think I can speak for the 45% of the U.S. population who is single right now and say it’s not an easy place to be.
- … And some of us listen to the culture around us for advice on what to do with that desire. This culture echoes a duplicity of voices, of ways to “handle” singleness, and it shines at us on small screens and big screens.
- … Marriage is marketed to us as a blissful, everlasting date – not as the covenant it’s supposed to be, but as an item on a shelf to be paid and bartered for. We fall in love with a wedding.
- Many of us not in one are told we need to do anything to get one – or else feel like the kid on the playground who is still wearing Adidas Sambas while all the cool kids are in Air Jordans. Culture says being single is fun at first, but it winds up as a problem to be fixed.
- … Sermons always mentioned family – which we didn’t have, and any sermons or studies about love, sex, and dating came from married men with multiple children who have never known what it’s like to date online or be single in their late 20’s, in their 30’s, 40’s or 50’s.
- The nice people in the church foyer told us to go to their singles ministry – but we found it to be a gathering of post-college church kids or older widows and widowers. When we joined a small group, we created the odd number. People asked us if we could volunteer to hold babies and teach other people’s kids since we didn’t have any.
- …We’re told to wait, yet are not validated before we fit an expected model. We go through lots of Lonely Sundays.
- …Scripture and early church history bear witness to a story that bucks both culture and religious culture. It’s a story that bases a person’s value not on status, family, gender, or background but on relationship – bearing the image of and capacity for relationship with his/her creator, through Christ
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