Pushin’ Buttons
Ever since I moved to St Louis I have been an intern at the church I go to. One of the things that I have to do as an intern is write down the things that I have questions for or even a critique on. This, I recognize, is very rare. How often have you been to a church where you are asked to be honest as to how you feel? Few churches welcome your feedback, fewer invite it and desire it.One of the things I’m to consider is why certain things make me uncomfortable or even mad.
Through this process I realize that there are not many things that make my blood pressure take a ride up a hill, but the things that I am passionate about I am really passionate about. And once I get the answers to the things I need answers for, I’m all set. Well. Except for the things I already asked about. I may have to buy a new whip so I can continue to beat my rotting horse’s corpse.
Through this process I have also come to realize that the things that I have expressed concerns about I feel like I have a good reason to continue pushing. And more than anything I am scared that God is going to use this passion. Yes scared. Even though I know that God can use me I am afraid that He will. He is sending me to help and encourage a people I don’t want to know. I’m changing my name to Jonah tomorrow. Bring out the dead horse…. here we go…
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I am pretty sure that churches only know two ways of dealing with singles:
1. Put them all in a class together led by a pastor who was married at 23. Allow the entire church to ask inappropriate questions about the dating life of your singles, neglecting questions about any other area of their lives. Then have dinners where you invite a few of them over put secretly hope they will marry and have babies in the next 10 months. Pretend their life is a fishbowl on which you are allowed to watch whenever you like. Oh, yes. Don’t forget to live vicariously through them. Just because you got married at 24 and started having babies right away doesn’t mean you can’t constantly tell your single friends that they are lucky to be “free.”
2. Singles? What singles?
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So, what would I change?
Speaking from personal experience the best thing a church can do for her singles is to give them the family they need. The answer isn’t necessarily marriage of your singles. The answer is family – you know, being what the church is supposed to be. This is where the church of the west especially has to fight back and go against culture. Culture tells us that we can do life alone, that we are strong enough- that we have to find it within ourselves to overcome. But that is just not how we were made. We were made for each other. We were made to live in community – in a family.
Christ gave us access to be His brother and by association we are all brothers and sisters. We are to love each other. I mean what would it look like for all the singles to be “adopted” into a family? And for families to adopt each other as more family? What if we stopped lying and admitted that we need each other? What if the world saw it and thought we were crazy?
Greg said,
November 21, 2010 at 7:38 am
What a thought-provoking and honest look at church life. I feel like churches that had a large singles population that transitioned to married people then to married people with kids somehow forgot what it meant to relate to the single people of the world.
It’s interesting that initially the shift of having kids around is confusing, but in a short period of time having the singles around becomes equally, if not more so, challenging. There’s no easy curriculum that leaders can follow for anyone past college not quite (or ever) on the track to marriage. We’re a finicky bunch!
I agree that more than anything singles want that family everyone else has. Let us in! Just don’t be that aunt, mom, or grandma who’s constantly trying to set us up with someone or asking us when we’ll get married.