Single anyone?

Valentine’s Day. 

Singles Awareness Day.

Galentine’s Day. 

The Scrutinization of Single People Day. 

Forever Alone Day. 

Valenterrible Day.

Loser Awareness Day.

All phrases that popped up when I typed “slang for valentine’s day into google”- no joke.

Monthly, I get to zoom with some single women in my life. Spanning all the time zones in the US, we meet to talk about life in the single lane, encourage each other, and listen to some sage wisdom from some friends of mine that didn’t marry until age forty. Together we “put our hands in the middle” to walk alongside of each other.  I usually get off that call and immediately pray a prayer of thankfulness for being allowed into this space to walk with them through life, long term.  All wanting to be married, but at the age of thirty are grappling with being single in a church that is, a lot of the time, built for families.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve penned some posts starting into some of the obstacles that I see standing in the way of the church being a better loving space for LGBTQ folk inside as well as outside our walls.  You can scroll back and read some. But broader than loving LGBTQ folks is how we love the single people amongst us.

Today we are going to scratch the surface beginning a discussion concerning the obstacle that the church’s focus on marriage has become.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying- marriage is not the obstacle. Marriage is a beautiful picture of Christ and the Church. Marriage between a man and a woman is God’s plan for family. Marriage itself is not the obstacle. Our elevation of marriage is the problem.

Marriage was not designed to become an idol in our midst. Many single 20-30 somethings in the church today find fault with the elevation of marriage. But I sit weekly with a group of college students who vary in how they identify themselves- but all fall somewhere along the LGBTQ+spectrum, and they are also highly focused on marriage as the goal. Straight and gay alike focused on marriage.

When I pointed out this dichotomy to them, they just stared back at me and one man said, “wow, you are right.”

But my purpose here in this space is to challenge average evangelical church-goers like myself to look closely at themselves and their church bodies for the purpose of loving more effectively.

And I believe with all that is in me that our focus on marriage is a HUGE (emphasis intended) hindrance.

Marriage is valuable and beautiful.

Singleness is to be equally valued.

That message is hard to find in most evangelical churches.

Perhaps you think I’m being dramatic- but I would challenge you to pay attention for the next several weeks to the language used at church, in sermons, in conversations.

I am believing that you will hear phrases like

“when you get married”,

“saving yourself (not having sex) for marriage”,

and other such things. Keep track. Pay attention.

We can’t change what we don’t pay attention to.

A couple nights ago I was with a small group bible study having dinner. I mentioned a dinner that my husband and I host for the single people at our church and how fun and well attended it was.

Later, my husband reported, someone joked with him saying, “if you do your job right leading that Singles’ group, next year you will have less people for dinner.”

Hmmmm…

It wasn’t my husband who relayed this story to me, but another woman in our group. She shared how my husband explained that being single was a state to be valued equally to marriage (I have a pretty cool husband :) and how we wanted a space that wasn’t focused on “getting people married”. She said, “until you pointed out to me years ago how our language sounded, I hadn’t thought about it”.

I had the benefit of having a long term single friend named Mike. I wrote the relationship my husband and I shared with him here. It was seeing church through his eyes that helped me first begin to think about language and focus. And it changed me dramatically. Because of my care for him, I never wanted to speak in a way that made him seem “less than” or “defective”. 

Unlike the Catholic church which has vocations and space for single people, we in the Evangelical church do not. And it’s going to take some intentional learning and leaning in to change this.

Valuing single people alongside married couples will go a long way in loving our LGBTQ friends- many of whom are single, and also feel “outside” or “less than” in our churches.

So today, begin to pay attention. We can change what we notice and pay attention to.

And ask an older single person that you know to honestly share their experience at church- don’t comment, just listen and learn.

We need a posture change, a humble leaning in, and it starts with what we are focused on.

We all need to put our hands in the middle to love well.