What to do with "singles events"?!

Hello readers,

I've recently been working on a guest post for a coworker, which she featured today on her blog. Every week she posts something on the topic of marriage for "Wedded Wednesday," and she asked me to write for it from a single person's perspective. So here it is, for the DFH readers to enjoy as well!




Several months ago, I brought about 30 of my young adult friends - a mixed crowd of guys and girls who all happen to be single - to a Feed My Starving Children event at my church. I purposely did not tell them that the volunteer slot I signed us up for was the designated “singles night.”

(Side note: It's funny to think that some of the same people are reading this now, ha... I'm only partially sorry! But you really helped make a great illustration for this blog post!)

Everyone was excited to be there together, to scoop rice and pack boxes. We entered the room and donned our hairnets. The speaker got up to the platform and said, “Welcome to Singles Night at Feed My Starving Children!” Immediately I had all eyes on me, and I heard several whispers of disbelief at my treachery - “You brought us to a SINGLES NIGHT?!”

Yep, that went just about as expected.

I can’t say I’m speaking for all my friends, but let me share with you my own thoughts:
By showing up to anything called a “singles event,” I feel super self-conscious that I am presenting myself as “on the market, desperate to get off, so that’s why I’m here, and so are you. Take me!” The label “singles event” alone screams “meat market of desperation.” At a "singles event," I am going to be hyper aware of anyone of the opposite sex who approaches me, and likewise I have the fear that any guy I strike up a conversation with is going to think I’m only approaching him because I have a particular attraction to him. Even if it’s true that I do, I don’t want to scare him off by being too forward... but if I don’t have a particular attraction to him, I don’t want to give the impression that I do! I just can’t beat the awkwardness! So I don't bother going.

Not to mention, I have an irrational but common fear that most of the people that show up to these things are smooth-talking smarmy creepers.

As much as we all want to find the right person to spend our lives with, people in my age bracket really abhor the forced interaction of "Let's put all the singles together in one room and let them loose on each other!" Rather, we are really longing for authentic community with our peers. The post-college stage of life can be rather isolated and depressing. We need a network of friends who enjoy being together and will help each other out, whether single or married. We all have things to learn from each others' experiences.

My group of friends I mentioned earlier is a rarity, in that we make a point to all meet together at least once a week and make a meal, hang out, play games, jam on our instruments, and just enjoy each others’ company. And at the heart of it all, we love the Lord. He has blessed us by bringing us into this community that others our age are so desperately needing. Anyone new to the group is instantly hooked. Many have said it’s one of the few things that keeps them sane week-to-week. Hearing such comments is both flattering and alarming. Why does my house seem to be the only place where this kind of community is happening on a regular basis?

I'd say my friends and I are all pretty well-adjusted young folk. We are intelligent, creative, active individuals with a widespread array of interests and fields of expertise. In fact, this probably describes many of the other 46% of all young adults (age 25-34) across the nation who have never been married. For the first time in recorded history, the number of never-married singles in this age bracket now exceeds the number of our peers who are married, according to US Census reports that were released about a month ago. Yet, according to numerous surveys, most of these single young adults still want to get married.

So why are we all still single? Why is this a nation-wide phenomenon? And what does that have to do with the church?

There are many contributing factors to the shrinking marriage statistics - a lot of which occur in the home and in the media - but for the sake of everyone's attention span, I will just be focusing on folks in the church here.

Throughout history, the church has played an active role in helping young men and women find their way to the altar. It was essentially a given that most people should get married, and folks in the church took it upon themselves (more or less) to make sure everyone got matched up correctly. From what I gather though, it seems that a lot of people took this to extreme measures, becoming way too nosey, gossipy, and controlling, and there has since been a huge societal backlash.

Now I fear the pendulum has swung too far the opposite way - the church community as a whole has become far too passive in the lives of young single adults. The message drilled into us, from pulpits as well as parishioners, boils down to this: “Keep waiting. Now keep waiting some more. Look how many marriages are failing; don’t marry the wrong person and become one of them. So you'd better wait even longer. Ignore your body telling you that you were biologically ready a decade ago. Don’t trust any of your feelings. Think rationally about everything, and analyze the life out of your relationships. When the magical time comes, which may well be when your hormones are dead, God will plop the right person in front of you and you won't be able to avoid marrying them, so you’d better not do anything to interfere with that process.” I exaggerate, of course. But only a little.

It’s no wonder so many people are scared to enter a relationship though. We've heard enough horror stories of marriages turning sour. Way too many have experienced it vicariously through family members. Folks, this is incredibly discouraging. What we really need to hear are the success stories! We can know in our minds that God created marriage to be a beautiful model of His love that we can tangibly experience on earth, but many of us have hardly ever seen it in action.

To the common church folk:
If you are reading this and you have been married at least a few years, and especially if you have gotten through some tough things with your spouse, I HIGHLY encourage you to invest in the lives of some single people. If you have something good to say about your marriage, we desperately need to hear it. Also, you have been through enough to see things about us that we are blind to. We need you to be our role models, mentors, coaches and networkers.

To church leaders everywhere:
Evaluate how you are presenting your views on marriage to your congregation. How much value are you giving it? Do you often talk about what marriage can be like at its best? What are you offering to the single people who come to your church? (...Or don’t they come to your church?) I encourage you to find creative ways to get all the young single people in your congregation plugged into mentorships, to break the generational silence and get some good dialogue flowing.

As far as what to do in lieu of "singles events":
I'd really like to see more churches holding regular events for ALL young adults to come together and regularly engage in community-building environments. We don't require a whole lot of structure outside of free food and some music - we just need to be around each other, without the segregation of marrieds and singles. The single people will figure out who’s taken and who’s available on their own. And our married friends can be great natural community-builders, bringing each of their friends together and introducing everyone to each other.

...with the added bonus of them acting as buffers against the creepers who escaped all the awkward singles events going on down the road.