My observation is that we Americans are so unaccustomed to community, that, though we desperately need and desire it, we also resist it. We have tried to do various things at our church, and after a while, no one shows up. They don’t really give it enough time to develop community. What are we doing wrong?

Let me say this: I was impressed by what Mike Durall had to say about religious education classes when he came to our church last year. He suggested that we put programs together that are focused on concrete ways to help people live their lives. In other words, fewer classes on global warming or the gnostic gospels and more classes on topics like caring for your elderly parents. This makes a lot of sense to me, and it’s where I’m coming from when I say we should focus on “needs.”

I know that there are people in the group who are dating and having a rough time of it and could use some support. You did a great job in your post of explaining why creating a “singles group” and encouraging folks at church to date one another is a bad idea. That’s why I’m suggesting that our covenant groups should address the topic, and that there might be interest in a “dating support and encouragement club” of some sort.

I’m being tenacious with these posts because what I really want isn’t an argument about semantics but your reaction to these particular ideas. Do you think they might be good ways to minister to single people, and more importantly do you think they’ll work for our group at church? You just said you like them apart from their “emphasis and direction,” but I still don’t understand your reservations. What’s wrong with them? How could they be improved?

At another level, needs-based ministry can become death by a thousand cuts. It can lead to the feeling that programs can never do enough, and therefore that they aren’t doing enough. The approach is a recipe for burnout.

The alternative approach is to base programming on gifts and strengths and assets and vision. And then to move forward based on what it takes to put them into action.

I like all your ideas. It’s just a matter of emphasis and direction.

But, PeaceBang, I hear you, too, that you meant to raise awareness of how a single person perceives the treatment of couples and families in the church, and how that perspective is very often not addressed. Just goes to show that none of this is simple, and that perhaps we _all_ need to learn to listen to one another better.

I don’t understand this comment, Chutney, for two reasons. First, how are single people different from married people except that they need different things? Every church program is designed to meet one sort of need or another. Broadly speaking, the reason we have a 20s/30s group is that folks our age need to socialize with one another. So, if programs at church aren’t based on needs, what are they based on?

Second, why is it a problem that needs are never truly filled? Isn’t that the human condition in a nutshell? Surely that’s why church is an ongoing proposition: ministry is a practice of attending to human problems that continue to arise, generation after generation. (Otherwise we could just fix the world once and for all this coming Sunday and be done with it, right?)

To go back to my example, it seems that the need that 20s/30s have to socialize with one another is a great example of a need that will never truly be filled. I know you pretty well and I’m sure you’d agree that our group is a worthwhile endeavor and a gift to the congregation. So, um… what do you mean by your comment?

I didn’t at all mean that you were insensitive, just that you projected an idea of what it’s like for parents in the church that doesn’t match with my *particular* experience of being a parent in the church. Just now in your comment, you mention ministers and church folk constantly taking parents’ needs into account, and I’m sure that happens some places, but I don’t actually feel that way. (To be fair, I was also a person struggling with infertility in the church for some time, and I didn’t feel put-upon by children, so perhaps it’s just that my congregation really doesn’t push the couples- and children-first agenda as much as some must.) My husband and I have also looked desperately for some way to participate in our congregation together, and we can’t do it. We were told we shouldn’t join a small group together because we were partnered, we were told we didn’t fit in the “young adults” group because we had a kid, we can’t go to service together because I teach RE, and there are no adult RE classes that meet before bedtime for our children, so we can’t even take advantage of the offered childcare. In our congregation, we end up having to act like independent single parents. That just happens to be my reality.

In any case, my larger point was not at all that you were “off” because you didn’t include me — you weren’t writing about me! Why should you include me? My larger point was that we all need love and support, and we might assume that other people are feeling supported, but we might not be right. I don’t at all mean that what you wrote about singles isn’t right. I trust you that it is. I just feel very left out sometimes, because my church seems to assume that as long as I can teach RE, my needs are being met.

Please, again, know that I didn’t mean that you should have included me in your narrative. This is why I didn’t comment on your post — I knew it wasn’t about me, and I just read it and tried to chew on it.