Peacebang asked some great questions about ministering to single folk a few days back. I’ve been chewing on it since.
Growing up evangelical, I saw a lot of singles ministries come and go. Many, maybe most, fell into the traps that Peacebang lays out so well, but I don’t think they’re so different that we UUs can’t learn from their foibles. So, looking back at them, I want to add a couple of wrinkles to the discussion. Maybe you can help me iron them out.
The first wrinkle has to do with size. Church singles groups seemed to come in two sizes: not quite big enough and more than big enough.
Not quite big enough groups collapsed in on themselves sooner or later. Folks would pair off and leave the group, or else the group would get dated out and hard feelings would send everyone in their separate directions.
More than big enough groups have so many folks that the group can’t be dated out—there are just too many people for everyone to date everyone, or even to know everyone. The group gets known as a place to meet people, becomes a meat market and attracts meat market behavior. Either the group is vigorously policed or folks start leaving because they don’t feel safe.1
The other wrinkle is the singling out of singles. On one hand, a dedicated Singles Ministry honors an important group of people—which is to say, the majority of Americans—with dedicated programs of ministry. On the other, it can patronize singles as needing special help to survive “normal” congregational life. (Using the world “singles” so many times in the post is starting to feel patronizing.)
So tell me, how do you iron these wrinkles? Or don’t you? Are UUs so different that my old evangelical memories don’t have any bearing? What does a successful “singles ministry” look like?
- Obviously, as these groups were evangelical, the emphasis was on pairing people off and getting them hitched, so that may have more to do with it than the size issue. [↩]
So I think part of what a singles ministry might want to consider is informally assessing the needs of the group (or formally). It seems like the examples you gave ended up disintegrating because of dating (or not dating) participants, but that also seemed to be the point of the group (in evangelical circles, as you point out). But part of what I think Peacebang was saying was about needs other than dating, like companionship, meal sharing, transportation, and the like. So maybe you could start singles ministry by asking people what they need.
And that’s where I start to get tripped up, because those aren’t things that only singles needs. As I read Peacebang’s post, the bits about not having kids especially rang true for me, even though I’m married.
Maybe the emphasis should be more on circles of friends than singles?
(I ask all this because we have a great 20/30s group here that has singles and partnereds and everything in between.)
Hey Chutney —
Part of why the 20s/30s group at the church we both attend is so vibrant is that it emphasizes community over dating. I know people in the group do date one another sometimes, but I’ve never heard anyone say that dating is the purpose of the group or that their main reason for coming to church is to meet someone.
I think this is a very good thing. We want our church to be a place where people come for community and fellowship in all aspects of their lives. It’s a fine thing if two people meet at church and decide they’d like to walk our path of church community together, but it’s vital that folks understand that church is a community of mutual commitment towards a higher purpose, not just a place to drop in when you have a need to meet, whether it’s for new friends, romance, or employment.
So how to serve singles? Stop focusing on the category “single” and address the support need, which is dating. How can our church community support its members when they are looking for partners? For starters, we could encourage our 20s/30s covenant groups to talk about dating from time to time. We could also start an activity — a discussion group, a night out — where single people who are actively dating can get together to share tips and encourage one another. In other words, we should recognize that many people in our community have a similar need and try to support them as they go about meeting it in the context of their own lives, rather than trying to solve it for them by creating a “singles group” where they expect to actually meet a partner.
This is the same approach I’d like to see us adopt for other clear support needs in our 20s/30s group: people looking for jobs, people looking to build their circle of friends, couples considering marriage, couples starting families, and so forth. We can’t solve any of these issues for folks but we can support them and give them the tools they need to work out their own solutions. So it should be with dating.
It seems to me that the problem is our apparently incessant need to either adopt or provide labels, and our inability to realize that we don’t actually know how others are doing if we don’t ask. These twin assumptions (that we can accurately label others and that those labels, once bestowed, matter) lead to all kinds of missed opportunities for true support at best; at worst they lead to significant resentment in all the nooks of a congregation.
As a married mother, Peacebang’s post has stuck with me over the last several days for two main reasons. One is that it made me realize how little I interact with the singles in my congregation, since I never seem to get to do anything other than RE activities and I don’t think I know any single RE volunteers. The other is how much she didn’t seem to understand my perspective as a UU parent. She had some assumptions that were just off (for my experience), which was ironic, given the subject. We could ALL use more/better support and love, and we could use it because we’re human, not because we’re single, partnered, parenting, musical, a freak, a student, unemployed, overworked, 20-something, 30-something, retired, an animal lover, etc.
I like the idea of groups being needs-base as Kevin suggests rather than partner-status based.
Chutney, I also strongly related to Peacebang’s point about children. In the past, when I was a regular church-attender, I felt that I wasn’t perceived as a full-fledged grown-up in the church unless I had kids.
I’m hesitant about programming around needs in general because needs are never truly filled, and people are always running across new ones. After a while, every new program starts to feel like catch-up work instead of a new gift a team of folks are giving the congregation.
Ruth, I want nto respond to what you said about my not understanding your perspective as a parent. The point is, I didn’t say ANYTHING about your perspective as a parent. As a parent, you are accustomed to ministers and church folk constantly taking your needs into account, which I did not do. For that, you accuse me of being insensitive. Isn’t that interesting? I’m not being defensive, just pointing out the inevitable hand-slapping that singles get when they dare speak out of their experience and don’t try to include parents or partnered people in their narrative. This happens every time I write about singles issues: someone invariably insists that sense I didn’t include them in my perspective, I’m somehow “off.” This is part of why singles avoid churches. You’re never allowed to say, “This is my experience” without someone chiming in, “It’s MINE, too!” So many of us shut up and leave.
PeaceBang, I must have been even less clear than I normally am, because I didn’t mean what I wrote to come across in that way at all. I apologize, and I hope you’ll let me try to clarify.
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.
I’m hesitant about programming around needs in general because needs are never truly filled, and people are always running across new ones.
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?
Ruth — I hear you, and have had much the same experiences. Like my participation in my church has to be centered around my kids, and not about what I need.
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.
Kevin, maybe this will clear it up. In high school, I worked in a bookstore with a washed up Baptist preacher. When he found out I was thinking about going into the ministry, he gave me some advice. He told me to get a wood shop, or something like it, where I could work on projects and finish them. This was because, he said, I would never get to finish anything if I worked for a church.
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.
Sorry, dude. All I get from your story is the moral that church programs shouldn’t move forward unless there are gifts, strengths, assets and vision behind them. I agree completely, and I don’t see what that has to do with whether or not a given program meets a given need.
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?
I should have started by saying I like your ideas. And I think starting in cov groups is a great place to start the conversation. I’ll email you about specifics.
Ruth said, “We could ALL use more/better support and love, and we could use it because we’re human, not because we’re single, partnered, parenting, musical, a freak, a student, unemployed, overworked, 20-something, 30-something, retired, an animal lover, etc.”
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?
many people enter in to a group for a specific “need” that one group might be offering, but in the long run the needs of the individual run deeper than what is first percieved. From my experience many people will become discouraged by this fact and leave the group when those needs don’t seem to be fulfilled. Needs based ministries are a great way to bring people into the community in a real and specific way, as long as you realize that almost all needs based ministries are transitional groups, and that the real emphasis should be on directing the individual to the larger community. One way this is done is by interaction between groups of different needs, allowing the individual to find other groups where he or she feels a connection as well. Just as 20-30 somethings will eventually become 40 somethings, all needs based groups will grow in their understanding of themselves, while certain needs become ministered to we will find those deeper levels of need that we have ignored or been unaware of; if we have already developed a larger network of community with other groups in the church we are less likely to feel so outcast when we realize how many other areas in our lives need ministered to. Chutney your Baptist was right you may not get to complete any projects working in the ministry, but that’s not the goal. The purpose is not to build a birdhouse, so to speak, but to sand and cut and prepare the wood to be made into an ornate clock by someone else’s hand (or many hands as the case may be).