Quitting Church: The Plight of the Single Christian over 35

Hmmm as one who is in this club as I have said earlier I knew that church wasn't going to be a place for me to find a partner but I wonder if that would have changed if men were socialized to be husbands in church like women get it shoved down their throats that they should learn to be good wives.

Where are the Singles Ministries? Why don’t they help people find mates?

The first church I attended after leaving legalism had no singles ministry and I never saw any advertisements for singles ministry at the church I was visiting for about a year. There's an emphasis on young adult but I found those groups  to be immature, cliquish, and out of touch. It felt like an extension of the youth groups that try to be cool but are just awkward

In this book, Quitting church  I find it interesting that when interviewing several singles pastors they all are horrified when people ask why they aren't helping single members find mates. This book quotes a pastor from India who says that in their country, they assume everyone is to be married unless they have a special call from God and so they help their people find mates.

Why doesn't the church in America help people find spouses?

I have long suspected that it's because some pastors believe  if singles get married (especially single women) then they may stop coming to church because they aren't looking to church anymore to fill their voids. I see this a lot in black churches. Their main demographic is single women over 35 and they help keep a lot of these places going. Churches assume since someone is single they can do all of the grunt work because after all they're not doing anything!

A man named Richard said this in Quitting Church:

We are not the church's easy free labor pool to do the undesirable jobs no one else wants to do in the name of servanthood, contentment, and humility(95)

Devoting yourself to church activities while ignoring the rest of your life is a poor strategy for singles to follow  because as a single woman who is nearing this demographic, I'm constantly doing things that I'm interested in. I'm not doing it to meet a man.  I’m doing these things because it adds to my life and helps me to grow as a person. That is what attracts the type of man I'm looking for.

Yet there's a lot of money to be made off of singles wanting to be married ministries without offering any real solutions.

I believe that a lot of men aren't going to sit up in church and listen to another guy tell him about his life especially if they can tell the guy is as crooked as a $3 bill. Single women are a bit more merciful in that regard and I think the $3 bill preachers like the attention from those single women. See: all those church scandals with preachers and single women.

A woman named Debbie Maken said that she was 28 when it dawned on her the teachings at her church actively worked to keep her single. She said that many churches teach that marriage is a gift that only some fortunate people receive.  (P88)

She continues:

Churches teach you must be content with your singleness since you cannot change or control it; Jesus is all you need to be happy. You should be single with great fulfillment, joy, and an absence of loneliness. To be discontent with your single status is sin. God wants you to be single, whether you want to be or not. Churches should quit acting as stumbling blocks to the pursuit of marriage”

That summarizes a lot of what I have seen with singles in church I would go on to add that the assumption that married people are doing something right and if you're still single then something is wrong with you. Never mind if the marriage is a mess and the people in them are messier. At least they're married so that’s better than what you’ve got!

One man wrote i to Ms. Duin to express that, “singles are seen as dysfunctional people with problems,wild crazed animals with hormones out of control. I am single, not shingles (96)

There is a shingles stigma against single people in church especially over 35. Something has to be wrong with them. When I was involved with fundamentalism I figured I would be single forever and didn't want to be married if it meant I had to marry a fundamentalist.

I just didn't think the type of man that I would want to be with would be in church but maybe he would if churches were different. Quitting church takes a look at why men avoid church

One man volunteered his story. To paraphrase he was rebuked by the elders (who were all married) at his church because they told him it was better to be single so he could serve God better. He was told that he should be content in his single hood. He was told that he should accept his circumstances of being single and there wasn't much he could do about it. If God wanted him to be married, then he would bring someone into his Life. His preacher also gave a sermon where he said that if a person was over forty and they were still single, then this was God’s calling of celibacy.

This poor man kept appealing to his accountability groups for prayer in this area. He was eventually kicked out of his group and they would no longer pray for him because his desire to marry was like: (and this is a direct quote)

A black man who was constantly whining to God about being black and wanting to be white

Eventually that man left the church and can you blame him? It sounded like he needed encouragement, personal development, and confidence building not to be told he was hopeless and that he should just accept that he would never be married.

In my own experience, I used to think singleness meant unwanted and rejected. I wonder if that man felt like that. That is the main issue that should have been addressed.