The Singles Among Us Deserve a Better Church Culture
Every individual church has its own culture. Biblical mandates, denominational beliefs, and traditions make up our church cultures. Of course, as followers of Christ, we should desire to have a strictly biblical culture, but yet in many churches, including the one in which I grew up, unbiblical concepts are accepted as truth. Some issues may be emphasized and followed with great intentionality, yet they are not always biblical.
And something that was always a mystery to me in years past was the emphasis within my church on being married. This doesn’t mean I don’t believe in marriage. After all, I’ve been married for fifty years. The problem for me was the way my single brothers and sisters thought of themselves. There were those who thought they had missed God’s best for them or that they were not good enough for someone to love. Some even felt their singleness disqualified them from full participation within the church community. It didn’t seem right to me to have different classes of citizens in the church—married and single.
I needed a biblical answer to this dilemma, and while wrestling with this issue, I attended a reformed conference with a friend. As we sat in the women’s conference, the speaker began to teach about the creation of man and woman and how they were both made with a purpose. My mind began to reel from this simple truth, which I hadn’t seen before this event. I was so excited that I caught up with one of the elders of our church, who was also at the conference, during lunch to share with him. It felt especially important to speak with him as he was single, and I desired his input.
Here’s what hit me that morning: God created man and woman, not husband and wife. I know what you’re thinking, “But they were husband and wife!” Yes, that’s true. God called Adam and Eve to fulfill the roles of husband and wife in order to fill the earth. He created marriage. However, the church culture I grew up in taught creation as if it were the creation of husband and wife, not man and woman. This teaching was not unique to that church, and I have since seen how this overemphasis on marriage has had and still has an effect on the singles within churches.
Contrary to what some church cultures have implied, marriage is not the goal of life. If marriage is the goal, then idolization of marriage will follow. Marriage can become more important than God at that point. However, our goal should be to please God (2 Cor. 5:9) and to bring him glory (1 Cor. 10:31). Yes, marriage is a good thing. We are even told by Paul that it is a picture of Christ and the church, which will one day be fully realized when we are united with the Bridegroom (Eph. 5:22–32). What a wonderful day that will be!
In the present, however, we need to focus on what the church is. The church is not little cell groups that meet in separate corners of a building. The church is not denominations. The church is not made up of everyone who is the same. In fact, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:12, 27: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ . . . Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” The church is the body of Christ—one body made up of many members who are equal in worth before God. The church consists of couples, singles, children, widows, widowers, divorcees, different ethnic groups, and many different cultures. Everyone has different backgrounds, experiences, and gifts, and all these differences should be used to benefit one another. We are all to contribute to the body.
God uses every one of his children regardless of our marital status. We need to embrace this wholeheartedly. The key is that each of God’s children needs to know him well. The marital status in this life doesn’t necessarily contribute to our knowledge of God. The increase in our knowledge comes from the Scriptures, as well as the counsel of other believers. We need each other and should embrace the status, married or single, God has given to us. It’s interesting Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:6b: “But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.” He is addressing marriage and singleness. Both are a gift from God. This is what should be a part of our church culture.
Our church culture affects our spiritual walk. I know this is true because of an experience I had as I was teaching a class. In the course of this class, I was going over creation as I have stated earlier—God created man and woman, not husband and wife. As I was speaking I noticed a single young lady in my class crying. I was concerned that I had hurt her in some way, but the opposite was true. She came to me after class and said, “Thank you so much for this teaching on creation. I now know I have a purpose greater than finding a husband. I am to serve God as I was created for him.” This is the reason it’s so important to have not only biblical teaching but also a biblical culture in our churches. What a joy it was to see the load lifted from this young lady!
We must make a conscious effort to give value to our single brothers and sisters. One of the ways I did this in our women’s ministry was to have single sisters serve on the ministry team. The team worked together to oversee all that was happening in women’s ministry, and our single sisters gave us a different viewpoint to consider. One of my team members would always remind us of how difficult it was for single people to come to events. This inspired us, as a team, to reach out to our single women for their guidance. Not only did this give the single women a feeling of belonging within our ministry team, but also they were full of valuable ideas of how to make the church events more welcoming to single individuals. Additionally, we made it our goal to coordinate Bible studies that primarily focused on our relationship with God instead of ones that focused solely on marriage. This gave the single women an opportunity to study with other women, married and single.
We can’t allow an unbiblical culture of the church to exist unchecked, rather we should actively seek to redirect our church members back to a truly biblical perspective. Therefore, we need to address the idolization of marriage within our church. While God’s design for marriage is a good gift, so is singleness. Both can uniquely bring glory to God. Both can be used by our good Father to give us more of himself and fill us with longing for the perfect Bridegroom—Jesus. So, it is not our job as wives to seek to influence single women to be married. Stop the matchmaking! Instead we should recognize and celebrate the gift that singleness can be to both individuals and the church. I have close friends who are single and I need them and their input in my life. Being close to someone single gives me a front row seat to her life and all she faces each day. It gives me a clearer avenue of prayer as I bring her before the throne of grace. And the same is true in reverse as we pray for and encourage each other. This is the body of Christ at work together in true community. That’s the culture we need to follow!
Denise Hardy has recently retired after being on the church staff of Cornerstone Baptist Church for 33 years. In that time, she served as the Children’s Ministry Director for 12 years and as the Women’s Ministry Director for 21 years. She is a certified biblical counselor through ACBC and has 28 years of experience. Currently, she still serves in Cornerstone Baptist Church as a counselor, in the choir, and teaches in the children’s and women’s ministry areas. Her role as sister to the church staff continues today as she gives input when called upon. As a caretaker for her parents, before their deaths, she learned many lessons from the Lord, which she blogged about on denisehardy.org. Denise has been married for 50 years and has two children and five grandchildren.