(continued from part 1)

Neither is it about recognition 🎊

Churches honor marriage, and rightly so. I heard it said that announcements of celebrations are often of engagements, weddings, and newborns (i.e., couples and family centred).

Should we start announcing things for singles to celebrate? I don’t think so, for what is there? It becomes ricidulous if you try. The reality is there’s no milestones like weddings, or your Nth anniversary, a pregnancy, your first child, second child, your child’s milestones, and so on. As singles, you simply don’t have it.

What about announcing milestone birthdays? Many (women especially) will class that among the bad news, like sickness—things to pray over, not a celebration! (Not that I agree, because the Bible says gray hair is a crown of glory, which I take to mean getting old and aging is a gift of God. So, if you get old, it’s not something to mourn over).

Nonetheless, I think to fear your body wearing away is as natural as the process of aging itself is natural (especially for women), but I try to look back seeing God’s faithfulness for yet another year, so the more there is to be thankful for with each wrinkle setting its mark on you! And I have always appreciated the kindness shown in my birthday celebration each time (although I am not even a birthday kind of person).

If not birthday milestones, what about announcing career milestones instead—a job promotion? As though it’s even something fulfilling to every single woman. Generally speaking, they might not even care about it. Also, then you should do that for everyone else too, and that’s just weird.

Instead of trying to be inclusive where it doesn’t make sense, it’s better to simply recognise you are in the minority and hence do not expect things to cater to you. It’s like if you are blind (I’m not saying singles are handicapped), you can’t expect the whole world to revolve around your blindness because the world does continue to work as they would for the majority, doesn’t it?

Instead of being weird, something I’ve heard is a suggestion that we could make it the norm to celebrate spiritual things instead, e.g., a newborn Christian, spiritual growth (although it would be hard to quantify, but you get the idea). The person wasn’t suggesting weddings and babies aren’t worth celebrating, but that if spiritual matters and the Gospel are what the church is ultimately about, we should behave like those are what’s worth celebrating. Isn’t that an interesting thought.

A mindset change💡

It’s really not about creating activities / programs to include the singles. I think it goes deeper and takes a mindset and a total culture change. Else, if you ‘include’ the singles without a mindset change about singleness, it won’t help.

E.g., say, you invite them to a group holiday with other couples and families, but if your dinner chat the entire night is about how each of the couples meet each other, the single will still feel excluded. In fact, it could feel even lonelier being in that crowd than if they had been by themselves elsewhere doing their own things. Because you invite them in, and then exclude them. Not a nice way to treat the singles, but these things happen, and often enough. In such cases, when they hurt, you really can’t just say they’re being unthankful and needy.

Now, let’s get on to some positives 🙂

A better alternative ✅

When the pulpit teaches well

In my experience, teaching on singleness often isn’t done well. Even for preachers and teachers I’ve learnt a lot from in other areas, I rarely find their teaching on singleness and marriage biblically holistic, balanced, clear and helpful. Part of it might be that we also see their lives, i.e., while there may not be anything obviously wrong in the sermons, it doesn’t seem like they deeply hold the right convictions at heart. It might sound arrogant for me to say, but that’s where I genuinely see a gap where the church could do better in. And if that conviction doesn’t start with the leaders, where else would it?

But when it’s taught well, it really does stand out from the mainstream narratives, as it should, and incredibly helpful. One talk I highly recommend is by Simon Flinders, worth listening to all the way through. If more leaders hold the same clarity and conviction, what a strong starting point that would be for shaping a healthier church culture.

In my church, we had a talk series last year on God’s glorious design on humanity, of manhood and womanhood, husband and wife, motherhood and fatherhood (including their implications on singleness). That was a good series, brings clarity and it’s distinct enough that people would be offended at different points, exactly because they are biblical.

An older series we had some years ago was on the ‘Whys of Relationships’, which is also a very helpful six-week series on different aspects and states of relationships. Here’s the one on singleness from that series:

Those are a few examples of when it’s taught well from the pulpit. Also in conjunction with the Humanity series last year, we held a Q&A panel session with a few people from the congregation in different stages and stations of life. That was an honest, open, vulnerable, and instructive evening. It would benefit the wider church if more of such take place to raise awareness to help us all do community better.

When it’s taught well from the pulpit, it should hopefully flow on concretely to the life of the congregation.

Behaving like a true Christian community ✝️❤️

I think it was Dani Treweek who said there is a subtle but crucial difference in the way we see ourselves in the family of God, i.e., has God called us into a family that is made of individuals (whether singles and married) OR married couples, family groups and singles? The difference is, with the latter, you are still looking at the singles as ‘outsiders’ whom you invite into ‘your’ family. When in reality, God puts us as a family in that we, each individual, whether single or married, are brothers and sisters with each other, not groups of married people as a unit and each single as a unit. That’s actually an important distinction. If we start thinking and doing community the Christian way, it really is counter cultural. The bible does turn the world’s concept of family inside out, and it’s not natural to us.

In the world you have activities aimed at the singles such as speed-dating, singles night, etc (which aren’t wrong in themselves). But in church, activities should be around the Gospel and the Word of God as the foundation and driver of activities, because the Christian community is one centred on Christ. Examples of how they look like in my church where we are as a genuine Christian family we are meant to be:

• 🌿 Growth Groups, a place for all adults to journey life and mature in faith alongside brothers and sisters in all seasons and stages of life.
• 🏠 Eat & Share, with a number of hosts opening up their homes for a meal and time together, and people signing up to go to places where they do not know the host/s or other guests well.
• 📖 Bible studies we occasionally do such as Six Steps to Loving Your Church, aiming to nurture the culture of the church where everyone is involved.
• 👥 Just doing life and community together genuinely, e.g., I have been to holidays with a family where we live and eat, do groceries, take a walk, go for a run, play games, watch the TV together, and not one moment I felt singled out. Because they do take me as family, not just a single they include in their family holiday (you do it rightly when people don’t feel like they’re just an add-on).

A better response from the singles 👍

When you are hurt in any situation, it’s easy to think the issue lies with others, but the change in perspective needs to also come from the singles themselves.

I know it can be hard, especially because we do believe in the bible. The place of a woman, a wife as a helper, a mother; it feels like what’s most fundamental to you as a woman, you don’t have and you are not. Then you are reminded monthly that your body is created to bear, to carry and nurture. It’s really not easy. Couples who are infertile are acknowledged and symphatised with, but the struggles single women go through as they realise they won’t have children as their biological clock ticks past a certain point is far less talked about. Not because people ignore their pain, but because it doesn’t even occur to them childlessness is something the singles may struggle with, which is exactly the point: it can be a lonely struggle. You can feel a deep sense of emptiness and an aching void. In such cases, you can’t simply dismiss it and say we fill it with God per se. It’s an innate need exactly the way we have been designed (just like wives whose need is to be loved, and husbands’ to be respected—it is their innate need to be acknowledged).

But then there comes our response. God’s taught me a few things over the years with respect to this, and I can honestly say what a relief to know He loves me and gives me what I need, though not necessarily what I want.  I thank God I don’t get everything I want—and that is not something to lament over or protest about, but something to be thankful for. I can say it because I have seen how things went when He let me have what I adamantly insisted on having. It became a destructive idol, good things turned into golden calves 🐮🛐, and I turned even blessings into curses. It is truly a fearful thing when you let a child have whatever they want or do whatever they like whenever they like. Be careful what you ask for, especially when you’re too eager. Through hard lessons, I have learnt to trust Him more as a child does a loving Father.

Now I can honestly say, a husband would be very nice, but thank you that I am single, thank you that You know what’s best for my christlikeness. Thank you that it’s Your and not my business what life circumstances is, so I don’t need to be frantic but only to trust and obey, and live in the freedom and with a quiet confidence of being under the wisdom and care of a sovereign loving Father.

We can choose to honour Him in our circumstances, whatever they are. Instead of serving the devil by wasting time in self-pity, some helpful thinking if you are singles could be 💬:

• What does God wants me to do with it?
• I can understand other singles better, be a better friend to them.
• It is an opportunity to view singleness rightly; do not live in the world’s narrative.
• I can serve in such and such areas or ways because of it.
• Recognise things for what they are: reality is reality as seen by God (not by our experiences, thinking, feelings). Go back to the Bible.

They of course apply similarly for the married too.

Another good question to ask (in both singleness and marriage) is: Does it draw you closer into the community of God, or does it isolate you? That is telling whether it’s all about your kingdom or God’s kingdom.

Lastly, (something from my fridge list 📋) you can weep but don’t whine nor whinge, grieve if you need to but do not grumble.

By the way, I’m in Indo at the moment, and my Mom used to say, ‘as a single you will grow old alone! and you will die alone, and people won’t even know!’ She seriously think that will get me married😆

The truth is, many married people will also die as widows or widowers. It’s okay to die single. Rather, what truly matters is not dying without a spouse, but dying without Christ. If you die alone (whether single, married, widowed, divorced, a single parent, or whatever else) but you are in Christ, you are never truly alone. God is with you, and you will be with Him in glory! And until then, you get to walk alongside and grow old with brothers and sisters in Christ of all ages—that is your forever family.