Being Single at Churches

I was reading a post yesterday about the difficulty of being single in church.  I’ll link to it (see here), but my goal is not so much to comment on the post itself, as it is to use it as a launch-pad for my own post.  Laura’s post is about how difficult it is for singles to fit in at a number of churches, where there are a lot of married couples who like to talk with each other about their family lives, excluding those who do not have a spouse or kids.

I’m single, and I was thinking about why I have never had that problem, at least not in churches I have attended.  (I have had it in other places.)  I think there are a variety of reasons.  For one, at most of the churches that I attended, the majority of the congregants were older.  Their kids were already out of the house.  The one exception to that would be Redeemer in New York City, and, in that case, there were a lot of single college students attending alone, so I was not an oddity.  Second, there were a lot of congregants at the churches I attended who were either single, or their spouses were not attending church with them.

How did I fit in at these churches, though, with the age gap?  Well, for me personally, getting along with people who are older than me is easier than getting along with people my own age—-and I’m speaking overall, since there are people my own age with whom I get along.  And, while I am not going to deny that there are gaps (in terms of interests, or my academic pursuits not always interesting others), people at my current church do acknowledge me and are friendly when I attend.  That gives me a boost.