CHAPTER 9
When Community Changes
“God setteth the solitary in families...” Psalm 68:6 (KJV)
Community changes across a lifetime.
Children grow. Friends marry. People move. Marriages end. Spouses die. Churches change. Jobs change. The people who once surrounded us may no longer be part of our ordinary day.
For single adults, that reality can be especially complicated.
Single Adults Need Places to Belong
By middle age, many single adults have already had community and lost or outgrown parts of it.
Maybe there was a marriage and now there is divorce.
Maybe there was a spouse and now there is widowhood.
Maybe children grew and family rhythms changed.
Maybe friends married and their availability changed.
Maybe there was a move, a new church, or a new job.
Trying to build close adult friendship again can be difficult because other people's lives already feel full.
Single adults do not only need opportunities to date.
They need places to belong.
Single Life Can Feel Temporary for a Long Time
Sometimes single adults live as though real life will begin after marriage or remarriage.
Community becomes temporary.
Plans become temporary.
Friendships become temporary.
We think, If I meet someone, everything will change anyway.
But temporary seasons can last years.
We need friendship now.
Service now.
Belonging now.
People to pray with now.
A life with Christ now.
A friendship is not wasted because someone's season eventually changes.
When Every Opposite-Sex Interaction Becomes Dating
This is another difficulty for single adults.
Most Christians understand why married men and married women need appropriate boundaries with people of the opposite sex. Marriage deserves protection. Private emotional intimacy outside the marriage can become dangerous even when nobody intended it to become romantic.
But where does that leave the unmarried?
Single men and women still need people.
Divorced people still need people.
Widows and widowers still need people.
Never-married adults still need people.
If every conversation between an unmarried man and woman becomes gossip, suspicion, or matchmaking, ordinary Christian fellowship becomes unnecessarily difficult.
Single adults are brothers and sisters in Christ before they are potential spouses.
Fellowship Is Different From Private Emotional Intimacy
Unmarried men and women can talk, serve, sit together, share interests, pray in appropriate community settings, work on ministry, and form friendship without every interaction becoming romance.
Wisdom still matters.
Boundaries still matter.
But the church should not make single adults feel as though the only meaningful relationship they can have with the opposite sex is dating.
That leaves people relationally isolated or pushes every connection toward romance before anyone knows whether romance is wise.
Dating Cannot Carry an Entire Need for Community
When someone is lonely, a dating relationship can become far more than dating very quickly.
Now this one person is companionship.
Friendship.
Prayer support.
Someone to text.
Someone to sit with at church.
Someone to do activities with.
Someone who makes weekends feel less empty.
Someone who gives a sense of belonging.
Then discernment becomes harder because losing the relationship would mean losing an entire community at once.
An unhealthy relationship can become difficult to release simply because the alternative feels like isolation.
That is one reason healthy community matters before, during, and outside romantic relationship.
We Need More Than People in the Same Marital Status
Single adults need other singles.
They also need married friends.
Families.
Older believers.
Younger believers.
Mentors.
People to serve beside.
Intergenerational community.
The body of Christ is larger than marital status.
A singles group can be valuable, but single adults should not be placed in a separate relational category as though they cannot belong naturally in the rest of church life.
Single Adults Bring Something Too
Community is not only about what single adults need from the church.
The church needs what single adults bring.
Gifts.
Wisdom.
Experience.
Service.
Perspective.
Encouragement.
Time.
Leadership.
Discipleship.
Love.
Single people are not unfinished married people waiting to become useful.
They are members of the body now.
Assumptions Can Make Community Harder
People outside a situation sometimes make assumptions.
A single man and woman talk frequently and people assume romance.
Someone visits with a person of the opposite sex and people begin asking questions.
A divorced person develops friendship and people decide what it must mean.
Those assumptions can make people self conscious about ordinary connection.
The church should be a place where people can belong without every relationship being turned into a story.
Community Should Help Us Become Whole, Not More Dependent
Healthy community gives us enough connection that one relationship does not have to carry everything.
We can have friends to call.
People to worship with.
People who know our children.
People who share interests.
People who pray.
People who can tell us the truth.
Then if romantic relationship develops, it becomes part of a life rather than the entire life.
Belonging Comes Before Marital Status
Before we are married or unmarried, divorced or widowed, husbands or wives, we belong to Christ.
And if we belong to Christ, we belong to one another.
That means the church should make room for the single adult who does not know whether their season will last six months or twenty years.
Make room for the divorced parent whose schedule is complicated.
Make room for the widow who does not fit neatly into couples activities anymore.
Make room for friendships that are not romance.
Make room for service, purpose, discipleship, laughter, meals, prayer, ordinary conversation, and life together.
Because single adults do not only need opportunities to date.
They need places to belong.