Raffie
( X _ x )
- Gender
- Male | 59
- Country
- United States
- City
- Spokane Valley
- State
- Washington
- Height
- 6'0"
- Last Login Date
- Click here to learn more
- Age
- 59
- Eye Color
- Blue
- Body Type
- Average
- Hair Color
- Bald
- Ethnicity
- Caucasian
- Denomination
- Church of God
- Looking For
- Anything
- Church Name
- The Only Church in Town.
- Church Attendance
- Once or Twice a month
- Church Raised In
- Pentecostal
- Do you drink?
- Socially
- Smoker
- No
- Willing to relocate?
- Possibly, who knows
- Marital Status
- Single
- Do you have children?
- No
- Do you want children?
- Undecided/Open
- Education Level
- 2 Yr College Degree
- My Profession
- Graduated College in Dec 20 AAS
- Interests
- (X_x).
- About Me
-
More than 15% of people are divorced in these four cities. Shreveport, LA tops another list with 15.9% of the population being divorced. Hialeah (15.7%) and St. Petersburg (15.6%) in Florida also have the most divorcees, along with Spokane, WA (15.1%).
From a web site-The Landscape of Single Adults
Fast forward 30 years: I am still single, and today my vocation is equipping local churches for health and effectiveness. As I engage with local churches, I cannot help but notice that the percentage of adults who are single is higher in society than it is in the Church.
The percentage of adults in the United States who are single is on the rise. Bella DePaulo reported that in 1970, the percentage of adults in the US over the age of 18 who were single was 28%, and in 2021 was 48.2%.1 In contrast, Table for One Ministries reported that only 23% of adult churchgoers are single.2 I set out to learn from single adults themselves what church practices increased their likelihood to stay engaged and feel valued and included. But I also needed to dig deeper when it comes to a theology of singleness, because we cannot build strong practices on weak theology.
-The Singles Have Spoken
As crucial as theology is, in this study I did not ask single adults about theology. We talked about their experiences in church, and this group had a lot to say.
In terms of what church practices increase inclusion for single adults in the congregation, four factors came through as significant for half or more of the participants. For 87.5% of these single adults, (1) having positive relationships with other people in the church was significant to their inclusion. They valued being part of a community that spent time together both formally and informally, in ways that were designed by church leadership as well as initiated organically by other church members.
For 68.75% of these single adults, the church practice of (2) being included in a small group increased their inclusion in the congregation. Small groups were a place where participants were more likely to develop those positive relationships. Similarly, for 68.75% of these single adults, the church practice of (3) being involved in volunteer service increased their inclusion in the congregation. Participants expressed satisfaction with being part of a team, and contributing what they had to offer toward a common, significant purpose.
For 56.25% of single adults, the church practice of (4) acknowledging single adults in the worship service increased their inclusion in the congregation. Personal acknowledgement in the worship service meant physically being in front of the congregation, or having their name spoken publicly and positively. The acknowledgement might be with a group, brief, informal, or rare, but was valued.
In terms of what church practices decrease inclusion for single adults in the congregation, three factors came through as significant for half or more of the participants. For 75% of single adults, the church practice of (1) underrepresenting singleness in sermons decreased their inclusion in the congregation. Most them said that they had heard sermons on the subject of marriage with some regularity, but heard sermons on singleness never or barely at all. Additionally, marriage came through in illustrations and applications regardless of the sermon subject, while singleness rarely or never came through.
For 66.7% of (2) single adults under 45 years old, underrepresentation of people in their age group in the church decreased their inclusion in the congregation. While younger single adults do not want to be the only person in their age group in a situation, most are open to, even desiring of intergenerational interaction.
For 50% of (3) single adults over 45 years old, discomfort with being the only single adult in a situation with couples decreased their inclusion in the congregation. The discomfort is not with being with other couples, but rather being the only single when everyone else in the situation is present as a couple.
What about “singles ministry”? All of the participants answered that their current church does not offer separate, targeted single adult ministry. When asked if they would attend such a ministry if it was offered, 31.25% of single adults said yes, that they would attend; 31.25% said they might attend; 37.5% said that they would not attend.
Half of the participants expressed that their churches did not adequately address issues relevant to single adulthood. Those issues fell under three headings: dating (dating non-Christians, dating after divorce, dating after death of spouse, social skills), contentment (understanding why one is single, knowing what to do as a single, dealing with desire, dealing with loneliness), and sex (celibacy, pornography, masturbation, LGBTQ+). In the absence of resources from the church on singleness, younger single adults identified other sources of information. One stated, “I don’t really know who to ask, other than Googling things.”
Women Are Much More Selective And Find 80% Of Men Unattractive On Dating Apps, Per Recent Research.
New mayor of Spokane is a Dem.
Good bye fair city and hello toilet.
Others May, You Cannot (Clearly this nutshells almost my whole life. I'm sick of this world and ready to go home.)
by G. D. Watson (1845-1924)
If God has called you to be truly like Jesus in all your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility. He will put on you such demands of obedience that you will not be allowed to follow other Christians. In many ways, He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.
Others who seem to be very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and scheme to carry out their plans, but you cannot. If you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.
Others can brag about themselves, their work, their successes, their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing. If you begin to do so, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.
Others will be allowed to succeed in making great sums of money, or having a legacy left to them, or in having luxuries, but God may supply you only on a day-to-day basis, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, a helpless dependence on Him and His unseen treasury.
The Lord may let others be honoured and put forward while keeping you hidden in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade.
God may let others be great, but keep you small. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit, but He will make you work and toil without knowing how much you are doing. Then, to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work which you have done; this to teach you the message of the Cross, humility, and something of the value of being clothed with His attitude.
The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, and with a jealous love rebuke you for careless words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over.
So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign and has a right to do as He pleases with His own, and that He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you.
God will take you at your word. If you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and let other people say and do many things that you cannot. Settle it forever; you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue or chaining your hand or closing your eyes in ways which others are not dealt with. However, know this great secret of the Kingdom: when you are so completely possessed with the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven, the high calling of God.
My fun phrase is 'Muppet Movernment' (its fun to say)
The Optimistic Quitter- (this is me for sure)
Sometimes, love just doesn’t seem to be a priority, or, rather, just doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
Men, more than women, are likely to just stop trying to date anyone and are also likely to stop pursuing partners. Why? Because in many situations, it just doesn’t make sense to keep trying only to face an increased chance of being shot down.
What’s cool about Optimistic Quitters is that they aren’t necessarily bitter towards women and they would be open if a girl were to approach them. However, due to the dating scene being what it is, they may not even pick up when a lady’s interested anymore.
Why Singles Often Give Up On Church
Julie Tisdale | July 18, 2018 |
As a woman who didn’t marry until she was 35, I notice it immediately�"in podcasts, news articles, Bible studies and sermons. Too often, it seems, speakers and writers are careful to find relevant examples to connect with different segments of their audience: married people, young adults, students, children.
But what about single�"but not young�"adults?
Unless you are an older single person, you might not ever notice. And that’s kinda the point of this article. It’s a problem, and not just “out there” but also in the Church. Pew Research Center regularly conducts surveys looking at religion in America, including demographics. Consequently, it’s actually pretty easy to look at how many Christians fall into that single, but not particularly young, category. It’s not a small group.
It turns out that among 30-49 year old Christians, only 60 percent are married. (Of the 40 percent who are not: 17 percent have never been married, 14 percent are divorced, 1 percent are widowed, and 8 percent are living with a partner, but not married.)
Among 50-64 year olds, the numbers don’t change all that much: 61 percent are married. (10 percent have never been married, 4 percent are living with a partner, 20 percent are divorced, and 6 percent are widowed.)
Over 65, the numbers of married drop a bit to 54 percent. (Widowed jumps a lot to 28 percent, 4 percent were never married, 12 percent divorced, and 2 percent living together and unmarried.)
Which means that, among 30-64 year old Christians, close to 40 percent are single, with that number rising as people age beyond 65. That is a lot of people.
And yet, while it may be completely unintentional, older singles can come to feel almost invisible within the church community. Why? I suspect there are a lot of reasons, but I think it is fair to say that churches can be pretty difficult places for single adults. We frequently discuss marriage and family. Men’s and women’s groups talk about being husbands and fathers, or wives and mothers. Singles groups within the church consist mainly of young people, most often designed for the needs of young people. For older single adults, church can seem irrelevant, alienating, lonely and even painful.
Given all of this, it’s not surprising that many single adults wander away from the church. The numbers bear this out: 53 percent of married and widowed adults say they go to church at least once a week. For adults who have never been married, that drops to 42 percent, and to 40 percent for those who are divorced. It’s 26 percent for those living with a partner.
Which brings me to a more fundamental point. Our churches could do a better job of relating to older single adults. In my years as a single adult church member, I found that most people did one of two things. Either they talked about how lucky I was to be single because, after all, in 1 Corinthians, Paul says, “It is good” to stay unmarried and it provides so much more time for ministry. Or they talked about the inevitable point at which I’d get married and just tell me to be patient.
Paul does talk about advantages to singleness, but in the same breath he talks about how hard it is. He’s talking specifically about sexual temptation in that passage, but there are other struggles. Some people love being single, but most would prefer to be married if they could find the right person. After all, at creation God says that it’s not good for man to be alone. Churches could do a better job of acknowledging that pain for many single people.
“Oh, it’ll happen” was also not helpful because it was impossible to know if it was true. Maybe I’d get married or maybe I wouldn’t. Plenty of good, godly people never find “the right” spouse. Look at the 10 percent of Christians aged 50-65 in the Pew survey that have never been married. There are no guarantees.
I think the key to all of this is to come back to the words of Jesus when he tells us to love our neighbors. Churches have a great opportunity to be family and community to older single adults. A few weeks ago, David Qaoud wrote a blog post about this topic that offers some helpful tips for churches and Christians. Among those, he wrote about: Understand how painful and lonely singleness can be; Pursue friendships and relationships with singles; Stop trying to be the matchmaker; Talk about singleness from the pulpit and in Bible studies.
If you want a longer look at the issue, Al Hsu wrote the best book on the topic that I’ve found. It’s a classic: Singles at the Crossroads: A Fresh Perspective on Christian Singleness. His message is mostly: Love your neighbor, whether single or married; Build relationships; Invite people to use their gifts; Nurture community. When the church does that well, everyone �" married or single �" will feel like a valued member of the church community.
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