This blog began several months ago with my thoughts on being single in church and the difficulties found in being part of the body of Christ as a single person. I’m revisiting this thought about what it means to be part of the body of Christ. The reason being that it is an important issue and also because I was shouting from atop my soap box on this issue to a friend and then felt that everyone should have the privilege of hearing my rant!
Here’s how it started. I was recently talking with this friend of mine and she mentioned that at her church her pastor was not a fan of mixed age small groups. In fact, the pastor went so far as to suggest that teens would not want to engage with older people and that the idea wouldn’t be given any more thought and that small groups would remain age specific. I know of another church where on a Sunday morning there are multiple age specific services all over their facility but never are all ages represented in one service.
This got me thinking – we have a problem. (This is where my ranting begins.) There is nothing wrong with age specific ministries (such as youth group) nor is there a problem with gender specific ministries, but if the only time you ever come to church is to be with people your own age then we are failing as a “body.” What we’ve done is put all the arms together in one place and all the knees in another and left no place for the nose. That’s not a body operating together – that’s a collection of parts. It’s great for the arm (or arms) to come together and make sure it’s all oiled up and strengthened so that it can best serve the body but at some point it has to join the body in order to be used to its full capacity.
(The rant is now in full swing – my voice is getting louder and louder and I’m going to need some Advil what with all the shouting going on in my head.) We in the church like to think that everyone is following the same life time line. You attend children’s church until you’re 12. From 12 to 18 you go to youth group. At 18 you begin attending the college class and start helping with the youth. At 22 you enter the young adult group and when you’re 25 you join the young married small group. Then at 30 you stop going to an age specific class and you only attend the main Sunday service with the rest of the young families and middle age families. Following that season of life you enter the empty nest small group and finish off your church career with the retired group.
And therein lies the problem. (Oh the rant has reached a feverish pitch now!) What if your life doesn’t fit the happy Christian time line? Where do you go if you’re 23 and unmarried with a child? Where does the military wife of 35 attend while her husband is deployed? Where does the 29 year old single go? You’re not an arm or a leg and there’s no place in the body for you to belong. You don’t look like everyone else so you don’t fit. That’s not right! Church is for the misfits not only for the cookie cutter look alike family! (In my mind I’m actually shouting this line!)
(In a much calmer, explanatory voice) The body of Christ is also the family of God. In a family you are not all the same age. There’s a variety of ages in a family – what an odd family if everyone in it was 13 years old. We need the wisdom of grandparents, the maturity and corrective hands of parents, the energy of children, the charm of babies, the adventurous spirit of the teenager that are found in a real family to be present in the family of God – the church. We need to be able to come together at some point each week or every other week and rejoice together and mourn together and learn from each other.
The scripture says that we are to make His faithfulness known through all the generations. If I’m only with my own generation then how am I to know about God’s enduring faithfulness?
Bottom line is this: we need each other and especially we who are single need others to share and do life with. Don’t put me in a class of other singles and tell me I’m part of the family of God (okay, I’m yelling again). God’s family is neither completely single nor completely made of couples. God’s family is rich with a variety of ages, genders (well, just the 2 but you know what I mean), and marital status (or is that statuses - once I start ranting my grammar goes bad.) So if that’s what God’s family looks like then why doesn’t the church look the same?
And so ends my rant. Glad I got that off my chest!
