Over a period of time, I’ve been hearing quite a number of complaints that the church does not do enough to facilitate avenues for singles to find life partners.
The first question that springs to mind is whether this is a fair statement.
The church I attend doesn’t really get involved in this area and even the singles group which was set up in the past has been discontinued. On that note, maybe not enough is being done.
However, when I look around, I see more and more people ‘hooking up’ where the symptom that I should find is that less and less find partners. So, if the number of new relationships are increasing in proportion to the past and the church does not create direct avenues for this, it must be on the people’s own initiative.
Which brings me to my second question. Is it the church’s responsibility to provide these avenues or does the onus lie with the individual?
There are quite a few comments I’ve heard about this that lean to the church taking more responsibility, mainly because they argue that if an individual is sacrificing so much time for church, the least the church could do is to help them find their life partner since they ‘don’t have enough time to find one themselves’.
But to validate this statement, the evidence would need to show that those committing the most hours to church ministry and service are the ones suffering from not finding a life partner, and the ones who spend less time in ministry should find a life partner more easily.
Once again, this is not apparent – many times, it is the leaders and those in service who are attached and the ones actively looking for more avenues are those who are, in reality, ‘freer’ with their time.
You might not agree with my conclusions but I feel that although my church can do a lot more to encourage wholesome ‘hooking up’, I feel that the responsibility and initiative lies on the individual. This situation reminds me of when Pastors and churches are held responsible by parents for how their kids act when the parents should in fact be holding themselves accountable.
If anything, Pastors and leaders need to encourage men and women in church to take more initiative in a healthy way and then take a step back and allow things to run their course but even in this situation, the responsibility does not lie with the advisor but the executor.
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