{Editor’s Note: Single guys are in the minority in many of our churches today, and it doesn’t seem to matter how big the church is or if it has a singles ministry or not. This is the fourth post in a series created to dialogue about what single men in church have been experiencing in a variety of congregations. Today, John shares his personal experience in the local church as a single man. You can find links to the other posts at the bottom.}
Most likely, we can all agree on something from the very start. Ministry is difficult. Christian community is difficult. It doesn’t matter if it’s in a tiny country church or the city’s largest megachurch. The Body of Christ is made up of God’s people. And with people, even redeemed people, come the inevitable problems. Misunderstandings. Deceptions. Hurt feelings. For those of us who are not particularly adept at handling either conflict or emotion, it’s extremely tempting to take the easy way out. And, sadly, we often do exactly that.
We just…leave.
Now, this reaction surely isn’t isolated to single men such as myself. But from my personal experience, I suspect that it has at least something to do with the problem that SingleRoots has been examining lately: namely, the absence of young single men in many churches.
As a whole, we men tend to be the less social of the sexes. It’s a broad generalization, I know, but I think it generally holds true. And being single often means that there aren’t any family ties to keep us intimately involved in the local Body. And so it’s easy for us to just leave.
Not for the purpose of finding other ministries or service opportunities at another local church. Not for the purpose of finding God-focused friends and mentors. I’m not even talking about church-hopping for the purpose of finding a suitable wife.
It’s something even more selfish than that: It’s simply running away.
If you’ll forgive the military metaphor (we are, after all, at war with the Enemy), this is the equivalent of abandoning our posts during the heat of battle. The Supreme Commander has granted neither a discharge nor a transfer. It is going AWOL in the spiritual sense.
“I have had enough, Lord…” {1 Kings 19:4c}
And going AWOL is what I found myself doing just a couple of years ago.
Fed up and exhausted from the drama that is oftentimes Singles Ministry, I convinced myself that the best thing for me to do was to just step away for a while. Away from the pressures, the pettiness, the personalities. I certainly wasn’t blameless in these circumstances. My actions and decisions had either caused or contributed to at least some of the drama that I wanted to get away from.
But rather than work through difficult situations or learn to love difficult people, I essentially threw my hands up and walked away.
Not away from the Church altogether, mind you. But I became an “attender,” coming to church for Sunday morning and having no other real connections to the rest of the Body on a weekly basis. In the moment, I suppose I had in mind some sort of idyllic time of solitude:
I long for scenes where man has never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept—
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
::John Clare
But times of solitude, while valuable and necessary to the spiritual life of the believer, aren’t intended to be permanent.
Our Creator didn’t wire us that way. As much as I sometimes wish it were otherwise, He made us with a need for the fellowship of other believers. When we walk away from our church community because of a few temporary frustrations, we leave behind many of our sources of encouragement and accountability. And in my case, quite frankly, the results of my self-imposed isolation were disastrous. And looking around me, it is undeniable that other single men have experienced those same disastrous results.
“And the word of the Lord came to him: ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’” {1 Kings 19:9b}
To be honest, I can’t say I’ve yet rushed back into the local church and poured myself into ministry, but I’m getting there.
I can already look back and say with certainty that Christ my Savior has never abandoned me. Despite my very best efforts to exile myself, He placed others in my life who would not allow me to remain a deserter from the cause. He provided accountability in a Christian brother when I most needed it. He provided cherished friends who knew my tendency to withdraw and pulled me out of myself.
I’m so very thankful for those who have not forsaken me, even when I might have forsaken them.
My prayer is that others who have left the local church with experiences similar to mine, especially other single men, would have the same sort of friends to bring them back into frequent fellowship. And that, when the time comes, I might be that same sort of friend for someone.
Other posts in this series:
Single Men in the Church [Part 1] : Where My Boys At?
Single Men in the Church [Part 2] : It’s Not a Man’s World
Single Men in the Church [Part 3] : The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Single Men in the Church: Some Final Thoughts
