Category Archives: Growing Mature

Can You Be Disqualified From Celibacy

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One day a few years ago I was meeting with a pastor, who was perhaps in his late twenties, to discuss a singleness talk that I was going to be doing at his church.  We talked about many of the things that we discuss here on this site.  As the discussion turned to celibacy it took a bit of a different turn.

He shared that part of his story was that even though he was married he thought there was a good chance that he was originally gifted/called to ministry from the context of celibacy.  Now he was not complaining in any way about his wife.  In fact he has a good wife and a good marriage.  That wasn’t his point in sharing.  He had two points really.

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You Are Not Her Spiritual Leader

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I want to continue to try to answer a question that reader Stephen asked me a few weeks ago. Here is the question.

Everyone talks about women wanting guys who “lead”, who “aren’t pushovers,” who “aren’t nice guys,” etc. Question: what does this mean in the context of DATING. NOT MARRIAGE. Its fairly obvious what this means for married men. But when I’m asking a woman out for the first, second, or third time, the only things we’re going to disagree over, or have to decide together, are whether we’re going to Chipotle or Olive Garden. What if I really don’t give a darn? How am I supposed to “lead” while I’m casually dating a girl? I’m not an integral part of her life, I’m not her primary counselor, I’m not even likely to be *informed* about serious decisions that she has to make. 

I tackled the general nice guy question previously, but I think Stephen raises a very interesting question when it comes to leadership.

First of all, let’s clear a couple of things up.  Nowhere in the bible is the phrase spiritual leader used.  It’s kind of inferred in several places but we’ve sort of created this phrase so that we don’t have to use words like headship.  But regardless of all of that, and no matter what you call it, when you are dating someone, you are not her spiritual leader or head of anything. You are not saddled with that and you don’t have to love her as Christ loved the church (any more or less than you would any other person) and she is not called to submit to your leadership.  Ephesians 5 is not about dating.

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Don’t Be A Fool For “Love”

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My son, do not lose sight of these— keep sound wisdom and discretion, Proverbs 3:21

Ahhh Wisdom.

Over and over again the scriptures point towards wisdom.  God asks Solomon what he wants.  Solomon asks for wisdom, because he knew he was in big trouble without it, and God grants it – and everything else.

If it is one thing I think we’ve forgotten how to teach share, it is wisdom.  This is true both in the secular world and in the church.

This lack of wisdom is seen everywhere in our culture.  It’s in our government, our marketplace, our entertainment, our sports, our schools and universities.  It is for sure seen in how we think about relationships, marriage, singleness and the idea of love.

Our wisdom has turned into head knowledge and our discretion . . . well that is just completely out the window at this point.

The problem is you can’t get to wisdom with soundbites, youtube videos, tweets, and hash tags.  WIsdom takes time and is proved right by it’s actions.

Now this lack of wisdom is seen when it comes to the church and singleness in so many ways it’s hard to even know where to start.  We look around and see the sexual immorality and all that goes with it and we just want it to stop.  The church is constantly reacting to it. But the problem is that rather than change a culture, we mostly offer rules, pledges and platitudes.  We look more interested in morality than helping people live to the full.  And you know what it’s not working.  At all.  We’re not even close.

Why?  Because the problem is WAY bigger than we are willing to see and we refuse to rethink the whole thing from the ground up.

We need to push the restart button on the whole thing, starting with what we teach our kids.  And I say this having taught adolescents for the last twenty years.  As I look back over that, I’d say that I taught them a lot of truth, but I’m not sure if I did a very good job of helping them be wise.  I have more to say about this later and I want to think about how we should teach our kids about marriage, celibacy, and all that goes with it.  I’m honestly not ready to write that yet.  I want to seek a little more wisdom first . . .

What started me thinking about this whole idea oddly enough was the song by the Doobie Brothers called “What A Fool Believes.”

It’s a song about a guy who meets up with a former flame.  Now it isn’t clear whether they were former dating partners or a crush or something else.  What is clear in the song is that the man has had a flame for this woman in his head the whole time, while the woman never carried the flame at all.  In his head he has/had something with her – but only in his head.

When I think of the Christian single men I’ve known over the years (including me) I can’t count the times I’ve seen this sort of thing.

Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered. Proverbs 28:26

Here’s what I think.  I think that in most churches, when it comes to what we teach men about women, we teach them to be fools.  Not on purpose mind you, but as an unintended consequence – albeit a gigantic one.

Now maybe we don’t teach women to be wise either.  But we sort of do.  We teach them that they are the sheep and the guys are the wolves.  We tell them to be careful, to choose wisely.  We tell them, watch out for his patterns and if he has a sexual past.  He’ll want that from you after all.  Heck we even encourage them to dress wisely.  Don’t put yourself in a bad position we say.  Yes I get that it’s not perfect.  But I’m willing to bet that most Christian women can tell you what to look out for, that they need to guard their emotions and what is attractive to men and what isn’t.  I know because in the past I’ve taught all of this.

But our men?  Not so much.

We teach them to be nice.  We are taught to pursue/chase but not who to pursue or how. We are taught to keep our pants zipped but nothing about what to do.  I’m willing to bet that most Christian men can’t tell you what to look out for, how to protect themselves, how to approach a woman and almost none of them can tell you how female attraction works. Basically we don’t teach our men anything about women that will actually help them get married.  Then we sit around and complain that Christian men don’t know what they are doing.  Exactly.

We are taught to be nice, but not to be wise.  The ironic part of that is, wisdom in a guy is extremely attractive because wisdom breeds confidence and crushes insecurity.

A wise man does not chase the girl.  A wise man is not desperate.  A wise man knows who he is and doesn’t have to pose as a nice guy.  A wise man knows how to talk to a woman and which ones to talk to.  A wise man knows when a woman is attracted to him and when she isn’t and knows how to handle both.

A wise man is full of strength, and a man of knowledge enhances his might – Proverbs 24:5

Have you been taught to be wise or nice?  What are you teaching others?

 

Get Out Of Your Head

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I remember back when I was a teenager and just starting to like the idea of dating.  I can remember working up the nerve to call a girl or to ask her out in person.  I was not confident in this area.  What I would do of course made it worse.  I would speculate in my head over and over again about how the conversation would go.  Then after a couple of almost dials, I’d let if fly.  You know what never happened one single time?  It never went the way I made it up in my head.  Never.  Not once.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my head and what I’ve named “the pretend“.  It started when I was a kid as imagination.  And there is nothing wrong with imagination.  But as we grow older we have to move into something very important.  We have to live in the real.

Here’s the thing, the key to health in anything, be it business, ministry or our personal life is to define the reality and then deal with it.  It’s one of the key’s to mental and emotional health.

But there are all sorts of ways to avoid reality.  We can choose to hide.  We can do this by “escaping”.  We might escape to fantasy, video games, alcohol, drugs, porn, comics, you name it.  Or we might just spend all of our time alone, consciously or subconsciously avoiding real community.  Some of us have more conversations with people in our heads than actual conversations with people.

I remember this man I knew who was always mumbling.  What I realized later was that he was carrying on a conversation in his head.  If you saw it on the street you would think that guy was crazy.  But if we do it all the time in our head silently are we crazy?

It’s not healthy.  The worst thing about this “pretend world” is that it strains our minds.  And I remind you that it is absolutely not real.

As a single person in today’s world living in our own head is a real trap.  Married people can fall into it as well to be sure, but when half of unmarried people live alone there is often no one around to physically engage.  Many of our jobs have us working basically alone.  We drive in our car alone.  We go home alone.  We eat alone.  Go to bed alone, wake up alone and do it again.

There’s a reason that in prison the worst place to be is solitary confinement.  Even if we are called to celibacy, we are not called to that.

I struggled with this immensely at different times in my life. I would have conversations with people in my mind over and over again.  This was especially true when I was mad, or when I if I need to have a conversation with a girl I liked.  I would turn the conversation over and over again in my mind.  This sort of process is unhealthy.  It took me more into my own head, more isolation and frankly a lot more stress.  The reality is, from a practical standpoint, never one time did a conversation go the way I thought it would.  Not One Time.  

I remember when God started showing me it was wrong.  I can still remember the first time I prayed against it.  I was driving and getting onto a highway and I literally just prayed, “God, clear my head.  Help me to live only in the real, no pretend.”  I kid you not it was like BOOM and there was silence . . . and peace.  After that, God began to walk me out of it.

We have to submit our minds, imaginations and speculations to God.  It’s a fight but I’m telling you it’s worth it.  We need to engage God and we need to engage others.  We need to shut off the computer, the ipod, the car radio, all of it, and engage the real.  It’s not that God doesn’t want us to ever day dream or use our imagination.  But just like the rest of our life, it needs to be submitted to Him, and the incessant analyzing, conjuring, and practice conversations that won’t happen are not a part of that.  We need to take every thought captive.

The more we let the pretend (in all it’s forms) run rampant, the more it will wear us down and isolate us.  This is bad for our work, play, ministry and dating life.  You will not be who you need to be in any of those areas if you don’t pull this area under control.

So how do we fight this.  Here are some practical things:

  • Pray – this seems so basic, but I mean this in two ways.
    • Pray against this specifically.  Submit your imagination and speculation to the Lord.  Ask Him to fill your mind with peace
    • Pray about the things that you are over thinking.  Instead of speculating and imagining things, lift them up.  Don’t practice the conversation, pray about it.
  • Instead of practicing the conversation or confrontation, write down the main things you want to make sure get said and then move beyond it
  • For me, I needed to turn off the fast music when I drove.  Anything that sends you into the pretend, turn it off.  I actually do better with talk radio – because I have to engage and listen.
  • If you work alone, go to where you have to interact with people.
  • Have people in your life.  You must have community and people to engage with.  Everywhere
  • I would encourage you to not live alone.  I know some people love it.  I think it’s dangerous on many levels.

Do you have more conversations with real people or in your head?  When do you fall into the pretend?  What thoughts are not submitted to God?

My Church Doesn’t Get Singleness And I’m Mad Pt 2

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Yesterday I said that a reader had posed the question, “what do we do about anger at the church when it comes to singleness?”  I offered some reasons why it’s important to deal with and some reasons why that anger can be legitimate.  I then said we could leave the church, ignore the problems, or actually engage the problem.  If we choose the third problem I offered that there are at least three things we need to do.
  1. Do our best to understand why it’s the way it is, and trust that most of it is not personal.
  2. Earn the right to have a voice.
  3. Exercise our voice in a way that can be heard.

Yesterday I offered some thoughts on part one.  Today I want to comment on part two and three.

The second part is vital and it starts with this.  We need to do a good job of loving people. We need to love an help shepherd younger single people.  We need to have married friends and learn to minister to them as well.  We can speak into married people’s lives and marriages.  We need to love our married friends well – and this includes loving our married church leaders well.

If we want to change the stereotypes then we have to be different.  There is no reason why we can’t lead a small group with married people in it. Attitude is important.  For example, what do we do when there is a marriage sermon series?  Do we check out, or double down?  How I love other singles, married people, and leaders in the church carries weight. What I’m kind of saying is get off of the defensive, “no one gets it” level and onto the “I’m an equal follower of Jesus and I’m going to live it” level. Church leaders may not pick us to lead naturally, but we have to actually try to serve and lead.  Maybe more than once.

This leads naturally into point three.  That is, once we’ve earned the right to have a voice, freaking exercise it.

I’m not saying it will be easy or that they will listen to that early on.  But that doesn’t mean they won’t listen at the end of the day.  What I know for sure is that if we don’t speak, and don’t act, then nothing will happen.  But if we earn the right and speak up, someone (not everyone) will hear us.

Someone once posted in the comment section , “I wish I was brave enough to share this post with my minister and elders”.  I’m not trying to be self promoting here, but if you like something I or someone else writes about this stuff, share it with people that count.   Have conversations (not just complaining sessions).  Point out that the bible talks about celibacy and that maybe your church should think about it.  Go missional on them (churches are all about “being missional”) and tell them that 50% of people are single and that those people are WAY less likely to go to church.  If they approached it differently maybe those people will come.  Speak up when it’s not right, not just under your breath to your friends on the way out the door, but with your elders and leaders that you’ve earned the right to talk to.

What we need is to lovingly challenge the church.  Not softly mind you.  Firmly and with conviction, but in love, for the good of the whole body of Christ and for the lost.

Offer solutions, and offer to help make those solutions happen.

This blog, and my whole writing and speaking ministry, started in one conversation about four years ago.  My church had a singles seminar that went bad.  I met with an elder and pastor at my church and after some niceties said essentially, “So, your singleness seminar sucked.”  They knew it.  Now understand, I was mid-30s, had helped our church plant a new campus, led several community groups and genuinely loved these guys.  I said, “Look, here are some of the things I would have maybe talked about.” and I shared some new ways of looking at it, from a single perspective.  Less than a year later they asked me to come to a weekend on Marriage and Family (of all places) and present on singles and marrieds together.  I just finished teaching (with another single person) a four week course on Singleness and the Gospel at my church.

Now does it look like it should?  No.  Do we as a Church get it?  Heaven’s no, not even close.  But is God moving in it? I’d say yes.

I don’t have a list of easy answers but here’s my point.  We can sit around, be mad and/or be the victim, or we can get off of defense, go love people, trust that they might have a good heart, forgive them for what they probably don’t even realize they are doing, without selfish ambition offer ideas – and then back it up.  It needs to be bigger than just me and it needs to come from a heart of conviction, not bitterness.  It will not be easy, but it could be good.

The question isn’t “does the church get singleness?”  It doesn’t.  Maybe a better question is if my church doesn’t get singleness – what am I going to do about it? If we don’t initiate the conversation, then who will?

My Church Doesn’t Get Singleness And I’m Mad Pt. 1

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A few weeks ago, a reader asked me if I would write a post about anger at the Church and what to do with that so I thought I’d take a stab at it.

Let’s do two things by way of prologue.

Bitterness Is An Enemy and Not From God

I’ve written before about how as a single we can easily fall into the trap of bitterness. There are a lot of mad singles.  I’ve been there.  Believe me.  There is an anguish.  There can be a sense of entitlement.  There is a sense of loss and we react to it.  I’ve written before that we can be mad at God, mad at women, mad at other guys, and mad at ourselves.  All of these are important things to consider and deal with.  I believe that we are mostly mad at God.  Really all of us at one time or another feel this.  We can also be mad at The(a) Church which brings us to:

The Church in general and in particular within protestantism, has really messed this up.

I mean it’s not good.  Where to begin?  The don’t get it.  And maybe worse, they don’t like it.  We don’t honor or even teach about celibacy.  We often don’t let singles into leadership.  The church is in a defensive position on marriage, and is actually often unwittingly helping to hurt marriage in the process.  The Church as a whole has created an idol out of marriage and family.

Rarely does a church address the singles in it’s midst (let alone the outside of it) and when it does, mostly what it does is tell us is what not to do, wait for the one, and then your questions of sexual prowess will magically be answered.  Of course as a guy the church has told us it’s all our fault, and therefore we are all (men and women) set up to fail.

So basically most of the church’s answer to singleness is to offer spiritual platitudes, worry more that we might marry wrong that if we would marry at all, and never address any of the things that we go through – including have to walk into their doors all by ourselves. And that is just a brief warm up.  So yeah, there is a lot to be mad about.

What Do We Do With It?

The real question isn’t are single people generally frustrated with the church.  It’s not even should they be, because frankly they probably should be. The real question (and the one that the reader was wanting to know) is what do we do with it.

I think there are three choices really.

  1. Say screw the church and leave – if I get married think about coming back
  2. Go to church at least at some level, but not engage the battle.  Maybe find a church that at least isn’t anti-single.
  3. Engage the church, forgive our leaders, earn the right to be heard, and then fight for what we know is right.

We all know option one is wrong, but it is an option.  The problem here is that it hurts the church, and that really shouldn’t be our goal. Taking ourselves out of the equation won’t change the equation in our favor (or anyone else’s).

Option two is where a lot of people I know (and myself for a long time) seem to be at.  It’s kind of a surrender really – this is just the way it is.  That is easier in a lot of ways and I guess at least you are there.

But option three is where I think we need to be.  So how do we do that?  We need to do three things.

  1. Do our best to understand why it’s the way it is, and trust that most of it is not personal.
  2. Earn the right to have a voice.
  3. Exercise our voice in a way that can be heard.

Today, I want to tackle the first one and tomorrow I’ll write about the other two.

I’ve written a lot about this part before, but let’s sum up some thoughts that can help.  We need to understand that the leaders of the church (most of the time) have the right heart, even if the wrong solutions.  There are so many factors in play.  Many in the church are looking around and watching the family fall apart.  They see it and want to help. This is where all the family focus and effort comes into play.  It’s why there are hundreds of Christian books on marriage and family.  They are trying to rescue the family, which isn’t all bad.  To their credit, I think these resources have helped a lot of families make it. That’s a good thing.

They also don’t want to see us hurt ourselves or others, which is why they constantly are worried about sex outside of marriage and all that goes with that.  As I told an audience of singles at our church, the surest ways to get the pastor to stop talking about not having sex, would be if all of our singles would . . . stop having sex.

And finally as I’ve written about before, on a practical level most pastors and church leaders have never been single.  They really don’t get it.  It doesn’t mean they don’t care. They just literally don’t understand.

What knowing these things can do, if we can get past the bitterness, is allow us to forgive people for getting this wrong.  I think we have to start there, because otherwise it’s just about us and that’s not enough.  This whole thing is way bigger than just our own personal situation.  It’s a real problem in the Church and we have a chance to help.  More on that tomorrow.

God The Great Withholder

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I want to revisit one of the beliefs that I think can really hurt us as singles and even as marrieds.  It’s the idea that God has one person for me that he is going to provide but just hasn’t done it yet.

This idea is everywhere.  It is in books on dating.  It’s said from the pulpit.  It’s encouraged in small groups.  “You just need to be patient – God will bring you the one”.  “God will in His perfect timing, bring you the perfect person for you.”  “Just live your life and don’t worry about it, because God will provide.”  “Rejection is God’s Protection – she just wasn’t right for you.”  The list goes on and on.

People try to use scripture to back this idea up.  They use situations like Isaac and Rebekah and say see God will provide.  Yeah I’ll just send my servant to a well. You have to make some major leaps to make this idea scriptural.

The heart of this usually comes in one of two places.  Most people are mainly trying to be comforting.  It’s a quick, painless way out of a the “why are you single” conversation. It’s what I call help you sleep at night theology.  While it might help you sleep, it probably won’t help you find a wife.

The other place it comes from is the good hearted place of wanting to recognize that God is our provider for all things.  Well He is, but the problem is that we don’t treat that the same way in any other place.

If I came to you and said, I’m broke and I need a job, would you tell me to sit tight – that God will provide the perfect job that is just for me at the right time?  I should wait for the perfect job, and for sure not settle right?  Obviously this would be a bad idea.  You’d tell me to go look for a job.  Or maybe you’d say I need to go back to school to train for a different job.  What you wouldn’t likely do is blame God for my joblessness.

I think this whole idea is dangerous to us personally on a lot of levels.

First of all it perpetuates the idea of the Christian Soulmate.  This idea that there is this one person that God has for you.  This to me is not scriptural and frankly more a mix of bad Calvinism, Oprah theology and romance novels.  Nowhere in Scripture are you promised a wife, let alone a soulmate.  You do not have a soulmate.  In fact Jesus specifically says that there won’t be marriage in heaven.  The other funny thing about the soulmate is that the focus is typically on how they will be perfect for me, not so much the other way around.

Second is that many end up in fear of choosing wrong.  What if I marry someone that is not the one perfect person that God has for me.  This can also become an excuse where every person I date just “isn’t the one“.  Not to mention it’s a great excuse after marriage for leaving the marriage.  I mean if I meet someone who seems more like the perfect one, well then I must not have been right the first time right?

It can keep us from working on the things that get in the way of us getting married.  Our (and other people’s) sin, insecurities and/or lack of ability to communicate with the opposite sex.  It’s not anything that I’m doing, or the choices that I or others around me make.  It’s God’s fault.

But perhaps the worst thing about it is that it turns God into the Great Withholder.  God loves you and has someone for you, He just isn’t bringing them to you.  Really?!  This always get’s explained as you’re not ready or they’re not ready or something to that affect. But people get married all the time.  God thought they were ready but you aren’t?  All this does is create unnecessary anger and frustration with God.

It would also mean, as I’ve mentioned before, that God has changed His mind about marriage.  Now I know logic is dead in our culture but hang with me here.  For thousands of years, people got married young.  As recently as 40 years ago if you were 18-29 there was a 60% chance you were married.  Now there is only a 20% chance that you are.  So God used to think it was good to “provide the one” in your early 20s or teens, but now He waits to do it until you are 30.  Really?!

Now here’s the thing.  God is the Great Provider.  But His provision looks a little different than this.  First of all we need to get in our heads that He is not as much our provider as He is literally our provision.  Read that again.  God has given us all we need regardless of our context because He has given us Himself.  We need to start here or all else is foolishness.  The beauty of living in this is that I can live life to the full in any context including single or married.  If I get this, then I am free to search for a wife, instead of The One. If I get married, I’m more free to actually love my wife.

If we walk with God, He will provide opportunities.  But we have a role to play in that and we live in a fallen world where we and everyone we interact with (including someone we could marry) make mistakes and bad decisions.  I believe that God indeed brought my wife and I together.  I fully believe that He was in that.  But I also believe that we both chose to do something about it.

Here’s what we really want.  We want a system where either we don’t have to do anything or where we control everything.  But neither of those are right.  Neither require actually walking with God.

Should A Single Person Have A Kid On Purpose

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This fall as I was helping to teach a four week course on singleness at our church (note, Way to go church!), we got asked a question that I had never thought about before.  And believe me I’ve thought about a lot of angles on this thing the last few years.

The question was essentially this: “Should/can single people adopt children? And what about artificial insemination?”

To be honest I was not ready for the question.  There were two thoughts that came immediately to my mind that made me want to lean yes.  First, let’s be honest, there are a lot of kids that are in really bad situations.  In fact, in our current culture, more women have their first kid out of wedlock than in it.  Would it really be worse for them to be with a good Christian single parent?  Really?

Secondly, there are a lot of women, and many men who desperately want to have kids.  I believe this is biological as well as spiritual desire.  Heck, we are supposed to go and multiply.  That’s one of the first commands of the bible.  It’s natural to want to do that. We’ve of course completely separated this from sex (which we’ve already separated from marriage) in our culture.  But that doesn’t make the base desire bad.

But after thinking about it more, I have big reservations.

The first big question we’d better ask ourselves is what are our motives?  In other words why is it that you want to be a parent?  While it’s great to have that desire, it’s really not about you.  It’s not about meeting some sort of emotional desire or fulfilling a dream you’ve had of your lineage going forward.  It’s about sacrifice and love.  You will be the number one influence (good or bad) on that person’s life.  That is not to be done out of some sort of personal need.

Secondly we need to understand that there is an order to things. We’ve kind of been sold in our culture that we can skip parts of the order.  Go ahead and have sex without being married.  Live together before you get married.  So why not go ahead and be a parent.  I can’t find someone to marry, or maybe I don’t even want to do the “spouse” thing, but I want to have a kid.  Why not just go for it?

But this is flawed thinking.  And it’s made worse by the idea that we can do what we want by ourselves.  In other words, the whole “I don’t need a man/woman” mentality.  But to be married and have a kid the right way, you actually do.  That’s part of the deal.  That’s the way it’s supposed to be.  It’s one thing to have messed up the order by sinning and have a kid as a result, it’s another to go out and create it on purpose.

Third it’s either better for a child to have both of his parents or it’s not. Most people believe that a stable two parent home where both people are married is the best place for a kid to be.  Now that doesn’t mean that if a kid doesn’t have it that he can’t do well.  If that was true we’d be in real trouble as most kids don’t have that these days.  But just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done.  The truth is that the number one thing you can do as a parent is love your spouse.  That comes first.  Kids know.

So what does all this mean practically when answering the question?

I understand there are strong emotions involved here, but here’s what I think.

I think under no circumstance should you as a single person go out and on purpose get pregnant artificially or any other way.  This to me is the most clear answer.  Choosing to go out and get pregnant and bring a kid into the world with only one parent is wrong.  To me that’s about you, not about what’s best.  That’s choosing on purpose to bring a kid into a single parent home.

What’s less clear is the adoption question.  I think that you could make a strong case for adopting an older kid that is stuck in the system so to speak.  But I think we should keep in mind that there are a lot of great ways to help kids without adopting them.  You could be a foster parent.  You could invest in the lives of kids through an outreach ministry.  You could let a kid that is in trouble live with you for a time.

I had a close friend who met a refugee family in our city.  There was one young kid who my friend wanted to help get a good education.  He offered their family a place to live in a good school district.  They said yes, but then bailed.  But he went ahead and took the kid in for two years while the mom got things straightened out.  He sacrificed a ton for this kid. But once the mom was in a better spot, the kid went with her.  My friend never adopted this kid, but the impact was huge.  It was about the kid, not about my friend’s desire to be a parent – even though he does have that desire.

My point is if you want to help a kid in a bad situation, there are a lot of great ways to do that, in which you could have impact.  You can be a parental figure without being a parent. The number one point is this: It should be about the kid, not about you.

When The Man Up Speech Isn’t Enough

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There’s a great scene in the movie Any Given Sunday in which Al Pacino (who plays an on the hot seat head coach) gives a pre-game speech to his team before the last and most important game of the year.  All season he has been trying to bring the team together and help a young QB forced into action become a leader.  It’s gone poorly.  But now the veteran QB has returned from injury and Pacino knows this game and season is all on the line.

The speech actually has a lot of deep stuff in it (and a bad word or two) and there is something about it that makes you want to go to battle.  But what I love the most about the scene comes at the very end.  As Pacino closes he challenges the the team.  He says we can win or lose, live or die.  Then he says, “Now what are you going to do?!”  The locker room goes crazy.  Men are going nuts they are so fired up. They’re ready to rush into battle. Except for the two most veteran players.  You know why?  Because they’d been there before.  And they knew the cost.  I realized watching that scene that they were the real men.

I once got to spend 4 days at a John Eldredge Wild at Heart “boot camp.”  It was in Colorado at a Young Life Property in the mountains.  In the instructions to get there it said, “Rent a 4 wheel drive vehicle from the airport.  You will probably need it”.  What could be more “man” than that.

It was an incredible weekend.  Eldredge and his friends that led the retreat did not disappoint.  We looked at our wounds and talked about how we were created as men.

Now you would think that the message the last day would have been something like, “Now go out and change the world” or, “Take action now!  Change everything!”  But you know what they said about 10 different ways? “Do NOT rush the field.”  In other words move cautiously.  Dig deep.  Go slow and steady.  God has shown you some stuff.  Take it back and chew on it.

The church is scared when it comes to the marriage.  The reality is all around them. The writing is on the wall and the season is coming to the end.  Masculinity as we were created to have it is in real trouble.  I mean 4th and goal trouble.  Men are failing to lead. They are not getting married.  Some are marrying other men.  There are more and more unmarried people that probably shouldn’t be.  Men are either weak, ruled by women, or living in extended adolescence. And it seems no matter what we do the trend continues.

Lots of things have contributed to it.  The feminist movement, lives that are too comfortable and at our fingertips – including sexual immorality, and a huge amount of fatherlessness that just continues to speed up the cycle.

We’ve tried to answer it with books and rallies. We got together to make promises.  We asked young men (and women) to wait for true love.  We kissed dating goodbye. The result?  It’s worse now than ever.  Did we actually think that we could slogan ourselves to victory?

The latest attempt to fix all of this are the “Man Up” pastors.  These guys are fired up.  A lot of them are angry. They know all the problems and causes inside and out and they rail against them.  All the problems are apparently men’s fault. They know that men need to step up and they are ready to challenge us to do it.  But here’s the problem.  If you rush the field, if you get fired up and head out, if you spend all of your energy in the first three minutes of the game, you’re going to get your tail kicked when you get out there.

What does this have to do with singleness?  Everything!

It’s a mess out there as a single guy.  But if you don’t know who you are as a man it’s complete disaster.  Most of us have never been taught what to do with women and most of what we have been taught is wrong.  And being told to man up is not going to cut it. The pre-game speech (read sermon) is not enough.  We need the right practice, the right in game coaching and the some of us need a whole new playbook.  We need veteran leadership.

This is all prologue really.  I’m going to write more on this asap.  I promise it’s going somewhere.  But for today, let me ask you a couple of questions.  What does man up mean to you? Do you want to be fired up or are you willing to be built up?

Should We Develop Dating Skills?

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When I was a kid I loved basketball.  I loved playing it, watching it, listening to it on the radio and then re-enacting that game in the driveway the next day.

As I got older I began to actually work really hard at it.  I was coached by my dad (who still has a quicker release on his shot than me).  Later different coaches spent time with me and coached me up.  I played spring and summer ball.  I went to the outdoor courts to practice.  I did drills.  When I reached high school I conditioned and even bought strength shoes to help my vertical.  I shot endless free throws making sure I made 10 in a row before I quit for the day – no matter how long it took – even in the dark.

Now I never became a star.  I got a few awards but I was no where near good enough to play division one.  But I did get better – a lot better.  And even now I can still bang it out in the post against most people.  I can’t do physically what I could 20 years ago, but the flow and movements come naturally – because they are ingrained.  They are a part of me.

Practice and coaching are a part of almost everything we do in life.  Think about it.  If you’ve learned to play a musical instrument, learned math, got a degree in anything you’ve been coached and you’ve practiced.  When we enter the workforce we are trained by someone. When you get a new job, you have to learn the culture of that company or industry.  Someone helps you – at least hey hand you a manual or something.

Even in church this is true.  To be a small group leaders usually means you have to be in a small group first.  Then there is at least a training weekend.  Someone should check in on how you are doing.   A new Christian can usually get help on how to read the bible.  There are membership classes.  Need help in an area? There’s a class for that.  Marriage, parenting, spiritual gifts, bible study, all of it.

But when it comes to helping single people get married, not so much. We are so lost in this area and there is very little help.

There are all sorts of things that keep us single.  Some of it is situational.  Some of it is our own sin or lack of commitment.  No doubt.  Some of it though, has to do with skill.

Now we all hate that it takes skill.  But we hate this in every area of life.  I mean I wish I could be good at stuff without working at it.  Who doesn’t?  But that’s not the typical situation.  I’d love to be able to hit the golf ball where I want it to go without ever practicing. I wish I never had to study for a test in college but I did.

There is skill involved in getting a date.  There is the inner confidence part.  The approach part.  There is the body language part.  Many of us have never even considered most of this.  Most of us have never worked at it.  And almost none of us have ever been coached or mentored in it in any way whatsoever.

Many of us grew up without a dad or without one who taught us this stuff.  A lot of us learned all the wrong things.  It’s a mess.  It doesn’t have to be.  But you probably aren’t going to wake one morning, flip a switch and do it different.

This is why a lot of the spiritual platitudes in Christian dating are a complete waste of time.  “God will bring you someone” is pointless if you can’t close the deal when He does.  Telling me about marriage is helpful but won’t help me get married.

Most in the Church basically say don’t date.  Don’t pursue someone unless you are sure it could go somewhere.  Don’t practice. I get the idea.  But to me it’s unfair to assume that someone can never go on a date, and then just turn it on at the right moment for the right person.

Am I saying go on hundreds of dates?  Am I saying ask everyone out, or hit on every girl.  Heaven’s no!  But what I am saying is that somehow we need to help people work through their stuff and develop their ability to actually move with confidence when they feel led to.

We need to quit focussing solely on keeping people from marrying wrong.  People are already not getting married.  Instead we need to somehow become proactive (within our principles of loving others) in helping people figure out how to get married right.  That has to include more than who not to marry.  It has to include how to make the right thing happen.

I have more questions on this than answers.  How do we get better at dating/relationship starting?  Where did you learn what you do know?  What do you wish someone would have helped you with in this area?