Tag Archives: Christian dating

The Ever Important Second Date

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If you are not called to celibacy and you desire and feel called to marry, as I see it we often struggle in at least one of three ways.  Some can’t get a date, some can’t get from a date to more, and some can’t make a commitment to marriage.  I’ve been all three of those guys at one time or another in my 20+ years of singleness.

Here at this blog we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the first one.  We’ve talked about attraction,  what do we do when we are attracted and how do we approach women etc.  We’ve talked a little about the third group.  The idea that men can’t make a commitment is sort of an overblown sentiment. True there are some fears, habits, and various other things that can create that situation. But it’s not as many men as people make it out to be.  At least not men that are following Jesus and living purely.  I’ll have some more to say about this group later.

But today I want to focus on the second group.  In one way or another, I think there are a lot of people stuck here.

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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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Should We Fear The Pickup Artist?

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Full time ministry people typically read a lot.  Now I’m not talking about seminary classes here, although those are great.  What I’m talking about is the books we read beyond that.

Christian leaders around the world have embraced a whole lot of books that aren’t officially (or in some cases even remotely) “Christian”.  I see people reading countless books on leadership, team building, good communication and business practices. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Good To Great for sure come to mind.  As I was going through leadership stuff with my church, my pastor had me read The Starfish And The Spider. This was a book about decentralization of an organization.  All good books. But not exactly theologically profound.

Do you know why all these Christian leaders read all these books?  Because they are helpful.  Duh.

Running a church or ministry has a business and organizational piece to it.  We can wish it didn’t but it does.  And while theological training can help with that, it’s not usually enough.

Now there’s some people reading this right now thinking, “Hey wait a minute.  Isn’t this part of the problem with the Western Church today?  Too much business?”  Fair thought, but hear me out.

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He’s Nice But. . .

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It’s been a while as work (as in my real job) has sort of taken over of late.  But I wanted to get back to Stephen’s great questions.  You can see the first part of his three part question right here.

Today, I want to tackle Stephen’s second question, which actually is much easier and more clear than the first.  Stephen asks,

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. How, given that we all spend the first 14 years of our lives being taught to be courteous and considerate – that is, NICE – am I supposed to demonstrate that I’m not “just a nice guy” in that context?

There is so much great stuff here.  I probably can’t do this in one post.  These questions are so crucial.  So let’s go.

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If Only Christian Men Would Ask Us Out

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One of the things I’ve heard over and over in recent years in the Christian circle of singles is, “Why don’t Christian guys ask the Christian girls out?”  This can be said several ways but the message is essentially that guys should “man up” and ask out all the Christian girls regardless of who the women are.  Some even go so far as to say essentially, “This is why Christian women end up dating non-Chrisitan men.”  According to these folks, if all the Christian guys would just ask women on dates then everything would work out.

There is so much here.  It’s a mess.

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The Protestant Celibacy Problem

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A couple of years ago I was asked by a campus pastor at a local Catholic University if I would be willing to sit on a panel about vocation and represent the unmarried people who don’t feel called to celibacy.  I said yes and was excited by the opportunity.

Now this is sort of funny but I was the only protestant in the room and perhaps the least educated.  Ha!  I was for sure the least educated person on the panel which included: the president of the university and his wife (married vocation – and they had been married for decades), a nun, a Jesuit Priest and a priest whose job it was to help students who felt they might be called to celibate ministry (becoming a priest or nun) discern that.

We went around and shared about our vocation/place in life.  A lot of questions from the audience were centered around how you can figure out what you are supposed to do. Everyone on the panel was great – I was in very solid company and would gladly share a stage with any of them, any time.

But the person who stood out the most (and not just because we kept agreeing with each other) was the priest.  This guy was unbelievably smart.  He also had ways of explaining the call to full time celibate ministry that I had never really heard articulated before.

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Don’t Tell Her How You Feel

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Back when I was in college the show ER became a sensation. One of the best parts about it was that the characters were believable. One of the intriguing relationships that developed on the show was between Doctor Mark Green (played by Anthony Edwards) and Doctor Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield).  They were both sort of the “good guys” in the ER.  They also developed a sort of friendship/relationship.

In the third season Susan decided to move away.  In her final episode, Mark had to decide if he should (or could) tell her how he feels.  They were great friends and had chemistry and it’s been obvious for years.  Dr Ross (George Clooney) tells him, “Tell her what you’ve wanted to for years.  Tell her how you feel. . . ”

Then comes the scene I’ll always remember.  Mark leaves work and goes to her house but he’s too late.  Then he goes to the train station.  I mean it’s an epic deal.  He goes to the wrong place as the train’s leaving point changes.  But he makes it just in time.  He calls out to her.  The train is about to leave.

He tells her that he loves her and should have told her long ago, and he wants her to stay.  I’ll never forget her response to that.  She says that she knew, he is her best friend, and that she is leaving.  Then she gets on the train, waves good by and says, “I do love you.”

I remember watching that scene and just being smacked upside the head.  For years I thought about that scene because it pretty much defined me.  Always the friend of the girl who I liked. Always carrying some sort of hope that at the right time, if I just shared it in the right way, everything would change.  That scene was a picture of how I felt.

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We All Need Touch

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About 15 years ago my brother and I went to a Rick Springfield concert.  I can’t believe I just typed that.  You have to understand that I was a child of the 80’s and Rick, was well, sort of awesome.  He had 17 top 20 hits.  He was smooth with the lines and the ladies.  So anyway in 2000 or so, long after he was cool, he was in concert to promote a new album that of course no one actually bought.

At any rate there we were at Station Casino and it’s packed (meaning there were like a thousand people there. . . maybe).  Rick steps up on stage, and forgets the words to his opening song.  Haha. Then he says, “I sort of forgot the words there, but it’s ok.  I feel I’m among friends tonight.”  The “crowd” roared.  From then he was on fire.  Flawless as he belted out the tunes as we sang along.

At one point, he starts to sing one of those top 20 hits called The Human Touch.  “We all need the human touch.  We all need it. . . I need it too”.  Then he went out into the crowd and began hugging people and giving high fives.  My brother and I died laughing as we watched a 40 year old woman run screaming to a friend, “He touched me! He touched me!.”

I know at this point you are wondering why I’m sharing this story, but I share it because I think we actually do need human touch and as a single person it can be hard to come by.

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Singleness And Christmas

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During my 20 years of singleness the holidays were some of the hardest.

The holidays are tough as a single person.  Especially if you are over 25.  Christmas is magical as a child, it’s a great time to do nothing as a college student, but the older you get, unless you just love Christmas, the tougher it is.

It’s during this time of year that most people have some time off to reflect, and whether we like it or not, it can be a time where singles are constantly reminded of what they don’t have – for yet another year.

We are often the ones that travel for Christmas.  After all, Santa doesn’t come to our house – just to our nieces’ and nephews’.  And most likely we will go to our parents not the other way around.

There are also the Christmas cards from our married friends – pictures of couples and kids arriving every day in the mail.  It’s not that we don’t love all of those people, we do.  It’s just that it is another reminder.

If we head to a party at the office, with the organization we work with, or at church etc, we go alone even when spouses are welcome.

If we have a gathering with our parents and/or extended family we will inevitably face all of the singles questions and platitudes we hear in that setting.  And we have to determine how to deal with them.

Then Christmas is over and we get to head to New Years Eve.  Yeah!  Celebrating another year passing – alone.

Bottom line, the holidays can be lonely, frustrating and emotionally tiring for singles.

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Don’t Believe The Lies

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I recently read an article in which a counselor was addressing a 30 year old single woman who was feeling bad about still being single.  As I read it, I was once again blown away by how lost we are in dealing with the new reality of singleness in our culture.  Essentially we are in the midst of exchanging old lies for new ones.  Worse, the Church is spiritualizing the whole process.

The old lie (which this article said was still the lie being told in the “evil” western culture), is that if you don’t get married by about 21 then you are in trouble, and if you hit 30 you are an old maid.  Now this has never been as hard as a man. Women in general, and for sure historically, faced much more pressure to marry early.  But even as a guy, there is some pressure.  The message to the 30 year old woman was/is that you must be unwanted, and the message to the 30 year old man was/is that you must be immature.

There is no doubt that no one should be pressured into marriage.  I also don’t doubt that many people have compromised to get married by a certain point.  It was a sign of adulthood, really a sort of right of passage.

The truth is of course that many things can contribute to not being married early, and you can for sure be an adult without being married.

However, this is not the most current lie from our culture about marriage.

The new lie is this.  You can get married whenever you want and you will still get to do and experience everything the way you would if you got married earlier.  After all marriage is a huge decision and it should only happen if you are 150% sure.  This counselor literally said “the thirties are the new twenties”.   Um no.

The idea now is that you go and live you life for you during the twenties and then maybe get married later.  Secular society has totally bought in.  Now they don’t mind having sex, living together and having children, but marriage can wait. Get everything you want, then get married.

But the truth is that this is also a lie.  There are costs to getting married later.  You don’t get to start out life together.  You build a life that you don’t get to share.  You decrease your chance of having children together.  (Sorry friends, biology is still biology).  From a purely secular point of view this lie is even worse for women. Like it or not women and men age and mature differently. A 40 year old woman does not have the same chance in the “singles market” as a 40 year old man.  The truth isn’t what we want it to be no matter how much our culture wants to tell you that.

In Christian culture we have joined in the lie.  In attempt to run from pushing early “irresponsible marriage” that leads to our greatest fear – divorce, we end up telling people to wait.  We still tell men to man up and ask women to marry us, but we aren’t in a hurry about it.  And to “guard our women’s hearts” we only encourage them to marry the perfect Christian guy.  Do you see a problem here?

But even worse, because we don’t want to actually walk with people and help them navigate dating, marriage and celibacy, we tell them not to fret.  Enjoy this season of singleness, be closer to God and then God will bring you the person when and if He wants.  He is after all writing your love story.  If you are 35 and single, that isn’t your fault – it’s God’s.

You see it isn’t that our culture has gone off the rails.  It’s that God has decided that in the 21st century, as opposed to all the previous ones, people will get married 10-15 years later than ever before.

So the message ends up being – you should seek only marriage, don’t have sex, but if you aren’t married it’s not your fault – God is just asking you to wait a decade or more for it.  It’s all part of the plan!  Really?!

Now let me make a couple of huge clarifying points.  You are not less valuable single than married.  No matter your age, situation, or past, you are not disqualified from marriage. You can still have a great marriage.  I got married at 41.  I love my wife and my life with her.  There’s hope no matter what.  You are both lovable and capable of loving.

But we need to stop pretending.  We need to stop blaming God and start looking at ourselves and our culture – including our church culture.  We need to stop reacting out of fear and actually help people overcome their wounds, arrogance, and fear.  We need to be proactively thinking about how we teach, encourage, and walk with people through the whole process and every stage.

Telling single people they are less because they aren’t married is wrong.  But so is offering spiritual platitudes as a way of avoiding hard conversations and putting band aids on obvious wounds.