Tag Archives: single friendly church

Making Your Church Unmarried Friendly – Experientially

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This is the last post in a series about what it might look like to make the church unmarried friendly.  We’ve talked about why this is so important for the future of the church and why it matters in the big picture.  Last time we talked about the theological side of being a church that welcomes 66% of folks who don’t go to church – the unmarried.  Today I want to get practical

The question you need to ask is what is the user experience for a single at your church? Here’s what I can tell you experientially; I was single until I was nearly 41 years old and one of the hardest places to go was church.  The experience was mostly not good.

So what does it look like, or maybe a better way of saying it, what could it look like?

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Making Your Church Unmarried Friendly Theologically

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In the last couple of posts I’ve been trying to make the point that if we want to do evangelization in the current western culture we have to have the unmarried in mind.  Two thirds of those that don’t attend church are unmarried.  I’ve asked the question, is your church unmarried friendly.  The obvious answer for most of us is no.  So what would it look like if it were?  Today I want to take a stab at the beginning of the answer to that.

There are at least two parts to this.  First there is a belief side.  This is the broader, overall view that we need to have in mind.  It includes theology but also practical belief.  The second part is the practices part.  What does it look like fleshed out.  What are some best practices that make the unmarried feel welcome?  Assuming correct theology and practical belief, how do we put it into practice?

Today we’ll look at the first part.  In my next blog we’ll take a stab a the practical implications.

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Is Singleness The Unspoken, Unstudied Reason The Millennials Aren’t In Church

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For the last several years we’ve been hearing from all sorts of places about how millennials are leaving or have left the church.  In reality at some level church membership and attendance is down across all generations.

This gallup report shows a lot of interesting statistics about church membership.  The bottom line however is that it has dropped significantly over the last 20 years.  Not only that, but when we look at millennials (those born from 1980-2000 – those aged 19-39), they have lower numbers than previous generations had at their age.  Only 42% of millennials are church members.

While the number of millennials who claim a religion at all is lower at 68% than the average of all Americans (77%) their church membership is even lower.

Now we could list a lot of reasons for the drop in church membership – not only for the millennials but for the country as a whole.  But there is one reason that I’ve tried to hammer here over and over and yet no one seems to recognize it.  That is, that single people, by and large, don’t go to church.

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