Last night I saw this article posted on Facebook about online dating and the church. Of course because this is a topic often talked about in my circles of friends it peaked my interest so I read it. It had some good points but also some things made me think. Read it for yourself
http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2015/january/church-set-up-your-singles.html?paging=off#bmb=1
Most of the conversations I have had with woman in the last year about online dating revolves around if it is a good idea or not and different experiences each person has had. "Will it be good for my heart? Should I spend the time, money and effort? What will other people think? I can't meet anybody at church so I have to resort to this. I'm tired of waiting so I'm just going to put myself out there." These are good conversations to be had, I think you need to let your community know where you are at during this life stage. I would say that 99.9% of the single people I know have the desire to be married one day so we need to talk about it, we need to encourage each other, we need to pray for one another and we need to remind each other that He is good enough and does what is best for us.
Stats say that there are 54,250,000 single people in the US and of that 41,250,000 have tried online dating. The average length of a courtship or marriage that has met online is 18.5 months while the average length of a courtship or marriage that has met in person is 42 months. Personally I think that is just sad, I can understand dating only averaging out to be amount of time but MARRIAGE? That's heartbreaking. So why even bother trying online dating if you want something that is going to last?
With all that being sad, have I tried online dating? Absolutely. Did it fail miserably? Most definitely. Was it good for my heart? Not at all. During the holiday season it is hard being single, there is no denying that. Another year of family members asking why you aren't dating, another year of nobody to celebrate holidays with, another year of seeing friend after friend get proposed to-only to think when is MY turn? I do not think that for me personally I should online date, I've said for a long time that I know that is not how I will meet my husband. But even in the times when I find myself to the most content in my singleness I will often question that. A conversation about online dating might spark the thought, "well, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I should try it since nothing else is happening". I would hope that my community, that's you, would tell me know and not let me resort to something that has proven to not be good for my heart. I do not think that online dating in inherently wrong but I do think you need to be cautious and wise. You do need to ask your community to hold you accountable and to check in with you to see how your heart is doing. It's easy to allow online dating to consume your life, to constantly be checking to see if you have a message or to see if someone has looked at your profile and when you log-in and see nothing, well that constant feeling of rejection can hurt.
Back to the article; I like the idea of encouraging married couples that we do community with to step in and help with introductions or set-up group things that could potentially allow your single friends to interact. I would love if someone was just like you and you-talk, date, marry. If only it were that simple. There needs to be caution in this though, in the article she says; "Be prayerful about setting up potential couples; don’t base the setup on
what you assume they’d be attracted to, but on the godliness and
maturity of the individuals." And I absolutely agree, don't just set up your two friends cause you know are single for the sake of them not being single anymore, there needs to be intentional prayer and thought put into it. Wouldn't that be what you want for you?
I would love to see the married couples in the church to come around singles, dating couples, and engaged couples and really invest in them not for the sake of making them married but to guide them and love them in a season that is often hard and confusing. Over and over again we hear the argument that it is the responsibility of the church (as in church leadership) to make that happen and I would disagree with that. I do not think it is the responsibility of the church to make an organized event or group for the people that are single. No, however it is their call to care for the people of their church and to shepard their hearts but it is our responsibility to serve and be in community with one another and potentially in that a relationship could be formed.
I'll end with this, in all of it we have to remember that we can not change God's plan for us. It doesn't matter if we miss out on the party that could possibly just maybe have our future spouse in attendance, it doesn't matter if we live in Dallas or if we move to China, or if we are in a woman's homegroup or a multi-gen, the Lord has a plan for us and if we are obedient to him and trust that He really is who He says He is and that He wants what is good for us then our lives will turn out just as it has been planned for us. This is no easy thing to remember all the time, we need to encourage each other in this. Life doesn't start when you get married, life is happening now-all around you, push into the Lord and live your life for him.
"I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of, for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking." C.S. Lewis
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*Statistics can be found at this not so credible source: http://www.statisticbrain.com/online-dating-statistics/
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