Extended singleness is a reality that many, young and old, face today. God is not surprised by this. Rather, He has called his people to live in “such a time as this.” In such a time, the Church has a responsibility not only to recover and uphold the institution of marriage but to graciously help people live out their singleness in self-sacrificial faithfulness.

Americans today are getting married later in life than their parents or grandparents. As of 2022, the average age at which Americans get married is 28 for women and 30 for men. This is eight years later in life than the average bride and groom of the 1960s.  
As many have noted, today’s spike in singleness and single-person households is, in part, the result of a widespread cultural erosion of marriage, both inside and outside of the Church. Over the past 60 years, marriage has taken a social and cultural beating thanks to the legalization of no-fault divorce and abortion, the widespread use of birth control, the proliferation of easily accessible hook-up apps, and the casual dominance of pornography. These realities undermine the maturity, self-control, and responsibility required for stable and successful marriages. Whether or not an individual chooses to engage in these practices, they decrease everyone’s chances of finding a partner interested in or ready for marriage. 
In the wake of this cultural erosion, the Church has had to make necessary and prudential efforts to reinforce marriage and family life as the God-given norm, reaffirming the goodness of marriage and family life in its teaching, serving as a space for Christians who desire marriage to find a spouse, and offering support and recovery for those fighting the temptations of “free love.” However, in these efforts, the Church has often struggled in its approach to singles. While not intentionally excluding singles, the Church has often failed to intentionally include singles—whether young or old, never married or widows/widowers—and create space for them to participate and serve in the life of the Church apart from the pursuit of marriage. In the process, some churches have even given the impression that singleness is only a problem to be fixed, rather than a calling that some have for part or all of their lives.  
Read More
Related Posts:

We must ask what we’re trying to achieve before we can figure out the best way to achieve it. Unless we know why we are doing this thing we can’t possibly figure out how best to do it. 

It seems like an obvious thing to say, but let me say it anyway. What you are aiming to do will necessarily affect how you do it. That is to say, what you do is necessarily driven by what you are aiming to do. What you do should be driven by why you are doing it.
The problem we often have in our churches is that we get this backwards. Often, what we are doing is not driven in any way by why we might be doing it. In fact, why we are doing it is often little more than because it is what we do.
So, it is not uncommon to go into churches and find them doing all sorts of things. Sometimes some pretty peculiar things. When we ask why we are doing them and what are we trying to achieve by them, nobody is entirely sure. We are doing it because it is what has always been done. We may be doing it because someone once thought it was a good idea but the reasoning behind the idea have been lost in the mists of time. We are doing it because there was a good reason at the time we instituted it but that reason no longer exists but we kind of carried on doing it anyway.
Interestingly, some of these same sorts of impulses come up when somebody deigns to stop something that has always been done – or that has at least been done for ages – from being done anymore. It doesn’t matter what the thing is, or whether anybody has any reason for why it is still being done, we have always done this is the view that often prevails. I don’t have to justify the existence of the bizarre or irrelevant thing, you have to justify why you are determined to no longer do it. Apparently, I cannot fathom what its purpose is and you are doing very little to help me out with that does not compute.
Which brings me back to my original point. Why we are doing something ought to drive what we actually do. We ought to have a reason why we are doing everything that we do in church. If we aren’t entirely sure of the reason, it may be a prime candidate for something we are no longer going to do.
In order to have conversations that are helpful about this, we need to return to first principles. The ultimate reason for us to do anything as a church is because Jesus tells us that is what he wants his church to do. So, if Jesus says it, we ought to do (or not do) it. So, we have to think about what Jesus says his church exists to do. Why are we there and what does he want us to be doing? If we can’t answer that question first, we have no business moving onto thinking about how we might go about doing any of the things he wants us to do.
Read More
Related Posts:

The tent image might suggest roominess, but the big tents most of us encounter these days contain circus clowns or maybe, far beyond, the cities and Starbucked suburbs, sweaty revival preachers, but maybe we repeat ourselves. Much better (and more biblical) is the image of a house. Houses have doors that can be opened wide or locked tight, windows that can let in light or air or keep out rain. To the officers of the church have been given the keys of a kingdom whose subjects, for now, reside in the house of and family of God on earth. No one has keys to a tent.

Every approaching annual assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) provokes posturing, positioning, and even reflection. To history appeals are made. To the founders we look. On the examples and words of great men we lean. The 2023 general assembly is no normal one—it is the 50th, of which much will be made. This middle-aged denomination looks to its Memphis meeting, not in crisis but in a state of unease, somewhat rattled after five years of controversy and the recent loss of two significant figures.
As in the late 60s and early 70s, violent cultural winds are buffeting the church. Those winds helped blow the PCA into existence in 1973. Theological liberalism and Neo-orthodoxy in the old southern Presbyterian Church in the U.S. were not the only factors that caused the fathers of the PCA to flee and found. The PCA’s mainline Southern mother had capitulated to culture on ethics, worship, and doctrinal fidelity—her maternal home’s once-solid confessional foundation was undermined, failing for lack of maintenance and attention. The PCUS gold, per Morton Smith’s book title, had become dim. And the late additions to the old southern home were built on sandy soil, not up to confessional code. The house came to have the solidity and wind resistance of a tent. Ironically, the old PCUS tabernacle’s stakes were pulled up for the last time only 10 years later in 1983 (a decade after the PCA’s founding) when Northern and Southern mainline churches joined to form the Presbyterian Church (USA), which now slouches toward oblivion after four decades of steep decline.
All of this makes one wonder why, after 50 years, the aspiration some have for the PCA is for everyone to agree that she is (and always has been) a big tent and that (by design) she never can or should be anything else. “Big Tentism” is not about facts. Its assertions are altogether in the realm of opinion and sentiment. Confessionalists and progressives alike may project their aspirations for the present and the future back upon the real or imagined founders of the PCA. Who they were, should have been, or would become, what they intended or hoped—none of these things are decisive for the PCA at 50. The sure guide for a presbyterian denomination is its constitution, which  for the PCA  consists of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, and the Book of Church Order  (the Form of Government, the Rules of Discipline and the Directory for Worship) “all as adopted by the Church,” and, we might add, as approved of by all officers of the church per their ordination vows. In the constitution we find firmer stuff than that which supports a tent of any size.
Read More
Related Posts: