Don't rush marriage. (this advice has nothing to do with my relationship with Elizabeth!)

Single people get trampled on in conservative evangelical churches in America.

Seriously. We treat singles like lesser beings. "Are you dating anyone?" "Have you found that special someone?" "How can someone as nice as you not be married yet?" Each of these is all too common among Christians (and, I suppose I should say, in society at large). We don't generally want to hire pastors who are single. We don't want council members or elders or deacons (or whatever other high offices you've got in your church) who are single. If you're single and female, forget about heading up a ministry of any kind. Find yourself a man and then you'll be valuable. Let's make sure our church hosts 26 marriage conferences/retreats/workshops this year (once every other week sounds about right), but we don't need to do anything special for singles. They obviously don't have any relationships important enough to care about.

And our "singles ministries"? That's where young single people go who are desperately trying not to be single anymore. It's a great place to meet nice young members of the opposite sex who are Christians and might be interested in marrying me someday. And in many cases the church's general attitude toward the singles ministry seems to be, "Well, if they all hook up with each other, then we won't have to bother with a singles ministry anymore -- they'll be able to join all of our couples ministries!"

Don't get me wrong. I think marriage is fantastic, and I think it's extremely important that the church do everything it can to help marriages succeed through whatever Biblically based programs it can get its hands on. I know women who have a deep longing to be a wife and a mother someday, and men who desperately want a woman with whom they can share their life and grow in Christlikeness. I have no problem with that.

But why do people in the church feel like it's their responsibility to check-in with singles every week and find out if they're dating anyone yet? How Biblical is that attitude? Where does inspired scripture say, "Make sure you're married by age 25 (or as soon as humanly possible thereafter), because until you have a spouse you're only a fraction of what you could be"?

Jesus was single.

And Paul spent seemingly half of 1 Corinthians (okay, maybe not that much) trying to convince his readers that singleness has its benefits. He told them not to be so concerned with a change of status (and this applies to any kind of status, not just marital status). You're single? Stay that way! You only make $20 grand a year? Don't worry about it. He tells them that married people will face a whole bunch of troubles, and if he can spare them from those troubles he'd be happy to. He points out that single people have a wonderful opportunity to be concerned only about the Lord's affairs -- not having to devote attention to a wife and family. Paul doesn't have a problem with marriage, but he has an awful lot more good things to say to single people than most of us seem to.

Why aren't our churches empowering that group of people that could easily have the potential to make an unparalleled impact for the Kingdom?