This past weekend was the Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh. The CCO puts it on, and I've been there every year since 2000. It's pretty much always a good time. There are always good speakers, and it's always a wonderful time to catch up with old CCO friends (I think I have previously mentioned this). There were a lot of the talks I heard that stuck with me, I have several notebook pages full, but the one that I enjoyed the most was on singleness by a young woman named Abbie Smith. Abbie has a book out on "keeping your faith in college" (which I have not read, but have on my bookshelf) that she wrote shortly after her college experience. She is in her mid-twenties and is currently working on a book on singleness and the Christian community. While the talks are geared towards college students, I really got a lot out of it. It was like she was speaking to me. I'm not going to write her whole talk out here... but hit some of the points.
The word that she felt that God was laying on her heart was "partial." She talked about as singles we are often made to feel that we are partial people (by society and the church) and how the church kinds of puts us in this "partial place." I definitely agree with this. I love my church family, and am really involved there, but I think sometimes people don't know what to do with me. I'm not a college student anymore, but I'm not married or have a family. we have a young adult group with a few singles, but mostly marrieds and I sometimes just feel like the unit that doesn't fit in. I know that no one means any harm in this, but it still happens. We (the singles) are often seen as the ones who can put in the extra hours, or volunteer in many areas of ministry because we have the time. And maybe that is true, but it can become unfair.
Abbie talked about how God calls us to be and wants us to be whole people, not partial people. And he wants us to treat everyone like wholes, not partials. This is true, and I, as a single, need to be quick to remember that in the way I treat people too, and not just a reason to get defensive at others.
She talked about how the church seems to want to focus its teachings on marriage. This was particularly interesting to me as my church is just coming off of a marriage series. It is good for the church to address marriage, but not only marriage. God created us to be complete in him, not just in a spouse. While I as a single think that it is still important to learn about relationships and marriage, as I still hope for that someday for myself, it is important to teach me that that is NOT where my completeness is found, and it's not the only good thing available to us through God. I really felt that was lacking in the series that I just heard, and it left me feeling a little hurt.
There was so much more that she talked about, but while I happily listened to her for an hour and a half, you do not need to read it all. But I just wanted to get a few thoughts out there. I'd love to continue this conversation....
The word that she felt that God was laying on her heart was "partial." She talked about as singles we are often made to feel that we are partial people (by society and the church) and how the church kinds of puts us in this "partial place." I definitely agree with this. I love my church family, and am really involved there, but I think sometimes people don't know what to do with me. I'm not a college student anymore, but I'm not married or have a family. we have a young adult group with a few singles, but mostly marrieds and I sometimes just feel like the unit that doesn't fit in. I know that no one means any harm in this, but it still happens. We (the singles) are often seen as the ones who can put in the extra hours, or volunteer in many areas of ministry because we have the time. And maybe that is true, but it can become unfair.
Abbie talked about how God calls us to be and wants us to be whole people, not partial people. And he wants us to treat everyone like wholes, not partials. This is true, and I, as a single, need to be quick to remember that in the way I treat people too, and not just a reason to get defensive at others.
She talked about how the church seems to want to focus its teachings on marriage. This was particularly interesting to me as my church is just coming off of a marriage series. It is good for the church to address marriage, but not only marriage. God created us to be complete in him, not just in a spouse. While I as a single think that it is still important to learn about relationships and marriage, as I still hope for that someday for myself, it is important to teach me that that is NOT where my completeness is found, and it's not the only good thing available to us through God. I really felt that was lacking in the series that I just heard, and it left me feeling a little hurt.
There was so much more that she talked about, but while I happily listened to her for an hour and a half, you do not need to read it all. But I just wanted to get a few thoughts out there. I'd love to continue this conversation....
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