Setting Ourselves Up For Self-Importance

"I wish they didn't call it that" she said. "As soon as they call it a 'singles group,' I don't want to go."

We were discussing young adult ministries in the Reno Sparks area, and I had seen in our church bulletin that one church is hosting "multi church single's Bible Studies." One is for 25-40 and the other is for 40+. The subject matter is currently "church leadership," an innocuous enough subject. But why go there? The existence of singles seems a mystery at my church, so it is nice to see someone trying. This is a small demographic, so a multi-church event makes sense - it helps you to achieve critical mass. But singles' ministries (so I hear) can easily feel like it is one thing - a shopping mall for other "acceptable" singles.

On the one hand, I need all the help I can get. Because while I can hold intellegent, funny, and meaningful conversations with a woman, as long as I am not interested in her. If I become interested, or fear that she may be interested in me, my tongue instantaneously swells to twenty times its rest size and I am rendered speechless. I am far more comfortable silently contemplating the night sky or a mountain lake than I am trying to talk to someone over the top of my unassailable fear of rejection.

On the other hand, I want to be able to be myself. I don't want to prance and preen trying to draw out the right person - I want to find someone I connect with. A loaded atmosphere is a place where I feel utterly out of place, and it is a place where only a very determined person could ever get to know me. Give me a small group having fun together any day.

On the third hand, something feels weird about using a Bible study as a place to hook up. If we are to be considering the sacred Scripture, we should have that focus, not something else. Which somewhat circuitously brings me to my thought for the day.

Do we construct groups - college groups, young adult groups, young married groups, whatever, with strict boundaries so that we may, however subconsciously, be able to think of ourselves as magnanimous and hospitable when we graciously reach out to those we arbitrarily excluded in the first place?

Do we form a young adults group for people out of college and consider it a great act of reaching out when we try to draw those outside the group in? Perhaps if we were not so exclusive in the first place, these people could already be welcome and we could go about the business of being a light to the world out there.