I just read an article from boundless that was written in response to an article by the ChurchReport.com that discusses the impact of shifting demographics towards singleness on the church. Basically, the idea is that US churches are seeing a growing population of singles and are struggling to figure out how to best deal with this demographic – including a shift from “family-friendly” programs. What I saw from both articles was indicative of the general misunderstanding of “Church” in America (and perhaps all of the West). Both articles (and most of the accompanying comments) seemed to focus on churches like they do corporations – In other news, Microsoft is deciding whether to focus on Vista or Office. Come on, is this what we have reduced ourselves to? Products that the church can promote or not? The whole discussion is rendered moot when we look at the local church as what it is – a building (jk) – the community of believers. When we see people rather than programs, we don’t have to be concerned with whether we are reaching out to singles or to families. If there is a family in your community, you seek to show God’s love and minister to their unique needs – if there is a single, you do the same for him/her. Most of us have communities of friends which are made up of both marrieds and singles — we should seek to reflect Christ to all of them.

This is not to say that there is not an issue to be discussed here; if there wasn’t, would we even be discussing it? In fact, the call to true community is harder than a call to programs. It makes the problem all of ours rather than the problem of those we lift up to be our leaders. True agape is never the easy way out.