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Christian Event News
| Sex, Singles and Western NY Churches |
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 I love listening to Neil Boron Live on WDCX 99.5 FM weekdays from 3 to 6pm. A recent show featured author Dale Kuehne talking about his book, "Sex and the iWorld." He talked about how judgmental, self-righteous and legalistic today's American evangelical church is-- how it's a place where you should be able to confess your sins, but most churches are filled with people putting on facades that "everything's fine." He also talked about how Christians, if they're being Christians, shouldn't be having sex outside of marriage. Tia, a 30-year-old woman from Cheektowaga, called and said, "People my age don't know how to have face-to-face conversations anymore-- communication is almost exclusively on Facebook and cell phones." She had a great point-- I've noticed this too. Wherever I go, I'm surrounded by people texting while they should be interacting with the group of people gathered together. I can't go anywhere without someone showing some video to others on their i-phone, or mentioning people's Facebook updates, which they read from their phones. Kuehne hopes that our society can move from toward a "relational" world-- where face-to-face, deep relationships exist. Kuehne thinks that the Christian life can be very fulfilling, even "better than sex." For more info about this author and his book, visit www.therworld.com.
Kuehne talked about how today's evangelical churches have not been there for single people. I agree. You've got a whole bunch of single people in their 30s and 40s in Western New York and very few churches offer anything for them. I think the reason is that almost every church is lead by married couples with children. So, if you look at the bulletin of Eastern Hills Wesleyan Church in Clarence, for example, you'll see lots of activities and groups for Seniors, Dads, Moms, and little kids. But people in their 20s-40s who are single? Hardly anything is offered. Kuehne is a pastor in New Hampshire, where he says only 2% of the population are evangelical Christians. He said in his area hardly anyone age 20-40 even goes to church. The one thing he noticed is how singles are hungry for relationships, so his church's small group for twentysomethings is its fastest growing small group. When I go to church, if I am surrounded by 800-2,000 strangers, and I sing 4 songs and then listen to an hour and a half sermon, I'm just not that interested in "church" as it's being presented. But when I go to a small group, like "Murj" at The Chapel at CrossPoint or "House" at Kenmore Alliance, I get to know people, face-to-face, and talk about spiritual topics. To me, that's more powerful and meaningful than singing "Open The Eyes Of My Heart" for the 100th time while I watch a band earnestly perform it in front of me. If more churches started putting time, effort and money into offering a place and reason for single people in their 20s-40s to gather together with a spiritual component, then those churches would probably grow. One of the things that irks me is how some of the Singles groups I've been to at Christian churches make a point of saying, "This is a Bible Study; this is not a place to meet someone." To me, that's ridiculous, but that's "how it is." Now wonder so many people I know are still single-- the church doesn't encourage dating or mating anymore! What do you think of all this? Email your comments to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and I will add the most interesting to this article. --Mark Weber |
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