The Singles are actually unmarried men and women.
It’s important that unmarried men and women are discipled as men and women and not a generic lump of singleness. From my perspective, Scripture’s emphasis is on being made a man or a woman in the image of God, with a secondary emphasis on how that looks in the various roles and seasons of life. Unmarried men and women are no less masculine or feminine because of being single.
Single men need leadership responsibilities.
Put 1 Corinthians 7 to work in your churches by showing that the church actually needs unmarried adults who are devoted to the Lord, especially single men. What this looks like will be different in various churches. But when church leaders ask unmarried men to take on significant responsibilities, they demonstrate a belief that godly singleness is a tremendous asset to the Body of Christ.
Single adults are not workhorses.
Conversely, unmarried men and women are not the church’s workhorses. As a new believer, I was in big demand as a new babysitting resource in the church. While I was thrilled to get to know so many families, one wise woman saw the burnout coming. She advised me to pray and ask God which of these families he was asking me to invest in. By knowing those relationships where I was to say yes, I knew also where I could say no without guilt.
Years later, when the speaking invitations started to roll in after the publication of my first book, my pastor saw where I could be driven by an open calendar. He suggested I create an advisory board to help me evaluate my invitations and schedule. The goal of the advisory board was to make sure I was not traveling too much. Even though I am unmarried, I still need to make my home and my home church priorities. I need time to receive care from close friends and also to return that nurturing.
Understand the challenges of endless opportunity.
One wise pastor once told a group of single adults that he was sympathetic to the challenges of endless opportunity. Because he was a pastor, father, and husband, the boundaries of his day were fairly well-defined from the moment he woke up. He knew his responsibilities and the priorities given to him by God and he didn’t have to spend a lot of time deciding what he was supposed to do.
