Help Needed!

When you start working with a ministry, you usually formulate a plan based on a target audience. Everything that you do is directed toward that audience. The games you play, the lessons you teach, perhaps even the songs that you sing. It is simple really, you study that demographic and you learn as much as you can about the needs and desires of that group.

Single Adult Ministry is tough. In the last several years I have studied the demographic, only to learn that it is such a diverse demographic and the needs are so numerous and yet so different for the many facets of the single adult world.

First the age span varies from 18 up. Lets look at the different age groups and some of their variations. From 18 to about 22 or 24, the largest group are college students. For the most part, their needs are met in a college ministry. However, in that same age group, there are those who chose not to go to college, for whatever reason. Do they feel comfortable in a college ministry? Are their needs the same as those who are in school? Is the need for more hours at work to pay the bills the same as the need for more time to research a term paper? Both are real and both are important.

Then upon graduation from college, where do you go? Do you join an adult Sunday School class? Which one? You may be lucky and there may a young adult class. Do you fit in with the newly married and young families or does that just add to your loneliness on Sunday morning?

As you get older and start a career, where do you fit in with the Church? Everywhere else you are treated with respect and as a peer. At Church, you are not allowed to serve communion, that is reserved for couples. Maybe you are never asked to serve on a board or lead a ministry, even though you are the most qualified.

You have raised kids on your own and they are all leaving home. While everyone else in your Sunday School class is looking forward to time alone with their spouses and trips they always wanted to take but couldn't. You are looking at night after night of nothing to do. No one to talk over your day with and no one to share a meal with.

Another scenario, you have lived with someone for many years and yet suddenly you find yourself alone. The grief that you feel is overwhelming and the loneliness is almost unbearable. You are scared of the future. You never had to take care of the finances or the car or the upkeep of the house. What do you do first? Who do you turn to for help?


All of these are real issues for real people, who just happen to be single. The needs are so varied and so real, but where do we start to minister. We need your help to find out. Who are you and what do you need? We can't structure a ministry without knowing what the needs are! Help us out please!