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I always assumed I was supposed to get married. Since I was 15, I never went more than a few months without dating someone.

I have begun to wonder, however, if that is really God's plan for my life. Not because, at 24, I feel aged out of the dating pool. And not because I think being single will leave me with more time to serve God. (That argument seems laden with strange notions about marriage and singleness—to wit that once you marry you retreat into some sort of cocoon from which you never emerge, or that a single person's daily obligations are not as pressing or legitimate as a married person's.)

I have begun to wonder if I am called to singleness because God, it seems, has been planting new ideas in my head. He has sent me stumbling into contact with new, unmarried people, and into the clutches of new books with more interesting things to say about singleness than the usual jabber.

I haven't drawn any conclusions or sworn off dating, but I am approaching the issue with more openness than I used to. It's not that I think I will be a better minister if I am single; it's that God may be calling me to remember how dependent I am on him—and that no man will ever be an adequate substitute.

It would be lovely if a single person, rather than a man-woman-child trinity, lit the Advent candle at church; if sermons were sprinkled with occasional examples about unmarried people; if my Christian friends would, on the whole, treat me like an adult even though I'm not married.

But lovelier than all those things would be a church universal that took seriously Paul's apparent preference for chastity over marriage. And that, I think, is not a task I can lay at the doorstep of my married pastor, or my friend who said true maturity only comes with marriage. It is a task that has to begin with me. After all, it is I, not they, whom God called—maybe for a season, and maybe forever—to live as a single Christian.

Lauren F. Winner, a contributing editor for Christianity Today, is writing a book for Brazos Press about evangelicals and sex.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

A ready-to-download Bible Study on this article is available at ChristianBibleStudies.com. These unique Bible studies use articles from current issues of Christianity Today to prompt thought-provoking discussions in adult Sunday school classes or small groups.

Articles on Christian online matchmaking services, Christian dating books, and an interview with Joshua Harris (I Kissed Dating Goodbye) will appear on our site later this week.

See today's related article, "A Singular Mission Field | There are more single people in America than ever—and they need the church as much as ever."

ChristianityToday.com's singles area has articles from many Christianity Today sister publications of interest to unmarried Christians, including Camerin Courtney's "Single Minded" column.

re:generation quarterly has had articles on singleness and the church, especially in its Fall 1997 issue, which contained Paige Benton's "Singled Out By God for Good" and Andy Crouch's "Extended Family Values."

Bill Haley, publishers of re:generation quarterly, has a 1999 sermon on "thriving single" at his church's Web site.

Christian Single magazine, published by the Southern Baptist Convention's Lifeway Resources, isn't just about being unmarried.

Associated Baptist Press recently noted that though more adults are single, fewer singles are going to church.

Christianity Today's earlier coverage of Christian single life includes

Sex and the Single Christian | What about the unmarried in their postcollege years? (July 7, 2000))

Women Churchgoers 'Face Growing Difficulty in Finding Partner | British magazine says church is out of single men, especially older ones. (June 7, 2000)

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June 11 2001, Vol. 45, No. 8