By calling them, along with the marrieds, to repent and believe the gospel. I don’t want to diminish the hardship. The church is full of single people wishing they weren’t single. I do, however, want to suggest that such questions mean little to the work and calling of the church.
The church has a call to deal with people as people. Each of us, parent and child, married and single, man and woman, tall and short, do not have our final identity in those distinctions, but in Christ. What I needed as a single man is what I need as a husband is what I needed as a boy- Word and sacrament. The problem the church is called to help the whole congregation with isn’t singleness but sanctification, not aloneness but growth in grace.
That is not to say, of course, that the church has no calling relative to different life circumstances. Widows in certain circumstances are to be cared for. Both the elders and the deacons have a calling to serve faithfully those who are not blessed with husbands. Younger men are to be taught by older men, younger women by older women. Certainly a church vibrant with family life can lose sight of these specific callings, and ought not to do so. The danger, however, on the other side of the horse, is dividing our congregations into different demographics with different programs. Isn’t it ironic that the one place the Bible speaks of older and younger men, older and younger women, it speaks of bringing them together rather than keeping them apart (Titus 2)?
For those who feel that awkwardness, my best counsel is to seek to get over it. Singles may not feel like they have much in common with bustling young families. Marrieds might feel like we don’t have much in common with singles. But we have in common all the things that matter most- we have been reborn, redeemed. We are being remade, and will all one day be like Him, seeing Him as He is.
The church is a family of families. It is one family together, and thus no member therein is without family. Families, however, don’t need programs. They merely need to love and welcome one another, to practice hospitality. They need to sacrifice one for another, and encourage one another on to righteousness. But the “they” I’m speaking of is all the members of the church. Singles need to not merely ask of the church, “What are you doing for me?” but also, “How can I serve this body?” Every family member participates in the work of the family. Those called to lead the church lead the church to do the work of the church:
And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; (Ephesians 4:11-13).