Who is single in your local area?
40% of society is single but in churches it is often much lower. If you look up the demographics for your area, you may find there are more single people in your community than you think!
It can be helpful for churches to consider what different types of single people there are living in your local community - and whether you could or should do more to welcome them. Here’s how to get started…
Singleness spans all ages and stages of life, and different types of single people have different needs. Some areas have more older singles living alone, while others may have more single parent families, or single professionals in their 20s-40s.
You may find it helpful to look up the demographics for your local area, and compare them with your current congregation. It’s up to you how much depth you go into depending on the size of your church and the resources you have.
You may be surprised by what you find! If there are groups of single people in your area who you hadn’t considered before, could you potentially do more to reach out to and welcome those single people who aren’t currently attending your church?
How to look up your local area demographics
An online search can generate very quick results. Options include:
The ONS website: How your area has changed since 2021
Area insights: https://www.areainsights.co.uk
A simple Google search of demographics for your area
Key information to look out for includes:
Legal partnership status (ONS): This will tell you the legal marital status of your local population, including those never married, separated, divorced, widowed. Note that those “never married” includes those who are cohabiting with a partner as well as those who are single - so this statistic will be slightly higher than the true number of single people.
Household composition (ONS and others): This will tell you how many households have one person living alone (one-person households) and how many are single parent households (lone parent households). The stats for one-person households also differentiates between younger single people and those who are aged 66 and over.
Your congregation demographics
If you’re a small church you will likely have a good idea already about the marital status of your congregation. However single people sometimes slip under the radar and can be less noticeable to church leadership than couples and families, so it’s worth looking at our list of different types of singleness and thinking about whether you have these groups of single people in your church.
Types of singleness in church
Never married (all ages)
Divorced
Widowed
Separated
Single parents
Married but living as single (e.g. partner away for long periods or in a care home)
Married but single in faith (attends church alone)
Run a survey
If you’re in a much larger church, you’re less likely to be able to identify everyone who is or isn’t single without asking – so you may want to run an anonymous survey.
There are many ways in which you can do this, but you may want to include the following:
Establish purpose and explain why you are doing the survey. The reasons given will also shape the data collected. Reasons could include: to see if there is any section of community who are not currently being reached; or to find out if there are needs within the congregation that might have been overlooked.
Establish a procedure for confidentiality
People may not wish to say what their marital status is, particularly if they expect the church to be judgmental about their situation in some way. A process should be put into place that allows them to answer honestly but anonymously.When and how to conduct the survey.
You should consider the following ideas when developing your own:Gender: Male/Female
Age bands as follows: 16 - 29; 30 - 44; 45 - 59; 60 - 75; 75+
Marital status: Never Married, Married, Cohabiting; Remarried, Widowed, Divorced, Separated
Responsible day to day for dependent children (under the age of 16): Y / N
Some churches may want to add the option of expressing sexualityWhen to conduct the survey, e.g. at a service or online through a free service such as SurveyMonkey or Google forms.