Teaching about singleness

Life was very different in Jesus’ time.  Most people married in their late teens and lived and worked as part of a self-supporting extended family.   So there’s little in the way of ready resources in the Bible for today’s single Christians to draw upon.

In this context there are a number of approaches that can be taken:

  • The overall story: Determining how to live as single people from the overall story of God's love for us as expressed through the Bible.
  • Key issues: Taking the key issues that single people say they face and thinking Christianly about them.
  • Personal stories of how single people experience God and leads them on in their faith.

We have a list of books and articles that single people have recommended.

V N Sinton's article from the conservative IVP's New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology, was hugely influential and been used by many writers. 

Is marriage a sacrament? In answer to a question that was asked of us, there is a short history of how some denominations recognise marriage as being a sacrament and others do not.