Segregating by age or status.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this postI read a comment on a post at InternetMonk, and was immediately struck by the need to say a public thank you.
First, the comment, by Aliasmoi:
A single - never married - woman is a pariah in a traditional church. After I crossed my 30th birthday people started thinking (and sometimes saying) there must be something wrong with me that I haven’t caught a husband yet. They started praying out loud - in church - for me to get a husband. But, I couldn’t get within ten feet of a man without the whole church having to stop and take notice of the fact. I really started to feel like I would have been less of an object of curiosity/pity/outright derision if I had been married and gotten divorced.
I want to thank the people of my home church for making me feel necessary. Normal. OK. Valuable. Treasured. For wanting me with them and enjoying things with them. Not making me feel like an outsider or extra or some kind of burden to have bear with. Letting me pal around and talk and laugh with the ladies and be involved in the group discussions and hang out with the couples and talk with everyone of all ages...I just never felt unwelcome or outside. I want to thank them, essentially, for not segregating the church based on age or status. For not shuffling me off to the side because of my status.
When we were in the process of getting a new pastor recently, we had the opportunity, after a meal following service, to speak up about the possibility of a person who had been in church for many years being our pastor. Many things were said, most moving and good. I spoke up and tried to say, without crying (I did not succeed), a kind of thank you for the extreme friendship -- beyond that, even -- and how it made me feel valuable. How I wanted to stay at this church even when I didn't "feel" like it or when it didn't meet my "needs" simply because of the relationship of the people and what they were to me as the body of Christ.
Truly, they are Christ with skin on. For me.
I think, in a post where I touched on the idea of age segregation, the greatest sadness that settles in when I see it happening is that we are shortchanging everyone involved for the sake of convenience and logistics. It seems to benefit us, but in reality, hurts and robs us all. I can't imagine being stripped of all the interaction I've grown to expect with different people of different ages and status.
Frankly, age segregation is not Biblical. It is not OK to be pulling out kids and youth and separating everyone out by age or status. It is not OK to train them to think that they must be only with their own kind and should not be expected to be with the older Christians in church. Barnabas mentored Paul. Paul mentored Timothy. The older women are told to mentor the young. Why cheat each other out of Job 12:12? No, some barely matured youth minister aping the culture up front doesn't always qualify as that mentor; he is likely in need of his own mentor, too. There is also a need for everyone to experience the joy (and difficulty) of being such a mentor.
It is easier, I will admit, to be with people in your own situation and generation. You speak the same language, have similar angst, and understand your particular culture. I treasure my friends of that sameness because we can connect over the similarities. But at the same time, I have so come to value the advice and support and companionship of older women, married women, widowed women, single women -- my mother -- and have grown to love the chance to be that for the younger women coming up.
Because my home church is so small, we often find ourselves with one Sunday school class in the basement. It may consist of the older generation, some Boomers, me (the token Gen X'er), and some teens (Gen Y'ers). There are married and single and divorced people there. The discussion is rich and brings both the wisdom of age and the freshness of new eyes.
What a pity when we pull that apart by something age-based. There is no separate-but-equal in the body of Christ.
Labels: christianity, relationships, women, youth
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 9/10/2008 06:30:00 PM
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2 Comments:
What I'm finding - as a 37 year old never married woman - is most people want me to feel normal, included, valued etc, but they really have no clue how to do that. It seems that in their minds I'm automatically an 'outsider' and so they seek for ways to bring me in. It's very well-meaning and loving, but it misses the point. I'm already 'in'. I had absolutely no reason to think of myself as an outsider until people started treating me that way.
I don't want people to spend hours agonising over whether bringing me into their family will cause me to feel jealous of their marriage and their children. Maybe it will, but that's between me and God, not them. The best, most loving church relationships I have are those where people stop worrying about whether the married/single ratio is okay at their dinner party, and instead recognise that we are united because of Christ (Eph 2:19), not because of age, lifestyle, status or anything else.
By 
femina, at
September 10, 2008 8:30 PM
This is going to be long, I apologize in advance...
Last week I was in Office Max. I walked to the jump-drive section and was perusing my options when an eager salesman asked if I needed help. Which was the first time I actually got to the 'section' I needed to go while in Office Max, usually a salesman/woman accousts me three feet from the door hoping to assist me with my purchasing decisions. Which I sometimes appreciate. Other times, it's annoying...
I started to reply, "Nope. I know what I nee--" when a sixty-something woman jumped right in front of me, nearly toppling me over with her zeal, and yelled at the salesman, "I've been waiting to be helped for fifteen minutes...why do you always give the best service to the young when it is the old that needs the help!"
Hmmmmmmm.
I had a busy summer and so I had not yet read your pull-no-punches and light up the blogosphere 'why I walked out of church' post, until reading this post with all its various links, and once again getting sidetracked by previous posts of yours I had not yet read.
and, ahem, about THAT-- following your blog posts is so time consuming, albeit it is 'fun' and enlightening time consumption, I can see how the whole 'stalking' thing comes up...I've been here all morning oohing and ahhing
So, anyway, four hours later and with plans to go back and read even more of the colorful links you provided, here I am trying to comment before I lose all sight of this post I wanted to comment on...
Back to the subject: I am married, happily most days. I am a Mom. I teach teenagers each week in Sunday school. (Our small town church is 'just big enough' that, yes, we do still separate the classrooms. However, our church is NOT big enough to justify a nursery program/keeping young kids out of the pews during the services... you have given
me much to think about, though, as to why all ages should worship AND study together...and I agree with you that to separate means we lose out on some important benefits of mentorship and fellowship)
I am NOT single and I suppose you could say I most definitely do need some 'support' with keeping my marriage on track and also with raising my kids 'right'...YET, somewhere along the way I began to understand that Jesus should be the most important 'man in my life' and that it doesn't matter if I 'save my kids' -- or have a healthy 'family unit' my main, over-riding obligation as a child of God is simply this: to make sure that I, yes I, me, myself, I--am following Christ.
Which, in my thought, should be the duty of all of us who park orselves in a pew and claim to be following Christ. Simply that, focus on Him, follow Him, and leave it at that.
John 6:29
Everything else, from pandering to youth to trying to fix up the single people with other single people, seems to be a dangerous distraction.
