9Marks Journal, Spring 2017: Pastoring Singles

Why devote an issue of the 9Marks Journal to pastoring singles?One, it's a growing demographic in our culture and therefore in our churches.Two, it's a demographic that is particularly impacted by our culture's removal of all barriers on sex; by the culture's eroticization of all forms of intimacy, especially among same-sex friendships; by its delay of marriage; by its lies about the advantagesof the self-indulgent and autonomous single life aswell as the growing enslavement of consumerism; and, in turn, by the extra emphasis churches have given to marriage in order to counter the lies of the sexual revolution. In other words, a number of cultural and pastoral roads all collide in the intersection which is the single life.Why devote an issue of the 9Marks Journal to pastoring singles? To help pastors and members both grow in conscientiousness and wisdom and love for singles. That way, singles and marrieds both can grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when eachpart is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.