A few problems I’m thinking about, when it comes to recruiting single men into missions:

Problem no. 1: the numbers

a) are there more women than men in society?

About the same number of men and women are born each year. However, women outnumber men by a small margin in teens, simply because men are more likely to die in teens than women. Further, over the course of their lifespans, women will outnumber men by an increasing margin, because women live longer.

b) are there more women than men in church?

Candace Watters wrote an article entitled “Plenty of men to go around, part 1” back in 2006. She notes the US Statistical Abstract for the USA identified 29.5 million never-married men vs. 23.6 million never-married women–in other words, there are far more never-married men, not the other way around. Then she applies Barna’s “most recent faith percentages to the totals” to get 12.1 million never-married Christian men and 11.6 million never-married Christian women.

I’m not entirely certain this is the right way to go about it. I’m not sure we can apply national faith percentages to a micro-niche in this way. It needs more examination.

Problem No. 2: men who lose their faith or lack orthodox doctrine

a) are young people (and men in particular) losing their faith when they leave high school and enter college?

There are complexities that are well detailed in this article which describes prodigals (who lose their faith, 1 out of 9); nomads (4 out of 10, less active in church than during high school, “lost” to church participation but not faith); and exiles (2 out of 10, lost to “church culture,” have faith but feel church is disconnected from where they live); 3 out of 10 stay faithful to church.

What we can say is that while not all young men lose their faith, many of them do lose contact with any church environment in which they might be challenged to missions. By the time they reconnect with this environment, they may very well be married and established in careers. Again, more study of this phenomenon is required, but we can say that it’s likely that missions recruitment must happen before college or else you can expect to get marrieds, divorced or widows. (Which is why that “gap year DTS” YWAM emphasizes is important.)

a) do singles hold unorthodox views? Yes, many do:

“Single Adults,” published by Barna in 2002, had a “revealing look at three unique single adult populations.” It divided the singles up into never-marrieds, divorced, and widowed. Of the never-marrieds:

4 out of 5 think of themselves as Christians 1 in 3 attend church services during a typical week 1 in 3 read the Bible outside of church Few volunteer at church, attend a Sunday School class, or participate in a small group Most never give money to causes or organizations 1 out of 3 have an unorthodox view of God a majority believe that if a person is basically good they will earn their way to heaven 6 out of 10 have made a personal commitment to Christ “a little more than half” are certain they will go to Heaven

Also, from this 2007 analysis: 37% of single adults stay away from church services (vs. 29% of marrieds)

These kinds of indicators show that most single adults in America would not be interested in missions or other Christian service.

Problem no. 3: complexities that discourage single males from missions

a) perception of immaturity: agencies that prefer to have married couples rather than singles

b) more ministry options at home for single males: males allowed into paid pastoral positions, while in most instances women are not. Thus to get involved in ministry women enter missions.

c) need for a career to attract a wife: Single males are told by culture, family, personal feelings that they need to have careers, money to support a wife. Whereas a single female is more likely to be free to go do missions w/o needing to feel like she has to have a career in order to attract a husband. (Please don’t read between the lines here and assume any stereotyping thoughts on my part!)

Research question: singles applying?

One very large gap in the data is this: For most agencies I know the total # of people on the field, the % of those that are single, and the % that are single males.

What we don’t know is: of new yearly applicants, how many are singles, and of those, how many are single males?

How many singles (and single males) make it through the application process and on to the field?

How long do singles stay on the field vs. the length of service of the typical couple?

How many singles get married while on the field and thus become “married” in the statistics?