Flying Solo But Not Alone: Supporting Singles on the Field
STATEMENT
Sending churches, receiving churches, and mission agencies should honor single brothers and sisters as members of the family of God whose primary identity is in bearing the image of God in Christ and not in marital status. The Holy Spirit gifts married and single missionaries for the building up of the church. Single missionaries may have unique needs that vary by individual, role, and season. Single missionaries and the church are served well by intentionally asking, understanding, and seeking to care for these brothers and sisters. God uses the gift of singleness for His glory and to be a blessing to the family of God.
Why an article about caring for the single missionary? After all, saints in the church are defined not by marital status, but by their identity as immortal image-bearers of God (Genesis 1:27) and sinners redeemed by Christ for his glory. Since their primary identity is not in being single, why must churches and sending agencies pay particular attention to the needs of single missionaries as a demographic? [1]
Singles represent approximately one-third of missionaries on the field; of these, the majority are women. This means that approximately a quarter of all missionaries are single women.[2] Since God continues to give single missionaries to the church, supporting these workers well is essential to the flourishing of our brothers and sisters and the Church’s mission.
Every missionary and field context is different, but the experience of overseas service has implications in the lives of single missionaries which differ from those who are married.[3] These implications are less visible, so leaders in their local church and mission agency must give careful attention to them, ask good questions, and listen well. Leaders do well to understand the unique experience of single missionaries because doing so serves the church in significant ways.
Confronting Unique Realities
There are several ways that serving on the field as a single missionary differs from serving on the field alongside a faithful, believing spouse. Confronting life’s cultural, spiritual, and relational challenges on the mission field as a single person is a very different experience than facing these realities as a married couple or family. These diverse experiences impact spiritual, relational, and practical realities for missionaries. Let’s look at each of these in turn.
Spiritual Realities. Missionaries necessarily serve in locations with few Christians. Scripture is full of “one-another” commands that highlight the God-ordained interdependence of the body of Christ. To love each other for Christ’s sake (Romans 12:10, 1 Peter 1:22), to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), and to build up and spur each other on in Christ (e.g., Hebrews 10:24-25, Ephesians 4:15-16) are commands given to the church. Because of this, single missionaries need to find safe relationships in which to share struggles and accountability, receive pastoral care, and benefit from gospel partners who affirm and encourage the use of their spiritual gifts. Ideally, this biblical interdependence will happen as the single brother or sister gets involved in a local church. However, teams in frontier locations must realize that team relationships may be the only local expression of Christian fellowship for their single members. As single missionaries leave behind both their home church and nuclear family relationships, the sending church, mission agency, team leaders, and local church will do well to consider how this essential fellowship among believers will be faithfully carried out in each context where single missionaries are sent to serve.
Relational Realities. Like all people, single missionaries need to invest and be known in the context of long-term committed relationships. Besides their initial transition, missionaries may be uprooted multiple times and see coworkers come and go. This transience may significantly impact single missionaries because they are not living and serving with family on the field. Leaders should think carefully about the relational needs of singles when they reassign missionaries to meet ever-changing needs on the field.
To remain healthy and serve fruitfully, single missionaries must find mutual friendships in their local context and intentional relationships of care and encouragement (nearby or remote). They should also be free to maintain relationships with parents, siblings, and other family members. They are best served when those who oversee decisions about work location, moves, and return-trips home recognize their need for continuity in family and personal relationships.
Practical Realities. Life in a new society and place is always challenging; moving to an area with a new language, unfamiliar government processes, or less reliable facilities presents challenges to even the most resourceful workers. In most families, spouses naturally divide practical responsibilities such as managing finances, technical support, and house chores. By contrast, every single missionary is the head of a one-adult household, managing all of these responsibilities alongside their daily work. Single missionaries might need support in one or more of these different areas, especially if it’s an area where they have little experience–such as buying cars or home repairs. Caring friends observing and advocating for their physical and mental health (which is more easily monitored within the family life) and intentionally sharing the burdens of solo decision-making through listening, talking, prayer, and follow-up would meet a significant need in the lives of single missionaries. Learning what practical support will serve each single missionary best will bless that person.
Hindrances to Care
If churches and mission agencies have recognized God’s call to single missionaries and invested in their work, what hindrances can prevent single fieldworkers from receiving that needed care and support?
In surveying various single missionaries on the field, the primary feedback we received on this topic was how important it is for church leaders to intentionally teach a biblical view of singleness. Emphasizing this at the local church level helps singles on the mission field be viewed more biblically by their brothers and sisters in Christ, while also affirming those singles who might otherwise feel alone in addressing these issues.
The reality is single people can often be overlooked and misunderstood even in the church. So, just as church leaders need to teach about marriage and family life to counter the cultural pressures, they also need to understand and teach about the cultural pressures singles face.[4]
Like marriage, singleness is a gift from a wise, kind, and loving God. While it is true that one can mature and be sanctified through marriage, the same is equally valid in singleness. Single missionaries need the church to actively present singleness as a good and meaningful life situation for the believer.
Where there is no robust biblical understanding of singleness and commitment to applying these realities in the sending of single missionaries, their experience and service might be hampered by a lack of representation, respect, and opportunity. We’ll expand on those three now.
Representation. First, as already observed, the experience of single missionaries is often less visible to leadership. Leaders might make decisions that directly affect the roles and responsibilities of the single missionaries without soliciting their input. Communication can fall short, too. On one team, for example, the male team members were hanging out together when they made a decision to move their team office to a new location within an apartment (instead of a business location). There were several good reasons, so they went ahead and announced their decision to the team without asking their single female teammate for her thoughts. The decision meant she would no longer be able to use the office since it would be inappropriate in that cultural context for her to enter an apartment with men. As the only person adversely affected by the decision, she faced the uncomfortable choice to naysay a settled decision or lose access to the office.
Respect. Single missionaries report that they sometimes feel micromanaged or restricted in activities, and then wonder if they are perceived as less mature or experienced than their married counterparts. For example, team leaders might not consider allowing a single person to lead a special project or include them in strategic planning. Gifted and motivated single missionaries can be regularly limited by their team leaders, and their ministry ideas passed over. Eventually, isolated from a team’s labors and unable to serve as they feel called, single missionaries might leave the field.
Another experience expressed by many single missionaries is having others presume upon their time or living situations. This usually happens with no ill intent, yet the thoughtlessness can tempt them to feel marginalized. For example, a teammate invited a single missionary to her home for mentoring and then assumed she would be glad to stay and watch the mentor’s children while she went out for a ministry activity. In another situation, a church denied a single missionary the use of missionary housing during an extended trip to the US because they wanted to keep it open in case a married couple or family should ask to use it.
Opportunity. We’re taught in Scripture that the single life allows unique devotion to the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:32-35), which is a gracious gift to any mission effort. We’ve also seen that singles are often able to initiate relationships with specific groups of locals that other team members could never reach. In spite of this, leaders will sometimes pursue a plan that doesn’t include singles or they don’t think creatively about involving singles in their efforts. If single missionaries comprise one-third of missionaries overseas, and single women account for one-quarter, then any mission strategy would do well to capitalize on these opportunities.
When It Goes Well
When single missionaries are encouraged and respected as valuable members of a missions team and deployed well with a clear understanding of their gifts and needs, they are free to use the abilities God has given them to build the church. They joyfully buy into the team’s mission and gladly contribute towards its goals.
One single missionary writes,
I have been a part of families where I am friends with both the husband and the wife, and it has encouraged me to share mutual respect and affection. We are brothers and sisters together and share true friendship and community. They have helped me to honor marriage and understand the dynamics of life with kids. I have encouraged them to exercise the muscle of friendship and helped them see past circumstances to the deeper meaning of being brothers and sisters in Christ.
Stories of churches who have honored single missionaries well also abound. One missionary shared that when a pastor visited her city to meet with several families from a church, he also reached out to her as a single female missionary on their team and met with her in an appropriate setting to hear about her life. It was a blessing to this missionary to be sought out and ministered to by the pastor. Another pastor asked a single missionary for cultural and theological insights during sermon preparation. He blessed this sister by valuing her gifts and experience, and by allowing her insight to serve the larger church. One US church helped a missionary who had to evacuate by securing housing for them in the US on short notice. They found a church member with a furnished apartment, lovingly providing the fellowship and friendship this single missionary needed in a difficult time.
Conclusion
Sending churches, mission agencies, team leaders, and local churches on the field should thoughtfully and prayerfully think through the life and role of the single missionary and how to promote and encourage their ministry on the field. Current feedback from single missionaries demonstrates the need for churches and agencies to better understand their experiences and provide the spiritual, relational, and practical care needed.
Church and mission agency leaders must uphold a biblical view of singleness and affirm these missionaries’ unique giftings and desires. They must recognize that single missionaries likely have needs that differ from those who are married, lovingly seek to understand, and offer appropriate help and support. Sensitivity, respect, inclusion, ministry encouragement, and opportunity are all vital for single men and women to flourish on the field. Their faithful contribution to missions merits renewed and specific attention so that their labors more fully glorify God and benefit the cause of Christ in the world.
Footnotes:
[1] At our GCC gathering, we found that this issue was one of the top concerns of those present.
[2] https://pioneers.org/2021/03/19/more-women-in-missions-four-reasons-why; https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/analysis-women-missions/; https://www.mnnonline.org/news/new-statistics-on-single-men-in-missions/
[3] With very few exceptions, each adult missionary lives in one of these two situations; the diversity of circumstances regarding life partners (e.g., unbelieving spouses, separation, long-term dating, etc.) that exists in the church is greatly reduced in the missions community.
[4] For a better understanding of this significant issue from the perspective of an unmarried church member, see Ryan Griffith’s article “Single in a Church of Families,” 16 July 2021, available at https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/single-in-a-church-of-families.
