Single…with Children

Jennifer knocks nervously on the pastor’s door. She wonders if she can find the courage to explain her story of a painful marriage, physical abuse, and divorce. When she enters the office, the pastor sees the pain in her eyes. “Jennifer, I think I know why you are here. You and Dave are divorcing.”

After an hour of talking, Jennifer feels neither comfort nor support from her pastor. But they do pray together. As she leaves his office, Jennifer wipes back tears and looks for her car. She has no idea how she is going to support her three children. She has been a stay-at-home mom for eight years. She feels alone, confused, and afraid of the future. Praying with the pastor was good, but Jennifer is losing hope. Her pantry is nearly empty, and she doesn’t have the courage to tell anyone how desperate she is.

When Jennifer arrives home, her kids ask, “Mommy, what’s for dinner? We’re hungry!”

There are countless Jennifers in our churches today: single parents who have to accomplish nearly everything alone, like working full-time, keeping house, maintaining the car, paying the bills, and ferrying the kids to school, church, Little League, and piano lessons.

While many churches are helping single parents with practical and financial needs, the churches that most effectively assist single parents also listen to the needs of the heart.

Make them visible and valued

Alan and Linda Kibble of Faith Community Church in The Woodlands, Texas, first became aware of these needs when their daughters befriended children from single-parent homes.

Realizing these single moms needed encouragement, they presented the need for single-parent ministry to their church’s governing board and offered to help meet it. The result is a ministry called the Oasis.

The goal of the Oasis is to encourage single parents by making them a visible and valued segment of the congregation. The Oasis team does this in four ways:

1. “Bless a Single-Parent” connects families with goods and services. An insert in the bulletin lists material needs, projects, and ministries the congregation can provide. Church leaders personally participate in meeting these needs.
2. Activities and classes. At Faith Community many educational and social opportunities are offered, and childcare is provided at all weeknight meetings so single parents can participate in the programs and ministry teams.
3. A Web site especially for single parents: www.faithcc.org/oasis. The site lists all the church ministries, solicits donations such as furniture and appliances from the congregation, and provides links to other single-parent ministries in the community.
4. Single Parent Sunday. Worship services are dedicated to and hosted by single parents, giving them opportunity to be recognized for their role in church life.

According to Alan and Linda, this is the most effective event Oasis sponsors. The message is “We welcome and value you.” For moms or dads raising their kids alone, who feel apart from to the two-parent culture, they need to hear that often.

“A woman in her thirties came to the Oasis Sunday school class,” Alan says. “She was unmarried, pregnant, withdrawn, and alone. She had experienced more than her share of rejection.

“She was in a town where she knew no one, and the father of her baby was gone. She had little church background. We welcomed her to the group and tried to make her feel comfortable.

“One Sunday after class, with teary eyes, she told us she felt no one cared about her. She said she wanted someone who would always be there for her no matter what happened.”

In Faith Community Church, she found a church that welcomed and encouraged her. She also found someone who would always be there for her; she received Christ that morning.

“Today,” Alan says, “she continues to blossom into a capable, loving Christian mother of a beautiful three-year-old daughter.”

Offer connections

Laura Dodson, a single mother and former coordinator of family life at Church of Our Savior in Cocoa Beach, Florida, wanted to know what caused her church’s families to struggle. She and the pastoral staff developed a survey and placed copies in the pews at every service. Eighteen responses were from single parents, and they all requested a support group.

Laura then planned an ongoing support group, not only for the single parents, but also their children. The evenings began with a fast food meal for everyone. After dinner the children, working in two age groups, were given opportunities to explore and express their emotions through puppet shows, craft projects, and other activities. The parents went next door to a video-hosted discussion on issues like alienation, finances, and the grief slope. Before rejoining their children, parents were given a key question to provoke discussion of the night’s activities at home.

Fellowship for single parents doesn’t always have to take the form of a traditional support group. Crossroads Church in Corona, California, does not offer a separate single-parent ministry. Yet the church has been successful in ministering to single parents.

Carl and Noryne Mascarella, both on staff at Crossroads, realized that the church’s singles shared much in common with its single parents. In fact, the single parents insisted they didn’t want to be separated from the other singles. Instead of dividing the two groups, Crossroads Church created an All Singles’ Night for the whole community.

To facilitate the mixing of singles and single parents, Crossroads Church offers free childcare during the weekly Friday night gathering. The evening includes a meal for everyone, including the children, a lesson and discussion time at round tables, and an activity. The activity might be a movie, a concert, board games, or even dance lessons. Carl says, “Think of it as a date night, with you and a hundred of your closest friends.”

Provide ears and opportunities

Pamela McKnight lost her husband to a lengthy illness while a member of Richland Hills Church of Christ in Fort Worth, Texas. Her plight awakened the church to the growing number of single parents in the congregation, so they decided to hire someone to work with single parents and their children. During their search, the leaders recognized something else. Pamela had a tender heart and a vision for single-parent families. So they hired Pamela!

They learned that enabling and empowering single parents can address many needs at the same time. Pamela seeks to do for other single parents what the church did for her. She networks single parents with reputable community resources, including financial and mental health counselors, to help them build a secure foundation for family living. As an example, Pamela reports this story:

“Cathy, who is in her forties with two kids, had been away from the church for several years. She owned her trailer, but then lost it, was driving a borrowed car, was out of work and unable to return to her trade because of a neck injury.

“When Cathy heard about our ministry through a mailing, she met with me one-to-one. A year later she is working successfully at a Christian business, is living in a house as part of our church’s homeless ministry, has a car that was donated by a member of the church, and has completed counseling.”

Pamela says the individual attention she offers may be the most important factor in single-parent ministry. She often takes people to lunch and simply listens to their journeys, to assure them that in this church, the single parent is more than a faceless statistic.

These churches succeed not because of programs and budgets, but because they listen to practical needs and prayer requests. And they listen to what single parents desire most: to be valued, to be part of a supportive community, and to be empowered to build a new and healthy family life.

Barbara Schiller is a single mother and founder of Single Parent Family Resources. www.singleparentfamilyresources.com.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.