I apologize for the corny title—I have facial hair on the brain (now, that is a bizarre image). With the David musical coming up, many of us are growing beards to look more biblical.

This also means that the singles winter event is nearly here! At headquarters, a small army of people are making preparations, formulating arrangements at local venues, planning details of specific events, making menus for meals, printing name tags, creating décor, assembling music, finalizing transportation and housing, outlining videos and other material for “onliners,” compiling thoughts for messages, producing booklets—all for you. We are excited, and we hope you are too!

I have a request of you that will help us get ready. It’s a question I’d like you to answer in preparation for that weekend. Even if you’re not going to be able to attend this year, if you’re willing, please give it some reflection and post a comment below or e-mail me at joelh@pcog.org with your thoughts:

What would you like life as a single in God’s Church to be like?

Imagine the ideal, the perfect environment for God’s singles. I’m not so much talking about the things that we can’t really change, like the singles being too few, or so spread out. I’m talking about, given those realities, what would you really appreciate and love for singlehood to mean within the body of Christ?

There’s only one true Church. If there is somewhere on Earth where life as a single is encouraging, helpful, physically enriching and spiritually rewarding, it should be here.

Take a moment to dream about it. If a single came in from the world and experienced it for the first time, what would he or she notice? How would people treat each other? What would your relationships with families be like? How many activities would be going on? What would happen at them? How much instruction would there be? How much dating? What would the dates be like? What would happen at the Feast? How would everything prepare you for future family, and what would it be like even if that never came in this life? You can probably think of other details I’m not yet considering.

I would appreciate your input (though I likely won’t be able to respond to you directly). I’d really like to see what sort of vision you have in your minds.

See many of you in just a few weeks!