Problems become Opportunities: Single Men in the Nations

In a post-all-nighter daze, I finished my architecture presentation. Coasting off the adrenaline of my presentation, I listened to my classmates present their projects. One of the other students repeatedly used the word “problem” about their project, referring to issues that had yet to be resolved. Then one of the panel of professors shared an insight, a reframing, that I have persisted to use to this day. 

Stop using the word "problem" was his demand. He looked as though he’d rip the student’s model if the student said the p-word one more time. Architecture professors can be brutal. One professor said that they used to try and make at least one student cry during presentations. Tears would flow from time to time.

But the professor didn’t stop there. “Instead use the word ‘opportunity.’ Then it becomes a chance for design and solutions.” Despite their rough edges, those professors can be helpful.

Often these “problems” in architecture become moments of beauty. Because “opportunities” call for creativity, collaboration, and solutions. 

When we look at the state of world missions and single men’s role (or lack thereof), we may find problem after problem. These problems become a parade of p-words playing the song parody, “Oh When the Saints Don’t Come Marching In.” But if we see them as opportunities, our view changes. Beauty begins to emerge.

Four major problems exist. Let’s see if we can turn them into opportunities, so the cruel professor doesn’t have to rip up our hard work.

The Problem of the Unreached

First, we need some definitions.

People Groups: the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance.

Unreached: less than 2% are professing followers of Jesus, holding to the core beliefs of Christianity, though they may not call themselves “Christian.”

Language, culture, and traditions form many of the divisions between people groups, not country borders. So if you wanted to share the Gospel with the Somali community in your city, you’d probably have to learn a new language and pick up some of their customs to meaningfully share. Even if they had become American citizens, they would not necessarily be part of your same people group.

Second, the “problem.”

If that people group is unreached, that means that they have little to no access to the Gospel in their heart language. It will take a literal outsider, a missionary of sorts, to cross cultural lines to share with them.

In the world, there are roughly 17,000 different people groups, representing 3.4 billion people. Over 7,000 of them are unreached. If you take into account the average death rate, that means every two seconds an unreached person dies without even hearing about Jesus.

That is heavy. But that’s why we send missionaries, right? Correct. 

But if you break down where missionaries and ministry money go, it paints a telling picture. Of the 445,000 missionaries today, just over 3% of them go to the unreached. Only 0.1% of the money tithed goes to ministry among the unreached. 

Sounds like a problem.

The Opportunity for Worshippers

We need to shift our perspective. Let’s shift it heavenward, and ask how does God view this?

“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10)

He knows how this ends. He is victorious, and a great multitude of currently reached and unreached will give Him praise. And how great will be that praise! 

Sin and shame are so deeply rooted among the nations. The strongholds of this world are built of unscalable walls. Death wanders this earth devouring whoever it wishes. What great power can tear evil up by the roots? Turn the ramparts of the Devil into rubble? And break the neck of Death and cast his rotten corpse into Hell? 

Our God. The Lord of Heaven and Earth who sits upon the throne! The Lamb, who though slain, lives and reigns above! 

And how will He gather the multitudes? Through the spilled blood of His Son. And you.

Of the unreached, about 1.7 billion of them are men. And many of those unreached people groups separate their communities on gender lines, meaning men and women to not significantly interact outside of their families. We need men to reach men. 

You have the opportunity to bring the Good News to the 1.7 billion. You have the opportunity to change the tides of how the church spends its money. You have the opportunity to raise up new unique voices in the Revelation choir.

The Problem of Loneliness

In a 2020 Gallup publication, they identified that 24% of the global population deals will feelings of loneliness. The recent years of Lockdown have only compounded the issue with now 61% of young adults reporting “serious loneliness.”

I’m hesitant to play diagnostician (actually I refuse to for ethical and legal reasons). Also, I am not prescribing any psychological solution. I can however recognize the social phenomena of loneliness. It’s real and very present. Whether you have dealt with bouts of loneliness or not, you know someone who has. 

If you are looking for solutions, please enquire elsewhere. But if you are looking for opportunities, I’m your man!

Opportunity for Camaraderie

Recent studies have uncovered a key difference between male-to-male and female-to-female friendships. Women connect face-to-face with only the pretense of a conversation. Intuitively you may already recognize this. You can think of women chatting over coffee or a meal for hours on end. Men, we are built differently. We unite in groups over shared activities. We are side-by-siders. Australia has even begun creating a little movement called Men’s Sheds. They have identified that men, especially in their later years, experience a variety of health and mental issues due to loneliness. Rather than putting them in a “face-to-face” therapy context, they created a tool shed environment. There men unite around a common task, working side-by-side and forming new friendship bonds.

In the recent series, Welcome to Wrexham, you follow the story of a small Welsh soccer (football to the non-American) club that was recently bought by two Hollywood actors. Towards the end of the first season, the episode devoted to male relationships. And every player and fan share how they have formed deep, lasting relationships over football (not soccer). They’re Welsh, so they don’t know how to speak English properly like us Americans.

Another bond forged in experience and shared activity is the deep fellowship between soldiers. This imagery is readily used by Paul in the Bible. He speaks of the spiritual warfare we wage against the strongholds of this world in 2 Corinthians 10:4. Paul often refers to his partners in ministry as “good soldiers” (2 Timothy 2:3, Philemon 2). In Colossians 4:10, he refers to Aristarchus as a “fellow prisoner”, which more directly translates to “prisoner of war.” 

The call to the nations is the Lord sending his soldiers out two-by-two, side-by-side into the world as heralds of the Good News of the Kingdom. Dedicated workers become “fellow soldiers” as they battle to this end. 

I am not saying you need to fix your loneliness by going overseas. In fact, as a single male, you will have to deal with major challenges of loneliness there. But in going, you may form some of the deepest friendships of your life.

The Problem of Singleness

If you’re like I was or like about every young Godly man I’ve known, you want to be married. “It’s not good for man to be alone.” Yes and amen. Know how do you trick one of them into liking you…

Given that you have read this far, there is one more wrinkle of complexity in your “problem of singleness.” On some level, you must be interested in going overseas as a missionary. But you probably want to be married. And now you're asking yourself “How do I find a wife interested in missions?” Or “Can you even meet a girl like that overseas?”

Gentlemen, you have come to the right place. It’s opportunity time.

The Opportunity of Marriage

Follow me for a second. You want to go serve God among the lost of the world. You want to be married. So I’m going to guess that you would like to be married to a woman who wants to serve the lost of the world with you. Now, guess where she is. 

She’s overseas.

I’ve said it already. There are AT LEAST 8 beautiful, amazing, Godly to the 1 single male missionary, ie YOU. I don’t care what dating app or social club you are going to, you will not find those types of ratios anywhere else. 

So sure, you might find a girl like this in America, but it’s unlikely. And the story often goes the two are dating and she says that she is “open” to missions. Then the ring is on her finger, and you learn that “open” means “open to dating you who is interested in missions” not really “open to doing missions.” I do not fault her. This life is a unique, bizarre, and challenging one.

That just means you need to meet a girl who loves you for being unique, bizarre, and challenging. 

I do not write this out ignorance or hopefulness. I went overseas as a single male. I was one man amongst many single women, women who wanted to be married. Now I am a married man, married to a beautiful, Godly wife who loves the nations.

Ok cynic. Yeah, you! The one who thinks I found the only eligible girl out there. Let me share more.

When I began sharing my passion for mobilizing single men to go overseas, guess who was most excited people for my work. Single female missionaries. One, they recognize the need for a masculine presence in missions. And two, they want to be married.

I could say more about this, but I’ll refrain for now. Suffice it to say “I wanted to be married” is not a valid excuse. Singleness is an opportunity.

The Problem of Inverted Commands

I’ve already addressed many problems and desires facing single men and the world today. There was the need for new laborers to rise up to reach the unreached, the need for community and abiding friendships, and the right desire for marriage and intimacy. These are needs worthy of being addressed. But in comparison to the final topic, they are nothing. 

In Matthew 22, Jesus presents us with what is dearest to God’s heart and thereby most beneficial to man. 

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

Love God. Love people. Pretty simple, right? Yes very much so. But I wish to share a pitfall many people relish stumbling into. 

We invert the two commands. Jesus tells us which command is first and which is second. Yet the human heart twists these simple commands, choosing to love people first and then God secondarily. 

I’ve seen this play out firsthand in missions. My enthusiastic friend goes off, motivated out of love and care for people. It starts great. But they then must deal with people’s unrepentance, the brokenness of the world and its harm on people, or ultimately when God’s law comes into conflict with the ways of sinful people. The first command to love God, second in their heart, comes in conflict with their love for people. I’ve seen my friends, whom I truly love, either repent and reorder these commands in their hearts. Or they reject God in order that they may go on “loving” people.

You know this. You’ve seen it. In America today, the story goes: I love my friend who is gay, the God of the Bible calls this a sin, so I must reject the Bible and its God to love my friend. The love for people has been twisted into perversion. And the love for God has been bitterly dismissed. All because the commandments were inverted. 

The Opportunity of Rightly Ordered Love

I’ve somewhat misled you. If you take the preceding list of problems and opportunities and make them of the utmost importance, you will have fallen into the trap of the inverted commands. Reaching the unreached, fashioning new friendships, and pursuing a wife are great and beautiful things. I desire them all for you. But if you were to place them before a love for God, I would desire none of them on your behalf. 

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!

‘For who has known the mind of the Lord,

or who has been His counselor?’

‘Or who has given a gift to Him

that he might be repaid?’

For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:33-36)

Make your greatest desire be to know God, and to be known by Him. 

If you can grow in this, something powerful will grow within you. You will better love people. Rightly ordered love, love resulting from keeping the first and second commandments in their proper place, bestows us with God’s love. His love is attuned to reality and powerful above man’s fickle efforts to create a substitute love.

Reflecting back to the Revelation passage at the beginning of this article, we gain a full image of the missional call. We see the love of people with multitude gathered in glory "from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” (Revelation 7:9) But they are not gathered for merely the love of people. They are gathered in loving worship of God and the Lamb. (Revelation 7:10)

If we properly love God, then we will be drawn to love His people, even those people of different people groups who do not yet profess His name. In humble service we love these people, that we might win some to the Lord. And in the end, we will worship the Almighty side-by-side.