ode to good shepherd

remember a couple weeks ago how i was all excited that my church was looking at starting a singles ministry? tonight was spaghetti dinner night.

first off, they started with a spaghetti dinner just open ended age-wise to singles (i.e. not married) in the congregation... that was tonight. 8 of us showed although more expressed interest. i was the youngest, and the next person was probably mid-30s. at any rate, looking at the congregation demographic, there's about 75 people who fit into the general singles category and 30 of them are 20s/30s, just i was one of like 2 that showed up tonight.

at any rate, what we decided on for now is to meet once a month with a "social activity" of some sort, with it open to singles of ALL ages. our next get together will be the first week in june -- a dessert potluck and board game night, which should be fun.

my goal in attending is mostly to get to know more people in the congregation than i know from my new member class, altar guild, the one seminar i've attended, and who sit near me on sunday mornings, regardless of age. and sometimes it's just nice to chat with other people, no matter what age, who aren't attached to a spouse or 10 children and can just chat :-P

anyhow, the hope is if we do a monthly social activity for a few months to see what kind of interest there is, then we can decide how other activities (bible studies/servant events/who knows what else?) can best be structured, and once we get a decent estimate of how many people are really interested in showing up, if we want, maybe we can partner with another church in the area to have a joint group to get more people involved in bigger things.

who knows.

at any rate, it just makes me excited to see a group starting up that i feel comfortable with (not that i'm uncomfortable with anyone at church, just like i don't belong in a couples bible study, even if i like the topics they're covering, for example), to get to interact with outside of sunday mornings, and i'm really looking forward to seeing how things further develop. :-)

yay for good shepherd and for growing new ministries :-)