The Resolute

Gus is an MTS apprentice. And Gus wrote some studies about Christian dating (and some other stuff). But is there more of a link between the two than Gus? Well, I think what links them is that Christians are in danger of undertaking them wrongly in the same way.

Christians do dating differently to the world. Sometimes it’s called ‘courting’ to help make the distinction. One of the differences (there are several) is that a large part of what you are doing is explicitly assessing whether or not someone is wise to marry.

MTS is a brilliant movement committed to raising up gospel workers to go out into the harvest. During a 2 year program focussed on front line ministry and training, apprentices are given the opportunity to assess whether or not they should go into full time word ministry.

How do we do either poorly? By missing two words:

‘Or not’.

If you date you don’t have to get married. If you do MTS you don’t have to go into full time ministry. If it’s a Godly and wise course of action to take then go ahead and get married/go into full time word ministry but we need to protect the other two options from the stigma of failure.

If these undertakings are about whether or not to make a commitment to a longer, more permanent version of themselves then the option ‘or not’ should be viewed as a positive outcome. If you were trying to figure out which way to go and were able to make a decision then you’ve achieved the goal. Neither should be about getting on a metaphorical conveyor belt, but gathering information to make a decision.

We’re running a series of Bible Studies in January on the topics: Marriage, Singleness, Dating/Courtship/”Who to get from single to married?” and Divorce and Remarriage.

To help prepare for next weeks ‘dating’ study I borrowed as many books on ‘Christian dating’ as I could find.

There are so many, and so many ways I could categorise them.

There are those that completely suck and those that aren’t quite as bad.

There are those that advocate not dating (but some how you’ll just end up down the aisle and married) and then at the other end of the spectrum there’s the ’100 tips to get someone to say ‘yes’ to marriage’.

Here’s what I’ve read (or at least skimmed through) so far:

• I Kissed Dating Goodbye:¹ I get where he’s going but it seems to be a bit ‘don’t do anything so you don’t do anything wrong’, so it doesn’t really answer how you go from friends to married.
• Every Young Man’s Battle:² Some of what he says is good, some of it I’m less sure about. And I guess the authors don’t really set out to answer the dating questions.
• Religion Saves: Question 3:³ This is a good book. I like 95% of what he says in the chapter on dating. But it’s a bit short, doesn’t answer everything and I don’t always agree with everything in the book so I’m not sure it’s what I’d want to recommend without qualification.
• Boundaries in Dating:⁴ It’s more about the authors giving their 101 thoughts on everything. I might be a bit cynical of this one, but the chapter on setting boundaries really just says ‘don’t have sex outside marriage’ but doesn’t bother defining anything and barely mentions any of the Bible’s great content on the subject. Also the chapter following is on ‘setting consequences’ and seems to assume you will stuff up and almost seems to play it down for my liking.
• For Young Men Only: ((Jeff Feldhahn and Eric Rice)) This gets the award for the worst book on the topic. It’s more about figuring women out rather than acting in a godly way.

So anyone got any books they can recommend?

I really want a book like Pure Sex⁵ but written on the dating subject: a bit of history, God’s plans for the world, the general principles and how to live it out.

1. Joshua Harris [↩]
2. Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker [↩]
3. Mark Driscoll, was originally a sermon series answering common questions [↩]
4. Dr Henry Cloud and Dr John Townsend [↩]
5. Philip Jensen [↩]