![]() ![]() He never stopped praying for his future wife. “I truly enjoyed the experience of that freedom,” Steve said. He authored articles spoke at college chapels, camps, and other churches and wrote a book. (He wasn’t a great cook-eventually, meals at Steve’s were BYOE, which stood for Bring Your Own Everything.) He threw himself into sermons, researching and thinking and polishing and practicing. “I was able to pour energy into the church in ways that it would be wrong for a married man to do.”įor example, he spent lots of time with his church members, eating meals at their houses or having them over for pizza. “There are advantages to being single in the ministry, and I worked those to the max,” he said. It’s not like Steve was dating every night of the week. There is no doubt I overlooked or passed on some excellent Christian women who would have been wonderful wives.” “I think that’s an unhealthy part of my story. “To my shame, that caused me not to think too seriously about commitment,” Steve said. At the same time, congregants began trying to set him up with their single daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and friends. The single women in his church-and in other area churches-were attracted to that. When Bethel called Steve as pastor in 1997, he was not only a committed Christian but stood up in front of 500 members every week and displayed this commitment. ![]() Steve in his single days / Courtesy of the DeWitts “That was obvious after spending a few minutes with him.” “But we could clearly see he was dedicated and loved the Lord,” Kelly said. “We wondered how he was going to teach us about marriage,” he said. Kurt Hand, who is about Steve’s age, was already attending Bethel Church with his wife, Kelly, when Steve arrived. But by the time he became the senior pastor at Bethel Church in Crown Point, he was still single at 29. When Steve was a 25-year-old single youth pastor, nobody at College Park Church in Indianapolis thought he was weird. Steve DeWitt was looking for someone like that-and on paper, the odds were in his favor. meaningfully practicing Christian piety,” researcher Lyman Stone wrote. Only about 12 percent of eligible Christian men and 18 percent of their female counterparts are serious about their faith, believing “basic Christian teachings and. But if you’re looking for an eligible young Christian, it’s a little trickier. Today, women make up 55 percent of American evangelical Protestants. In the 1700s, Puritan preacher Cotton Mather complained that “in a Church of three or four hundred Communicants, there are but a few more than one hundred Men, all the rest are Women.” The ratio of Christian men to women has been disproportionate ever since the days of the early church, when women likely made up about two-thirds of the believers. That’s because there always seemed to be possibilities. ![]() Steve was “a hopeful dater but didn’t feel any pressure about it,” he said. He dated through his years at Cornerstone University and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, then through his pastoral internship and his handful of years as a youth pastor. He was serious about his faith, about responsible dating, and about going into the ministry. “Beginning at age 18, I prayed for my future wife nearly every week,” he said. “It was like summer camp, with all these Christian girls walking around,” Steve said. ![]() His junior year, his parents switched him to a Christian high school. Steve was theologically solid, a gifted speaker, and popular in his growing congregation.Īnd he wasn’t avoiding the search. He told them anyway, to shouts, claps, and whistles: “This is my last sermon as a single man.”īethel members knew Steve had been looking for a wife-in fact, many of them had been looking on his behalf. ![]()
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