All The Single Ladies

How many of you have gone to a church service or event by yourself? How many of you have felt awkward about it?

Be honest now...

Having switched denominations out of religious conviction, rather than because of marriage or some kind of family feud with another congregation, I've gone to a lot of churches by myself, not to mention a good number of events at my own parish. I can't remember whether or not I've written about this before; if I have, I apologize for the broken-record phenomenon. That's the kind of thing that happens when you don't bother to update your lame blog for a few months.

Sometimes going to church services on your own isn't so bad -- or maybe even expected. When I was still Roman Catholic, I used to go to the weekday noon services at a downtown cathedral. Going alone wasn't bad: practically everyone else was there by themselves, too. And now, of course, I've gotten used to going to church alone because I do it every Sunday. I have a group of people that I sit with instead of hanging out in the pews all by myself, so that helps. I even have friends now who help me out by driving me home.

But let me tell you, going to a new congregation was really, really hard at first. The fact that it was in my hometown helped a little, and so did actually knowing one or two people who worshipped there. But it wasn't easy, sitting by myself, going home right away because there was no one to talk to at coffee hour, being new and not having any role in the new congregation.

I don't think I'm an expert at how to be 'the new guy' in a church. But I do know that it's harder to be new if you also happen to show up alone.  If you have kids, they'll make friends in Sunday school and you have an automatic 'in' with the parents of their new little friends. If you have a spouse or partner, then you have at least one person to talk to. But show up by yourself and, wow, there's no easy group for you to break into. Unless of course you go to one of those hip city churches that have large groups of young people who came by themselves. And to be honest with you, I'm not sure those places really exist. I may have made them up in my imagination.

At any rate, it's not so hard to blend in to a new congregation if you show up every week. People get used to you pretty quick, and eventually someone might ask you to sit with them. Say yes. Stay for coffee hour and try to get to know a few people: if you're lucky (which I was), most will be overly welcoming of the new person because they want you to keep coming back. Someone will usually talk to you so you don't end up standing around by yourself feeling like a loser. After the newness factor wears off, it may temporarily get harder to find people to talk with at coffee hour, but if you stick it out you'll probably end up with a few solid groups that will permanently welcome you into their conversation.

I've discovered the most difficult church events to go to alone are the ones that are themselves temporary, and made up of temporary new groups. Like ecumenical worship events where no one else from your congregation bothers to show up (has never personally happened to me), or events that bring together a scattered group of people for a specific purpose. I've been to a few of this type of event, one just this past week. These are the hardest events to go to because they aren't sparsely populated enough for everyone to gravitate together but also don't tend to reach a critical mass of attendance where people can legitimately get lost in the crowd. When everyone comes with a ready-made group, or knows a lot of other people, it can really suck to come on your own, especially if they're all relatively used to hanging out with each other and you aren't.

I thought it wouldn't be so bad because I did know some people pretty well. Unfortunately they were running the event, which effectively means that for mingling purposes I showed up alone and barely knew anyone.

The worst is when you know some people but haven't seen them in a really long time, so they say hello, and you have a little conversation, but then it's time to move on and you don't have another social group to go to but they do. Yeppers, awkward.

No wait: the worst is when you know one person talking with a small group and you try to join their conversation but they won't let you. Double-awkward for everyone.

No, no wait: the worst is when you say hello to someone you know and haven't seen in a really long time, and they're obviously and manifestly not interested in talking to you. Yep, they don't care. And then, of course, you're standing there and no one says anything, and you're thinking 'coming over here was a tactical error, how the hell can I get away.' And then you just walk away because the fact that they're not talking to you, and don't want to, is really really embarrassing. Triple awkward!!

Of course, quadruple-awkward is the moment when you realize you've exhausted all possible mini-conversations and have to either leave or stand alone at the cheeseplate feeling sorry for yourself because you couldn't convince anyone to come with you to this thing in the first place.

It's also awkward when people ask what you've been doing and you have to answer, "writing a food blog and pretending to work on my thesis that will never be finished because, frankly, I just don't have it in me." That's awkward, but not for church-related reasons.

Having experienced this, from now on I will seek out the random alone people at church events and talk to them, maybe try to suck them into my own conversational groups. I know what it's like to be that person. I think it's hard to notice them if you haven't been through it a few times yourself. If Jesus can touch the unclean and eat with sinners and save the child of the Samaritan woman, I guess I can suck it up and hang out with the loners if it ever turns out I'm in the popular group.

One really sweet woman invited me to come to another event the night after at a community I used worship with. But really, I couldn't do this to myself two days in a row: girl, alone, surrounded by people she doesn't really know but who know each other, without having drafted some poor sucker to come with her. For us single ladies, sometimes church can really suck.

Having said all that, here's my list of tips on how to deal with showing up to a medium-size mixed-group church event by yourself:

-find a nice corner chair and surround it with all the other nicest chairs in the room. When people's feet get tired and they want to sit down, they'll end up sitting around you and will have to include you in their conversation.

-own a smartphone or a phone with a full numeric keypad. If worst comes to worst you can text people, or pretend you're texting people, every time you end up standing all by yourself.

-convince a friend to call you at a certain time so that you have an out for leaving early (I'm sorry I have to go, my best friend's goldfish just asphyxiated and she needs me to come over. But I had a really lovely time, thanks for inviting me).

-bring a sock-puppet or treasured stuffed animal. That way, you'll always have someone to talk to.

-keep going back to the cheeseplatter. If you don't manage to strike up a conversation, at least you'll get to eat lots of cheese.

-fall on the floor filled with the Holy Spirit and start speaking in tongues. I guarantee they'll pay attention to you after that.