Single Mixers and Stereotypes

Post Author: Teri Peterson

I can’t bring myself to join an online dating service. It feels like shopping to me. But I also can’t quite resign myself to being single in the suburbs for all eternity. So, with a 5pm glass of wine to fortify us, a friend and I ventured to a singles event. We’d found it on meetup.com, and it seemed promising—a night of board games and trivia. At the very least, we told ourselves, we’d have a good story to tell afterward, even if we didn’t meet our soul mates.

On the way over, my friend asked what I would say when asked about my job. I (or maybe it was the wine?) decided that it would be easier to just be truthful. I’m not always—sometimes I claim to just “work for a nonprofit” and then I’m evasive about the nature of that work. But on the off chance one of these guys was interesting enough to stay in touch with, I didn’t want to explain later why I’d lied about my job the first night, and how that’s not the same thing as breaking one of the Big Ten commandments.

The first person to ask about my job was a guy at the bar during the icebreaker game. His face registered his surprise before he could stop himself. It wasn’t long before he moved on to talk to other people. Next was another woman at my table. She was surprised, but interested. At the end of the evening, another guy admitted he would not have put my profession with my personality. I don’t know whether that was supposed to be flattering or an insult—he followed up with the story of his own online ordination. All three of them said the same thing: “I’ve never heard of a woman pastor before.”

In the middle of the evening was a guy who was clearly interested in me. Rather than simply asking about my job, he took a stray comment of mine and turned it into a game of twenty questions. As he continued trying to figure me out, I became more and more fascinated with his guesses and his questions. Was I a teacher? A social worker? A therapist? A community organizer? How is it that I worked with children, teens, and adults, that I counseled and taught without a license, engaged in regular public speaking, and worked with volunteer organizations? By the time he gave up and just asked, I was relieved to finally say it and he was shocked into silence.

I suspect most of us need this reminder—I know I do—that the rest of the world outside the church not only has no idea what we do, but also can’t fathom that we do anything that matters. It never crossed this guy’s mind that all those disparate-seeming things could come together in one place or one job. At no point in the conversation did he even come close to thinking about the possibility of the church. It was so far off his radar that we may as well not exist.

I doubt I met my soul mate last week at the slightly-better-than-shopping singles mixer. I don’t doubt that I got a peek into the world’s indifference toward and ignorance about all things church. I also don’t doubt that I made the right decision to be honest about my call and my job—at the very least, it makes for an interesting evening of facial-expression-watching! It also reminds me that while I’m more than my job, that calling is a real part of me that can’t be ignored, however foreign it may be to others. I’d like to think I planted some seeds that may one day begin to break down stereotypes. The fruit those seeds may one day bear might just make it worth it to go to another event and be just as honest. Though I’d still prefer to meet someone I might want to go on a date with, today I’ll settle for a little stereotype shattering.

Teri is a pastor in the suburbs of Chicago. She doesn’t yet qualify as a crazy cat lady, but is well on the way to crazy book lady and crazy board game lady. She’s also the co-author of a forthcoming book through YCW’s imprint with Chalice Press: “Who’s Got Time: spirituality for a busy generation,” due out September 30.

Photo by Hungry Girl, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glass_of_unidentified_red_wine.jpg, July 8, 2013. Used by Creative Common License.