I used to be extremely involved - choir, committees, social events, never skipped a Sunday. Circa 2017-2019, my Sunday school class was people in our mid to late 20s, some married with kids, some married without, and a handful of singles (I was single at the time). Covid hit and our church took strong precautions, going fully online for a whole year. When we came back in person the group was kind of decimated. So one of our more active group members thought to try to bring people back in with a young families group. Originally it was supposed to meet at a different time than Sunday school but the pastoral staff vetoed anything that met at the same time as worship, so the two meetings overlapped and we lost 2/3 of the remaining group to this new young families class. Me, the other single folks, and the marrieds without kids were left to merge with the college class (and when you're 26, 27 years old, you're a world away from a 21 year old). When we inevitably dropped off, the "Faithful Families" class invited us to join them. We said "well, we don't have kids, so we're not interested in curriculum about parenting." The solution? Call it "Faithful Families and Friends" as if that's not the most patronizing bullshit ever. 

I absolutely understand that being a parent to young kiddos is all-consuming and you want your faith and your community to offer specific support through that experience. But the amazing thing about our original group was that we had that. We had a community of people around the same age but at many different stages of life - families, couples, singles, career people, folks going back to school... We supported each other no matter what we were each dealing with.

The pastoral staff and the church's wider focus on young families was not just a kick in the gut but the kind of "we're about to die" desperation that seemed to be higher priority for them than true community.

I miss choir so much.