#67: Where the Gospel Meets Dating

#67: Where the Gospel Meets Dating

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Hey guys, it’s Jesse. Listen, it is the end of the year, and for many nonprofits just like ours, what happens over the next several weeks really decides what we can do in the year to come. So here’s the deal. If you have benefited in any way from this podcast or if you appreciate the work that we’re doing, if you want us to continue, we really need your support. We depend on listeners like you to make this happen. Whether that’s a small gift, whether that’s a large gift, we really need you. We need your help. And we would be so grateful for your compassionate and generous gift. In order to support us, you can just head over to lovethyneighborhood.org/donate. It’s an extremely simple process. It does not take much time at all. So if you’re listening to this and you think, “Well, I can only give five bucks, that’s not gonna make a difference,” it would make a difference. So please head over to lovethyneighborhood.org/donate. We would be so grateful for anything that you give.

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AUDIO CLIPS: Love Thy Neighborhood… Discipleship and missions for modern times.

ANNA TRAN: Hey listeners, before we get started, a quick warning – this episode contains some mature content related to sex. Just heads up if you have sensitive ears around. Okay, onto the episode. 

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ANNA TRAN: Hey, Jesse. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Hey. 

ANNA TRAN: I have a dating story for you. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay. From who?

ANNA TRAN: Okay, wait, hang on. 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: Kristen Cragg. That’s my alter ego. 

ANNA TRAN: Ooh, wow. 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: That’s not my name.

ANNA TRAN: Do you use that for dating profiles? 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: (laughter) No, that’d be really funny though.

JESSE EUBANKS: (laughs) Okay, so Kirsten Cragg? 

ANNA TRAN: Yep. 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: My name is Kirsten Cragg.

JESSE EUBANKS: For our listeners, Kirsten is on staff here at Love Thy Neighborhood. You probably hear her a lot doing commercials on the show. 

ANNA TRAN: Yep. And a couple weeks ago, I sat down with her and asked her, “Hey, tell me your best dating story.” So, we sat down in the studio. 

How many dates have you been on, like, in this past year? 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: (laugh) I would say somewhere between 10 and 12. 

ANNA TRAN: So that’s a lot of dates, and the dates that Kirsten went on ended up being mainly first dates. They didn’t really end up moving on to a second date, many of them as a result of dating apps.

KIRSTEN CRAGG: Elijah, Jacob, Caleb, Christian, Cameron, Andrew, Anthony, Darren – which was a funny name, that is a little bit different – Daniel. There are two Bretts – both of them redheads. Michael. There was a Michael – my friends call him Roadhouse Mike. (laugh) Oh, I forgot Mitchell. He was one. 

ANNA TRAN: Mitchell. 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: Mitchell. One thing to know about Mitchell is Mitchell’s a car guy. Before the date, he was like, “Yeah, people only tell me that I talk about cars, okay?” 

ANNA TRAN: Huh-huh. So Kirsten and Mitchell – they had matched on a dating app multiple times, but it really never led to anything actually in person. But then one day she decides, “Hey, let’s meet this guy in real life.”

KIRSTEN CRAGG: I really am just curious about Mitchell at this point. So I’m like, “I don’t even think that this is gonna lead to a second date, but free pizza and I’ll get to finally figure out this Mitchell guy.” Always in the back of my head with every, I think, match that I make on, on a dating app, I’m like, “This could be the one, and I don’t wanna, like, miss this opportunity,” y’know.

ANNA TRAN: So Kirsten meets Mitchell for pizza. He talks a lot about cars, a lot about himself, and not much else really. 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: He was not asking me anything about myself. So, you know, conversation is like wrapping to a close. It’s not great. It’s not terrible either. This is kind of what I expected. But then he’s like, “Okay, so you know you have to ride in my car now.” And I was like, “What?” And he was like, “Yeah, let me drive you around.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Wait, why is he pushing so hard? Like what’s the deal about his car? 

ANNA TRAN: Exactly. That’s what Kirsten is wondering, like, “Why is he so insistent about taking me out in his car?” And so in her head she’s thinking, “Maybe this will be quick, he’ll just drive me around the block a couple times.” You know, she’s thinking up some excuses, and then eventually she’s like –

KIRSTEN CRAGG: “We’re not really vibing, but like whatever.” So I get in the car.

ANNA TRAN: They start driving, but then Mitchell starts doing some weird things where he’s slamming on the brakes super hard and super suddenly.

KIRSTEN CRAGG: He’s, like, brake checking me essentially and so I’m, like, jolting forward in my seat and he’s like, “Stop doing that.” And he was getting like frustrated at me for like flying forward in my seat ’cause he was brake checking me, and I was like, “Dude, like you’re literally doing this.”

ANNA TRAN: And Kirsten said, you know, he’s gunning the gas pedal so that the car will make these super loud engine noises, and they’re on, like, neighborhood roads too. So, needless to say, Kirsten was feeling pretty concerned.

KIRSTEN CRAGG: And he’s driving very recklessly. And I wanna get out of the car, but I really can’t. 

ANNA TRAN: Okay, so this car – it’s a stick shift. So at some point Mitchell turns to Kirsten and says –

KIRSTEN CRAGG: “Okay, when I tell you, you’re gonna shift gears for me.” And I was like, “You know what, no thank you. I’m really okay.” 

ANNA TRAN: And like the windows are down, so it’s like super windy. It’s like loud. And Mitchell keeps insisting. 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: And I’m like, “No, I don’t – ” And he was like, “No, you’re gonna do it when I tell you to.” And I was like, “You know, I really don’t want to.” And then he’s like, “Okay, do it.” And so I like literally, like, had to like shift gears, and he just, like, laughed it off or whatever. We drive back to where my car is and he like drops me off and he is like, “Oh, this was really nice.” And I was like, “Okay.” (laughter)

JESSE EUBANKS: Please tell me that that is the end of the date. 

ANNA TRAN: It is the end of the date. But then Kirsten gets back in her car, she goes home… 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: This is what just makes me laugh about Mitchell. You know, we go our separate ways.

ANNA TRAN: And at this point, you know, Kirsten’s already made up her mind – there’s not gonna be a second date. She doesn’t wanna go out with Mitchell again. And then her phone beeps and she reads his text and it says –

KIRSTEN CRAGG: “Yeah, so I had a really good time today.” And he was like, “I could definitely tell you were into me. (laugh) I’m really into you too. Like, I wanna take things slow. Like when should we go out again?” And I was like, “Are you kidding me, Mitchell?” (laughter) I was like, “Read the room, dude.” 

ANNA TRAN: You know, and since then, Kirsten and Mitchell have obviously gone their separate ways. 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: Maybe he found somebody, you know? I hope so. I hope she likes cars. (laughter) I hope she likes cars.

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JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks. 

ANNA TRAN: I’m Anna Tran. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Today’s episode – “Where the Gospel Meets Dating.” And since this topic is so broad, there are some aspects and angles that we just will not have time to cover. 

ANNA TRAN: Yep. But the questions we will be looking at are – why do we date, where do we get our ideas of dating from, and how can our faith help us date well? Whether you’re single, already married, or not even interested in dating, I think there’s something in this episode even for you. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so it is no secret that our culture is fascinated with dating, right? 

ANNA TRAN: Right. Like there are so many reality TV shows about dating.

AUDIO CLIPS: Is love truly… Next stop, Love Island. 

ANNA TRAN: There are so many blog posts, Instagram accounts, coaching services, all dedicated to giving dating advice. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and it makes sense. You know, why in the world do we have, like, all of these dating shows and romcoms and songs about romance? And I think at the heart of it all, at some level, we all come into the world looking for someone looking for us, and one of the ways that we try to fill this longing is through marriage. And the Bible’s clear – marriage is a good thing. So Proverbs 18:22 says, “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.” And we read this and we go, “Yeah, finding a wife, finding a spouse, sounds like a great thing.” And clearly the Bible is saying God favors it and favors us when he gives us that gift. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. And also in Proverbs 31, it affirms the characteristics of, you know, what a good wife could be – “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: And so of course, somebody who’s single reads those verses and thinks like, “I would like some of that good life. I’m gonna go out there, and I’m going to pursue it.” But of course, that pursuit looks different in every era and every culture. And so these days it looks a lot like –

ANNA TRAN: Online dating, dating apps.

JESSE EUBANKS: Hookup culture, going to bars.

ANNA TRAN: Blind dates.

JESSE EUBANKS: Speed dating.

ANNA TRAN: Picking up people at nightclubs.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you know, there was this study from Stanford University that found that young adults between ages 18 and 25 wanna be married actually in their early twenties, meaning the demographic that they are interviewing wanted to be married at the time that they were being interviewed, but the reality is that more and more people are actually getting married for the first time in their late twenties.

ANNA TRAN: Right, and there are reasons for that phenomenon that we won’t get to in this episode. If you’re interested in the topic, we explored that in a previous episode that we produced – “Where the Gospel Meets Emerging Adulthood.” However, all this talk about dating actually makes me think of this woman. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: Hannah Ruegsegger. I’m 31.

ANNA TRAN: So this is Hannah. She is super lovely. Right now, you know, she has bright orange hair that matches her car, and in the past her hair has been all different types of fun hair colors. She has a really cool style, an eclectic bohemian look. All that to say, you know, she’s just a fun, lively woman. And so for Hannah, in her early twenties, she didn’t really date at all. You know, there were times where she was interested in one or two guys, but as a whole, she was more focused on friendships, faith, and school. It wasn’t until her late twenties when she started actually having an interest to date.

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: It was like I knew two things – you had to date to marry and to marry you had to date. But, like, what does that even mean? What does it look like? 

ANNA TRAN: And at this point, Hannah is around 27. And from Hannah’s perspective, in order for her to date, she needs to wait for a guy to ask her out. And one day, it actually happens. At church, a guy comes up to her, gives her his business card, and asks her out for coffee.

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: Which is kind of great because it was like, even though we met in person, I now, you know, knew his full name. I knew what he did. I could go creep on him on social media. (laughs) So it was like a, uh, real time version of, like, what you would get on a dating app, right?

ANNA TRAN: And over the next two weeks, things are moving along quickly. You know, they went on more dates, and Hannah’s feeling really excited. And remember, you know, she’s around 27 and only recently has started even wanting to date at all.

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: You know, I met this guy at church. He initiated kind of in the way that I would want him to. Very charismatic, very kind, you know, gentleman, you know.

ANNA TRAN: You know, she met his friends. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: He met my friends too. Very quickly he kind of became a part of life than people in my life, which to me, in my mind, was like, “Oh, this is a big deal. You know, I’m sharing you with my parents.” 

ANNA TRAN: So two weeks pass and then Hannah said that things just started to slow down and one day he texts her to meet up for coffee. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: And we took a walk, and he was just like, “Hey, yeah, you know, I’ve just been thinking about it and I think, like, the chemistry’s off and, um, it just doesn’t seem like, you know, it’s the right fit.”

JESSE EUBANKS: Ah, that’s like the impending doom, like when things are going so well and you can feel the chemistry start to unravel and then –

ANNA TRAN: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: – ahh, he’s breaking up with her. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, it’s like a slow downward slope. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: For me, it was so out of the blue ’cause I thought things were going so well.

ANNA TRAN: And, you know, the guy offered give her time to think and talk about it later. It was just a lot for Hannah to take in all at once. In her head she’s just thinking –

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: “I thought you were attracted to me. I was attracted to you.” And the only reason why I thought that was like, you know, holding hands, putting his arm around me. 

ANNA TRAN: And then by the end of the conversation, you know, he tells her, “Hey, maybe we could still be friends.”

JESSE EUBANKS: No, no, no. That, that’s a foul play. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Don’t pull the old “let’s just be friends” maneuver. 

ANNA TRAN: And in the weeks to follow, Hannah tries reaching out a few times.

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: And eventually it was just that he wouldn’t respond back to me.

ANNA TRAN: And so she just stopped trying. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Gosh, I just remember so clearly, like, you know, when I was younger, like, going through these sorts of things, like it’s, like, confounding when you’re like, “I thought all the signs were pointed to this great thing.” And it’s horrible.

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, it was. And she took some time to process that. She really tried to not let it get her down. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: In my head, it was like, “There’s more guys out here than just him.” (laughs)

ANNA TRAN: But the way Hannah was most comfortable with dating was having a guy ask her out. But the problem was guys were not asking her out, and it’s not like she didn’t have any contact with male friends.

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: We just never ran in the same circles. I had visual interest, right? Like I thought they were cute.

ANNA TRAN: But a lot of times, even when you put yourself in a good situation to be asked out, there’s always a chance it, it just doesn’t happen. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: You know, I was in a good church, I was in community groups, and it was like I wasn’t meeting anyone where I was like, I thought, you know, these would be the places that I would.

JESSE EUBANKS: So what did she decide to do? 

ANNA TRAN: Well, Hannah decides to take a different approach, and a lot of listeners may be familiar with these. She decides to try out dating apps. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: I was totally against them. (laughs) I was like, “No, there’s no way. I want it to be natural and organic.”

ANNA TRAN: But since natural and organic was not working, she decides, “Hey, let me give these apps a try.” So she downloads a couple apps and fills out her profile. You know, there are spots for your spiritual beliefs, if you were ever divorced, widowed, your age, your height. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: You can put if you smoke weed or not, if you have kids, if you don’t, if you want them. 

ANNA TRAN: All sorts of things. So she matched with some guys. They would talk and message on the app. But a lot of the dates would end up just being kind of like a once and done type of deal. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: Like we went for dinner, conversations seemed good, but then, you know, you don’t end up going on a second date. 

ANNA TRAN: And of course, there were other guys who were on the app for just one thing – sex. And for Hannah, that was a boundary. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: It was pretty frequent where once the guy kind of found out that that wasn’t what I was on there for that would end it for him. 

ANNA TRAN: And a lot of the guys who were only interested in sex – Hannah said they actually described themselves as Christian in their profiles. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: Man, I thought when people say they’re Christians, certain things followed, and that wasn’t what my experience was.

ANNA TRAN: But sometimes she found a good match and they would get past that one and done phase into more of a long-term, kind of like talking relationship.

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: I had started dating a guy from Nashville, and we were talking for, like, five or six months. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, and so they’re talking to each other more frequently. It seems to be turning into, like, a real relationship. But the weird thing is that every time they would try to get together in person, they would have some sort of miscommunication.

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: It would be like I would text him and wonder if he was coming up to see me or not and I wouldn’t hear from him until the weekend was over. I was like, “Oh, okay. I guess you’re not coming up because I never heard from you.”

ANNA TRAN: And so at one point, Hannah is trying to figure out time to visit him in Nashville. A few days earlier, they had just talked on the phone about aspects of their relationship. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: Almost like bullet-pointed of like, “Okay, we, we feel like there’s about three things going on that we need to talk about.” And we did, aired everything out I felt like, and, um, things felt really good. 

ANNA TRAN: Saturday rolls around. Hannah’s really excited. She’s going to meet him for the first time. She puts on extra cute clothes. She does her hair, gets her makeup on. She’s nervous, but also really excited. So, she jumps in the car and starts driving to Nashville.

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: Saturday I didn’t hear from him, but at that point was kind of expected, like I would, sometimes I wouldn’t. I texted him and said that I was heading down, and it didn’t deliver. 

ANNA TRAN: You know, Hannah’s thinking, “He told me he was going to this event. Maybe he’s in a building where the service is just bad.” 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: “Like maybe he’s, you know, busy.” 

ANNA TRAN: So Hannah keeps driving. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: Yeah, I was maybe an hour, hour and a half away from Nashville and I found out that he blocked me from Snapchat and Instagram and phone and everything and I had no idea why.

ANNA TRAN: So Hannah, she immediately calls her friend and was like –

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: “What do I do?” And she was like, “Honestly, I would just turn around and go home. If you go and try and wait for him to text you or something like that, I feel like you’re just gonna be a mess,” which I think was the best advice that she could have given me. So I turned around and went back.

JESSE EUBANKS: And to be honest, like it makes me pretty angry for him to, like, not just ghost her, which is horrible enough – 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. 

JESSE EUBANKS: – but then to, like, actively block her when they just spoke two days earlier. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, and she’s like driving over two hours to see this guy. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, like there is a way to handle not wanting to see someone, but like this is not the way to do it. When we have an issue to deal with, we just need to actually communicate to the person.

ANNA TRAN: And so this was the start of a little bit of cynicism for Hannah. A week goes by, she has some time to process it, but Hannah – she’s just so hopeful. She actually just picks herself up and gets back on the dating apps.

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: “Okay, that was a shut door, done, completely over. You know, we’re starting something fresh.”

ANNA TRAN: And so Hannah got back on some of the apps. None of the matches ever pan out. So she gets to a point where she just deletes them all.

JESSE EUBANKS: Gosh, like modern dating, like what a discouraging experience. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, and I just feel like that it’s really hard to keep hoping after being in that cycle for so long. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Gosh, and you have to wonder too, like – why do we subject ourselves to this process? Sure, you know, the possibility of what you’re gonna gain is huge, but like the risk is so big. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. Well, for Hannah, wanting to be married is much deeper than just trying to find a happy ending. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: Well, I appreciate when people are like, “Marriage is hard. It’s not as easy and great as people say.” And I’m like, “Is it weird to want that kind of hard though?” And that longing I think of like – ooh, getting emotional. What? (laughs) – um, longing I think for like that depth, that lifelong companion with a bond that’s so deep on all intimate levels.

JESSE EUBANKS: You know, this may sound silly, but in the TV show Friends, there’s this scene where Phoebe is talking about how lobsters mate for life and she goes on to describe Rachel as Ross’s lobster. 

AUDIO CLIP: He’s her lobster.

JESSE EUBANKS: The person that he will be with for the rest of his life. And I think about like this desire, this longing for us to have connection with somebody who wants us. Like that is a desire given to us by God. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, our obsession with dating doesn’t come from nowhere. I think there’s, you know, an eternal longing for love and acceptance, and so we try to figure out how to get that in all sorts of ways, which, you know, it makes me wonder – how are people trying to find love, what methods are they using, and is there even like a Christianly way to do it?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, these are really good questions, you know, because there are – there are so many ways that people are trying to find that special someone, and sometimes like when the traditional approach doesn’t seem to work, people decide to do something a bit less conventional or in some cases way less conventional. And the results can be pretty fascinating. So, coming up – the story of a former male stripper learning how to date in the church. 

ANNA TRAN: Wait, hold on. What? 

JESSE EUBANKS: We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Jesse Eubanks. 

ANNA TRAN: Anna Tran. Today’s episode – “Where the Gospel Meets Dating.” We just heard a story from a woman in her late twenties adventuring through the wild, wild west of dating apps in her search for love. The results were mixed at best. 

JESSE EUBANKS: It did not make guys look very good. 

ANNA TRAN: Nah. So the questions on the table now are – what happens when we try to find love using our own methods, and what happens when we try to change course and do it God’s way? Is that like even possible? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, there’s an old saying – “Love makes you do things you wouldn’t have imagined doing.” I think that we could amend that to say – “The pursuit of love makes you do things you wouldn’t have imagined doing.” And that actually brings us to this guy.

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: Travis. And that’s my name. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay. Hold on, hold on. Let me do this, uh, dating show style. 

ANNA TRAN: Okay. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, here we go. This is Travis. Travis is in his early thirties. He enjoys hiking, dancing, and exercise. Travis’s two greatest loves are God and going on adventures with his friends. If you’re looking for a companion to join you on the journey of life, Travis just might be your one true love. How’s that? 

ANNA TRAN: That was actually kinda nice. Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so Travis lives out west and he’s actually on staff at a church, but he can remember even as a kid dreaming about finding a wife, a special someone to share his life with.

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: From a young age, I kind of – I was a hopeless romantic, of course.

JESSE EUBANKS: But Travis was also a bit of an insecure kid. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I found my value in wanting to chase a girl. I never thought I could. 

JESSE EUBANKS: He had a fear that no one would ever want him or that he wouldn’t be appealing enough to ever attract someone. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: So I started seeking more validation from women.

JESSE EUBANKS: But then he goes off to college and one night he runs into this girl that he knew from high school and actually it was this girl that he had had a crush on. One thing leads to another, and they end up having sex. Travis is like really into this girl and she seems into him, so he pursues her and tries to date her, but – 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I tried. She didn’t want anything from me necessarily beyond validation probably as well. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And so this experience – it actually made his insecurity even worse. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I think that led me to just work really hard to put on a male – worldly male – image. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And this results in Travis going on a whole bunch of dates as a college student, but over and over the dates never really turned into any long-term relationships. So the cycle would just go, “feel lonely, go on some dates, have a good time, end up alone, repeat,” and this cycle really just wore down on him. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: It was just, it was a lot. You know, I, I started just down a really long, dark path.

JESSE EUBANKS: And so Travis found himself feeling rejected and insecure and still just longing to find a girl who would love him, and he was starting to feel pretty desperate. And out of this desperation is actually when his story takes a pretty unconventional turn. 

ANNA TRAN: Okay, I’m with you. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So Travis is getting to the end of college, and as all college students do, he’s trying to figure out – “What am I gonna do with my life after I graduate?” 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: As I was graduating, I got an offer from one of the other girls who was graduating. She was telling me how she was gonna start choreographing this show, and she said, “Would I be interested in being in a male review?” And I’m like, “What’s that?”

JESSE EUBANKS: But when he asked for more details about the job, it’s not what he was expecting. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: And she goes, “Go watch Magic Mike, and, and get back to me.”

ANNA TRAN: Magic Mike? You mean like the movie about male strippers? 

JESSE EUBANKS: (laughs) Yeah. So Travis goes home, he watches Magic Mike, and then –

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: And then that night I’m like – I texted her – I’m like, “I could, I think I could do that.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: And here’s the deal, like he refers to himself at this point in life as a male stripper. That’s his own language. So he becomes part of this group and he quickly finds himself immersed in a new world and, like, he’s not just, like, on the outskirts – he jumps in head first.

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I ended up like kind of leading the show, managing that alongside burlesque dancers, DJs, go-go dancers, just like the whole thing. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And having all that attention from women every night not only made him feel less insecure, but he also thought –

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I thought it was like a gateway to meet women, to hopefully find one and get out of it and start a family and live happily ever after kind of thing.

ANNA TRAN: Oh, so he thinks that if he could just find, you know, the right woman, he can, you know, finally be loved and fulfilled. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, I think we’ve all believed this at some point in time, but I would have to say that this is a pretty interesting way to find love.

JESSE EUBANKS: (laughs) I, I know, I know. But it’s such an attractive illusion to believe that if we could just find the right romantic partner our aches and wounds would disappear, but like that’s just not true. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, for sure. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So, here’s something worth noting. While Travis wasn’t a Christian throughout college, during his first year of working as a dancer, he begins to sense God pursuing him and wanting a relationship with him. He even starts going to church a little bit. And as part of that experience, Travis begins to feel more and more conviction that something about his life isn’t right. And so at one point he actually decides he’s gonna stop dancing. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I got out and I thought it was gonna be done and then the flesh hits strong and God in his patience let me, like, have the roughest sanctification walk in the beginning. (laughs)

JESSE EUBANKS: So a whole bunch of things happen in Travis’s life over the next few years. At this point, he’s in his mid-twenties. He travels a bunch as a dancer. He parties a ton. He gets really sick. He has to move back to his hometown. He becomes a bouncer. He starts taking steroids. And this whole time he keeps chasing women, but the other thing he keeps doing this whole time is going to church. 

ANNA TRAN: For real?

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: You know, I’d sleep around or whatever, but I was also like, “Hey, we should go to church. Let’s go to church and like hear about God together and like just find this order in our lives.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: So, like, he’s trying to have it both ways – you know, one foot in the party scene and one foot in the church. Eventually though, he reaches this breaking point. So the story is a little bit chaotic, but essentially Travis is getting towards the end of his twenties, he’s been in this on-again, off-again relationship with a woman. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I think her and I were both kind of hopeless romantics and, um, so we started dating and she had a, this six month old that I was trying really quickly to become like his dad figure.

JESSE EUBANKS: Travis really loved the idea of being a father figure. He really wanted their relationship to work. So one night, they’re at a bar hanging out. Their status as a couple at this point is a bit vague, but the evening is going really well. So Travis thinks all signs are pointing to them making things official and even going home together. So Travis calls an Uber, assuming that he’s going to go home with her. He walks outside, he starts to get in the Uber, but when he motions for her to come and get in, she begins walking away. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: She goes, “No, I’m going home.” And she points at the ex’s house that she was recently just broken up with. And I’m just like, “What?” My ego was just shot.

JESSE EUBANKS: Travis decides he can’t do this anymore. He’s hit rock bottom. So the next day he wakes up feeling dejected, but he decides to go to church anyway. So after the service, he approaches a pastor, he tells the pastor his story, and decides then and there that his plan for his life isn’t working. He hasn’t found a wife. His insecurity hasn’t gone away. He actually feels more alone and more confused than ever. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: “Hey, can you guys set me up with a, like a, a group, community group of like older men? I just want to like shut up and listen and just learn what it looks like to walk in obedience and in like spiritual maturity.”

JESSE EUBANKS: And as part of this decision to try to change his approach to life, Travis also decides not to date for a year. Instead, he just wants to learn and focus on growing in other areas of life. And so that’s what he does. He spends his time meeting with other men, studying the Bible, praying, trying to learn a new way of doing things. And throughout the year, he still feels a really strong yearning for marriage. So, at the end of the year, he decides it’s time to re-enter the dating scene, but this time he’s going to do it God’s way. His goal is simple – he wants to find his wife and do it in a godly way. But pretty much immediately things do not go according to plan. He goes on a few dates with one woman from church, but the chemistry feels off and he panics.

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I, I just kind of, like, ghosted. 

JESSE EUBANKS: His values don’t line up with others. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I wanna lead a church someday. And they’re like, “Cool, well, I wanna go have these other ambitions.” So, okay, that’s out.

JESSE EUBANKS: He goes on a date with one woman, but he doesn’t like her weekend activities. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: “Yeah, I love Jesus, but I go to Burning Man.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Burning Man is a controversial art festival that often involves nudity, sex, and drug use.

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I know there’s a lot of people who call themselves Christians who will justify that. You’re talking to a guy who was a stripper who would then put a cross on and try to evangelize after the shows. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And remember – the whole time he’s trying to figure out how to do all of this differently than he’s done in the past. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: Um, this is like some confusing new water, I think for me, because I was learning at the same time what it looked like to walk in Christianity and respect women and, um, meanwhile respect myself and just trying to walk this line.

JESSE EUBANKS: So, Travis backs off. He takes time off from dating. Eventually he tries again. And every time he tries just to do it a little bit better than before, but it’s never quite right. It’s like he can’t crack the code of what makes dating work. And so today, Travis is in his early thirties, and the truth is that all of this back and forth that he’s been going through over the last decade – it can become really tiring and discouraging for him.

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: It just stunk because I was trying so hard and it seems like every time it was, it would always lead to almost becoming more afraid to just date at all. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And of course, all this effort constantly being followed by rejection – it often resulted in Travis feeling even more alone.

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: That loneliness hits hard, and when it does, it just kind of shakes you up and you’re trying to hold on to like, “God, my truth and my value is in you and you alone and I know you love me and you’re here with me and I don’t have to be alone.” But then you’re like, “But I wanna hold on to somebody.” And I – you know?

JESSE EUBANKS: And I think that we can forget sometimes that for a lot of us, what we want is just what Travis said – we wanna come home to someone to hold and hold on to us, to accept us. You know, at our core, we long for deep relational connection, for intimacy. You know, just to add to all of this complexity and tension, I think there’s another layer that we need to take a look at as well.

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I think you’re faced with not wanting to sin, not wanting to give into the sin that comes along with being a male and/or female, and knowing what it feels like to have sex before.

JESSE EUBANKS: Remember, in Travis’s past, dating and sex were synonymous with each other, and now he’s trying to date in a way that takes sex off the table because he wants to honor God and do it God’s way. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, Travis has really changed the way he’s dated from his past. And once he became a Christian, one would think that dating would get easier, but it actually sounds like it got a lot harder for him.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you know, he really is still just trying to figure this stuff out, you know, ’cause now he has to wrestle with things like how to experience loneliness and not use sex to fill that void, answer questions like, “What do you do when you have the desire to be married but it seems that God has closed so many of those doors?”

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: Right now I’m kind of in this wrestling mode of like – are we called to wait, or are we called to actively pursue? 

JESSE EUBANKS: And that’s a question that so many people wrestle with. Do you choose patience, or do you choose pursuit? Is there one right way for Christians to pursue dating and marriage? 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. Like we said earlier, the Bible doesn’t have actual examples of modern dating, but there is a wealth of wisdom that we can apply. So, after the break, we’re gonna explore how Christians have tried to date in the past and how we can date God’s way. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Jesse Eubanks. 

ANNA TRAN: Anna Tran. Today’s episode – “Where the Gospel Meets Dating.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: So we just heard a story from Travis Echevarria. Travis was learning to navigate dating as a Christian after leaving a lifestyle of hookups and seeking validation from women. And, Anna, we left off with this question – is there one right way for Christians to date? 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, that’s a great question. Since we’re specifically talking about marriage-seeking, I think it’s gonna be helpful to take a quick look at four popular methods Christians have used to find a marriage partner. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Alright, cue the romantic montage music.

ANNA TRAN: Method number one – arranged marriages, meaning a marriage planned and agreed to by the families or guardians of the bride and groom. The couple usually doesn’t have much say in the decision, and this is actually still practiced in lots of modern cultures today – in Asia, the Middle East, parts of Africa. And Christians probably notice that this often takes place in the Old Testament.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, like I know that it’s really frowned upon in a lot of Western cultures today, but the reality is is that tons of Christians have used this process for thousands of years. I am not a fan for a variety of reasons, but it does happen.

ANNA TRAN: Yep. And eventually an additional element was added to arranged marriages to allow the couple to meet a few times before the ceremony and get to know each other a little bit. And that actually brings us to method number two – courtship. This is a time period in where two people with romantic interests formally get to know each other with the intention of marriage. And in Western culture, courtship started coming into fashion in the 1700s. And in courtship, while the couple had some time alone, the family still tended to be highly involved and oversaw the process leading up to marriage. In courtship, the intention is clear that the couple’s goal is to get married.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so, so far we’ve got, uh, arranged marriage, courtship. Okay. What’s the next method? 

ANNA TRAN: Method number three – dating. Dating comes onto the scene in the early 1900s, and actually something interesting is that it was originally a slang term for the word “prostitution.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, so you could probably imagine it didn’t have very favorable attitudes towards dating, and it’s more like in addition to courtship where there are multiple potential partners added to the equation and it was intended to be less formal and it allowed the couple themselves to make the decisions about their future with a lot less authoritative involvement from the family.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so like if arranged marriages gave the couple almost no say regarding who they marry, then dating was actually intended to give the couple all of the say.

ANNA TRAN: Yeah. Unlike courtship, when the goal is to get married – dating can have that goal, but it can also not have that goal. Okay, so I feel like we need to talk about one last category. While the first three can be explicitly Christian approaches, this last one isn’t so much a Christian approach, but it is an approach some Christians are using, and so this category is hookups. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Hold, hold on. What do you mean when you say hookups?

ANNA TRAN: I mean, I’ve heard a bunch of different definitions. I think for a lot of people, hookups basically means any type of, you know, casual sexual encounter. Sometimes it involves actual sex, or sometimes it’s just like making out. I’ve also heard it explained more specifically as a one night stand. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so some kind of sexual encounter, but there is no commitment to a relationship together. 

ANNA TRAN: Right. Now, thinking about present-day Christian culture, we’ve kind of gotten stuck between what it looks like to have Godly ways of courting and dating.

JESSE EUBANKS: Wait, what do you mean gotten stuck? 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, since the early 1900s, Christians have kind of see-sawed back and forth between courting and dating, trying to land on whether one is better than the other. Here’s some examples of that in the U.S. Let’s begin in the 1950s. Imagine you’re at the retro drive-in theaters. Y’know, the guys and the girls are going steady. And while plenty of people were dating, there were also others that were advocating for courtship, like theologian John C. Wenger. He wrote a short book called Clear Thinking About Courtship. 

AUDIO CLIP: You cannot prepare for a happy marriage on the basis of insincerity or deception.

ANNA TRAN: Fast forward to the 1980s. So between the ’50s and ’80s, a lot happens – the sexual revolution, women are gaining a lot more independence, divorce rates are on the rise. And so Christians are just grappling with – what does the family look like? And at the same time, self-help books are on the rise. And so we have things like Scott Kirby’s Dating: Guidelines from the Bible, Greg Laurie’s God’s Design for Christian Dating.

AUDIO CLIP: Here’s the problem – people aren’t doing it God’s way. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, okay. Hold on. So now we’re into the 1990s, like that’s my neck of the woods. 

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, you should take this one. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so you’ve got the rise of single parent households, you’ve got culture wars going on, there’s the aftermath of the AIDS crisis, you’ve got purity culture on the rise. And in the midst of all of this, parents are really worried that they’re raising kids who are not going to have any idea how to ever build a godly marriage. You get things like When God Writes Your Love Story or Joshua Harris’s I Kissed Dating Goodbye. 

AUDIO CLIP: Or are you pursuing a relationship when you know the timing is wrong…

ANNA TRAN: And then today you find pastors, podcasters, YouTubers all having different approaches and opinions, emphasizing either dating or courtship or sometimes using the term synonymously. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so while the Bible does outline what a godly mate looks like, at the end of the day it looks like the method and the process of finding a spouse does and has changed throughout the years and it can be different between different cultures.

ANNA TRAN: Right. And so at this point, I think it’s, you know, time to tell a little story about two people who dated perfectly, got married, and lived happily ever after – or, we could do something a little bit different. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, we can’t promise a, like, clean, straightforward answer, but what we can offer is wisdom. And wisdom is different from rules and laws that only tell you “do this” and “don’t do that.” Instead, wisdom is accumulated insights that come from time and experience. 

ANNA TRAN: Right, and to help us process how to date with wisdom and discernment, I talked with someone who gets a lot of questions about dating. 

CALEB HUTCHCRAFT: So my name is Caleb Hutchcraft. I am the ministry leader for our college ministry at our church in Louisville, Kentucky.

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, yeah. He’s, like, living in ground zero of the dating world.

ANNA TRAN: For sure. And what you’re going to hear from Caleb are insights that he’s gained through time and experience – so essentially pieces of wisdom. And often when students come to Caleb for dating advice, they tend to want a clear yes or no answer about precisely who they should date and precisely how they should date. And instead of giving them a one-word answer, Caleb encourages this. 

CALEB HUTCHCRAFT: God gave you a mind. He gave you a life so you can grow in wisdom. So just use some of the tools that he’s gave you to know yourself, to know this person, and to ask wise, discerning questions, both of the Holy Spirit, of yourself, and of your community.

ANNA TRAN: And Caleb told me about this framework he encourages students to think through. He tells people there are three critical things you should know if you wanna date well. First, know God. Second, know yourself. And third, know who you’re looking for.

CALEB HUTCHCRAFT: So often people don’t know their Maker well, therefore they don’t know themselves well. Therefore, they’re pursuing a person who just categorically fits what they think, what they assume, is the right kind of person to pursue. So they’re actually, like, pursuing an idea rather than the kind of person who would make sense for them to be with relationally for the rest of their life. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, yeah, this totally makes sense. Like, and thinking back to Travis’s story, you know, when he wasn’t a Christian, like he used women to validate him and to make him feel better about himself. He thought that if he could win them over and convince them to go to church with him that somehow he was gonna end up happily married. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I think I ended up having more sex trying to win like these, the girls that I liked over. I think it was more of like this, “If I give into that, maybe they’ll wanna start a family, maybe they’ll wanna go to church. Maybe they’ll – ” ‘Cause like I said, I, I had this faith, but I thought that I had to, like, give in and then kind of bring them in. 

ANNA TRAN: And in addition to knowing God, yourself, and what you’re looking for in a partner, another piece of wisdom Caleb offers is to keep in mind the importance of both sacrifice and boundaries.

CALEB HUTCHCRAFT: You’re gonna have to learn to do two things radically well in any deep relationship. You’re gonna have to learn to radically give yourself over sacrificially, but you’re also gonna have to learn how to radically stand up for who God made you to be. 

ANNA TRAN: And thinking about this idea of standing up for who God made you to be, it reminds me of something Kirsten realized after her date with that car guy. 

KIRSTEN CRAGG: I don’t know, looking back I’m like, “I should have stood up for myself a little bit more,” or “I should not have even entertained the idea of a date with him.” But I think that, you know, like, with dating in your twenties and especially when you’ve been single for a long time and so I feel like, you know, time’s running out, which is like so stupid because I’m 22 and I have my whole life ahead of me to do really, really wonderful and cool things. 

ANNA TRAN: And Hannah – she also talked about the importance of having healthy boundaries and not sacrificing who you are. 

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: Women – and I’ll even say men too – we can get so scared that we won’t find someone, so we’ll, you know, sacrifice a little here and sacrifice a little there till then, you know, we’re becoming a version of ourselves that isn’t true. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you know, so often I hear about Christians who in their genuine loneliness, their genuine longings, they will end up dating somebody who doesn’t truly align with their core values – and it could be core values related to vocation or hospitality or what you do with their money or whatever – but I think that the one that’s a real risk is when they date somebody who doesn’t share their deepest values, which are related to their faith. And I just think that it’s a reminder, like, God wants us to enjoy relational flourishing, but that does mean that whoever we enter into a romantic relationship with, we need to agree on some really core things. And if my faith is the deepest thing about me, I need to be able to share that with you.

ANNA TRAN: Okay, so to recap – know God, know yourself, know who you’re looking for. Be yourself, but also be willing to sacrifice. And another great principle Caleb mentions is to have emotional boundaries. A lot of times when college students come up to him, they already have their physical boundaries in place. 

CALEB HUTCHCRAFT: And, and they’ll be like, “Oh yeah, I totally know. We’re not, like, sleeping together.” And I’m like, “I’m not talking about that. You’ve got physical boundaries, which many Christian men and women, they’re, they’re for the most part clear on those.” 

ANNA TRAN: And to be clear, Caleb believes that physical boundaries are important. Caleb clarifies that it’s the emotional giving of each other that is also part of a marriage.

CALEB HUTCHCRAFT: In the sense of like, “You know me better than anyone else knows me.” And they’ll do that within months of meeting one another. You know, they’re 60 days in with this female or with this man, and they’ve, they’ve shared intimate pieces of their life that they haven’t shared with their community that they’ve been walking with for years. That’s not wise. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Like all of this reminds me of the episode we did, “Where the Gospel Meets Sex,” where we talked a whole lot about the relationship between physical intimacy and commitment and emotional intimacy. Like all of those things are combined and the importance of understanding their role. So if you’re dating somebody and you go really, really deep emotionally really fast but you don’t have these other aspects, this commitment in place, boundaries in place, it becomes very disorienting really quickly. And, you know, that is something that Travis said that he had to discover. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: I did not have boundaries. I was romantic. I’m a confident guy given my past, so like I just say whatever I want, but I found that that saying too much to women from a guy’s perspective is not being gentle with them. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And Anna, can I ask you a question?

ANNA TRAN: Sure. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Do you think that the church has sometimes painted singleness as a curse and made marriage into an idol? 

ANNA TRAN: Oh, for sure. And Caleb mentioned this in our conversation about how, you know, often the message the church sends by heavily emphasizing marriage is that marriage is of a greater status than singleness.

CALEB HUTCHCRAFT: Because marriage is kind of seen within Christian culture as being, “Oh, if you’ve attained that, then it says something about you, so we’ll now respect you to a degree that we wouldn’t a single person or we’ll assume things about you in the, in the positive realm that we wouldn’t about a single person.”

ANNA TRAN: And when people pursue that idealistic image of what marriage brings –

CALEB HUTCHCRAFT: They then pursue more of like what that may say about them than the covenantal relationship that that actually is, right? In the same sense that someone may pursue money not because money is something that they really value but because they know of what it projects externally to culture.

ANNA TRAN: And that’s the trap, right? We compromise our standards to fulfill our loneliness, or we chase status to feel important. I think we need a better view of life outside of marriage. 

CALEB HUTCHCRAFT: Singleness is not a curse. It’s actually a necessary period of life for anyone if they desire marriage. And so I think a helpful way of talking about singleness and marriage would be that they are both occupations that the Lord’s sons and daughters can walk in fully and faithfully and that you can live out your calling in both of those.

ANNA TRAN: Just in hearing all these stories, I think we really need to remember how grace factors into all of this. 

CALEB HUTCHCRAFT: For a lot of people, the process of you knowing yourself and knowing who you should probably be with, there will be some hurt and there will be mistakes and there will be – like that, that’s always going to be the case. Like God knows we’re broken, flawed people. We will fall, we will be prodigal sons and prodigal daughters. 

ANNA TRAN: And I think that knowing that there’s grace in this process, it really takes a lot of the pressure off, which is something Hannah and Travis are also learning how to do. 

TRAVIS ECHEVARRIA: And I’m also learning that, like, “slow down, be friends.” And I, I didn’t believe in that. I was like, “Oh, well if I’m attracted to you, we can’t just be friends.” I, I’ve reached this point of like, “Hey, like just, just kind of like stop expecting things and just take one step at a time.”

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: I’m 31, and this is like, you know, clicking. But I think like, I, I had to learn, “Okay, this isn’t just someone that you’re, um – oh, is this a potential husband? Oh, is this a potential husband? Potential husband? Potential husband?” Like, no, this is a human being. (laughs) So I guess that going into that, like take your time, get to know them as a person, and, um, be honest with yourself of where they’re at.

ANNA TRAN: Okay, so what do we do with all of this? In trying to take this all in, I’m left with, you know, these questions of like – how does Jesus meet us in our longing and desires? What if 10 to 20 years go by and what I’m hoping for just doesn’t come true?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, you know, I think there’s so many ways we could talk about this and, uh, and really try to like put, like, a Christian bumper sticker on the whole thing and, and make it small and easy and portable and, like, no big deal. And I think that would be a disservice because these are hard questions that we all have to wrestle with. That being said, it does make me think of the moment when Jesus is praying in the garden of Gethsemane. You know, he prays, “My father, if it’d be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” And remember, in this moment, Jesus is fully God. He knows that he will be crucified soon, but he’s still expressing his desire to God the Father in that moment. The theologians call his posture here “holy indifference.” It’s our ability to become like Jesus and state our desires to God but also be fully content with whatever he chooses to give us because we believe that whatever he gives us ultimately will be so good. And the truth is that this is really hard work. You know, so whether it’s the issue of singleness or dating or marriage or kids or career or money, how can we believe that God knows our desires and yet also be okay with however he chooses to respond to those desires?

ANNA TRAN: Yeah, there’s this, like, tension that we live in, that in this life we will always have some sort of longing. There will always be something we desire. And it makes me think of this C.S. Lewis quote that says, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yes. So if you wanna date, do it. Do it with wisdom, do it with Godly character, do it in community, but don’t put all of your hopes and dreams into finding someone. Trust that God loves you as you are and has every intention of satisfying your desires – if not in this life, then in the next. So don’t despair, be hopeful, trust God, and keep living in the tension between patience and pursuit.

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JESSE EUBANKS: If you’ve benefited at all from this podcast, please help us out by leaving a review wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. Your review will help other people discover our show.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Special thanks to our interviewees for this episode – Kirsten Cragg, Hannah Ruegsegger, Travis Echevarria, and Caleb Hutchcraft. 

ANNA TRAN: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks. 

JESSE EUBANKS: This episode was edited, mixed, produced, and written by Anna Tran, who I did catch at the grocery store yesterday pointing at a lot of the guys in there.

HANNAH RUEGSEGGER: Oh, is this a potential husband? Potential husband? 

ANNA TRAN: Editorial input from Rachel Akers, Anna Johnson, and Rachel Hamm. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere, Poddington Bear, and Blue Dot Sessions. Theme music and commercial music by Murphy DX. 

ANNA TRAN: If you want a hands-on experience of missions in our modern times, come serve with Love Thy Neighborhood. We offer internships for young adults ages 18 to 30 through the areas of service, community, and discipleship. You’ll grow in your faith and your life skills. Learn more at lovethyneighborhood.org. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, “Go, and do likewise.”