- Shekainah Healing Ministries hosts an annual date night where attendees get to pick the partner they desire.
- A pastor and marriage counsellor at the Christ Embassy Randburg Church says church is the safest place to find love.
- She believes when people meet at church they follow a biblical structure of dating.
People often go to church for religious purposes and at times the love angel is present.
Some find themselves locking eyes with a potential church bae, while moruti is preaching. The question is, does love come surprisingly to you when you are seated in the house of God reading your favourite bible verse or do you go to church looking like a 10 out of 10 so that you can be noticed by a potential church bae? Maybe you found a potential bae outside of church and they insist on going to church as a date, would that inappropriate?
Pastor and marriage counselor at the Christ Embassy Randburg Church, who chose to remain anonymous, says, "church is the best place" to find love. "If you are a believer, where else will you find love?"
She explains that they encourage both young and old to find love within the church environment. The pastor believes that church is the "safest place" for people to find love because God can place you with someone likeminded.
She refers to bibliotic scriptures such as 2 Corinthians 6:14, which states: "Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?" to highlight that church believers should avoid dating outside of the church environment.
"I'm a mother I wouldn't want my child to get someone outside," she adds, highlighting how she would want to know the type of belief system the person who dates her son believes in.
However, the pastor disagrees with people going to church for the sole purpose of finding love.
"Within a short time, those things will fizzle out," she says, highlighting how relationships between people who were initially nonbelievers and came to church with the sole intention of finding love never last.
She makes an example of how teenagers within the church grow to establish relationships together. Even though they do influence and educate them from a young age to date within the church or with someone who attends a church with the same beliefs, the teenagers are still not intentionally coming to church solely to get a partner.
Pastors from the Christ Embassy Randburg Church intervene at times to bring couples together. The pastor states that if a church member approaches a pastor, asking them to speak to a fellow church member on their behalf, the pastor gladly assists. However, they do not coerce people to be together. They just find out if the fellow church member would be interested in establishing the relationship.
We asked the pastor whether there had been church members who began dating at the church and are now married and her response was, "lots and lots, lots and lots. That's a huge testimony with the church."
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Apostle Musawenkosi Joshua Mohlala from Shekainah Healing Ministries tries to spice things up a bit in his church. The Prophetic Door Service Yama Dakhi is an annual event at the church where single people from all parts of the country gather at the church in Philippi, Cape Town, to pick a suitable partner for themselves.
Apostle Musawenkosi told IOL, "A few people are trying to establish families. We want to bring back that glory of family life people come here and find a suitable partner."
The ceremony is not meant to force people to get married but after picking your match, you receive counseling and then the families of the new couple are encouraged to meet. If it gets to marriage, Apostle Musawenkosi receives the honour of facilitating the wedding.
The Christ Embassy Randburg Church pastor says establishing relationships in the church maintains the biblical structure of dating, which is marriage and then pregnancy.
"You want to follow the structure. Some people come already pregnant and call it love and most become single parents," she says.
However, they do not discriminate and offer counseling for married, unmarried and premarital couples. Apart from counseling, the pastor believes that the church environment is best for couples because they can resolve their conflicts and reconcile by just hearing one sermon or perhaps when the pastor asks the congregants to join hands, sparks can rise again.
Dating and eventually marriage is a tricky affair - church or not. If you explore this option. We're not judging.
