An Edmonton Journal article last December highlighted a Statistics Canada finding regarding the divorce rate. Although divorce is down in all age groups, “figures leap to 34 percent for couples 50 – 54, peaking at a 47.8 percent increase for those 55 – 59.” Many people recovering from the trauma of divorce are seeking a new romantic connection. Some Christians in this ‘people group’ don’t find their needs addressed in church – and don’t feel comfortable with secular options such as bars, speed dating or ‘singles events.’ Hence, many are going online, and discovering the ‘subculture’ of Christian dating. Ron Csillag offers an overview.  

INTERNET dating services are not only an effective means for Christian singles to meet other Christian singles – they have also become a booming business.

It’s not often that loneliness, dating and the internet all combine to strengthen someone’s religious faith, but it did for Sharon Topping. In November 2003, the 49-year-old divorcee was living in St. John’s, Newfoundland – and, by her own admission, she was lonely.

“I needed a friend,” says the mother of three grown sons. “I longed for the companionship of a male.”

She had one major proviso for a mate: he had to be a practicing Christian. So Topping, a Pentecostal, did what millions of other Christians worldwide have done in recent years to find their soul mate: she went online, figuring it was less awkward – and in some ways safer – than going to church mixers or answering newspaper personals.

Destined

A few weeks later, she noticed one email from an interested party: a man in the small northern Saskatchewan town of La Ronge. Her profile at ChristianSinglesToday.com was the only one Fred Topping, a Lutheran, had expressed interest in. His was the only email she received. Talk about being destined for each other.

About seven months after going online, Sharon flew the 6,000 kilometres to meet Fred – and “it was like we had known each other for years.” The couple was engaged seven months after the trip, married in June 2005, and now live in La Ronge.

Sharon sees a divine hand in her cyber-tale.

“There is no way this could have transpired without God,” she says, noting that her biggest adjustment, apart from going from city to rural life practically half a world away, was worshipping at a considerably smaller church.

“If everything has been designed by God, then this was too,” she adds, the contentment in her voice loud and clear.

Big bucks

Topping is one of millions of Christians who have collectively spent millions of dollars searching for that special someone on the internet, where dating and matchmaking have became a booming business. Analysts say the industry generated revenues of $500 million in 2004, in North America alone. That total was projected to climb  to $623 million by 2009.

And the Web offers no shortage of niche sites for those who are discriminating. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of sites geared expressly to Christian singles. A Google search of ‘Christian online dating’ yields more than 200,000 results; not all are matchmakers, but the sheer variety of services out there can be daunting.

Degrees of specialty are becoming ever finer, as site names suggest: SingleParentsMingle.com, FarmersOnly.com, DateMyPet.com. The top religious personals site is reportedly JDate.com, for Jewish singles.

What to do?

Amid the clutter and confusion of up to 700 websites offering dating and matchmaking, what’s a good single Christian to do? Should they sign onto the bigger sites, or go to the Christian ones? Or avoid them altogether?

“I always tell people they should consider what their preferences are,” says Mark Brooks, the New York-based editor of Online Personals Watch, a Web portal which tracks the Internet dating industry.

“If you really want to meet someone who is Christian, you can go on Match and Yahoo and say ‘I’m a Christian and I want to meet a Christian.’”

However, he cautions, “they’ll send you a whole bunch of people who are interested in you – but are not Christian. So if you’re open to receiving communications from people who aren’t [Christian], then by all means” use a general site.

In other words, despite filters and preferences, it’s still difficult to instruct most sites to tease out non-Christians, according to Brooks.

Niche sites

That’s where the niche sites come in. If you’re on a specialty site, “you’ll probably be jumping on a plane soon” – because you’ve found someone so eligible that you’ll risk the money and time to go to meet them. As Brooks says, there may be fewer niche sites than general ones, but common sense dictates they’re more likely to have what you’re looking for.

While it might be easy to take a spiritual approach to online dating – expecting God to play cyber-matchmaker and allowing prayer to guide you – “it’s equally important to take ownership of the process,” advises marriage and family therapist Dr. Leslie Parrott in a posting at ChristianityToday.com.

“Scripture is full of examples of people being proactive about finding mates,” Parrott counsels a young woman who was considering surfing for a spouse. “And a Christian dating service can be a great help in connecting you with people who share your interests, traits, and deeply held values.

“Think of it this way: Would it help to be in a room with a dozen single men who are potential good matches for you? Of course. And that’s what an effective online matching service does. I know dozens of happily married people who found each other this way.”

Parrott suggests that anyone weighing this route keep the following in mind:

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“Don’t be tempted to play games by presenting yourself to be different than you are. Be real.

“Focus on the characteristics you want to find in your date. I’ve seen too many singles who want so desperately to be dating that they overlook problems in the other person. They sometimes fall for the popular myth, ‘I’ll change him.’ You won’t, so don’t try.

“God reveals his will in a variety of ways – and we have to resist the idea that there’s a predictable formula to follow that leads to a spouse.”

One problem is that a lot of outfits want to cash in on Internet dating, leading to a congested and confusing landscape.

Oversaturated

“The market is simply oversaturated,” says Sam Moorcroft, founder and president of ChristianCafe.com, based in Markham, Ontario.

“A lot of companies got into it thinking it’s easy, which isn’t true. You don’t turn on a switch and watch the money come in. The same thing applies in the Christian market.”

Meantime, there are dozens of dating sites that have a page up, but no traffic.

“This is a very ‘sexy’ business,” says Brooks of Online Personals Watch. “It’s like opening a restaurant. Everybody wants to do it. It’s very appealing, like you’re doing humanity a great service – but it’s tougher than it looks.”

Finding himself 30 and single in 1997, Moorcroft began spending a lot of time on Christian.Matchmaker.com.  

“I thought you had to be desperate, or a loser, to use these things. Not me, of course, but everyone else.” After telling a friend that he thought he could do a better job than the “primitive” sites back then, Moorcroft was challenged to put his money where his mouth was.

With $100,000 on low-interest credit cards, he launched his site in early 1999.

“We decided to call it Christian Café after the café concept, because when I spoke to women friends they said the biggest impediment to going online was safety. They said they wanted some place cozy, designed so nobody had to list their emails or real names.”

Today, Moorcroft proudly notes that ChristianCafe.com is the largest exclusively Christian singles site in the world, and controls fully one-third of the Christian singles market online.

Brooks might quibble. His site measures hits, or the number of actual visits to a page, and lists ChristianMingle.com as the biggest Christian singles site.

Moorcroft says “nominal” Christians should have no trouble making friends at Match or Yahoo. “But if you’re even half-serious about your faith and you want to meet someone who shares what you believe, I would highly recommend a Christian-only site.”

Dogmatic or practical?

Some such sites, he says, “require a statement of faith. We thought, ‘Do we want people agreeing with the Nicene Creed, or do we want people who consider  themselves Christians? Are we going to make this dogmatic or practical?’

“We basically tell people: ‘Look, you’re on this site to find someone who matches your faith level.’ When we ask people their level of faith, it goes from ‘I believe in God’ all the way to ‘Jesus is number one in my life.’ The bulk of our market – I would say 80 percent plus – is conservative evangelical Christian.” About 10 percent of the membership is Catholic.

ChristianCafe.com, like other successful sites, doesn’t define what a Christian is. But like most others, it does require users to abide by Christian standards of ethics and morality –  meaning no profanity, or threatening or abusive language.

At any given time, ChristianCafe.com tallies 100,000 members within a three-month timeframe. Moorcroft’s company grosses into seven figures per annum and has 10-12 employees. In 2002, he launched JewishCafe.com in direct competition with JDate.com. “We do very well,” he smiles.

The icing on the cake: he met his wife through someone he’d met on Christian.Matchmaker.com. They’ve now been married two years, have twin boys – and she’s now his chief marketer. “So I tell people that while I didn’t meet her directly, what I do worked for me. And that’s a great testimonial.”

Be streetwise

Still, Californian Nancy Aird – who met her husband at a Christian site when she was living in Toronto – would not recommend online dating to a younger person. She suggests the process requires some level of maturity and discrimination. “You have to know what you’re getting into, and what you’re looking for. Be streetwise. Have realistic expectations. Be careful. And read between the lines.”

And watch out for frauds, if a certain chat room at ChristianCafe.com was any indication. While no chatters had outright horror stories (one woman related the tale of how a man she once met dropped her at a pancake house with all her luggage), several rued having met someone who was not a fully-practising Christian, in spite of the ‘house rules.’

“That hurts doubly,” one man wrote.

Moorcroft advises evangelical online daters to look for one particular red flag. Any site that touts Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses – groups that born-again Christians would consider heretical – “guarantees the owners aren’t Christian. Do you want to be on a website where you can potentially meet someone who considers him- or herself a believer, but they’re from a background that we regard as an apostate faith?”

So exercising care and Christian sensibilites are good ideas. Other than that, the virtual world seems no different than the temporal one. As one woman who earned the kudos of her fellow chatters put it recently:

“The biggest thing about the Internet and meeting people is to be open to making friends first.”

– courtesy of Faith Today

September 2007