Jesus intended vocational singles to live "for the sake of the kingdom" by reinvesting the time and energy they would have used to raise kids to instead do even more non-child-raising kingdom work.

50% more.

Let me explain.

According to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics and a bit of back-of-napkin math, the average parent spends the equivalent of two decades of 40-hour work weeks raising children.

Between the ages 25 and 65, that’s nearly a third of their total capacity for kingdom work dedicated to the important kingdom work of raising children—but therefore unavailable for other kingdom work.

The average parent also has to earn twice as much as a single person to provide for a nuclear family.

Yet teachers in low-income neighborhoods, pregnancy resource center workers, nurses at free clinics, advocates for refugees, and mental health therapists are often the most underpaid.

Parents often cannot afford to take the jobs directly addressing the plentiful harvest of brokenness.

That's why Jesus established vocational singleness!

—to make a meaningful minority of Christians available to take that third of kingdom work capacity and leverage it for something other than raising children.

Jesus hoped for a powerful minority of Christians having 50% more time and energy than parents to heal our communities with undivided attention.

To be clear, I'm not saying that parents can't do kingdom work other than raising children. And raising children is *essential* kingdom work.

At the same time, I consistently hear from parents that, after 8 hours at a job to put food on the table and 4 hours of after-school parenting, they feel like they don't have much to give other kingdom work endeavors.

What if instead of shaming parents for not doing it all, we instead honored their kingdom work of raising children and simultaneously supported single Christians to leverage their availability for the sake of kingdom work with undivided attention?!

Watch/read the full message at https://youtu.be/7v-W0GilP_I