Christian Dating UK

There have been some interesting stories in the press recently (Today programme BBC Radio 4 28^th September 2011) about online dating scams and fraud and in case you didn’t hear it we’d like to tell you more about it here.

The greatest majority of online dating members (on both explicitly Christian sites like ours, but also secular sites) are genuine individuals looking for friendship and love. However, like anything online, online dating sites are open to online fraud and undesirable people who use these sites for their own undesirable means.

Often these people work in teams – and it’s not unheard of for gangs of criminals to work in this sphere. However don’t be put off online dating just because you hear this. There’s lots you can do to keep yourself and others safe.

Firstly be aware of their tactics. Tactics include sending overly familiar emails at the very beginning of a correspondence; implying some great desire to get to know you; telling you a great sob story in the early or medium days of your connection; asking you to email or contact other members of their family or friends to verify their story (which may be just other members of their gang!); making you feel guilty if you don’t offer to help in whatever way they want you to, having befriended you.

Secondly learn to recognize who these people are. These people will often pose as someone else but as a result, over a period of time, their ‘story’ won’t be 100% coherent nor will it hang together. If it’s difficult to pin them down to one place, or job, then they may be covering their tracks as they move around the world – or may not be resident where they say they are. Much fraud is coming from Africa – e.g. Ghana and Nigeria (although of course that doesn’t make every Ghanian or Nigerian a fraudster!). Genuine people have genuine stories that fit together over a period of time.

Thirdly protect yourself. At the very outset of your online dating experience, resolve not to be conned into giving money to anyone – or giving help to anyone else who you have only recently met. Money is a common request – but other things may be asked for as well – e.g. replacement mobile phones, help with rent etc. Genuine online daters looking for friendship or a relationship will not ask you for money or help in this way. It’s just not normal practice. If something online feels odd or different to what would happen offline, then the chances are it truly is odd and not right.

Fourthly do something about it. Online communities are only as safe as their members (and administrators of course) make them. You can greatly contribute to the safety of all members by reporting any suspicious or unusual activity that you become aware of. Report profiles by using the report function or by emailing the site’s administrators. Do this whenever you sense something is not quite right. This is the most important thing you can do, because if you just ignore or ban someone you think is suspicious they will just move onto someone else – whereas had you contacted the site’s administrators you could save many other people being bothered by these people.  Don’t be embarrassed that you have been targeted by a fraudster. They haven’t picked you out for any other reason than they found you on the site – and don’t think you’ll be the only one. Like any online fraud, these people work by scaling the numbers. If they target enough people someone will fall for their tricks. Help us to keep our members safe by reporting them and helping us to rid our sites of them.

A new survey shows that just over half (51%) of people in the world believe in God. Only 18% don’t and 17% are undecided. More than 18,000 people from 23 countries participated in the poll conducted by global research company, Ipsos Social Research Institute.

The poll also found that around one half (51%) believe that there is an afterlife while a quarter (23%) believe they will just ‘cease to exist’. The remaining quarter (26%) say they do not know what will happen after death.

Bobby Duffy, Managing Director of Ipsos, commented, ‘It may seem to many that we live in a secular world but this survey shows just how important spiritual life is to so many global citizens with half saying they believe in a spiritual being and the same proportion in an afterlife of some sort or other. The other really interesting thing is that such a large proportion of the remaining people are just not sure there is a spiritual explanation either for how they got here or what happens after they die.’

According to the survey, the proportions having ‘definitive belief in a God or Supreme Being’ is highest in Indonesia (93%) and Turkey (91%), followed by Brazil (84%), South Africa (83%) and Mexico (78%).

Conversely, people who don’t believe in God or Supreme Being(s) are most likely to live in France (39%), Sweden (37%), Belgium (36%), Great Britain (34%), Japan (33%) and Germany (31%).

In other findings, the survey revealed that 41% believe in human evolution, 28% believe in creationism and 31% are uncertain of what to believe in.

If you’ve ever been worried about declining numbers in the Church of England then the following report will be of interest which we found on the Church of England’s website. In conjunction with this, perhaps you saw Anne Widdecombe’s programme on TV a few nights ago where she was investigating the numbers of people going to church in our country and showed that although traditional churches are suffering decline, the Pentecostal churches across our land are growing massively and fruitfully. Now that’s good news.

Provisional attendance figures for 2009 released: attending a local CofE church continues to be part of a typical week for 1.1 million people.

The latest local church attendance figures from the Church of England show that approaching 1.7 million people continue to attend Church of England services each month, and around 1.1 million attend church as part of a typical week – and not just on a Sunday.

Total attendance

The total number of adults, children and young people attending local churches has dropped two per cent overall in the seven years since 2002, with the 2009 figures showing a drop of one per cent against the number attending on an average week in 2008. The total number of under 16s was virtually unchanged compared to 2008 and remained more than two percent higher than 2002.
People continue to attend church on other days than Sunday.  For every 50 people attending church or cathedrals on a typical Sunday, another 10 attend during the week and an extra 37 in total over a month.

The Revd Lynda Barley, the Church of England’s Head of Research and Statistics, comments: “The figures released today, covering regular local church attendees, give an important but inevitably partial snapshot of today’s Church. They paint a mixed picture for 2009. Alongside some encouraging signs, such as the number of under 16s in church holding steady and growth in church attendance in 16 out of 44 dioceses, there are continued challenges, with further small declines in traditional attendance measures. Churches continue to be central to community life and are responding positively to changes in modern day lifestyles with a growing range of opportunities to participate in church life.  Excluded from these figures are Fresh Expressions, chapel services in hospitals, education and other establishments, some international congregations and the projects funded by the Youth Evangelism Fund.

“It remains important to see these trends in the context of wider changes in a society where fewer people join and take part in membership organizations. Even in a General Election year, almost double the number of members of the three main political parties taken together will attend a Church of England parish church on a Sunday. Nevertheless, the figures are a further reminder of the importance, highlighted in the report – Challenges for the Quinquennium – which Synod will be debating next week, of achieving sustained numerical and spiritual growth over the coming years.”

In summary: Average weekly attendance was down slightly at 1,131,000 (2008: 1,145,000; 2007: 1,160,000), as was average monthly attendance at 1,651,000 (2008: 1,667,000; 2007: 1,690,000). while average Sunday attendance dropped two per cent to 944,000 (2008: 960,000; 2007: 978,000) The average number of children and young people at services each week was slightly down at 223,000 (2008: 225,000; 2007: 219,000). The number of children and young people attending on a monthly basis was virtually unchanged at  436,000 (2008: 438,000; 2007: 424,000), while other research reveals that a further 375,000 attend other church based activities.

Marking life events

The total number of baptisms dropped one per cent, with increases in the number of ‘child’ and ‘adult’ baptisms (those aged one year and older) of three per cent and six per cent, respectively. The number of ‘infant’ baptisms (under one year old) fell by three per cent. The number of Thanksgivings for the birth of a child fell by two per cent.

The number of marriages taking place in parish churches was down one per cent at  52,700. Blessings of marriages following a civil ceremony fell (by nine per cent, to 3,900). The total number of weddings in the UK in 2009 has not yet been published, although numbers have been falling gradually in recent years.

The total number of funerals conducted by the Church of England also dropped (by six per cent, to 176,700), particularly those taking place in crematoria (by nine per cent, to 85,600); this is against a backdrop of a falling UK mortality rate (the number of deaths fell by 3.5 per cent between 2008 and 2009).

Nine in ten Church of England parish churches completed attendance counts.  These have been verified across all 16,000 Church of England churches by the Research and Statistics Department of the Archbishops’ Council.

Celebrating festivals

Widespread snow and ice badly effected Christmas Day attendances in 2009, with some churches forced to cancel services. Attendances and those receiving Communion on Easter Sunday were little changed from 2008.

In summary: Attendance at Church of England local church services on Christmas Eve/Day 2009 was down nine per cent at 2,420,600 (2008: 2,647,200; 2007: 2,656,800). These figures do not include the large number attending at other services related to Christmas, for example, Christingle and carol services during Advent. Easter observance was little changed at 1,411,200 (2008: 1,415,800; 2007: 1,469,000).

The number of adults on the electoral roll of local parish churches rose one per cent from 1,179,000 to 1,197,000. The historic ‘usual Sunday attendance’ measure (see note below for definition) fell two per cent to 826,000 (2008: 845,000; 2007: 868,000).

Notes

According to the Office of National Statistics, 72 per cent affiliate themselves with Christianity and of those who affiliate with Christianity, 32 per cent are practising. The data comes from the Citizenship Survey 2008/9 and Social Trends.
Definition of terms

Average Sunday attendance: the average number of attendees at Sunday church services, typically over a four-week period in October.
Average weekly attendance: the average number of attendees at church services throughout the week, typically over a four-week period in October.
Each of the above measures is provided separately for adults and children/young people aged under 16 years. The highest and lowest counts over the four-week period are calculated as follows:Highest Sunday/weekly attendance: the sum of the highest Sunday (weekly) attendances over the four-week period. The ‘highest’ figures on the accompanying tables are proxies (in fact under-estimates) for monthly attendance levels.

Lowest Sunday/weekly attendance: the sum of the lowest Sunday (weekly) attendances over the four-week period.
Attendance figures are only included where local churches held at least one church-based service (which included adult presence) during the week under examination.
The traditional usual Sunday attendance (uSa) measure is interpreted differently across the dioceses and is therefore not regarded as statistically accurate as a comparison.

Many Christians nowadays are using Christian dating websites to find their Mr or Miss Perfect. And if that’s you, then please make sure your online etiquette follows the golden rule ‘Treat others as you’d like to be treated yourself’. This means treating people on line well and courteously. Now you are probably the sort of person that would be polite and interested and kind if you met a stranger at a party; even if on first impressions you thought you weren’t going to be interested in this person as a date. You’d probably make some sort of connection with the person before politely excusing yourself and moving on.

This must be what you do online as well and if you are on a Christian website it’s even more important. Lots of people get fed up on line if they make the effort to contact people and then get either no response, or suddenly find the person they’ve been chatting to ‘disappears’ and won’t respond to any further contact. This is so rude and just because it’s an on line environment, it is quite simply unacceptable behaviour. Treat people like this and you will soon find yourself becoming rude and discourteous in your off line behaviour too. As Christians we ought to act with integrity and authenticity in all our dealings – off line or on line. If you are chatting to someone, or someone has made contact with you, and at some point you decide you don’t want to communicate further with them for whatever reason, just send them a brief email saying something like ‘It’s been nice talking to you but I won’t be in touch with you any more after this . I wish you all the best.’ Trust me they’ll respect you for it. Don’t think that no response doesn’t hurt or annoy the other person. It does. And the clearest message it gives is that you are a person who is not genuine, not kind and not worthy of respect. No, you don’t want people thinking that, do you? and certainly not in the relatively small world that us Chrsitians live in – it’s amazing how many people you’ll meet who know someone you know!

So whatever site you are on, and especially if you are on a Christian dating site, behave well at all times and to the end of every contact you have.