Guys: Check out my amazing daughters
As a father, I’ve considered it my duty to be appropriately protective of my daughters. We guys are built in such a way that when beautiful women walk by, our antennae tingle. So I’ve written a number of blogs detailing my strategies. For example: A dad’s role with his daughter’s suitors and Scaring your daughter’s suitors.
It was all in good fun – I didn’t want to scare them off; just wanted to make sure that my girls didn’t get in the kind of relational jam I’ve seen take down so many young women. Our society is more broken than you may realize – for example, roughly a third of the girls showing up for World Race training have been sexually abused at some time in the past.
Anyway, at this point, I’ve mostly done my job as a dad. Maybe too well in fact. Because the proportion of girls to guys on a lot of our projects is about four to one, I feel some measure of responsibility for finding guys that will make those girls’ dreams come true (not that they can’t be very happy without men, mind you). My daughters and their friends are all in their twenties (the youngest, Leah, turns 20 in December). They are going to make some lucky guy very happy. They will be the best thing that happened to him. And most importantly, Karen wants grandbabies.
So, how to advertise these amazing young ladies to the qualified young men out there? Hey men, beautiful, brilliant, funny, interesting, engaging women are available! Me and my wife have been working hard to make them wonderful for you! Come check ’em out – we’ll take your applications! And, BTW, check out these other 22 amazing women and another 22 here – every one of them lovely and guaranteed to make you happy for life!
Yeah, I hear you, probably not the right angle. I’ve even thought about starting an on-line dating service. In fact, a staff member suggested it semi-seriously yesterday. This may not be such a bad idea. Once you’ve gone through a program like the World Race, for example, you’ve done a lot to pre-qualify your candidates. I don’t know, I’m a man looking for help here. We need to put our heads together on this.
At AIM, we do everything we can besides implementing an affirmative action program to attract more guys on our projects. The guys who are in the market have a hugely unfair advantage given the guy/girl ratio. If anyone of you has any ideas about finding qualified guys, please let me know.
In tomorrow’s blog, I’ll share some thoughts for future sons-in-law.
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I agree, Seth!! As a social worker and massage therapist, I am in highly woman-dominated fields :-(. Thanks for thinking of us…. God’s best is worth waiting for, I am confident of that!
Let’s see… 4-to-1 Girl-to-guy ratio. Plus those girls are fire-breathers, ready to see the “kingdom come” on earth. Plus they’re all beautiful, talented women.
Just advertise that… What men wouldn’t want to join?!
P.S. Seth, you’ve got a gorgeous talented family. Well done, brother.
I have an incredible group of young, single ladies in my life – all beautiful and whole-hearted for Christ. They are doing mighty exploits for Christ in the earth and I just can’t imagine any of them making a trade-off for some guy who is anything less than that. Right now their lives are rich and they are enriching others.
I gotta admit this blog makes me cringe a little. I didn’t marry until I was 39 (some girls freak out when they hear that; some revive their hopes!) and it was worth the wait. Mark and I often talk about writing a book called “Why Marry?” because our story is so unusual. It seems many Christian men and women are not marrying because they have so many worldly ideas of how it’s all supposed to happen, how they’ll feel, etc. And they marry for the wrong reasons.
So my recommendation is to do some godly teaching, correcting, reproving and redirecting on the subject. And we’re available to help. 🙂
With that being said, we forget to weigh in the reality of spiritual warfare. The enemy hates godly unions. He works to keep them from happening in a number of ways. So, I will pray for your creative ideas and efforts. And I should know better than to cringe with your ideas, Seth. It just sounds so like Christianizing a worldly idea. But then again, perhaps they are taking what we should be doing as parents for our kids, and counterfeiting that!
oh my. when you mentioned in Romania about lining us all up, i only thought you were joking! i should have known there was an idea/scheme somewhere underneath that! ha!
love it – but i think you might have picked the wrong squad – it’s only fair you start at the beginning and work your way up from there 😉
Send them to the jungles of Peru! We have a few very eligible bachelor missionaries here feeling discouraged about the possibilities of finding great women interested in serving God cross-culturally 🙂
omg, I laughed at this blog. Well said on all fronts – including comments. (I like what Kathy said!) As someone whose relationships have always ended up being the achilles heel of my life, it was good this summer to finally realize why and begin to heal in deep ways.
When you said 1/3 of girls who show up for World Race training have been sexually abused – that’s probably low (some who don’t admit it, some who discount it as I did because of dissociative memories) – and believe me, it’s growing. Everywhere. Both women and men. Unhealed, we are absolute magnets for each other – I’ve never seen anything like its pinpoint accuracy actually – and the result is pretty painful for all parties involved.
So if your screening process for WR includes healing or at least identifies the need – then I think that prequalification is pretty good. I’d look to you guys over eharmony any day … pity that you have such a problem attracting the same proportion of good men (ha, and that I’m so much older than the standard WR age!! 🙂
I assume you’re recruiting on college campuses – maybe you should try recruiting using the man-hike technique for guys. “come on a hike to have fun and change the world” … My guess is most guys have never experienced real discipleship of any sort – even on christian campuses. A taste of it might whet their appetite for more. Or perhaps you should be advertising WR as the way to find a hot Christian chica and trust the Holy Spirit to straighten out their motives in training 🙂 ….
Anyway, more power to you in finding solid men for those beautiful girls of yours and all your spiritual daughters – some of whom I know and can attest to their amazing beauty and deep love for Jesus Christ.
I have 2 godly, strapping young lads (ages 16 & 15) and one 11 year old sapling … too bad your girls aren’t younger!
LOL! Seth you had me laughing the whole way through your blog. I appreciate your willingness to be blunt to express a serious question. So there is a 4 to 1 ratio. But there are still a number of guys that have gone through the WR without meeting a significant other (me). There needs to be a way to meet or connect with X-WRers that haven’t met each other before. On-line dating service? Sounds good. I know people that have used ChristianCafe.com and had a lot of success. But there is a part of me that screams no inside- dreaming that God knows what he is doing and that as long as I keep following him things will just work out. But it is probably easy for me to dream like that – I am a young X-WRer male, the odds are in my favor. My heart does go out to all my sister though, it is not fair. Lord help us.
Hey Seth,
The best problem solvers I know are Jewish–no kidding. 🙂 So I am going to ask this question of a friend who helped launch “J-DATE” which is the largest online matchmaking site for Jews globally.
Shalom.
BarnesHarmony.com?
Oh Seth Barnes.
Wow… for all the WR women out there, thanks for all the fabulous comments! I’m not going to hinder your creative juices on this one, but I don’t know that I’ve got much to add. : )
WOOOOOWEEEEE those are some hot Godly, amazing women! I like Matt Snyder’s idea… Barnesharmony.com
Oh Yeah! I have to admit I like this one!
It’s the truth. I’m liking the Seth Barnes matching sight idea a lot, and not just because I would be a client =)!
You could also just go on ahead and pre-arrange the marriages or go back to bartering farm animals for the daughters.
I “sorta” understand what you’re saying, and if this is a plug to get guys into the TWR, then thats cool, but I think it needs to be clarified. I know both T and E (Your daughters) and agreed, they are both awesome… If this is a “mission” ministry targeting the heart of God, which is people, then I would probably stay away from dating service idea or leveraging that in making men want to join the TWR. It could then be referred to as “missional dating”, and I don’t think that’s the label desired.
i like to think i’m worth more than a few cows, thank you very much.
You are one brave dude. If I had posted this, my three beautiful daughters would have nailed my butt to a tree with push pins.
Having said that, the three of them are also candidates for the seth-harmony site. Where are all the guys with Christ in their hearts, and the strength to take on strong willed women?
Steve J.
I’d love to be a part of actively screening the guys before they could lie about themselves on the dating page.
ha! I’m with Neil…pursue God, if he has a mate for you, your paths will cross. Better to be single than with a person God did not intend.
SETH, brilliant idea. also, why was there not a link for the amazing women of c squad? i’m going to be looking for developments on this little, but very important project!
I would not be opposed to starting a Race alum dating service. It did kick my standards into higher gear anyways….
…and thanks. 🙂 haha!
and just in case it matters to anyone out there reading, I am worth about 20 cows as a wife in Swaziland. so hah.
lol
PS this made me smile big-time
This reminds me of the father who was telling a group of young men, “Whoever the lucky man is who marries my daughter will get a real PRIZE!”
After an awkward silence, one of the guys cleared his throat before asking, kinda hesitantly, “Uh, can I see the prize first?”
All in good fun, of course. FWIW, many young ladies where I’m from seem more interested in their education, job, and even their Christian ministries than a husband.
Regarding meeting online though, I’ve noticed these relationships often end up being long distance. For instance, a friend of mine recently married a man she met online who lived in Australia. After marrying him she moved to Australia too, leaving behind her family, roots, and “tribe” (that word “tribe” is one you like to use Seth).
Of course, it doesn’t have to work that way. For instance, one of my brothers met his wife online and it turned out they both attended the same church but had never met each other before. It was a big church.
Mr Barnes
I think I may like the idea of a post race dating site thing. I am down, and don’t tell Neil “Brimstone” Bruisma, but sign him up as well;)
Thanks
Jeff (Oct 08)
hahaha…..if the dating service becomes part of the innovation team, I’m NOT taking the lead on it. Give that to Matt or Jeff.
Bro, uh I mean Mr. Barnes, what are you doing? I mean here I am on the race told I cannot think about THAT kind of love for another 9 months and then you invite me to check out all these amazing women of God, it is tough, I think this is a test isn’t it? Well, actually I think it is great you are looking out for all your daughters! Not sure if I could do it (let my daughter run off with a guy, I mean I know guys and all, of course I do not have a daughter so I can sleep easy). Well, good luck man, of course you can always pray Jesus comes back before you have to go through being a father of the bride if you wish.
Seriously, why not a WR dating/matching website? I think it would be awesome! The age group is perfect and the screening has already been done. These are great kids…they would make dynamite couples for the Kingdom 🙂
as one of the above-mentioned daughters of Steve J: you are a very brave man! I thought you were joking in Romania too 🙂 WHERE ARE THE MEN? Thanks for always looking out for us Seth!
I was maried for 20 years 4 beauttiful kids and ready to try again 44 years old let me know