A Match Made in Minutes?
A single girl's take on the latest meet-and-greet trend: speed dating
by Camerin Courtney

The first time I heard about "speed dating," I thought it was a bad byproduct of our fast-food, romance-obsessed culture. I mean, what's next, drive-thru dating? "I'd like one tall, dark, and handsome Jesus-follower with a side of sensitivity to go."

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized this could be a great way to avoid all those long, drawn-out blind dates and never-ending e-mail interactions from Internet dating services that lead absolutely nowhere. Like most single women I know, as a never-married 32-year-old, I've often wondered where all the good single Christian men have gone. Hence the thought of being in a room with 25 bachelors, let alone getting to interact with them all one-on-one, seemed like an answer to my prayers. By sheer odds, at least one or two of them had to be a good guy, right?

For those of you unfamiliar with this new dating phenomenon, let me bring you up to speed: At a typical speed-dating event, a bunch of single women sit in a big circle around a circle of men. Everyone enjoys a one-on-one minidate with the person in front of them for three to eight minutes (depending on the host organization's set-up). When the buzzer sounds, one circle rotates. After each encounter, participants mark on their scorecard whether they'd be interested in getting to know the other person better. Afterwards, the host organization alerts participants to mutual matches (meaning both people marked "yes" for each other).

Though I searched relentlessly for a Christian speed-dating event in my geographic area, I found none. Instead I settled for one sponsored by a secular organization, Hurry Date, just a stone's throw from a megachurch in my area. Surely some nice Christian boys in the neighborhood would show up! After all, I wasn't necessarily looking for a husband, but for the rare chance to mix and mingle with some new faces. If God had more up his sleeve, so be it.

I invited several single friends, knowing I'd chicken out if left to this adventure on my own. Three brave souls, Kristee, Kim, and Todd, accepted the challenge. And that's how we found ourselves on a random Wednesday night standing in the doorway of a suburban Chicago restaurant called Fox and Hound, slapping on nametags sporting our first name and our assigned number for the evening, nervously awaiting "the hunt."

On Your Mark, Get Set, Date!
In brief, here's my speed-dating experience by the numbers:

Dollars to join the adventure: 35
Age range of those in attendance: 25-35
Men and women who attended: 17 and 16, respectively
Minutes for each "date": 3
Friends who looked at me like I had three heads when I invited them: 2
Times I changed my clothes before deciding to wear tried-and-true all black: 7

When Jodi, our hostess for the evening, blew the whistle to start things off, I found myself face-to-face with "Chad," a guy who spoke very fast and blinked a lot. He told me he was a lawyer, asked me not to hold that against him, then bleated out a laugh at his own little legal humor. At the end of our three minutes, I discreetly circled the "N" next to his assigned number.

My conversation with my next "date," "Kurt," about our common love of writing, was just getting good when Jodi blew the whistle again. Definite "yes" for Kurt. My time dragged on with "Nate," a transplant from Texas who missed the wide open spaces of his home state. Being more of a city gal myself, I marked "no."

The next three guys were engineers. There were three other engineers in attendance, too. The final one I met told me he'd heard there were many of "his kind" there that night, and then he joked about the not-so-social stereotype of those in his chosen profession. He was the only engineer who made me laugh. Consequently he was the only engineer for whom I marked "yes."

As the evening progressed, I also was impressed with "Dave," a pharmacist working on his doctorate. He was easy to talk to and seemed genuinely impressed when I told him I wrote and published a book. Yes!

My faith in Christ wasn't the easiest topic to bring up in three minutes. For example, when "Doug," an editor at an educational book publishing company, asked me which magazine I work for and I replied Today's Christian Woman, he paused for a second, then asked, "So, are you like religious?" Oh, brother. "Well, my faith is very important to me," I responded, "but I'm not sure what you mean by 'religious.'" He went on to talk about Bible thumpers and those who try to "cram their beliefs down your throat." Dear me, no.

At long last we heard the final whistle. After a little mixing and mingling, my friends and I made our exit.

The Aftermath
My friends Todd and Kristee, with whom I'd carpooled, debriefed with me at a nearby coffee shop. Kristee and I chuckled when we realized "Kent," the soccer player, had made sure we both knew he works out "five times a week." We laughed even harder when Todd regaled us with his notes from the evening, such as "Number 13, really fond of frogs, no." He was optimistic about one woman who appeared to be a Christian; she'd perked up when he mentioned he volunteers with his church's youth group.

The next morning we all logged onto the Hurry Date website and entered our yeses and nos. Twenty-four hours after the event, we were able to view our mutual matches. I received four. When I perused the brief self-profile my matches had created on the site before the event (something we all did), I learned more telling information. I mentally nixed the atheist, as well as the guy who for his ideal match marked "doesn't matter" for everything except age (which skewed young) and body type (which skewed supermodel-thin). One of my matches e-mailed Kristee and Kim almost identical messages within a day. I never heard from him, and mostly out of wounded pride didn't e-mail him. That left "Dave," the pharmacist working on his doctorate. I crafted a clever message (which took me about six drafts), sent it, then never heard boo from him.

When I compared notes with my friends, the results were somewhat similar. Though Kristee and Kim actually heard from some of their mutual matches, and Kristee went on a few dates with a couple of them, neither woman expects anything long-term to result. Todd's still in contact with one woman from that night; time will tell if anything comes of that.

It was interesting to see the way our opinion about speed dating shifted as time went by. Initially, we all agreed it was a fun way to meet new people. Once you've been in the same job and church for a while, meeting new singles is a challenge. One friend pointed out that speed dating can be a nice antidote to the extreme seriousness with which many Christians approach dating. That seriousness can be quite intimidating, and in many cases has led to a complete lack of dating in a lot of faith circles. Speed dating, in some ways, is a nice way to break that tension and to get singles loosened up and interacting again.

But as time went by, our positive reaction faded. It was easy to feel boosted or deflated based on the number of matches we received. That only reinforces our society's idea that self-esteem comes from romantic love instead of from the truth that we're valuable because we're fearfully and wonderfully made by God. And my initial excitement at being in a room with a bunch of bachelors eventually was replaced by a reminder that it's quality, not quantity I need. Good single men may seem scarce, but in reality, I only need one God-approved guy.

My friend Kristee summed it up well in a postmortem e-mail: "Three minutes was a fun, easy way to meet people, but getting to know them is a different story. It takes a lot of energy and time. The instant gratification of speed dating makes it look easy. Nothing is as it seems."

Overall, my friends and I learned that while you can speed up dating, you can't hurry love.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian Woman magazine.
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September/October 2003, Vol. 25, No. 5, Page 74