In this solo episode, Katie Haldane goes behind the show and shares how she faced loneliness head on. She prayed through her worst-case scenario, found it was far smaller than her fear, and chose to stop letting it decide her future.

You’ll hear:

• Why decisions made in desperation don’t work
• How loneliness blows the future out of proportion
• Why facing loneliness beats denying it
• Why God is with you in this season
• Why isolating makes loneliness worse
• How to become comfortable on your own

Katie’s four steps:

1. Face it head on.
2. God is with you.
3. Get friends around you.
4. Be content on your own.

Takeaway: loneliness doesn’t get to determine your future.

Host: Katie Haldane
Show: The Pentecostal Nun, a calling, not a waiting room.

In this conversation, Katie Haldane asks Valerie what it really takes to walk through singleness with God. Valerie's answer is honest. Trusting God didn't mean she never felt fear, loneliness or disappointment, and she says pretending otherwise is when you get into trouble. Her advice for the hard days is to bring the anger to God, keep moving, and move toward the joy.

In this episode

• Why "this life is meant to be producing God-like character in us every day"
• Giving first and trusting God with money as a single woman
• How a church family that included her shaped her life
• Enjoying the life you have: golf, piano, French and a summer house
• The inner work that prepared her for marriage
• What pastors can do so singles are included, not sidelined
• Bringing your anger to God, then moving toward joy

Timestamps
00:00 Why every day matters
00:49 Welcome
01:37 Valerie's story
03:12 Tithing and finances
06:24 Staying the course
08:21 Faith community
13:58 Married at 47
15:49 Enjoying the life you have
19:50 What churches can do
24:23 Confidence and identity
29:58 Anger and disappointment
33:40 Move toward the joy

Listen and follow: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and watch the full video on YouTube.
Instagram: @pentecostal_nun

Single, preaching, and told to cover up so nobody gets distracted.

In this solo episode, Katie Haldane sits down for a real, unpolished chat about a shame that church culture hands single women, and one she's decided to stop carrying. She has taught and preached for years, and for most of them she absorbed one message: keep your body out of the way of the message. The result was big jackets, baggy pants and dressing as masculine as possible so that people would take her seriously.

Here Katie talks honestly about where that came from, what it cost her, and what changed when she looked at photos of herself preaching and asked why she was hiding. She also shares the moment a senior pastor told a room of single women to dress well, be fabulous and feel safe in church, and why that moment stayed with her.

This isn't a dating episode. It's about being whole, present and fully yourself in the body of Christ, single or not.

In this episode

• The unspoken rule for single women in ministry
• What "you're a distraction" does to a person over time
• How shame quietly changes the way single people show up
• Why the church is meant to protect and celebrate its single women
• Taking off the cloak of shame, whatever your story

A note for you: if you're in ministry, or you love someone who is, this one is worth passing on.

The Pentecostal Nun is a calling, not a waiting room. New episodes weekly on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts.

In this episode, Pam and Katie talk about the real grief of singleness (and why it never fully disappears, it just gets less intense), the moment a scripture from Numbers — "life and death stand before you, choose life" — changed everything, and why she refuses to sit in a "singles connect group" full of, as Katie puts it, "weeping willows." They get into everything church culture gets wrong about single people: the singles-auction-on-stage humiliation, the isolation, the even-numbers-only dinner parties — and what actually helps: texting people instead of waiting to be invited, being included in kids' weddings and Christmas plans, and a pastor bold enough to admit his own blind spots on stage.

It's a conversation about theology too — the goal of the Christian life was never marriage, it was Christ formed in you — and about identity: "I'm more than my status. It's honestly the least interesting thing about me."

About Pam Borrow

Pam Borrow is the Principal of C3 College, travelling globally to promote the college and connect with alumni. She sits on the C3 executive team overseeing discipleship — pastoring, Connect groups, the Next Step leadership pathway, youth and kids ministry, and preaching and teaching — and coordinates the C3 Pastors Master's program at Alphacrucis University College. She's also partway through her own PhD, a devoted aunt, and a Connect group leader. Fifty, single, and thirty-plus years into a ministry career, Pam is proof that a full, faithful, single life in senior leadership isn't a hypothetical — it's already happening.

Kirsty Neilson has been hung in the Archibald Prize four times, painted the likes of Cheng Lei, Ita Buttrose and Garry McDonald, and built a fifteen-year career on stepping out before she could see where she'd land. In this episode she sits down with Katie to talk about what actually changed her relationship with her own singleness — the desperate, self-righteous prayers, the church culture that only knows how to pray singles into marriage, and the moment she heard "it's not rejection, it's protection. Move on." They talk freedom, mission work in Uganda and Ethiopia, and why the value of this season isn't a "what if" — it's now.

About Kirsty Neilson

Kirsty Neilson is a Sydney-based portrait and landscape artist represented by Nanda\Hobbs, and a four-time Archibald Prize finalist (including her 2024 portrait of journalist Cheng Lei). Her past sitters include Ita Buttrose, Garry McDonald, Grace Tame and Rachel Ward. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Art School and is drawn to painting women with stories worth telling.

Beyond the studio, Kirsty is an ambassador for the Barbara May Foundation, has completed five mission trips to Uganda with Watoto, and has worked with Esther's Voice providing art therapy to survivors of trafficking in Cambodia.

• Instagram: @kirstyneilson
• Website: kirstyneilson.com

Mentioned in this episode

• Barbara May Foundation — maternal health, Ethiopia
• Watoto — child care ministries, Uganda
• Esther's Voice — anti-trafficking ministry, Cambodia
• Cheng Lei — Australian-Chinese journalist, subject of Kirsty's 2024 Archibald Prize portrait

Katie unpacks why church culture so often treats singleness as a problem to be fixed — the pity, the “poor you,” the well-meaning attempts to “set you up with anything that moves” — and makes the case, backed by Tim Keller, ancient rabbinic sources, and 1 Corinthians 7, that Christianity was actually the first faith in history to hold up single adulthood as a viable, honourable way of life.

She walks through what it looks like to do singleness well: rejecting fear, shame and disgrace; building an identity that isn't dependent on relationship status; fighting loneliness through real community rather than a relationship; and learning contentment now, rather than waiting for a wedding day to grant it. Along the way: a rabbi's brutal ancient take on unmarried men, the moment Jesus's own singleness reframed everything for her, and the very Australian story of a chainsaw, a fallen tree, and a prayer that got answered in a way she didn't expect.

In this episode

—  Why “poor you” is the wrong response to singleness — and what to say instead

—  Tim Keller's case that Christianity was the first religion to treat singleness as a viable calling

—  What Jesus's own unmarried life means for anyone who feels like a “lesser Christian”

—  The difference between being alone and being lonely — and how the church can do better

—  Why desperate people make desperate decisions, and how to reject the fear of missing out

—  Katie's four keys to being single and secure: gift, advantage, worth, and freedom from shame

Scripture referenced

1 Corinthians 7:7–9, 7:29, 7:32–35 · Genesis 2:18 · Psalm 68:6 · Romans 12:10 · Colossians 2:6–10 · Philippians 4:11 · Isaiah 54:4–5

Timestamps

00:00  Cold open: “I am single and secure”

00:25  Welcome to Episode 1

00:54  The “poor you” response, and where it comes from

01:45  “Pairs and Spares”: if you're the spare, this one's for you

02:40  Don't get Jerry Maguire syndrome

03:30  Tim Keller: Christianity and the first case for single adulthood

04:56  Ancient culture, ancient pressure — and vanishing without children

05:52  Jesus never married

06:51  Reason 1: singleness is a gift, not a punishment (1 Cor 7:7–9)

09:00  Reason 2: the advantages of this season (1 Cor 7:32–35)

11:37  On loneliness — and the friend who stayed in an abusive relationship

13:23  What the church needs to do better

15:08  Reason 3: self-worth and contentment in Christ

16:53  “I the Lord am your husband” — Isaiah 54:5

18:46  Reject FOMO, reject desperate decisions

19:14  Reason 4: single without fear, shame or disgrace

20:04  “But you're not married, are you?”

21:55  Isaiah 54:4 — no shame, no disgrace

22:23  The storm, the tree, and the neighbour with a chainsaw

23:47  Living every season in light of eternity (1 Cor 7:29)

25:12  Closing blessing

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