If you’re a full member of Christian Connection, one of the most powerful tools available to you is our Discover filters. You’ll have found your Discover page already: it’s the one that greets you when you open the site or app, showing you pages of potential connections. If all those results feel a little overwhelming, you’ll find that clicking filters can help you narrow your search to focus on profiles that fit what you’re looking for.
It might be tempting to set filters for all your preferences straight away, but our experience has found that filters work best when used sparingly and smartly. Here are our tips to make filters work for you, without missing any matches.
What Discover filters do
Along with other profile-based preferences, our Discover filters allow full members to search by:
- Distance from your location
- Age range
- Faith tradition
- How recently someone has been online
This means that, instead of scrolling through every option on the site, you can quickly tailor results to reflect your priorities. If you live in a busy city, filters can make your search results feel less overwhelming. If you live in a more rural area, they can help you see who’s nearby.
However, it’s vital not to let your filters narrow your outlook. Remember, this is a process of discovery, so you don’t want to limit things too much.
The Golden Rule: Start broad
Many new members make the same mistake: they apply every filter straight away.
If you’ve set up a narrow age bracket, a very small distance radius, one particular Church background or a range of other limited preferences, you may already know that the result can be that you only see a small pool of profiles.
For the best results, we recommend starting with minimal filters. This may mean starting with a wider age range than your exact preference (without compromising any hard boundaries) and adding a generous distance setting.
Then, browse your results. Get a feel for who is using the site and how much they match what you’re looking for.
If the results feel too broad, or overwhelming, it’s time to add more filters.
Add each new filter one at a time and monitor how it changes the results you see on your discover page. You’ll notice really quickly if one filter setting dramatically reduces your options. Then you can weigh up just how important that is to you.
Try asking yourself: is this preference essential, or just ideal? This approach should help keep your Discover results relevant to what you’re looking for, without unintentionally excluding someone wonderful.
Over-filtering can work against you
Most of us have an idea of who our perfect partner might be, but in practice connection often happens outside our neatly defined checkboxes. Many of our success stories come from members who met someone when they looked beyond their strictly defined settings.
When your filters are too narrow, you can accidentally exclude people who might match your preferences perfectly, but just haven’t filled out every profile field.
Or you could limit yourself to just your area, when someone a few miles further might be exactly who you’ve been hoping to meet.
You might even miss someone who doesn’t seem to match your preferences at a first glance, but who shares your values, life goals or sense of humour in a way that connects at a deeper level.
Allowing room to be surprised is always better than limiting yourself to rigid results, so think about which of your preferences might be flexible. For example, a shared commitment to your faith might well be non-negotiable when it comes to finding a partner, but would someone two years older than your ‘ideal’ age range really be such a red line?
Spend some time reading the profiles of people who don’t immediately seem like your ‘type’. Pay attention to how people express their faith, values, and goals. Chemistry isn’t limited by statistics like age and location.
Revisit your filters regularly
Don’t just ‘set and forget’ your Discover Filters. Remembering to review them regularly and taking the opportunity to try something different can be the key to finding that new connection.
Clear your filters every week or so, then review what still feels important.
For example, we’d all like to meet the perfect partner next door, but the truth is that expanding your search radius across a wider distance can open up significantly more possibilities. Many successful relationships begin with a bit of travel and intentional effort – this helps show the other person that you’re really invested.
If you live in a rural area, widening your search area can be even more impactful.
So try expanding your distance filters, or adding a few extra years to your age preference. You’ll soon notice new members you’d previously missed, and might reconsider filter criteria that don’t seem as important as they once did.
Check out who’s online now
You’ll notice there’s a second section to the Discover page for our full members: Online Now. This option does exactly what it says, allowing you to browse all the other members who are checking out the site at the same time as you.
Using the Online Now page can be a great way to broaden your horizons and often allows you to start a conversation right away. Chatting with someone while you’re both active and online allows the conversation to flow freely, and you’ll often get to know each other much faster than if you exchanged a couple of messages a day. This can be one of the best hacks for getting something started.
Be open as well as intentional
Christian dating is a unique experience. You’re not just looking for a set of matching attributes; you’re looking for shared faith, purpose, and a relationship rooted in Christ.
Christian Connection’s Discover Filters can help you align your search with your priorities, but only you will know exactly what moves someone from a match who looks good on paper to someone spiritually aligned with you, too. Use filters to guide you, not to limit you. And, every now and then, remove a filter and see who appears. Your future partner might be just outside your current settings.
Check out Elena and Josh’s meeting story: “Our wedding day was 50 weeks after we first connected through the Discover function! We couldn’t be happier!”
Watch more #MetOnCC stories on the Christian Connection YouTube channel
Find more helpful online dating tips on our blog
