"Real Men Don't Do Church?"
Captain Sensible writes: Interesting article here, written by Christian Vision for Men. The statistic that leaps out is that out of the 26 million men in the UK, only 0.9% attend church regularly.
Maybe that would explain why the leading Christian publication in the UK, Christianity magazine, is full of job advertisments with a focus on men's ministry? Oh, dream on! Out of the 67 job advertisements in the July issue, 57 of them were for youth or children's workers.
Are we completely mad?
Men believe themselves to be self-sufficient, all-capable and in no need of a crutch, so why be a Christian? That’s for wimps and women isn’t it? And nothing at all happens in church that is of any relevance to men, does it?
We need to face hard facts and then ask hard questions! Out of the 26 million men in the UK only 0.9% attend church regularly. So we need to confront this issue head on.
Most men completely by-pass church. They see it as a place that according to a BBC radio survey is for wimps, women and irrelevant! Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that when the “wheels come off” in a mans life they look to the church. A small minority might, but for most, their perception of what/who Jesus is and stands for will be quite the opposite of what they feel they need in a crisis. So what are we going to do to put hairs back on the chest of the Gospel?
Men today still look for robust and strong environments to forge friendships. They may not express it like this but men really do desire authentic relationship. Men want a “band of brothers” that they can stand shoulder to shoulder with. So, they go to the pub, the match, curry house or the lodge meeting! Being blunt about it, men don’t expect to find a band of brothers in a church, so they just don’t look there! In addition, for the most part, major male driving forces are “Money, Sex and Power.” Men will instinctively (thanks in part to the media) believe that what the church has to say about those issues, will be diametrically opposite to what they want to hear!
On top of this, consider what most men experience when they go to church. When you walk through the door you get a bit of paper shoved in your hand and a hand shake from a stranger. Nearly everyone smiles when they look at you and will expect you to smile back and engage in small talk. Then you have to sit still during a talk and sing songs about a man called Jesus being your lover and wrapping his arms around you as you surrender everything to Him. And then right after you have another small talk session.
When you consider that the verbal reasoning part of a man’s brain is smaller than a woman’s and as a result struggles with small talk and also finds expressions of emotions in front of strangers a bit tricky, it’s no wonder that 49% of men aged between 20-29 left the church over the last 20 years!
• We talk of Jesus being our lover when men want a leader and a captain.
• We talk of surrender which carries connotations of defeat (and is only mentioned in the Bible in those terms!) But, men will bend the knee and submit to a higher authority!
• Men don’t like to get too close too soon yet we think it really helpful to break into small groups or say “grace” whilst looking into each other’s eyes.
• Men want leadership whilst the church provides pastoring.
• Men love to declare objective truth about God and yet we sing about our feelings.
• Men want to be challenged yet we wrap the gospel up in fluff.
Additionally, status and success are of huge significance to many men, which is why their work is of such importance. Yet church rarely, if ever tackles workplace issues head on. You could easily attend most churches for years and come to the conclusion that God isn’t interested in what happens 9-5 at all! But where does that leave men?
Carry out an audit: Take a look at your church: when did you last hear sermon on work? When did the church last pray publicly and seriously for those at work. In general we are great at praying for the so called “caring professions” but when did you hear a prayer for a Tesco van driver, a policeman dealing with child abuse work, a solicitor handling divorce work each week or a train driver who must spot the red lights or endure the trauma of suicide attempts. We pray for those in “full time Christian” work – but we ALL are! Christian men, let alone those yet to believe, will sit under sound and tremendously accurate Bible-teaching only to wonder what’s in the service for them: the preaching deals at best with generic issues, or with churchy or touch-feely things, and the very things that absorb so much of a man’s time mid week are never mentioned. While we sit under teaching about how to pray better or give more, most men will be thinking about the challenges of the week ahead.
Men are being spiritually starved in church and they are voting with their feet! The decline in male attendance at church is almost terminal. “Believing” men are switching off to church at an incredible rate of knots. We desperately need churches to engage with men on the real issues they face.
If we don’t get real in church we won’t get men.
Christian Vision for Men
Maybe that would explain why the leading Christian publication in the UK, Christianity magazine, is full of job advertisments with a focus on men's ministry? Oh, dream on! Out of the 67 job advertisements in the July issue, 57 of them were for youth or children's workers.
Are we completely mad?
Men believe themselves to be self-sufficient, all-capable and in no need of a crutch, so why be a Christian? That’s for wimps and women isn’t it? And nothing at all happens in church that is of any relevance to men, does it?
We need to face hard facts and then ask hard questions! Out of the 26 million men in the UK only 0.9% attend church regularly. So we need to confront this issue head on.
Most men completely by-pass church. They see it as a place that according to a BBC radio survey is for wimps, women and irrelevant! Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that when the “wheels come off” in a mans life they look to the church. A small minority might, but for most, their perception of what/who Jesus is and stands for will be quite the opposite of what they feel they need in a crisis. So what are we going to do to put hairs back on the chest of the Gospel?
Men today still look for robust and strong environments to forge friendships. They may not express it like this but men really do desire authentic relationship. Men want a “band of brothers” that they can stand shoulder to shoulder with. So, they go to the pub, the match, curry house or the lodge meeting! Being blunt about it, men don’t expect to find a band of brothers in a church, so they just don’t look there! In addition, for the most part, major male driving forces are “Money, Sex and Power.” Men will instinctively (thanks in part to the media) believe that what the church has to say about those issues, will be diametrically opposite to what they want to hear!
On top of this, consider what most men experience when they go to church. When you walk through the door you get a bit of paper shoved in your hand and a hand shake from a stranger. Nearly everyone smiles when they look at you and will expect you to smile back and engage in small talk. Then you have to sit still during a talk and sing songs about a man called Jesus being your lover and wrapping his arms around you as you surrender everything to Him. And then right after you have another small talk session.
When you consider that the verbal reasoning part of a man’s brain is smaller than a woman’s and as a result struggles with small talk and also finds expressions of emotions in front of strangers a bit tricky, it’s no wonder that 49% of men aged between 20-29 left the church over the last 20 years!
• We talk of Jesus being our lover when men want a leader and a captain.
• We talk of surrender which carries connotations of defeat (and is only mentioned in the Bible in those terms!) But, men will bend the knee and submit to a higher authority!
• Men don’t like to get too close too soon yet we think it really helpful to break into small groups or say “grace” whilst looking into each other’s eyes.
• Men want leadership whilst the church provides pastoring.
• Men love to declare objective truth about God and yet we sing about our feelings.
• Men want to be challenged yet we wrap the gospel up in fluff.
Additionally, status and success are of huge significance to many men, which is why their work is of such importance. Yet church rarely, if ever tackles workplace issues head on. You could easily attend most churches for years and come to the conclusion that God isn’t interested in what happens 9-5 at all! But where does that leave men?
Carry out an audit: Take a look at your church: when did you last hear sermon on work? When did the church last pray publicly and seriously for those at work. In general we are great at praying for the so called “caring professions” but when did you hear a prayer for a Tesco van driver, a policeman dealing with child abuse work, a solicitor handling divorce work each week or a train driver who must spot the red lights or endure the trauma of suicide attempts. We pray for those in “full time Christian” work – but we ALL are! Christian men, let alone those yet to believe, will sit under sound and tremendously accurate Bible-teaching only to wonder what’s in the service for them: the preaching deals at best with generic issues, or with churchy or touch-feely things, and the very things that absorb so much of a man’s time mid week are never mentioned. While we sit under teaching about how to pray better or give more, most men will be thinking about the challenges of the week ahead.
Men are being spiritually starved in church and they are voting with their feet! The decline in male attendance at church is almost terminal. “Believing” men are switching off to church at an incredible rate of knots. We desperately need churches to engage with men on the real issues they face.
If we don’t get real in church we won’t get men.
Christian Vision for Men
posted by Captain Sensible at 2:17 AM
2 Comments:
Also according to stats from Christian Vision for Men:
"Win a man to Jesus and 93% of them lead their families to Jesus. (As opposed to 3.5% for children and 17% for women)."
So, broadly speaking - if we want our churches to be filled with children, then we need to reach the men in the world!
The married ones will then bring their wives and children, and the single ones will marry the single women and they will start new families. (Of course, this is assuming that the church doesn't poison the new influx of single men's minds with wrong teaching about "the gift of singleness" and how they should "wait on the Lord to bring them their spouse"! But somehow, I don't think the real men that have come from the world will stand for that anyway!)
It just seems so obvious to me. What is it that our church leaders have a hard time understanding about this? I find it completely baffling, I must be honest, which is probably why I think there must be some spiritual blindness there. The only other explanation is that our church leaders collectively have the intelligence level of a mosquito. No, even that's not right, those pesky creatures can be pretty effective...
Church leaders find all this 'difficult to understand' because quite often they're men who want to stay away from normal masculine men. They want to stay away from the competition for women. They actually want to be in a cosy feminised environment where they can indulge their need to be needed.
If church leaders don't want to reach more men, they should be kicked out of their jobs.
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