Church Voices

Two blog entries by Paul McCain interested me. This one is about the role fathers play in their children’s spiritual growth (its huge) and this one is about how men are pretty much dropping out of church left and right due to the church environment reflecting values that women find important (ie stablity, safety etc.) rather than values men find important (reaching a goal, risk taking etc). Pastor McCain links over to this website on which is found this article which claims the feminization of the church began in the 1800s when men left home to find jobs in the cities and women took over church leadership functions.

If this is true (I don’t doubt the statistics, and the historical explanation sounds reasonable) then the solution to the problem would be to return the church to what it once was. So what was the church prior to the 1800s? What attracted men to the church at that point in time that has been changed or lost? Up until that point in time the church underwent constant change. From the early church which grew under persecution and battled with heretics, to the newly legalized church under Constantine which dispatched missionaries and developed the hierarchy now found in the Catholic Church (not to mentioned grew in size, scope and political power), to the Reformation which saw a battle of ideas that resulted in whole countries breaking from the Catholic Church to Christianity making landfall in the Americas and different denominations formed and grew. Not to mention the whole Second Great Awakening which saw a huge expansion of churches throughout America. While all of this was going on, art developed from within the church as a direct result of her teachings, and science grew out of a genuine desire to understand the creator by studying the creation. Innovation in areas such as art and science (not to mention academia) was directly linked with the church.

Since approximately the 1800s there hasn’t been the kind of change, and development of the church seen prior to the 1800s (well in the west anyway, Asia and Africa are different stories). If we concede that men are generally drawn to risk taking, and the achievement of goals, as well as to trail breaking new endeavors then the history of the church prior to 1800s is well suited to masculine traits. How do we translate that to today?

Not to brag, but being a manly man myself I was attracted to the church for a number of reasons. The first was an emphasis put on philosophy/apologetics. While this isn’t normally a subject equated with large biceps and hairy chests it does lend itself to masculinity as it was an area of study born out of conflict. There’s a certain amount of risk that comes from putting up your intellectual kung fu against someone else’s in a public area. Unfortunately this is an area that many churches neglect, which is sad for a large number of reasons.

Leadership is another area that lends itself well to the nature of masculinity, especially in new endeavors. This brings with it not just risk taking, but also acheiving a particular goal. Giving men (well anyone really, but men are more likely to benefit from this paradigm) a free reign over a particular area of ministry and laying out clearly defined goals you expect them to meet will not only appeal to men, but it will also tap into the human resources of the church as people are allowed to apply their natural talents and creativity.

So far I haven’t found any really good ideas on this problem. Sure, there are some ideas for men’s ministries but nothing I’ve seen has addressed how the church as a whole can appeal to men.

For those of you who read this and instantly went to write me an email accusing me of sexism don’t bother. Anyone who thinks men and women are exactly alike other than physical differences isn’t occupying the real world and I don’t want to pay the intergalatic charge on emails.