Kreitsauce's Musings

This Father’s Day article is going to address a huge problem in the American Church: the lack of male attendance in congregations. I’ve read a number of articles and even a book or two on the subject, and I’ll be pointing you in the direction of a few good online articles and books if you’re interested.

A while ago, I wrote an article entitled “Jesus Isn’t ‘Nice’” about how we have altered our perception of God Himself to fit our culture. Because we have made that change in perception about God, we have feminized (I prefer the term “neutered”, since it brings to mind the stallion and the gelding) churches and our portrayal of the “godly man.” The effect on our congregations has been profound.

Consider the following statistics listed on the “Church for Men” website:

• American churches on average display an incredible gender gap- 69% women and 31% men. That translates to about 13 million more women attending than men.
• 1 in 4 “churched” women will attend the Sunday service without their husbands, while 80% of attendees at the midweek services are women.
• Over 70% of boys raised in church will drop out by the end of their college years.
• At Christian colleges, the ratio of female to male students is 2 to 1.

These statistics, verified from a number of researchers, are astounding to me. Besides the obvious problem of men abandoning or rejecting faith in Christ, think of the incredible symbiotic relationship between men and Christianity!

• Churchgoers are more likely to be satisfied with their lives, marriages, and themselves.
• Churchgoers are less likely to remain poor or depressed.
• Men who attend church are more likely to be engaged with their spouse and children, and teens with churchgoing fathers are more likely to admire and enjoy spending time with their fathers.
• The presence of men in a congregation is statistically related to whether or not the church grows or declines.

Who is being reached by the Gospel today? Women. There are women’s conferences, fellowships, Bible studies, and retreats. That’s fantastic and needed. Men, on the other hand, are fortunate if they get a monthly pancake breakfast and an annual retreat. The early church was a magnet for men seeking for something, but today’s church repels men.

The question must be asked: Why are men abandoning church in record numbers if many men believe in God, claim to be saved, and want to be good husbands and fathers? The answer is quite simple: churches have followed the trend of American culture and have become more effeminate. The average church, quite frankly, has been neutered.

Paul Coughlin at Crosswalk.com says that men have been encouraged to be harmless as doves, but not to become wise (shrewd) like serpents. Wisdom and cunning are extremely important, but men are told that shrewdness in everything from political and religious arguments to business deals is bad. That goes right along with the feminizing of Jesus and preaching “feel good” sermons. Sermons today are often geared to deal with supposedly practical issues and not deeper, more penetrating, or more intellectual issues. What’s so terrible to me about that last point is that I think this is insulting to many women as well as men!

Coughlin also points out that preaching and teaching today commonly instructs men to avoid anger. The problem is that anger is the primary emotional response for many men and some women! It’s a simple reaction that can’t be controlled! Of course, how anger is dealt with can be controlled, but anger is to some men what crying is to some women. Can you imagine a pastor telling the women in his congregation to not cry when they get upset? No one would do such a thing, because everyone knows that crying is sometimes a natural response to situations for some people. The same thing stands for anger. Good luck building a biblical case against anger, by the way. You’ll find the Bible speaks often of controlling and dealing with anger, being angry and not sinning, God’s own anger, and being meek. What you won’t find is an instruction to never be angry. You also won’t find God banning masculine qualities.

Christian men are encouraged to be “nice” in the name of Christian testimony. Sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade though. To be sure, there are times when testimony is important, but that isn’t all the time. Imagine telling Moses, David, Elijah, Daniel, John the Baptist,  and Paul to back down in the name of testimony. Personally, I’d like to see more men in church that exhibit more of the qualities of these godly men. If the righteous are bold as lions (Proverbs 28), then our churches are sadly lacking in righteous men.

Churches today are extremely relational, and seek to meet emotional needs, according to writer Nancy Pearcey. They deal with sharing feelings, soft singing, and comforting members. Praise songs describe Jesus almost as a lover, while songs such as “Onward Christian Soldiers” are avoided at all cost. As Pearcey says: “So, as long as Christianity appeals to the emotional, therapeutic, interpersonal, relational areas, it’s not going to appeal to men as much as to women.” Where is the church triumphant in all of this?

The answer is that the church today isn’t too concerned with being triumphant. As my fellow blogger Wintery Knight observes:

“All of the outward facing disciplines within Christianity, such as apologetics, theology, ethics, etc. are de-emphasized, censored or resisted in feminized churches. There is no place for rationality, moral judgments and boundaries, debates and disagreement, confrontations and persuasion, or other manly Christian practices.

Christianity is evangelical, and evangelism takes study and preparation, which culminates in confrontations and discussions. The object of these discussions is not to win the argument. It is to win the person over to your side. So facts and arguments play a huge role in  evangelism, but there has to be gentleness too, if you actually want to win. And this is what Christian men are supposed to do.”

Men seem to enjoy theology, philosophy, politics, ethics, and science more than women do. They love debate, contest, competition, adventure, challenges, danger, risk, and achievement in a unique way. It isn’t that these are “men’s areas”, but there is something different in how men are wired that gives them an affinity for these things. As John Eldridge’s book Wild at Heart observes, our self-worth is intimately connected to these things. Men don’t feel complete unless they are accomplishing, building, and standing on something larger than themselves. As Christian comedian Jeff Allen has said, men need something worth dying for to make them truly come to life.

So what’s a church to do? Jesus founded His church on men, and it only seems fitting that churches can only thrive when there is a core of both men and women willing to serve Him. Remember that the pastor of any given church probably isn’t to blame for who attends- or doesn’t attend- his church. The congregation wields great control in this area, so it is up to us- the laity- to make the changes. Christianity must be presented as more than the solution to fears and failures if men are to return to church. It must be presented as the wild journey, the incredible quest, the “Pilgrim’s Progress” that it is. There must be more preaching and teaching on being “a soldier of the cross”, of putting on the armor of light, and of rejecting spiritual milk for meat. Only then will there be a resurgence of men to the church pew.

For more information check out Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow and The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity by Leon J. Podles. Personal enrichment books on the same topic are The Silence of Adam by Larry Crabb and No More Christian Nice Guy by Paul T. Coughlin.