WHERE HAVE ALL THE MEN GONE?

Have you wondered why more women than men attend church services?

In most congregations there are 30% men and 70% women, notwithstanding the leadership is usually male.

In fact in a survey carried out in Australia, it was found that churches led by women were losing members quicker than those led by men.

We do not however, have to look too far to discover the reason for this sad state of affairs.

The standard organisational setup of most churches militates against men and their character and nature. Most are based on the three As of attend, agree and admire.

If you attend, you are fulfilling the main requirement of the churches existence. You don’t actually have to do anything, unless singing a few songs constitutes activity.

The second, agree, means that all that is expected of you is to passively agree with everything that is said from the pulpit by professional leadership. Critical thinking or enlighten ideas are not welcome. In fact, in most churches it is positively discouraged.

The third is that you admire. You admire a nice building, a nice sermon, a nice programme, nice singing, an orderly service, a not too demanding schedule. But you never do anything.

Enter the nature of man. He is not into sitting, singing, listening and admiring and issuing platitudes that keep everyone happy.

Men are into doing, which is why sport is the main God of most men. It is active and even if they are only looking on there is always something happening and no two weeks are the same.

John Tanburn in his book “Open House” says that the industrial and technological revolutions have reduced men to ‘it’, a number or a cog in the wheel of the company or business. They have been depersonalised. That is why sport has become so important as it gives them something to identify with and be active about.

The church has gone the way of the world and reduced people to an impersonal being who is there to make up the numbers and spectate something that never changes (apart from the hymns sung). The same thing week after week without challenge, excitement, involvement, a beginning and an end or real purpose, all the things a man responds to.

They have to listen to the parson drone on week after week about things that have no relevance whatsoever to the lives of the men. The end result is that they are absent. Why give my time and energy to something that is so BORING!! I am a nothing at work, why go to church and be a nothing there.

The church needs a wake up call to start being relevant to men. it needs variety every week, short sermons, even better discussions about life’s topics that interest men. it needs to dump the religious ritual that chokes the life out of most churches. In other words it needs to wake up to itself and understand that what they offer is not cutting the mustard for most people, especially men.

And they need to face up to the startling fact that the majority of males leave their church when they move out of home and are never seen again.

Men are passionate about the things that interest them. If your church is not full of passionate men, then you need to take the axe to what you are doing because the bottom line is it is your fault not theirs. Sacred cows are only any good for eating, not preserving.