Sunday, October 23, 2011

Is Church Too Easy for Men?

the numbers don't lie. Men are staying away from church. The reasons are undoubtedly complex, but perhaps a clue can be found in a Christian group that attracts men and women in roughly equal numbers: Eastern Orthodoxy. A cynic might say that men are attracted to Orthodoxy because it is conservative, with an all-male clergy, many of them sporting beards. The finding of religion journalist Frederica Mathewes-Green, however, is closer to the truth. She surveyed male adult converts and discovered that Orthodoxy's main appeal is that it's "challenging." One convert said, "Orthodoxy is serious. It is difficult. It is demanding. It is about mercy, but it is also about overcoming myself." Another said that he was sick of "bourgeois, feel-good American Christianity."

Yes, some churchgoers are satisfied with feel-good Christianity, but I think many Christians—women and men—yearn for a more costly, demanding, life-changing discipleship. Perhaps women are more patient when they don't find it, or more discerning of the deeper cross-bearing opportunities that lie beneath the candied surface. Men take a walk or hang around the church coffeepot talking in jargon about football: another disciplined and costly arena of life in which people sacrifice their bodies and their individual desires for a larger cause that matters to them, at least for the moment. Near transcendence is preferable to no transcendence at all.

full article at Christian Century.

I can relate to this. On 3 months of sabbatical, the things I enjoyed most were not really the free time, or the cold beers, but the challenges: a weeks silent retreat, a 30 mile walk in the Lake District, converting half the garage into a games room for our kids with limited (read 'no') DIY skills. Those were the highlights.

Here's the survey the article refers to, which really is worth reading in full. Here's a snippet






  1. I think that Church is perhaps too passive and doesn't really drive action enough. Maybe practicality and doing would help. I know a group of guys who go mountain biking together, some of them find that they are able to worship far better in that, enjoying God's creation.

    What about people using their practical skills, a form of church that enables us to help others, decorate, build, offer mechanical skills etc to those who need it. What does/could worship look like in that setting? Something separate or something that is built into their doing.

    Maybe this would allow men to connect with church more easily.