Coming to church feet first

I was chatting with a friend recently about David Murrow's book Why Men Hate Going to Church.

There's a reason it has that title and not "why men don't go to church". Because this runs deeper than just the absence of men from church pews, it's also about the men who are there - but in the physical sense only.

The cartoon is a bit of an exaggeration, but sums up the situation for many.

What's wrong with this picture

This photo was made public by the Uniting Church. The man on the left was being thanked and recognised for his contribution in role of what is effectively a 2IC of the church in this state.

Except for lingerie, at the moment I can't think of a more feminine and inappropriate gift to give the man. Particularly a man who is 6 foot tall with broad shoulders and a shaved head. At least he didn't get the pink flowers. But that's kind of like buying a man black lingerie and saying is masculine because it's not the pink set.

I think we can do better.

Male Bonding?

Brilliant cartoon. Like the man in the tie, sometimes church is completely unaware of its man-repelling actions. While we earnestly wish for more men to join, the very things church does can have the opposite effect.

As a side note, the cartoon uses holding hands as an extreme and obvious example of something to NOT do. Whilst there are also other things to also look out for, if you're a church that forces men to hold hands, please stop now.

I once attended a service where the church all held hands for the final song. As a (then) young single man, there is almost no-one it is appropriate to hold hands with for 3 minutes. Definitely not the grandfatherly figure who sat on my left, or the 12-year old girl on my right.

Looking back, I wonder what it was like for married folk. Apart from having your 12-year old daughter hold hands with an unknown man (me) you're holding your spouse with one hand - and someone else's spouse with the other.

No-one benefits from this situation. Except may be the music team. Musicians avoid the awkwardness by playing an instrument. For those 3 minutes they are the envy of all the men in the congregation.

Lyrics to keep men away from church

I recently experienced one of the more man-excluding "worship" songs I've heard in some time.

Beautiful one I love you
Beautiful one I adore
Beautiful one my soul must sing...

Do we really think this helps men worship Jesus? That it's natural for men to speak this way to another male being? Or that beautiful is even a biblically valid term for Jesus? (The answer to that last one is "no" - in the bible that word describes things other than God).

While worship music is not the sole reason for the lack of men in the church today, it certainly does its fair share in making men feel like a fish out of water.

Here's the Murrow test
If you're a man, try singing (or even saying) these lyrics to another man. Your brother, dad or best mate - someone you love, but in a non-sexual way.

Chances are you'll get a weird look in return. This is not a normal way for men to express non-sexual love. The more church sings to God like this, the more men will stay away from church, and from God.

PS. I looked up the full lyrics on the web. The page included a computer-generated Google ad - based on the frequent words in the page. Based on these lyrics, Google chose "Beauty courses" as the most relevant ad. I think that tells us something.

Soft music and candles

Occasionally, i talk about the ways in which church culture repels men. One of the main ways is by presenting faith in very romantic terms. This is dubious enough on its own, but heard through the ears of a man (given that Jesus is also male) it becomes doubly weird.

I found an example in my email. A church friend pitches a pre-Easter event like this:

We're opening the church up from 6pm-8pm, where it'll be candle-lit with soft music playing in the background. [..] an opportunity to quietly prepare our hearts [..] this is a great place to be stilling your heart before God and listening to His still small voice.

Seriously, that was in the invite. And people wonder why men are disappearing from church!

Why Men Aren't Singing

David Murrow has a great piece on Men v Praise Music. A big part of the problem is songs that paint God as "a lover rather than a leader", which means they verge on homoerotic when sung by a man. But there's other stuff too.


The result is that "women are worshipping robustly while most men stand for 20 minutes with their hands in their pockets, dutifully mouthing words that fail to resonate with their hearts."

Essentially, there are 3 reasons we ended up this way. Fortunately, there are also 7 practical ideas to help make the music time less anti-men.

Boys and Girls Toys

Saw a word cloud of the phrases used to advertise toys to boys: (most frequently used words appear the largest)


and then the corresponding one for girls' toys.


Toymakers know that different genders respond in different ways, but do churches? You'd think if there was one weekend a year where we could be relevant to men it would be Easter.

Jesus's internal battle (knowing what lay ahead). The torture. the nails. the pain. The courage in the face of mockery. The determination to stick to God's plan. The toughness. The spear into the guts. The shedding of blood for the cause. Overall, the most powerful sacrifice in history.

But for some reason, even on this weekend, it's all 'sharing', 'friendship', and 'perfect love'. Sounds more like My Little Pony than the Transformers - and hardly anything like the gospel account of the Ultimate Transformer.

Church For Men - The Website

The past couple of days i've summarised the two-part interview with David Murrow, and linked to the audio (here and here). There was a quick mention of his website Church For Men.


It's a very useful website. Obviously it outlines how we have a church that is against men, and how dysfunctional that is. But most of the website is devoted to making positive changes through a wide range of tips, tools and resources.

My personal favourite is the Guy-Friendliness Test. Answer the questions. Tally up the score. See how your church rates.

David Murrow - How Women Help Men Find God

David Murrow continued his discussion on James Dobson's "Family Talk" program (see my summary of part 1). This time the discussion was more about women - and how they can help the men and boys in their life find God. [Download Part 1 | Part 2]


The point of this discussion is well summed up by the dedication in David Murrow's second book:

This book is dedicated to 3 women - she who prays for her man but sees no change, she whose son has abandoned the faith, and she who searches for a Christian mate but finds none.

The female host reckoned that speaks to about 90% of women. The chat started with understanding how difficult it is for men in the church today.
More of David Murrow's own story:

I got so frustrated with Christianity, I began to wonder if I could be a Christian and a man at the same time. Our church was such a cautious place, such a nurturing place. And then i'd open up the scriptures and Jesus was anything but that. I began to realise that if Christ came to our church that he would probably be thrown out. He would be considered unfit to lead.

On how we've twisted the gospel:

150 years ago - If you went up to a pastor and asked for 'a personal relationship with Jesus' they wouldn't know what you're talking about. But now we've brought in metaphors like that, which takes the gospel and expresses it in terms of a woman's greatest desire - a personal relationship with a man who loves her.

On why some "worship" songs just don't cut it:

A man is going to express his love in terms of respect not romance. I'm not going to say "Ryan. I'm desperate for you. I'm lost without you. I'm so in love with you." You feel how weird that is?

Speaking about helping men find God, he says "you gotta realise that church may not be the way it's going to happen - or you need to find a church that understands men... Help them find other goldy men to hang out with." It's not a macho thing, It's about bringing a healthy masculine spirit, that's present in the gospel, into the church.

Brad Stine

Christian comedian Brad Stine talking about a few things - including a few ways the church distorts Jesus and repels men.



Highlights:

"They make us do stuff at church that we do like to do - and then we think we're bad christians"

"Either Jesus isn't God, or sin isn't always what we think it is."

"We've tried to make Jesus exactly what we wanted to be - and he wasn't. He made a living ticking off the religious people."

Jesus Made Me Do It

"Some Christians take so few risks, it's no wonder folks have a hard time believing in heaven. Most of us live in such fear of death that it's as if no one really believes in resurrection anymore."

Shane Claiborne is definitely at the other end of the spectrum - if Chapter 8 of Irresistible Revolution is any guide. He lived in Iraq during the war, was arrested for helping the homeless, and was taken to court (where he wore his "Jesus was Homeless" t-shirt - see Matthew 8:20 and Luke 9:58).

It sounds a bit scary, but Shane quotes Jesus's words that we should not fear things that can destroy the body, but those that destroy the soul. (Matthew 10:28)

Conversely, churches teach kids to "tiptoe through life so they can arrive safely at death." Such a timid mindset (apart from being unJesus-like) is part of why we "lose kids", according to Shane. "Kids want to do something heroic with their lives". The gospel provides that opportunity but often we hide it. Shane asks for God to "forgive us for all those we have lost because we made the gospel too boring."

Fear Of The Word

One of Dave Murrow's main disappointments with the church is that we don't strive to be Christlike as much as we strive to be ladylike. Expecting people to behave like princesses is a sure-fire way to fail with men.

Local mischief-makers

I was reminded of this recently when my local church's noticeboard was "creatively rearranged" overnight. This is what it originally said:


The sign is one of those double-sided ones, so the prankster had a bunch of letters from the other side to choose from to alter the message. Here's the other side and the letters they could have used (despite an E going missing).


What to choose?

If their intent was to annoy, ridicule or embarrass the church, they could have easily spelt out S-A-T-A-N or D-E-V-I-L (using the D from the dog). But instead, they substituted the word "dog" in the original message with another word. The letters they used were P,E,I,N and S .... though not in that order. ;)

It seems that in the minds of the impromptu sign-changers (and perhaps the general public) none of the words describing Jesus's arch enemy would startle or alarm church-people as much as the sight of a 'rude' word. (Sad thing is they're probably right.)

When our sense of morality seems to be sourced more from Jane Austen than Jesus Christ, is it that surprising that we struggle to be relevant to the policemen, footy players, mechanics and truck drivers in our world?

Bench Believers

CMS has a great article on Bench Believers. The term is a reference to the Soccer World Cup, and Nike's Write the Future campaign.


By contrast the church's message seems to be less about passionate pursuit of ambitious actions to create a glorious future (which you might expect it to be) and more about seeking refuge in the safety of a holy huddle.

The vibe of church is "Come, sit and stay", as opposed to Jesus's "Go, tell and do".

On a side note, it also makes me wonder if this is another reason that the church's message struggles to inspire men, while the message of Jesus excelled at it.

Mums and Dads

Sure there are so many ways that the church repels men from the gospel. But one of the more obvious symptoms is the comparison of mother's day and father's day sermons.

David Murrow describes it as "Mum's, you're great. Dad's, you better shape up." but finds it unscriptural to suggest that women have less need of God's redemption.

Anyway, i bring it up because (as father's day has just passed in the usa) Jon Acuff has done a hilarious example of the kind of things that are said on these two days. Sad thing is that even though it is meant as satire, it's only a slight exaggeration on the truth.

Moms are amazing. They are like human unicorns, special, beautiful, smelling of lavender and night jasmine, deserving of our gratitude and our complete affection and pedicures....

Dads, what are you doing? Seriously, get your act together!....

Why Men Hate Going To Church

When it comes to the issue of the church's tendency to repel men (both from itself and from Jesus) it seems there are three stages of response.

1. "I refuse to believe it. It's just not true. There's absolutely nothing wrong with church."

2. "Men have the issue. So they need to change. There's absolutely nothing wrong with church."

3. "Hmmm.... we do seem to struggle to reach men with the message of Jesus. And Jesus did command us to take the gospel to all people. Perhaps we could show some humility, accept that we are not perfect, and be open to learning how we might better represent Jesus to the male population."

Whatever stage you're at, David Murrow's book Why Men Hate Going To Church is an informative read. Though you'll get most out of it if you're at stage 3.


He explores the reasons why Christ's body (the church) is so out-of-balance, and what can be done to remedy the problem.

From time to time on this blog, i'll give some of my examples, but David Murrow is all over this issue. Coming from a background in the media, he has a unique insight as to how church presents itself almost exclusively to a female demographic. Often i think it's a tribute to the awesome power of the Holy Spirit that any men attend church at all.
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ps. His site Church for Men is not to be taken as the opposite to a church for women. It is meant to be the opposite of what we have now - a church against men.