Testosterone Church

Is Manliness Next to Godliness?


A recent study by the Pew Foundation surveyed how many men attend church as compared to women. The historic stream of churches (mainline) didn't do too badly. Males comprise 46% of our membership and 31% of them claim to attend church weekly. In the mainline churches 37% of women say they attend church at least once a week.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-07-23-males-church_N.htm

Those numbers seem to jive with my observations over time. But some churches are asking, "where are all the men?" Apparently there is a movement to make churches more masculine in order to attract men to worship. I've been out of touch, I guess. I even had to go to the dictionary to learn how to spell testosterone. In fact, Sandy's kids told her not to marry me because they questioned my sexual orientation. According to them, I cleaned my nails, touched my hair with my hands to put it back "in place" and did not practice audible flattulence.

Go figure.

The USA Today reported that . . . many pastors say they need to power up on reaching men if the next generation of believers, the children, will find the way to faith. So hundreds of churches are going for a "guy church" vibe, programming for a stereotypical man's man. "I hear about it everywhere I go," says Brandon O'Brien, who detailed the evolution of the chest-thumping evangelism trend this spring in Christianity Today." Listen to an audio interview with the author at http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/ .

According to the USA Today report, one church in Texas (of course) was designed "designed with dudes in mind, from the worship center's stone floor, hunter-green and amber decor and rustic-beam ceilings to woodsy scenes on the church website."

Now that I think about this, some church buildings are large enough to have a high ropes course climbing walls and maybe even skeet shooting. Or maybe just the Wii version. Bally's and Bible?

I jest. Sort of. Ingniting passion for God in all people is critically important. But it is so easy to lose our focus. Presbyterians believe that God is already actively at work in calling people to salvation. I don't think the Spirit has a gender quota but what I do know is that is that when we are passionate about God's mission in the world, God's people flouish - men and women.

When I was brash young adult, I was a Boston radio air personality. Don't get excited. We barely showed up on the ratings chart. I gained three Nielson points in one day because I asked my in-laws to listen during sweeps week :) Actually, what happened was that the station General Manager came in during my air shift with a sheaf of print outs. He said, "this is really strange and I wanted to tell you." My first thought was that no one listened to my ramblings and I was gonna be outa there. Not. The GM said, "during you show we increased the number of male listeners. I've seen the female listeners increase often, but never the men." Then he sent me out to sell ads for golf clubs and advertising spots during the Notre Dame football game (remember, this was Irish Catholic Boston).

I've tried to figure out if I did anything particular that connected with men. All I could come up with was authenticity.

Go figure.