I read Jane Tooher’s review of “Single Women: Challenge to the Church?” in the Jan 04 Briefing, which was interesting as we have been discussing the book and related issues for the last 6 months ;)

However, I couldn’t help but feel there really should be a companion book called “Non Existent Men: Challenge to the Church?” hence this thread. The topic was picked up briefly in the singleness thread, but leaving all the singleness stuff in there, I thought it would be good to raise the topic of men in the church here.

Are our churches male-unfriendly? Is church and the way its practised here, inherently unappealing to men in our society, and hence so is the gospel? (Or vice versa?)

I looked up the NCLS 2001 research and found these were the stats for Australian churches:

http://www.anglicanmedia.com.au/files/misc/ncls_gender_graph.gif

Is this the case at your church?

I think its probably about right for mine (which is small and skewed towards uni age ppl). In any case the females seem far more cohesive on the whole than the males, which are a bit all over the place (me included).

I’m not sure what the answer is, but whatever it is, its not what we are doing now!

Discuss :)

What more eloquent a response could the blokes in this form make than silence......

I just checked my own parish’s NCLS results, and we come in at 64% female and 36% male exactly.  So we are spot on average.

But it is probably worse than that really, because Kalgoorlie has an unusual sex distribution profile - more men than women.

and the remaining third all of a sudden have noticed the lawns have grown 3.5 millimetres since last weekend, and although it’s Thursday evening, the yard must take priority over all this ‘men’s issues’ stuffp

:killingme:

*hahahahahahAHHAHAHAHahahahah*

This will be interesting :)

My church congregation also reflects the stats already given (though I’m not sure of the exact %).

But what I find even more disappointing is that the number of men at church who want to be involved in ministry, who want to take on leadership (in any form), who are willing to take the initiative is so small. Out of an evening congregation of about 50 this year we have three Bible study leaders. Three. Two of them are guys (the sole female is me at this point! But only because we have lost two or three of the ‘core’ girls this year) and it’s wonderful they are taking on the role… but it’s just disappointing that all the other guys who have been asked (and who are more than capable) have said no. And it has been this way for a good number of years now.

One of my male friends at church is involved in the men’s ministry and as much as they encourage the guys in our congregation to come along, as much as they plug it and talk it up they invariably are lucky to get 3 men from our congregation come every single time. It’s incredibly frustrating and disappointing for him. The morning congregation guys seem to be more enthusiastic (on both the ministry/leadership and fellowship fronts) so maybe it is just a 20 something issue? I’m not sure.

Sorry- I’m not meaning to have a whinge… really I’m not! (I’ll get to that in February when only 5 people from our congregation turn up to the annual vestry meeting despite our best efforts to encourage them! ) :) It’s just hard not to be disappointed when it happens year after year after year.

As sad as it will be to leave the church I have been at for over 10 years at the end of this year I’m actually looking forward to going to a church where (God willing) there will be more guys willing to stand up and be counted when it comes to ministry and leadership.

Where are the men?

Dani said:

… but it’s just disappointing that all the other guys who have been asked (and who are more than capable) have said no. And it has been this way for a good number of years now.

I was informed there is an old saying:

“There are two types of people in this world;
those who are willing to work,
and those who are willing to let them work.”

I guess this model happens in church as well, even though the scriptures ask us to all be part of the one body, the Church. We are urged to use the gifts that we have been given. Trouble is the gifts some have been given is the gift to bludge.

Ken

Hi y’all

I think a lot of things we do at church are things that most men don’t like doing eg singing

Dont get me wrong, I love singing - but Im used to it....

-A-

There is a real need for corperate repentance along the lines of Nehemiah in our churches today.

He confessed to God, his sins his forfathers & hi snations sins before he moved on.

It seems to me that men “GAVE” their spiritual authority over to women by saying - you go to church, take the kids to sunday school, you pray for the kids, you do all the God stuff - as to me I am going to golf.  is it any wonder that militant feminism raised it’s head the way it did

It really breaks my heart when I go past the local freemasonry temple and see more cars out the front then I do at the local churches collectively.

I think when the men ministering in our churches truly open up to other men about their lives - other men will do likewise. Aussie men in paticular do not like to ask for help, this flows down into our relationship with God where we are reluctant to ask God for help through out the day for our day to day needs, we do not like to ask others for help or even give the impression we need help.

I am talking generally here.

When I went to Bible College we did some stuff in our college small groups called “MAN TO MAN” it was very very good.

I think it all starts with us in how do we take our Christian walk with God. I find that the majority of Australian Christians (those I know) compartmentalise their walk with God. It is a programic Christianity - that is I must read my Bible, I must pray, I must go to church, Oh I must attend the working bee, etc etc.

Instead a paradim shift is needed where we have the revelation, I pray because God hears my voice and because he hears my voice I love him, I read the word of God because I want to hear what God is saying back to me, I go to church because I have gifts to share with others of Gods flock and need encouraging as well.

The other paradim shift is that we need to reach out to men because we care for them, not because we want bums on a pew, we reach out to them because God loves them, not because we want to see more in our church, we need to reach out to them because we have a heart for the lost, that means we need to be open ourselves.

I find it interesting that there are more men in the Assemblies of God then elsewhere. We need to look at this and find out why. I know a well known jocky who became a Christian because the church prayed for his daughter who was deaf, God replaced the missing part of her ear, there are two x rays, before and after prayer, a miracle the doctors say.

That got his attention, the otherday at work a guy was sharing with me about his wifes pregancy, he was about to leave as she was overdue, he had also lost a child at 2 months old.

I asked him, “mate whats your wifes name - I will pray”, I then laid a hand on his shoulder and prayed for her, the baby and him, he walked away with tears in his eyes because I cared, I shared with him a part of my faith in a real and caring way.

Time will tell how open the door will be for me to witness to him later on, I do know this though - it is more open than it was before.

Men stop worrying about the length of the lawn, stop being a Martha and start being like Mary - I even say this to our fulltime ministers - how often do you get caught up with full time ministry - reading and studying the bible for sermon preperation - programs etc - without really spending time at the Lords feet?

craig

One thing that can help explain the raw stats is that our churches are made up mostly of people over 40 (with people over 70 being the most represented age group).  And women outnumber men as you go up the age scales (to the point of 2-1 in the 70+ age groups).  Given this, that there are more older people in our churches and older people are more likely to be women (that dosen’t sound right..  I mean that it’s more likely that given a random individual from the 70+ age group, the chances are greater that you picked a woman. ;), it follows that there will be more women in churches than men.

Hmmm… doesn’t explain everything, though. The statistics hold true for us anecdotally.

Our 10am service has a whole lot of young families - bringing husband, wife and kids. On top of that are a significant number of women (maybe a dozen) who come without their husbands. I can only think of two men who come without their wives. Plus there are more single women than single men at that service also (though very few singles in total).

Net result: 60% women, 40% men. Only 2 people over 70.

I don’t have a flood of answers, but women do tend to be more relational beings where men are more task oriented (crude generalisation I know) - could that be a factor in motivating them to try attending church?

Perhaps too our outreach programs are more effective at tapping into women’s relationships at times in life when they are most feel the need for adult company - the years of motherhood - at school; playgroups etc.

So what can we do to reach out to men in a similar way...?

Keep thinking…

Gross generalisations to follow, for which I apologise in advance. 

[quote author="Matthew Williams"]Perhaps too our outreach programs are more effective at tapping into women’s relationships at times in life when they are most feel the need for adult company - the years of motherhood - at school; playgroups etc.

The first time I got hit with the difference between men’s & women’s ministry was very simple.  It was up at the first WKC and came in one of the illustrations used in the talks. 

Now, I can follow a sporting analogy as well as the next guy, I can match you point for point in James Bond illustrations, and I will correct your Star Wars stories because obviously the bit you’re thinking of was in Return of the Jedi, not Empire Strikes Back, and it would have been more appropriate to mention that scene in Episode 1 where Qui-Gon takes....

Ahem.  Yes.  Well. 

I am, however, very much aware that I’m in the minority among women.  Start talking about sport and many women roll their eyes.  Start talking about Science Fiction and those same eyes glaze over. 

Up at WKC a very simple illustration was used for “holiness”: the sewing scissors.  Every woman in the shed knew that the good sewing scissors are set apart for one purpose, and one purpose only - the cutting of fabric.  Woe betide anyone who uses them to cut paper!  (As my brother and father well know...now.) It was a very gender-specific illustration. 

A few weeks ago our pastor started his sermon with a cricketing illustration and began by apologising to the women.  (This was also the week I told him I was going to duck out early after the sermon to go out to the SCG for Waugh’s last test, but I digress...) I don’t remember exactly what it was, but thinking back on it the illustration didn’t seem inappropriate and furthermore didn’t require any kind of in depth understanding of the of the rules to understand the point. 

I guess what I’m thinking about is… is there *no* place for any kind of sporting illustration (for example) in “co-ed” teaching?  I’m not talking about going so far as to have Sunday’s sermon being nothing more than a commentary of Friday’s game, or having a sermon that’s so entirely gender-biased that the other 64% of the congregation have nothing to relate to, but does that mean we can’t talk about it at all? 

Yes, there are men’s ministries that cater directly to blokes.  My church has men’s breakfasts for the guys and ladies’ coffee evenings where we have women speaking.  Maybe it’s a product of only having men preaching?  Guys who are trained to be very much aware of making sure women relate to their sermons (and don’t get me wrong - this is a Very Good Thing), so steer a bit to far away from the men? 

Please note that I have absolutely nothing to back this up, no data or info at all, just my random musings.  I don’t even know if *I* agree with what I’ve said.  I’ll have to think about it more.  Basically what I’m thinking is… if it’s appropriate, and if it doesn’t go too far, and if not done too often there might be a case made for possibly using some kind of gender-biased illustration at some point in a sermon. 

Conditional much?  ;-)

SJK.

I think the age proportionalism explains alot.

But I think there is something inherent in Christianity that attracts women. Jesus’ most faithful disciples were women: a woman gave birth and raised him, women followed him around and “cared for his needs”, women were the last to see him alive, were the last with him in death, and were the first witnesses to his resurrection. There is some room to suggest that we should not be unduly concerned about the proportion of women to men in church; I’ll bet it is a statistic that doesn’t vary much from denomination to denomination.

There is also an aspect that people are busier today than they were 40, 50, 60 years ago. There is more pressure on young adults to perform, to have a career, to have the classic Australian dream (new house in the suburbs, 2 kids, 2 cars, in ground pool etc etc) - even within the Christian community. We are often so busy keeping up with the rat race, by the time Sunday comes around we are exhausted and in need of a rest (which is what it was designed for), and too tired/immobile to get up and go to church let alone be involved. I see this in my sister and her fiance, and in many others of their age group; it’s not that they are not Christians, it’s just that fulltime work which demands you are there Mon-Fri 7:30-6:30 is rather exhausting. This is probably the case with many people. I think even of my Dad, who is the most ardent of Reformed adherents, who often has to work into the wee hours of Sunday morning, and is too trashed to think about church.

Yet again, Australian culture expects alot of men. Relationships are “girlie”, you don’t get too close to other people, big boys dont cry or show their feelings, it’s more man-like to go to the pub and drink on a Saturday night than it is to avoid a hangover for Sunday morning… There are many more ideas of “manhood” that could be ticked off as typical of Australian culture.

I don’t know how any of this impacts how we do church, or how we as church address the issue of smaller numbers of men…

One thing which is notable is that it doesn’t matter what sort of church it is (catholic, evangelical, calathumpian), if that church is ALIVE and doing stuff all sorts of people will be attracted to it. Maybe that is what we should be focussing on, rather than dreaming up new men’s ministries?

They are not in Scotland, that is for sure!

Josh

I must’ve missed this thread when it first appeared. Tony Payne’s book on Fatherhood is absolutely brilliant, and addresses some of the basic misunderstandings and wrong thinking about being a father, in a way that will have direct bearing on things like numbers of men in church.

What will be interesting over the next decade or two is to see what happens to the proportion of men in churches where the (chief) Pastor is a woman.

The early signs I suggest are not good. A recent report in the UK Sunday Times, cites a member of the C of E General Synod member saying the number of women worshipping in Anglican Churches had fallen 3% to 483,000 over the past 10 years while the number of men had fallen 30% to 283,000. Whilst other factors will also be at work, the ordination of women and placing them in one minister Parishes will be one significant factor. My casual observation of the Anglican and Uniting Church is that it is not working out well. Where women ministers can work is in the old fashioned deaconess way and also to be observed is the Pentecostal joint husband and wife pastoral team. However, in my experience of Pentecostals, when you meet them in Pastors Networks you meet the husbands (or is that deference to the tender consciences of Presbyterians, I don’t think so)

More power to men’s ministries, though personally I prefer mixed sex and mixed age ministries, but don’t forget the Biblical patterns for men/female relationships and the requirement for male leadership in worshipping communities.

I think this is a conspiracy by women to.......
Oh sorry, wrong thread!

I think that there is something prohibitive in the Oz male psyche re church. We are a nation built not just on the sheep’s back, but on concrete thinking.
If you can see it and it works then it is OK, anything else is not OK. Consider that you should never talk politics or religeon.
Why?
Too much opinion involved. Sport is OK. This team will win or not. The horse will come in with a win or not.
Too much time is involved.
Sport is usually resolved in a season at the most (like a crop) but pollies and God are long term and ethereal. Superannuation is less ethereal and at least you get a running balance (for all the good that does you).

No wonder Prosperity Gospel has taken a foothold!

David Palmer,

Your post was a real eye opener for me. Hadn’t even thought about the issue you raised so many thanks from me to you.

Something I have noticed over the last decade is a change in Australia’s work culture. Men and women are working increasingly longer hours and subsequently have less time for relationships and R&R. How can you invite a male friend to hear the gospel at church or an evangelistic event if they are time poor? Or how can a Christian man leave his office at 5.30pm for bible study later that evening when there’s more work to do and others are staying back to help complete the work?

I wonder how this change in work culture and the accompanying advances in technology (mobile phones, beepers, laptops) have affected the numbers which attend church, bible studies, evangelistic events, men’s conventions.