Are churches 'too feminized' for men?
Jul. 19, 2006 News media contact: Linda Green * (615) 7425470* Nashville {432}
NOTE: Photographs are available at http://umns.umc.org.
A UMNS Feature By Robin Russell*
Author David Murrow says a typical guy feels as comfortable in church as Tom Sawyer in Aunt Polly's parlor.
"He must watch his language, mind his manners and be extra polite," Murrow writes in his popular 2005 book, Why Men Hate Going to Church. That's because the altar flowers and felt banners, mostly female Sunday school teachers and blue-haired ladies playing the organ, all make church feel like a "woman's thing." And unless a man enjoys serving on a committee or passing out bulletins, he may feel there's not much for him to do, so he steers clear.
Today's contemporary worship services aren't much better: Their soft praise-and-worship songs and emphasis on relational needs are better suited to the needs of women than men, says Murrow, who is a member at a nondenominational church in Anchorage, Alaska.
"If church was a place where men could be real and not religious, you'd see a lot more of them," he concludes.
United Methodists may not see completely eye-to-eye with Murrow, but statistics on American church life seem to bear him out.
More than 90 percent of American men believe in God, and five out of six call themselves Christian, according to the Barna Research Group, a Christian research firm based in Ventura, Calif. But only two out of six attend church on a given Sunday.
Church attendance is roughly one-third male and two-thirds female. Nearly a quarter of married women attend church alone while their husbands sleep in, mow the lawn or play golf.
It's not that men are less religious than women, Murrow says, because other religions have little trouble drawing males. His theory is that Judaism, Buddhism and Islam offer more "uniquely masculine" experiences for men.
"Every Muslim man knows that he is locked in a great battle between good and evil," he recently told Religion News Service. But most Christians today see their faith more in terms of "having an unconditional love relationship" with Jesus, he said.
"And if that's the punch line of the Gospel, then you're going to have a lot more women than men taking you up on your offer, because women are interested in a personal relationship with a man who loves you unconditionally. Men, generally, are not."
Mainline woes
For mainline denominations, the news is even worse. Whether it's because they ordain women or because they're more established in their patterns of "doing church," mainline congregations experience the greatest gender gaps, defined as having at least 12 percent more women than men actively involved.
More than 70 percent of United Methodist churches report such a gap, compared to 55 percent of Baptist and 25 percent of nondenominational churches, according to the 1998 National Congregations Study.
Mainline denominations, as Murrow points out, also have the greatest percentage of membership losses and church closings.
"A lack of male participation is one of the surest predictors of church decline," he writes. "If you want a healthy church for the long term, attract men. This was Jesus' strategy. It still works today."
Murrow knows how to roil ecclesiastical waters, yet some United Methodists who are concerned with declining membership concede that he makes a few good points.
The Rev. Mark Winter, a general evangelist of the United Methodist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, is old enough to remember the early 1960s Norman Rockwell print, "Sunday Morning," which showed a woman leading her Sunday-dressed children out the door while her husband, still in pajamas, slinks down in a chair reading the paper, a cigarette nestled between his fingers.
"A lot of guys who spend their time hunting and fishing walk into church and think, 'This is the same as it was when I was a child. Why should I come back? It was boring then, and it is now,' he said. "As one Texan put it, 'Men don't go to church because they've been.'"
'Feminized' church
Murrow's critique of church culture is nothing new. After all, churches didn't become "feminized" overnight, says Catholic scholar and author Leon J. Podles in his 1999 book, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. Podles traces a feminine characteristic of the church back to the 12th century, when medieval female orders began to rise and mystic Bernard of Clairvaux popularized the metaphor of the church as the bride of Christ.
The notion of each person as essentially feminine before God is evident in today's praise-and-worship songs that are "love songs to Jesus," Murrow says.
That doesn't bother Art Brucks, who helped launch the men's ministry at First United Methodist Church, Mansfield, Texas. He sings in the church's praise choir and lifts his hands during worship. But he draws the line at holding hands when praying or sharing feelings in a mixed group. He also doesn't like feminine touches during worship, like when 12-year-old girls in pink flowing dresses "slit up to the hip" performed a liturgical dance on a recent Sunday morning.
"I about got sick. I had to keep my head down and just read Scripture," Brucks said. "I think a guy is looking for Christ in a way that he can identify with in a church. My pastor nails it 90 percent of the time, so I can't complain."
It helps that his pastor, who leads the men's ministry, is "a real man, a 50-year-old guy who is physically fit, plays basketball with the guys every Sunday night after preaching four services and can still bench-press 350 pounds."
Muscular Christianity
That kind of masculine approach has been part of historical church efforts to reach men, including the "muscular Christianity" movement of the late 19th century that extolled manliness and, in the last few decades, the popularity of Promise Keepers. More recently, John Eldredge's best-selling Wild at Heart has spawned a number of wilderness retreats and Bible studies for men.
Rob Renfroe, minister of discipleship at The Woodlands (Texas) United Methodist Church, leads a Quest men's breakfast that was inspired by Eldredge's work and draws 300 men.
"Men can talk in different ways to other men. We talk about real-life issues that matter to them," he said. Men want to hear, for instance, about workplace issues, their responsibilities to their wives and families and the need for healthy male friendships. The Quest group has spawned 15 small groups that meet throughout the year, as well as service projects and mentoring programs for young boys without fathers, Renfroe added.
In spite of such efforts, the only golden age in American male church attendance to date, according to Murrow, was during the 1950s and 1960s - the heyday of the "builder generation" - when church construction was also booming. Attendance then mirrored the adult population (53 percent female and 47 percent male).
"But once the paint dried, men began to get bored. There was nothing for them to do," he says in his book. Upstart churches still tend to draw more men than denominational congregations that have been around awhile. That's because newer churches use the kinds of skills men bring to the table, Murrow explained.
"Risks must be taken. Plans must be made. Buildings must be built. Men love this stuff. But as a congregation ages, it begins to value feminine gifts such as nurturing, stability and close-knit community."
Larry Malone, director of United Methodist Men's Ministries, thinks church today is "feminized to a degree" because a disproportionate number of women are present as the power players and because there's been a "distinct absence of the right kind of male leadership."
"I think that nature abhors a vacuum. I don't think this is a master plot or scheme. It's just how things have evolved. There's not a bad guy in this," he said.
In the past, male church leadership has sometimes wrongly reflected a patriarchal mentality that said, "I'm not just the male, I'm the alpha male and I'm in charge around here," Malone said. "This is the very model that feminism had its rightful stand against. The male leadership that has been absent is servant leadership as modeled by Christ."
What men want
While Winter doesn't buy into all the "red-meat theology" promoted by some men's movement authors, he's learned from leading men's retreats in Fort Worth what United Methodist men are looking for in a church.
"Men like adventures. Men like challenges. We like in-your-face sermons. We need to be pursuing God on our own, and not expecting the preacher to change our spiritual diaper each Sunday," he said. "All week long, we're given projects, goals and challenges by our bosses. We like to sink our teeth into projects. If a pastor can theologize that this is what Jesus did, it stirs men's hearts. We want to be impacting our world for Christ."
That's part of the formula that worked for Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church in Columbia, S.C., a congregation whose men's group used to consist of a monthly restaurant meal that "had no energy," said the Rev. Michael Bingham.
The church now recruits men for hands-on service projects instead of committee work. Men repair homes of elderly members. They participate in rebuilding projects on the Gulf Coast. And they've gone on service missions trips to Mexico the last two years. The church also launched a popular "Men Cook With Fire" monthly get-together, where the men grill something, eat together and hear inspirational speakers. The gathering is so popular that men have begun inviting their friends, Bingham said.
"Some aren't members at any church. That's been the most pleasing," he said. "It's come out of hard prayer and trying a few things that didn't work. Men want to belong to something larger than themselves. They like doing something that matters."
UM Men responds
Malone agrees that "significance is a huge issue for guys." Trouble is, he adds, many men haven't found it at church.
"Our worst fear is getting near the end of our life and just not having mattered. This is deep in the soul of men. This is a craving in a man's soul. In a very real sense, a man wants something that is worth dying for. And if he actually has something that is worth dying for, he can live for it."
In his work with United Methodist Men, Malone sometimes uses books such as Why Men Hate Going to Church to start discussions on how to more effectively reach men.
"One of the provocative statements in the book that affects our church is that 'men follow men,'" he said. "Could that be considered true? If our biggest purpose is reaching all of God's creatures for Christ, what could a female pastor do with the fact that some men are more likely to respond to male leadership?
"The question you have to get past is, 'Should it be this way?' Of course it shouldn't be. Then you move on to the reality that this is how it is with some people."
Malone said United Methodist clergywomen need to be secure enough in their leadership to be able to engage men who are "on the periphery." Teams of men and women leaders, for instance, might help communicate messages effectively to men, perhaps even during a worship service.
Some men may have a problem that goes deeper than who's preaching on Sunday. They may be reluctant to get involved at church because they have a problem getting closer to God in the first place, Malone said. That's because they might have never dealt with their "father wounds."
Most people get their image of God from their relationship with their own fathers, he said. So if a man has a problem with Dad, he is much more likely to have a problem with God.
"It's not an accident that many men have been in church a long time and don't seem to be getting any closer to God," he said. "If you have a significant father wound, there is a part of you that doesn't want to get closer to God. You can be intellectually aware that God is not the same as my earthly father, but the reality is that men and women are profoundly affected by who they think God is.
"For some, it's a crushing, life-sucking, just absolute catastrophe. I run into guys in their 50s and 60s who have been going to church for decades and they've never, ever touched this. But the freedom that is unlocked when you're able to unpack that thing! You find that God is at the ready. You learn that what God has been intending for so long has been blocked for so long."
'Wesley men'
The church should be helping each man understand "how absolutely crucial his faith walk is" because it affects not just himself, but his marriage and his family, Malone said.
United Methodist Men wants to help men find a place in church, and more importantly, develop a sense of eternal significance, through a new partnership called Wesleyan Building Brothers, a one-year, small-group curriculum that will help move men toward what Malone calls "a full pursuit of God, who is adventuresome, powerful, loving - a Christ who is simply to be worshipped and fallen down before."
Men will first work on maturing their own faith and growing toward Christ. But it doesn't stop there. They will go on to become "spiritual fathers" by helping reproduce the Christian faith in someone else, and ultimately help that person reproduce the faith in others.
"Wesleyan Bands of Brothers" will be launched at 70-80 churches in the Tennessee Area and six to eight other areas before 2007. Eventually, some 1,000 men will be trained to help set up teams in every district so that by 2012, all 35,000 United Methodist congregations will have a Wesleyan Band of Brothers influencing their local church.
"This is a lifetime aspiration. This is different than just good, faithful men who attend church," Malone said. "If it doesn't take your breath away, if you don't realize you need God to do this, then you didn't get it."
*Russell is the managing editor of the United Methodist Reporter in Dallas. This story was originally published in the Reporter. She may be reached at rrussell@umr.org.
News media contact: Linda Green, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
********************
United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: http://umns.umc.org
----------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this group, go to UMCom.org, log in to your account, click on the My Resources link and select the Leave option on the list(s) from which you wish to unsubscribe. If you have problems or questions, please write to websupport@umcom.org.
Powered by United Methodist Communications http://www.UMCom.org