Where Are The Men?
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 10:43PM I came across the following while preparing for my Father's Day message.
1. If both your parents worshipped with you regularly while you were growing up, there’s an 80% likelihood that you’ll worship God regularly as an adult.
2. If only your mother worshipped regularly with you, there’s only a 30% probability that you’ll worship regularly as an adult.
3. If only your father worshipped regularly with you, the likelihood that you’ll worship regularly as an adult increases to 70% percent!
With all the fuss at this year's Synod over the Office of Women, I almost hesitate, but those who know me, know I won't, to bring up the pink elephant in the room. Why isn't more attention being paid to the fact that men comprise only about 30% of membership of the RCA?
One could debate the future of women in leadership in the RCA, but we can't debate the truth that if we fail to increase the number of men in the pews the RCA does not have a future. If we don't address this growing or is it shrinking problem soon we will not have the funds to fund the Office of Women or much of anything in the denomination.
Yet I never hear this issue talked about at any level of the RCA. With the mass exodus of young people from our churches, most never to return, where will we be in 10-25 years? We need to get serious about the men inside and outside our congregations.
But will we assess the churches $1.30/member to form an Office of Men? I doubt it. If you want to see the real reason for our decline - ask, "Where are the Dads?"
Reader Comments (17)
Where are the dads?
Many dads are pursuing all types of pleasure and leisure activities both on Sundays and during the week times when they should and could be apart of worshiping, serving their families and being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Many dads also are buying into the notion that their highest calling is to financially provide for their families, rather than providing spiritual nourishment to them. Many "church-going dads" are also missing the mark, as they do give up an hour or 2 on Sundays, but have not yielded to the Holy Spirits leadership during the rest of the week.
We dads need to evaluate how we have spent our time and ask God for forgiveness for the "gods" we have bowed to.
"Deep Discipleship" will be a focus in the RCA in the future. Dads need to heed the call.
Right on the mark Tom. But what should the church be doing to reverse this problem? What will it take to turn the hearts of the fathers toward the children?
Matthew 6:33:
Preach it, pray it, explain what it really should look like in todays' world and lovingly hold it as an expectation of us, each and everyone of us.
How sad! - 30% men!?
Deep Discipleship? Simple discipleship is one answer in that the RCA is severely lacking in adult sanctification and education. Salvation and membership is just the "first rung of God's ladder." Members = disciples? Not! In Chuck Colson's book "The Body" he writes (page 336) that in 1963 there were 65% of Americans who believed the Bible was true but by 1992 the number had dropped to 32%! Jesus was with his disciples 24/7 for three years, perhaps similar to three years seminary. A 20 or 30 minute sermon once a week is probably not enough to make disciples. Showing my age here but i remember when Sunday School was all year for all ages.
Dads need to be challenged to be in God's Word so that they will be led by the Spirit - to be "consumed with the Lord of the work, and not the work of the Lord."
Blessings in Christ Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our Faith
Amen Scott: This topic is one I have discussed with some in my church for the past few months. I am preparing to present this topic once I have prepared solid evidence that we have been doing it wrong. The old model, of going after the kids, to get the parents has not worked, nor will it every work. It is a proven scriptural fact that if you get the man, the family will follow.
I forgot to state that my premature premise for why this has happened is:
1) The feminization of the Church
2) The feminization of God
3) Men resisting their duty
I am a complementarian, but I would settle for egalitarianism the way it stands now. What word could be used to describe the polar opposite of complimentarian? My pastor has a book I plan to read called; "Why men dont go to Church."
Let me close with some Driscollisms.
"All of this has led this blogger to speculate that if Christian males do not man up soon, the Episcopalians may vote a fluffy baby bunny rabbit as their next bishop to lead God’s men. When asked for their perspective, some bunny rabbits simply said that they have been discriminated against long enough and that people need to 'Get over it.'" -Mark Driscoll
“The problem with our churches today is that the men are sissy boys who wears cardigan sweaters, has The Carpenters dialed in on his iPod, gets his hair cut at a salon instead of a barber shop, hasn’t been to an Ultimate Fighting match, works out on an elliptical machine instead of going to isolated regions of Russia like in Rocky IV in order to harvest lumber with his teeth, and generally swishes around like Jack from Three’s Company whenever Mr. Roper was around.” -Mark Driscoll
"All of this has led this blogger to speculate that if Christian males do not man up soon, the Episcopalians may vote a fluffy baby bunny rabbit as their next bishop to lead God’s men. When asked for their perspective, some bunny rabbits simply said that they have been discriminated against long enough and that people need to 'Get over it.'" -Mark Driscoll
“There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in his hair, who drank decaf and made pithy zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” -Mark Driscoll
Let's just be honest; men aren't involved in the church because the men who've been leading the church for the past 20 centuries haven't done very well. Come up with whatever answers... blame whomever... in the end, men aren't involved in the church because of a dramatic failure of male leaders in the church to present the depth and breadth of the gospel in a way that's recognized by men as legitimate and compelling.
Grace and Peace,
`tim
Tim, I add that the "organized church" doesn't require much of men these days.
Pastors seem somewhat timid in expecting much in the area of service and leadership from the volunteers at church or in the home for those who have already put in 40+ hours a week in the workforce.
Showing my age (like Mick earlier) I can vividly remember growing up in a home where the elders came over for house visitation on a regular basis. Right in front of mom and we kids, Dad was asked if he was leading his family spiritually. Sadly that expectation does not exist in many of our churches. Maybe we will hear it Sunday morning.
I'd contend, however, that this isn't somehow a "male" disease. We don't expect much from women in the church either. The church is, as a whole, requires very little of anyone. I grew up in what might be referred to as a "complimentarian" home (although that language was never used). Both my mom and my dad recognized that they equally took vows upon my baptism to raise me in the faith.
The statistics are dramatic in the first post, but I wonder what other factors play into it. What are the social and economic factors that might lead to children worshipping with only a mother or only a father? What are the marital factors that? For example, It's well known that single fathers (as a whole) are economically better off than single mothers often are. That certainly plays into this question. What else does?
I'm not arguing that there's a problem with hoping to see more men involved in the church (surely that's true!); nor am I arguing that there's an inappropriate mis-balance between the percentage of men and the percentage of women in the pews. I simply can't buy the idea that this is a result of a failure of men to be "spiritual leaders" in their families. It is, instead, a failure of (mostly) male pastors and consistories and a failure of churches to expect as much out of their members as they expect out of their softball teams.
Does that make sense?
Grace and Peace,
`tim
Good points Tim:
I think its been said that congregations on their own will typically will not rise higher in their spiritual effectiveness than the level of spiritual leadership of their church. I think that applies to what goes on in the homes of the congregants as well. ( not to pressure pastors any further)....(:>)
Some more stats to bolster my case:
Recent research is shining light on the importance of male spiritual leadership in the home. Among their findings is the reality that 68 million of our nation’s 94 million men don’t attend any church. This, in spite of the fact, that 86% of them grew up with some sort of church background. Research has revealed that if a child is the first person in a household to become a Christian, there is a 3.5 percent probability that everyone else in the household will become Christians. Not very high at all. If the mother is the first to accept Christ, the percent goes up and 17 percent of the homes will see the remainder of its members trust Christ. But if the father is first, there is a 93 percent probability that everyone else in the household will follow.
Scott,
I don't really mean to be argumentative, but let me at least explain why I simply don't buy into most of the statistics you reference. Percentage of people who attend or don't attend church and their history I accept, but the attempts to define who becomes Christians when and how that effects others I don't. It's simple: faith is far less easily quantifiable than that.
I can look back and recollect getting saved no less than a dozen times before I turned 16. Each of those times someone counted me as a conversion. None of those times were an authentic, first-time, hell-to-heaven experience of God's saving grace. Why? Because, looking back with what I now know, I recognize that I was already a Christian and that most of those experiences, though psychologically satisfying were merely that: psychologically satisfying experiences. I may be an odd duck, but I know enough people with similar stories (from various stages of life) to not put much faith in conversion statistics.
Similarly, the differential between mothers and fathers who "become Christians" "first" doesn't convince me either. What does it mean that the "whole family" came along? What does it mean to "become Christian?" How does one determine "first?" Is it really plausible to believe that one can quantify "first" conversion in a marital relationship that likely experiences things together well enough to attempt to draw conclusions? etc. etc.
Statistics are usually developed and interpreted by people with particular positions to promote. These are no exception.
Having said that, I don't mean to belittle the edifying characteristics of "psychologically satisfying experiences" - they can be very important (I can testify to that too). Nor do I believe, even though many "spiritual" statistics are far less clear than they pretend, that there isn't something that can be learned from them. It's simply that numbers like that aren't nearly as honest as they like to pretend they are. (Notice: I'm not saying YOU are dishonest; I'm saying that statistics of this nature are not as cut-and-dry as most hearers and readers unthinkingly assume they are.)
Grace and Peace,
`tim
TTC:
Statistics or no statistics, the model we have now of going after the kids to get the parents has failed miserably. The fact remains is male leadership in the church is terrible. I was talking to 2 ladies i worship with about this, and asked, "Who wears the pants in our congregation?" I did not notice they both had slacks on. Proves my point exactly.
Tim, I appreciate your thoughts on"lying" statistics. However, I would like your take on the fact that only about 30% of our congregations are men.
Joe...
RE: Parents "following" their kids. I agree completely with you. As a matter of fact, somewhere in one of Barna's more recent books he notes that the assumption that families will follow their kids goes back to a mis-interpretation he made from some of the statistics he did years ago. It's an interesting Mea Culpa... I'm afraid I don't have the reference with me right now though. Sorry. I'll see if I can dig it out....
RE: "'who wears the pants" -- Obviously I don't consider it a problem that in many congregations women are the most prominent leaders. So that's doesn't bother me at all. The congregation I serve is split about 50/50 male/female. The consistory is exclusively male but many of the "movers" are female. I wish more of the "movers" were male and more of the consistory was female, but that balance is not something a minister can do - it's a congregational move.
Scott -- RE: 30%... I agree with you... it's a HUGE problem (although, as I've already mentioned, the congregation I minister with is very close to 50/50). I also agree that the contemporary church has created an image of Jesus that has much of his humanity (as well as his masculinity) removed. I also agree that there's a problem with much of the "intimacy" language used for Jesus that's distasteful for many Christians (and to make it worse, only tangentially biblical - at best.) In the end, however, I don't see this as a disintegration of male "headship" but rather a demolition of the incarnation.
I don't have an answer as to how to change the 30% problem.. however, in my experience the answer is NOT to create "men's" ministries (even though there certainly is a place for such things) but rather to encourage a more well-rounded culture in a congregation where everyone's gifts, skills, talents and resources are valued - those that are easily recognized, those that are easily embraced as well as those that are more difficult to accept or uncomfortable to acknowledge. "Male" things and "Female" things are often culturally designated. For example, as you may know, I'm a knitter. In our culture, knitting is almost universally seen as a "female" thing - historically quite the opposite has been the case. It's a problem whenever the church "buys into" such designations... and although there are some things that cannot be "crossed over" (I, for example, could have never nursed our daughter when she was an infant), generally speaking, when we label things "male" or "female" we give undue value to societal peculiarities.
Grace and Peace,
`tim
TTC:
You said: I also agree that the contemporary church has created an image of Jesus that has much of his humanity (as well as his masculinity) removed. I also agree that there's a problem with much of the "intimacy" language used for Jesus that's distasteful for many Christians (and to make it worse, only tangentially biblical - at best.) In the end, however, I don't see this as a disintegration of male "headship" but rather a demolition of the incarnation.
And to think I am looking at the result instead of the cause. Thank you for pointing this out. What is more important? Lack of male leadership or involvement or preaching a different Christ? The latter for sure and thank you for opening my eyes to this. I have been focusing on the fruit, (lack of male involvement) when the focus should be on the root, ( a wrong Christ).
Find the Barna study when you can. And again thank you for pointing out where the focus should be.
In His Name
JPK
Just wondering if you can post the source for your stats?