Amen. There is no remission of sin without blood.

JPK

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

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

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.

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

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.

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