Why Men Hate Church / Tim Abrahamsen
Hi all,
Our last conversation re: men and church prompted lots of conversation (my favorite comment was Scott's--to the effect that "the author of the original post" was out of touch and stuck in the past, but the commenters were really onto something--how true that is). It also prompted Tim Abrahamsen, who attends my church, to take the bold step of writing a guest post about why this very issue has him considering leaving our church. While, clearly, this could provide a fruitful internal conversation on our end, it's also full of specific insights and opinions about this topic that I thought you might appreciate. Take a look.
Why Men Hate Church
Not only because I happen to be a young
single man (which seems to be the target demographic here), but also because I’ve
been wrestling with this issue for some time now: I think the church just doesn’t understand
men. I’ve gone to one or another church
my entire life; I’ve been a member of my current church for six years now and
can say this is far and away the best church I’ve ever been a part of. I’ve grown in my relationship with God in
these past six years in ways I never thought possible, and I really do owe a
lot to this church for that.
But the irony here is that as I’ve
grown closer to God and started to learn what it means to be a man of God, I’ve
increasingly felt the desire to leave the church. This is not motivated by anger or youthful
rebellion, but by the feeling that the church really, fundamentally does not
understand men, and so I’m not going to find what I’m looking for within the
walls of any church. Here are a few
reasons why:
1) Sunday services and small groups appeal to women way more than they do to men.
First of
all, let’s talk about Sunday services, which are the central part of almost
anyone’s experience in church. A little
background on me: I work as a personal trainer, and I think it’s very
interesting watching how men and women differ when it comes to exercising in a
gym. Women tend to love group exercise
classes, where you have a trainer up top leading a group of people in a
proscribed exercise routine. Men tend to
like working out on their own, taking a mentality of “just show me a couple
things and let me figure it out.” I’ve
often wondered why this is, and believe me, big corporate gyms like Boston Sports
Clubs have invested plenty of money in finding out why. Their answer?
It’s just the way we are. Women
tend to like the leader/group format, men tend to prefer doing it themselves,
learning as they go along – it’s how our brains are set up to work. This has also been postulated as one reason
why boys are underperforming in schools – the typical lecture format you find
in school appeals to girls more than it does to boys. Considering this, is it any surprise that you
find more women than men in any given Sunday service, given that it’s format is
based that same leader/group format you find in group ex classes and in
academia? I hope not.
Second: Small groups. Imagine this conversation taking place:
Man 2: I know, why don’t we get together once a week, drink tea and talk about our feelings?
Man 1: That sounds like a great idea! I’ll bring the chips and dip!
Come on, guys. This is the format we’re giving men to grow spiritually and seek a deeper connection with God? It sounds like a Sex and the City episode. This highlights another important difference between men and women: women build relationships for their own sake – most women would feel completely natural calling a girlfriend “just to talk.” Men, on the other hand, are much more objective-oriented when it comes to relationships. There’s a goal that we share, so we work together for that goal, and we become friends as a result. We men do talk about our feelings, but usually as a means to further accomplish whatever goal is in front of us. So don’t be surprised if men don’t feel the desire to go to a small group “just to talk.” I’m not: I’ve been leading a co-ed small group for six months now, and in that time I’ve gotten about six or seven requests from women asking to visit to check it out. The number of men who’ve shown interest so far: a big fat zero.
2) The outreach and
ministry we do tend to be very feminine.
A couple
months ago, I got invited to “game night” at an apartment building close to my
church. For those of you who don’t know,
game night is a little gathering that some people from the church put on where
people who live in the buildings can come down, have fun, make friends, or even
just drop their kids off for a little while so Mom can relax. It’s a great concept, and I hear lots of
people have gotten some good out of it, both on the giving and receiving end. For me, though, it was kind of awkward – taking
care of small children tends not to be the forte of most men. So no big deal, it wasn’t for me, I don’t
have to go back if I didn’t like it, right?
Thing is, this kind of typifies a lot of ministry/outreach programs that we do. We have community gatherings, potluck dinners, quilting parties, arts festivals – all great stuff to be sure, but stuff that women are probably going to get more out of than men. This is probably to be expected in a community that is predominately female, but after a while the effects start to spiral: men feel like all the stuff the church is doing is for women, so they stay away, but then there’s nothing going on for the men except to follow the women at whatever they’re doing (ever wonder why churches attract passive men?)
3) The church sees masculinity as the problem, and femininity as the solution.
Men today not only feel out of place in church; many times we feel as though we are the problem. In our society we get so bogged down with
tales of masculinity gone wrong, of corporate greed, gang violence,
pornography, etc, that we start to feel like the problem is men. After all, if it
weren’t for men, there would be no Wall Street meltdown, no civil wars, and no
child sex trade, right? If only we men
weren’t such junkies for risk and success, if only we weren’t so aggressive, if
only we could reign in our sex drives, if
only we were more like women, the world would be a much better place,
right?
This is how a lot of men feel. We seem to have forgotten all the awesome characteristics that make men men: things like fighting to protect those you love, being able to take risks without being paralyzed by “what ifs”, being able to stand strong in the face of adversity and keep your wits about you. We as a church talk about peace, we talk about love and reconciliation and getting in touch with our emotions, but we rarely if ever talk about the need to stand and fight for what’s right, or how to act in the face of fear, or how to take risks, damn the consequences. It’s no wonder we see men as the problem.
4) The church rarely talks
about sex, and when it does, it goes about it in the wrong way.
It should
come as no surprise to anyone that sex is an important topic for men. Dr. Kevin Leman, a Christian marriage
counselor, writes in his book Sheet Music
that a woman once asked him, “Do men think about sex all the time?” His response: “well, not all the time. Sometimes we
think about food and sex. Occasionally we think about killing deer and
breaking ninety on the golf course, but pretty much our minds go back to
sex.” I will say, ladies, he is
exaggerating (although not that much).
Nevertheless, it’s easy to say that sex has been the single most
important emotional/psychological topic in my life since I hit puberty.
But we never talk about it! For some strange reason we all act like it doesn’t exist most of the time, and even when we do talk about it, it’s just to say “no.” Don’t look at porn. Don’t masturbate. Don’t make out with your girlfriend. Don’t check out that girl in a low-cut top. Don’t pressure your wife for sex: can’t you see she’s tired from taking care of the kids all day? See the pattern? The only time I ever hear anyone talk about sex is when someone’s advising me on how to resist the desire (or asking my advice), as if sex is this big cosmic evil, this huge prank that God has pulled on us: giving men an emotional longing that is so central to our lives and yet supposedly so antithetical to who we’re supposed to be as Christians. It’s the ultimate Catch-22, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cursed my sex drive thinking that no good would ever come of it.
It’s only been recently that God’s led me to the startling conclusion that my sex drive is actually a gift! Who’d a thunk? There’s more to my sexuality as a single man than just denying it, I can actually discover who I am as a sexual being and realize that as part of who I am as a man, AND THAT IS GOOD – it’s part of that wild strength that God gave men, to make us pursuers and protectors. Sadly, I definitely feel in the minority here: most men in the church still feel that they have to be “neutered for Christ,” and most men outside the church stay away because of it. So if we want men to come back to church, we’ve got to accept our own sexuality, and recognize a man’s sex drive as a good thing.
5) The church just doesn’t know what to do with men.
The tragedy
of modern masculinity is this: men feel
obsolete. It used to be that men were
protectors and providers, we fought to defend what was ours, we worked with our
hands, and we taught our kids, especially our sons, how to be adults, how to be
men. But now thanks to safe suburbs and
Brinks Home Security for keeping us a push of a button away from the police,
thanks to an increasing number of women working and becoming breadwinners for
their families (which isn’t a bad thing, but this is how men feel), thanks to
public schools who now take on the role of teaching our children, we men don’t
really know what to do with ourselves.
And to be quite honest, I don’t think the church knows what to do with
us either – it seems to me that the biggest reason people are even trying to
get men back into church is because there are lots of single women who want to
get married. Is that really the only
good that men can do for the church?
You see, everything that men have to offer, everything that has defined masculinity since the dawn of mankind has slowly become unnecessary in this day and age. And so we men feel like our time is past; like an aging superhero in a comic book who realizes that the world that once called to him for help no longer needs him. It’s a sad realization to make.
But the reality is there are still battles to fight, we men have just been asleep to them, and to our own power to fight them. There is still evil in the world, and battling evil just happens to be a man’s biggest strength. If the church can acknowledge that, if we can awaken ourselves to that untapped resource that is true, Godly masculinity, if we can accept it and learn to wield it and not fear it, I promise that you will be astounded by what you can achieve.
