I found this interview at crossmatch.com with David Murrow author of the book Why Men Hate Going to Church. I was fascinated, partly because I (as a motorbike riding not very typical female) related quite well to a lot of the “male” characteristics he lists but also his comment on worship music:
“Tom is less than thrilled with today’s church music - it’s often too high for him to sing. Reformation hymns spoke of battle, blood and victory. But modern praise songs invite the singer to imagine Jesus as his lover. Verses repeat over and over and over and over and over.”
Do comment below and let us know what you think. Here’s the interview:
Q: Your book highlights that far more women than men attend church. Could you give us some statistics from around the world on this?
DM: Most of my statistics come from the US, since the American church is the most studied on earth. Here in the States the typical church draws an adult crowd that’s 61% female. About a quarter of our married women attend church without their husbands on a typical weekend (the reverse is rare).
Worldwide, the results are much the same. Churches in Asia and the Middle East draw many more women than men. So it is in Africa. Russian churches attract many aging babushkas, but few young men. The fast-growing Pentecostal congregations of Latin America are led by men but filled with women. I’ve been told the gender gap is present in the UK as well.
Look beyond Sunday morning and the gap widens: 70 to 80% of adult participants in midweek activities, small groups and Bible studies are women. Youth groups consistently draw more young women than men. Nearly all the church employees are female. In 2005, for the first time in history, the Anglican Church will ordain more women than men. By the year 2050, I predict the priesthood will be 90% female.
Q: Does the gender gap vary across denominations?
DM: There’s some evidence to suggest that Greek and Eastern Orthodox churches draw as many men as women. However, there is no stripe of Catholic or Protestant church that comes close to gender balance.
Look to other religions and you’ll find men. Hinduism, Judaism and Buddhism are roughly 50-50. Of course, Islam has no problem attracting young men. Among world religions, only Christianity has a consistent, nagging gender gap.
Q: Why is it that men are missing from the church compared to women?
DM: Let’s say Tom and Tina are churchgoers. Both are Christians. Both love Jesus. But from the moment he arrives at church, Tom is at a disadvantage, because the church “system” is stacked against him. So even a man like Tom, a genuine follower of Christ, may become discouraged in church. Here’s why:
Church is a highly verbal environment. Studies have shown that the verbal regions of Tom�s brain are smaller than the corresponding regions in Tina’s. Tom has a hard time remaining alert through a long sermon. Tom must also read the words of hymns, choruses, prayers and Scripture. Adult Sunday school classes also reward verbal expression. After church there’s another tongue test: chit-chat. Tina easily outperforms Tom in verbal expression and comprehension, thanks to her female brain.
We also reward churchgoers for empathy, sensitivity and nurturing. Churchgoers are also supposed to be highly relational. Again, Tina seems to have the advantage.
Most volunteer opportunities in the local church involve traditionally feminine roles: childcare, teaching, singing, cooking and gathering. Tina’s experience in these areas makes her a very valuable volunteer. On the other hand, Tom may feel ill qualified or even emasculated by these roles. (Of course, some men are highly verbal, empathetic, sensitive and relational. We call these men pastors and priests.)
Then there are the little clues we send. We often decorate our churches like a Victorian parlour with lace doilies, quilted banners, boxes of tissue and fresh flowers. We speak of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, thereby transforming the gospel into every woman’s fantasy: a personal relationship with a man who loves you unconditionally.
Tom is less than thrilled with today’s church music - it’s often too high for him to sing. Reformation hymns spoke of battle, blood and victory. But modern praise songs invite the singer to imagine Jesus as his lover. Verses repeat over and over and over and over and over.
Tom and Tina attend a Spirit-filled church, which encourages its members to surrender control of their bodies and mouths to the Holy Spirit. Weeping is highly regarded. Tom doesn’t do public emotion as easily as Tina does. Corny, sentimental, or tear-jerking moments often leave Tom cold. Tom doesn’t enjoy hugging or holding hands with men he barely knows.
Is Tom an insensitive brute? No, he’s just a normal man. He loves the Lord. He prays regularly. But he’s still a man. For him to fit in at church would require more than a conversion experience, he’d need a personality transplant.
I could go on. I offer more than 100 pages of insights in my book, Why Men Hate Going to Church. But it all adds up to this: today’s church is a perfect environment for soft-hearted, receptive, relational, and highly verbal people to meet Jesus. Women are more likely than men to possess these personality traits. So most women do church better than most men do. Indeed, the men who really excel in the church environment are those who are in touch with their feminine side. But your garden-variety male will feel more comfortable prowling a football pitch than sitting in a pew.
Q: What is it about men that the church has failed to understand or speak to?
DM: We’re not speaking men’s language. Men are all about goals, adventure, risk, challenge, etc. Think about your last trip to church? How risky was it? Was it truly challenging? And we tend to challenge men in just two areas: reading and relationships.
Advertisers know how to speak to men’s hearts. They spend millions of pounds to influence male behaviour. Let’s benefit from their research. Tune in a football game on the telly. Watch the commercials. Look at the images and humour they use. Not particularly nurturing, gentle or sensitive, are they? How about the video games boys play? Do people talk about their problems in video games?
My wife and I enjoy renting a DVD on the weekends. I usually choose “action” films. They feature a hero who saves the world against impossible odds. My wife chooses “romantic comedies”, which feature a heroine who finds a happy relationship with a wonderful man. Now, connect the dots: today’s gospel is all about finding a happy relationship with a wonderful man. Can you see why so many blokes are jumping off the gospel train?
Q: How do you think the churches need to change in order to attract men?
DM: Men have to know, from the moment they walk into a church, that this is something for them, not just for grandma. Traditional British congregations have earned a reputation as a place for “little old ladies of both sexes”.
I encourage you to re-examine everything about your Sunday morning experience through the eyes of a 21-year-old construction worker. Examine the decor, the imagery you deploy, the lyrics of the songs. Then have the courage to make some changes.
Let me also encourage you to re-invent your Sunday school. Anywhere from 70 to 90% of boys who are raised in church abandon it by the time they’re 20 years old. Its not hard to see why: in Sunday school the girls usually win and the boys usually lose.
What do I mean? Look at the behaviour we value in Sunday school: sit still, read, verbalise, memorise, find Bible passages, empathise, be relational. If those are the goals we’re pushing students toward, the girls will win every time, simply because they’re better at them. By the time a boy reaches sixth grade, he’s got this message: you can’t cut it at church. You’re a loser. The girls are better than you. Its no wonder they’d rather stay home.
Q: What do you see as the greatest needs men have?
DM: Men don’t follow ideas, religions or philosophies. They follow men. Every man is looking for another man to follow, one he can look up to, love and respect. Ask a man about the person he most admires and respects, and he will always mention a man (the only exception is mum). Always. Ask a Christian man, “Who led you to the Lord?” It’s usually a man.
Unfortunately, our church system makes it hard to create man-on-man discipleship opportunities for men. We tend to put men in classroom situations, where learning is the goal. Men don’t bond over shared ideas; men bond over shared experiences.
Men also want to be a part of a team. You see this in movies men love: a band of brothers comes together to save the world, to pull off the big caper, to win the championship. Christ assembled his team of men before he began his ministry. He showed us that little teams of men are the basic unit of the church!
We’ve gotten away from the structure Christ gave us. We put people in classes, not teams. This is why men are not coming to maturity: they have no male leader and no team around them. Isolated men fall off the train.
Is there hope? Yes! Jesus knew how to attract regular blokes. The key to reaching them is hidden in plain view, in the pages of Scripture. Now is the time for God’s people to humble themselves, pray, and follow his example once again, by intentionally forming small teams of men. Make it your top priority. Your congregation and your community will never be the same again.
13 Comments
I can relate to this. A little while ago a group of men from church attended a men’s conference together, and following that starting meeting just as a group of guys – having food, watching films, paint balling, that sort of thing. We found this a much better way of interacting together than some of the more traditional activities. Would also recommend John Eldredge’s book Wild at Heart.
I’m a female, but I can totally relate as well. The church is too often the bastion of the vanishing “traditional” woman – stay-at-home mom for whom her kids and spouse are her world. It’s been very difficult to find a church where an alternative expression of Christian womanhood is welcomed. As a career woman with no children, I have often felt I had more in common with men than women – I want to be part of a team, to wrestle with questions of ethics in the workplace, Christian leadership on my job, and contribute in very non-feminine modes. It’s interesting that it was a woman, Marie, who brought this to share with the Musicademy community.
Hi Mitzi
Great to hear from you – a kindred spirit! Actually I have two kids but I also love to work (to the degree that I have two jobs – I do all the stuff I do with Musicademy but I also lecture in marketing on a pretty regular basis). My kids say they would report me to social services if I dared have any more children! Anyhow I think I tend to be more “male” in my responses to lots of things. If you’ve read that Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus book (I wouldn’t recommend it but I’m trying to make a point), it stereotypes those soft, what we think of as “feminine” responses into what women are and the stronger, brash, less empathetic responses to what men are meant to be. Given a list I would tick the Mars responses most of the time, but my husband, and also Andy who I work with are both far more Venus-like.
Anyhow, back to church…. Yes, I do think that church is a place where the traditional feminine side of things are rewarded, and we often feel guilty for being who we are if we are different from that. Its almost as if its taken Gray’s list of Venus attributes and decided that this paints the idea Christian personality. Its epitomised in that prayer with the line “Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild”. Once in Royal David’s City says “Christian children all should be, mild, obedient, good as he”. I so don’t want to be “mild” (and I don’t want my children to be mild either). I don’t think Jesus was very mild. He was radical and upset the established religious order of the day, every day.
There is totally a place for empathy, people skills, communication and the like, but we mustn’t reject other preferences as not Christlike.
though it might reflect a concern within the church there are too many inconsistencies. ‘little teams of men are the basic unit of the church’?
And it feels as though the book plays upto traditional stereotypes of men and women. a back lash to feminism as led to hyper masculinity. as for hymns of battle and blood, let them stay out like colonialism.
A very good point Sunil. Jesus and little teams of men! I don’t somehow think the disciples would all have been male in today’s society. And we know that Jesus was totally counter cultural in his equal (and radical) treatment of women. I think Jesus had quite a lot of those Venus-style personality traits too. (Gosh I am hating using that Venus and Mars language – really must stop.)
Fascinating reading… I’ve posted it on my facebook page and will be sending some of my male and female friends to this page… thanks for putting it on here… now I wanna read the book!
Thanks Marie, for that brilliant article on why men don’t like church! I will share it with my pastor and FGMFI friends.
I understand completely that our churches need to re-examine their services and ministires to try reaching more than women. We must remember that our goal is to reach whoever we can reach. We should try to be very careful and not become entertainment while at the same time leading in quality worship. I would say that the issue is not so much gearing our worship services for masculinity but more for identifying, and meeting the spiritual needs that men, women, boys and girls of those we hope to reach. Sure we can gear our groups for masculinity or femininity hoping to draw more people to our churches but when it comes to our worship and teaching services we should all strive to be genuine and relevant to everyone attending. When we fail in these areas is when we hear “what they offer does not speak to me.”
Hoo-boy is this a hot topic with me. I teach a 5th grade Sunday School class and this is how it goes week after week: action songs and Sword Drill–great. 5 min puppet show(Pilgrim’s Progress scripts I wrote)–great, except for an overly enthusiastic battle scene with the Foul Fiend. Bible lesson–disaster. We’re doing Children Desiring God How Majestic is your Name–a wonderful curriculum but I can’t get the boys to settle down and listen. I even got a broken microphone to pass around for permission to talk. Didn’t work. Then I read aloud from Bruchko–a fantastic missionary story, lots of arrows and eating grubs–while the kids draw pictures matching the various names of God. Jehovah-Maginnenu got illustrated with army tanks. Again–great. I’m doing all I can think of to teach but the actual lesson never gets heard. Now what?
Meg,
I lead Children’s Worship at our church and can completely relate to your dilemma. As you’ve observed, 10-year old boys are all about physicality….movement, noise, doing rather than listening. What a contrast to girls the same age, and it’s not reasonable to expect them to be the same. Unfortunately, most Sunday School curriculum really doesn’t take those emerging gender differences into account. Consider that we are created three-part beings – body, mind, and spirit. If you put each of those characteristics on the points of a triangle, you’ll see that there’s one on “top”. That doesn’t mean that the other two disappear, they’re just not dominant in that season of the child’s life. I’m saying this by way of encouraging you in the knowledge that the lesson may actually be getting heard, just not the way you imagine it should. I’m often surprised and blessed to overhear some nugget of truth or scripture (often embedded in a song or motions) that emerges from our 5th-graders guys. Remember, the Word of God will not return to Him void, but will be sent forth and used as He directs to accomplish His purposes. (Is 55:11). You do need to somehow co-opt these rowdies in order to keep peace in the classroom – your “talking stick” is a good idea, but perhaps you could surround it with a story of its own and help the boys find their part in the story…….would also be an idea for how to use the Bruscko story more effectively. Let the leaders among the boys take on some leadership role….in this age group, we too often tend to reward the “nice” girls rather than allowing the guys to grow through this challenging stage. Just a few thoughts – hope some of it is helpful!
Nice discussions. As a male from the same church as Mitzi, and a worship leader myself, I am taking more note of the difficulty in connecting with men during Sunday worship (though I believe we do fairly well in comparison to other churches I have attended over the years).
To highlight the challenge, we recently hosted a men’s conference in the same church. We picked mostly upbeat/rocking songs, and they sang at the top of their lungs. We interacted in ways more natural to men and discussed things men routinely face. We prayed and worshipped in a real way. The following Sunday, the same guys are there, but they are quieter – some lipsync and a few stand mute. Of course, the whole atmosphere is different. Yes, more introspective songs, and generally more a feeling of tamed niceness rather than a raucus time with the guys – even if is boldly declaring God’s praises instead of sports, or whatever.
I often get comments from the men in the church on the worship, but it is almost always when we “rock”. Its not that men don’t need to love and be loved – we do. But has it become unholy to be active, strong, bold, and fight the enemy of our souls? Has it become too rude to stand for what we believe in?
I am quickly concluding that we need more songs about God’s power, might, and taking a stand. In fact, my wife and kids love those songs as well. Sure, God is love, but He is much, much more than that. More balance of all of God’s attributes, many of which are things to get excited about, is a simple step we as worship leaders can consciously take.
Lord, help us to serve the whole community, and discover more of who You are in worship, prayer and service!
Ben
I think this article speaks allot of wisdom on this subject http://blog.sophianetwork.org.uk/2007/11/article-rediscovering-heart-by-jenny-baker.html
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to be honest i’m tired of wild at heart
man church (where men go gurrr)
and why men hate church
I’ve found a funny response to this from the Stuff Christians Like Blog – its on the subject of “Manly Man Retreats” Enjoy.
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2009/04/529-manly-men-retreats.html