David Murrow says we need to re-evaluate our message to get men in the pews:
"We don't have to have hand-to-hand combat during the worship service to get men there," Murrow said. "We just have to start speaking (their language), use the metaphors they understand and create an environment that feels masculine to them."
Today's churches, Murrow argued, just aren't cutting it.
"My background is in marketing and advertising and one day I was sitting in church and all of a sudden it dawned on me that the target audience of almost everything about church culture was a 50- to 55-year-old woman," said Murrow, a Presbyterian elder who's now a member of a nondenominational congregation in Anchorage, Alaska.
The gender gap isn't a distinctly American one but it is a Christian one, according to Murrow. The theology and practices of Judaism, Buddhism and Islam offer "uniquely masculine" experiences for men, he said.
"Every Muslim man knows that he is locked in a great battle between good and evil, and although that was a prevalent teaching in Christianity until about 100 years ago, today it's primarily about having a relationship with a man who loves you unconditionally," Murrow said. "And if that's the punchline 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."
He does make some good points, and I think that there is imbalance in the presentation of the gospel at times that results from generational priorities. We must be careful not to make God--or the gospel--in our own image.
Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. (1 Corinthians 16:13)
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