Men and Church

A few days ago I received an an article from a friend regarding men and the church. Essentially a review of David Murrow's Why Men Hate Going to Church, this article reactivated my thinking on this topic. Murrow found that the top reasons why men don't like church are:

1. Men don't like to sing in public.
   Think about how much of our worship involves singing. Look around at your next worship service and notice how many men are participating but not singing.


2. Men don't really like to talk about their feelings or to talk about relationships.
   Think about how your church talks about following Jesus. Most of us use the picture of a relationship with Jesus. We tell men that they grow in that relationship by sitting around and talking about how the Bible impacts their life.


3. Most men love a challenge, a chance to risk and to put their faith into action.
   Consider having more opportunities for the men in your church to grow through service. I had a real learning experience when twelve men from our congregation spent a week in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. We did not spend a ton of time in the Bible each day, but instead put faith into action, shoulder to shoulder, as we "mucked out" houses, shingled roofs and ate and played together. I bet those twelve men would say they grew more in their faith that week than at any other time in their lives.


4. Men respect and expect excellence and quality.
   But excellence and quality are probably not the first two words that pop into the average man's mind when he thinks about church. Think seriously about how your church can strive for excellence and quality in all the areas of your ministry; from the music to the messages; from the way the church is decorated to the activities you offer men. God is worthy of our best efforts and so are the men (and women) who have yet to come to know His grace in Jesus.

Personally this list really speaks to my heart (well, 2-4 anyway--I do love singing). It's really no wonder our men are passive our absent--we've designed the church to exclude and suppress much of what is masculine. We don't let men be men and we suffer for it.

In our simple expression of Christ's body we've been examining Jesus and one thing that's been brought to our attention is how he's constantly on the move. He's active. He's working. Sure, the conversations and relationship are there, but those things are developing while Jesus is taking his band of followers all over the place--i.e. eating and healing, proclaiming the nearness of the kingdom of the heavens, righting wrongs, and living out righteousness and shalom in his every moment. Jesus hardly spent most of his time in a sterile environment sitting around in a circle discussing how loving God is. He was out demonstrating how loving God is.

We still sit around and have discussions--and rightfully so--but we also encourage people to get out there and dispense some shalom to the people around you. Whether that is sitting at a bar watching the Red Sox and talking with the people there (like Jen and I are doing tonight), or walking your puppy and taking advantage of the opportunities that creates (like the Plotts are doing), or helping out at a homeless food shelter (Adam and I on Wednesday) it's important to get out there.

Men of the church, what are your thoughts?

Here's a website discussing these issues.

Forcing "Jerusalem" to Happen

A Dallas Willard quote in response to Steve's question about if the American Experiment has failed:

[On the new earth and] in this new city--"Jerusalem," or "the peace of God," is its name--"all cultures and languages will come together to see God in his glory (Isa. 66:18). They will transmit that vision of God throughout all of the earth, and all humanity will come regularly to the center of divine presence on earth, to delight in God and worship him (vv. 19-23).
The power of God's personal presence will, directly and indirectly, accomplish the public order in and among nations that human government has never been able to bring about. Truth and mercy will have met and kissed each other at last, like long-lost friends (Ps. 85:10). Grace and truth are reconciled in the person of the Son of man (John 1:17).
The greatest temptation to evil that humanity ever suffers is the temptation to make a "Jerusalem" happen by human means. Human means are absolutely indispensable in the world as it is. that is God's intention. We are supposed to act, and our actions are to count. But there is a limit on what human arrangements can accomplish. The alone cannot change the heart and spirit of the human being.
Because of this, the instrumentalities invoked to make "Jerusalem" happen always wind up eliminating truth, or mercy, or both. World history as well as small-scale decision making demonstrates this. It is seen in the ravages of dictatorial power, on the one hand, and, on the other, in the death by minutiae that a bureaucracy tends to impose. It is well known how hard it is to provide a benign order within human means. For the problem, once again, is in the human heart. Until it fully engages with the rule of God, the good that we feel must be cannot come. It will at a certain point be defeated by the very means implemented to produce it.

feel free to stop reading there (that's the main responce), but Willard continues:

God's way of moving toward the future is, with gentle persistence in unfailing purpose, to bring about the transformation of the human heart by speaking with human beings and living with and in them. He finds an Abraham, a Moses, a Paul--a you. It is this millennia-long process that Jesus the Son of man brings and will bring to completion. And it is the way of the prophets, who foresaw that the day would come with God's heart is the human heart: "the law of God would be written in the heart." That is, when what is right to God's mind would be done as a simple matter of course, and when we would not be able to understand why anyone would even think of engaging in evil. That is the nature of God's full reign [i.e. the Kingdom of God].
All of the instruments of brutality and deceit that human government and society now employ to manage a corrupted and unruly humanity will then have no use. As, even now, the presence of a good person touches, influences, and may even govern people near-by through the respect inspired in their hearts, the focused presence of the Trinitarian personality upon the earth will govern through the clarity and force of its own goodness, and indirectly through its transformed people.
Thus we see repeated portrayed in the prophecy the gentleness of this government--for the first time a completely adequate government, in which the means to the good do not limit or destroy the possibility of goodness. The beautiful prophetic images portray the divine way of operating: "Your true king is coming to you, vindicated and triumphant, humble, mounted on a donkey. His word will bring peace to the nations, and his supervision will take in all lands, from where his presence is centered to the farthest reaches of the earth" (Zech. 9:9-10).
Divine presence replaces brute power, and especially power exercised by human beings whose hearts are alienated from God's best. "I will focus my being in their midst forever. And the nations will know that it is I the Masterful Lord who makes my people different" (Ezek. 37:26-28).

The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard, pp. 380f.

As long as we humans act like we're God (and God's not) there's no real hope for any human institution. But the day described above will come. I long for it. Don't you?

Maranatha, Lord Jesus!

Boundry Conditioning

Here's an interesting video. I think it has implications for the Church. (HT* The Forgotten Way)



This PS2 add (I really don't get how it's advertising the PS2) is a great illustration of the problem of centered vs bounded sets. Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch discuss this concept in their book, The Shaping of Things to Come (an excellent book that I'd recommend to anyone who has any interest in the past or future of the body of Christ). Ben Cheek also references this idea in his very good e-book examining the person of Jesus, Revolutionary. Since I'm short on time (and since he does a better job than I can) I'm going to quote from Ben (book 4 page 9 and following).

Frost and Hirsch use this as an illustration to demonstrate the difference between bounded sets and centered sets. A set is a collection of objects, or in the case of the spiritual community, people. A bounded set is a group of people defined by their boundary and by their separation form others. On the other hand, a centered set is defined by their center and their relationship relative to that center (how close they are to the center).

Churches that see themselves as bounded sets have a clear line of who’s in and who’s out. Those inside the boundary all have certain minimal qualities in common like baptism, membership, doctrine, etc. The point is to get unbelievers or non-Christians to become believers or Christians by crossing the boundary. The work of the leaders is to tend the fence, make sure none of those inside “cross the fence” and are lost, and in some cases they prevent others from getting in who are outsiders and don’t
belong.

In contrast, churches that see themselves as centered sets have no clear line of who’s in and who’s out — in the broadest sense of the group, everyone who has any kind of connection at all is in. What all the people have in common is a relationship to the center, but these relationships vary considerably in closeness, quality, strength, and style. The point is — whether you consider yourself a Christian or a not-yet-Christian — to move closer to the center of the set: towards Christ and his core values. The work of the leaders in a centered set community is to link to people and to the center. Like rescue workers, they use their relationship to Jesus as an anchor line, while they extend relationships to those farther out (regardless of their Christian/non-Christian, member/non-member status), which they use to pull them in closer.

I'd recommend picking up Shaping or downloading Revolutionary. This is an important thing for Christ's church to think about.

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* HT: (I just found this today) blogging jargon for "Hat Tip" or, in other words, the source for where the blogger found the content for his blog

One of the best things about break

Ask anyone very close to me and they'll tell you I'm a reader. I come from a family of readers. In fact, one of the basic ideas I grew up with was, "Never leave the house without a book." You'll never know when you're going to be stuck someplace with nothing to do, so it seems like a pretty good idea. There's a problem though: one of those pesky little details about being in school is that the professors have their own ideas about what I should be spending my time reading; unfortunately their list and mine rarely line up and there's almost never enough time for everything. So I enjoy the summer and winter breaks since I have a chance to read what I want.

On occasion I allow myself the pleasure of reading fiction. I started a lengthy series a few weeks ago by George RR Martin called The Song of Fire and Ice. The first book (of 7) is A Game of Thrones and has been quite good--good, but not exactly relaxing. It's a medieval fantasy book that many people claim is as good as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I'm not quite convinced, but it can be worse than Tolkien and still be excellent. I've been avoiding starting it for a couple years now since starting these 6000+ page stories is such a huge commitment.

Dallas Willard is an author I can't recommend high enough. A friend and I have been slowly working through The Divine Conspiracy for the better part of a year now, and I just picked it back up after an extended break. He truly has a gift in making the most common and simple ideas amazingly profound. This book is an extended look at Jesus' sermon on the mount from Mathew 5-7. The paraphrase of Jesus' model prayer (previous post) is from his book. I had almost developed a bit of disdain for "The Lord's Prayer"--I had let it become perfunctory--but his discussion and explanation have changed my attitude. Amazingly Jesus (who Willard points out was the absolute smartest person who ever lived--a fact I need to remember) included in these few sentences everything that we should include in our petitions to God: our relationship with God, his nearness and love for us, our praise and a desire for everyone and everything to give him his due respect, requests that every institution and individual surrender themselves to becoming a willing part of God's kingdom, asking for our daily needs, a recognition and request for forgiveness (along with a realization that once we've grasped how great the grace given to us is that it'll be impossible to not extend it to those who offend or wrong us), and pleading that everything evil, unpleasant, and tempting be kept far from us (unless, of course, our Father has bigger and better plans for us that involve suffering). Willard's discussion is great, but the true genius is found in the timeless and terse words of Jesus.

I started a book yesterday and finished it this morning. I can't remember the last time I finished a book in a dozen hours, but this is one I've been wanting to read and am glad I finally picked it up. Under the Overpass by Mike Yankoski is a first hand exploration of the plight of America's homeless. Mike tells his story of how he was convicted to go and experience homelessness, so he took a break from getting his BS in computer science and spent 5 months with a friend living on the streets of Denver, Washington DC, Portland, San Francisco, Phoenix, and San Diego with only the cloths on their back and a guitar each. The stories and faith found within these 200 pages are amazing. By far the best and worst interactions they had were with those who claim the name of Christ. They were shooed away like stray dogs from most of the churches they slept near. On Sunday mornings multiple pews around them were usually left empty, even in an otherwise packed auditorium. One church in Portland even has a posted sign saying "No Loitering. Church Business Only. Police Enforced." On one day (most days, in fact) Mike and Sam (his companion) hadn't eaten anything but a 99 cent hamburger during the past day when they saw a feast being taken into this church. Two well dressed men came over and angrily tried to remove these two bums (who happened to be reading their Bibles at the time). Mike's question sticks with me: "What is the Church's business?"

However, some of the Christians that Mike and Sam encountered surprised them with their generosity and faith, but very few of these were working with a church. In fact, many of them were homeless themselves. One homeless man in Portland known only as Sugar Man upon discovering that Mike and Sam were Christians exclaimed

You guys are my brothers in Christ. I know it. The Bible tells me to love my neighbor as myself. Not even my brother, but simply my neighbor. You share more with a brother than simply with a neighbor and I'm supposed to love a neighbor more than myself. So, brothers, those I love more than neighbors, more than myself in fact, what do you need? Anything I have is yours because you call Christ Lord same as I do. You need a car? I've got one. It's yours. You need cash? I'll give you everything I've got. Place to stay? We'll work that out. So tell me, how can I serve you?

While waiting for a response he accepted a marijuana pipe being passed around by the other homeless around him. This left Mike questioning.

What do you do when a good tree bears bad fruit or a bad tree bears good fruit? Look harder.
What's your definition of a Christian? Is it broad enough to encompass the drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and broken people of the world? Jesus said that he came to heal the sick. Drug addicts are messed up just the same as liars are messed up, just the same as all humans are messed up. We all need Jesus. we all struggle with personal ways in which sin plays itself out in our lives.
What's worse? To not do dope or to not love your brother? Why do we kick drug users out of the church while quietly ignoring those who aren't dealing with other, equally destructive sins? Why do we reject the loving, self-sacrificing, giving, encouraging, Jesus-pursuing drug addict but recruit the clean, self-interested, gossiping, loveless churchgoer?

Tough questions. The same ones could be asked regarding homosexuals or gossips or any number of other "taboo" or "acceptable" sins. We're all sinners separated from God and redeemed by His son. We all struggle daily with our own demons. Of course, some sin have worse consequences than others and some are less culturally acceptable, but they all have the same eternal effect--and they are all forgivable. . . . . Things to think about.


That's a sampling of what I've been reading over break; well, that and an Introduction to Wave Phenomena and a book on Photonics, but we won't talk about those.