Men and the Church Part 1

There have been rumblings on this blog about being a man in the church, and how tough it is at times. This may come as some surprise to those of you won over by the notion that 'discriminating-Church' is a male dominated domain. Yes, it might be male led, but it is a long way from male dominated. Church life, on the ground, is a very matriarchal enterprise believe it or not, and us men are rarer than a rare-beast's Welsh rare bits.

Last weekend I indulged myself with a whine about it all, and quite rightly, someone made the challenge about how I would attend to the shortage of men  in our church life. I am going to meet that challenge over a number of posts. 

As it is all the rage to articulate cogent thought in terms of mnemonic acronyms, I am opting to make DISCIPLES of men in the church. Apart from  the original concern as offered above, I have been grumpy about an offering on this subject that will make its appearance some time in February. For clarity, I think it is a worthy course of work, tackling a tough issue up-front and I wish it every success. I am grumpy because of its labels ('un-churched' and 'de-churched' are pejorative in the extreme and evoke terms like 'unwashed' and 'deloused' - to me) and also because I offered to help with it a long time ago, and am still waiting for the call! Anyway - these are my motivation for writing. 

So, regard this as the contents page to this thread - I will work with it for a few days.

D - dropping labels, differences, distinctions, difficulties

I - involvement and how

S - spiritual dimension of men, stalking targets

C - community and committing, church and children 

I - individuals and image

P - pub and places, problem, what problem? poor-selling of salvation

L - listening for the right reasons

E - enablement, enthusing, exceptions

S - settling down, seeing it through

Naturally, other things will emerge that do not fit my neat pattern here. I will wang them in somewhere, don't you worry. Chief among them would be 'trying too hard', and it is that facet of such efforts mentioned above that I worry about. That is for later. I think that this area of thinking is sparsely populated, and this will, of course, be only my perspective. It will be a perspective born of some difficult facts hidden in my past, a long time in a job that I didn't love so the bills could be paid, a work history in retail and a business skill-set, normal and healthy male appetites and weaknesses, having a young family and caring for their needs, and a simple love for God (not to mention lumpy testicles, being the at dead centre of the target age bracket for target-heathen-geezers, oh, and being male). I believe that this all qualifies me to write on subject. So I will. 

What Maketh a Man?

I was pawing through a gentleman's magazine during the course of the week (not the sort where the ladies get their giblets out, now behave, or sit at the back of the class) - and I made an astounding discovery about how it is to be male.

GQ Magazine is a thick old glossy affair for gentlemen of distinction and taste. It had articles about blokes, a few articles about blokey toys and their place in the market of blokey toys. There was much in there to please Steve Jobs (the geezer from Apple - Mr. iPod, you might say). There were articles on wholly inaccessible motor cars - or perhaps it is just me who can't shell out for an Italian super car right now. You could read about the very best pongy pongs to spray all your muscular fluffy body, the best in thermal jimmy jams, silk scarves and preposterously pointy business shoes for doing business in. I read a copy that told me about the most influential men in our country - chief among them being the Prime Minister and his Chancellor (no surprises there then). It had a long waffly article about how vile Google* is, and I am sure I remember an article about how to romance a laydee. 

All of things were sort of predictable. They are the mainstays of gentlemen's magazines - a little chest puffing, a little power-grooming, a little sabre rattling - ugg. What was a surprise was the adverts. Ever mindful that advertisers advertise to their market, it seems that we men are motivated not by breasts and bottoms, but by

... watches

I counted thirty separate adverts for over-priced chest-beaty watches - ugg. This outnumbered ads for mobile smart phones three-to-one. This outnumbered ads for boy-perfume by five-to-one. This outnumbered boobs by thirty-to-nil (a very respectable magazine for respectable married geezers who have wives who don't like naughtiness in the house, on the Habitat coffee table). But watches ...

Now, it may surprise some of you, given the sensitivity and pathos with which I utter forth on this blog, but I am in fact a male - blokius cloakii. I might not be the furriest, but I have a deep voice, a protruding throat, little use for a brassiere and I break wind in the lounge - I am a man. I have two wrists, which though greedy, limits my use for a selection of watches - accustomed as I am to the use of a singular watch. When I wake in the morning, the first thing I think about is 'why?' followed closely by the eternal quest for caffeine - but not 'God in His Heaven be praised, for this day I may be granted grace to wear my watch'. 

So, I wonder why a magazine for gentlemen is replete with adverts for watches, all beyond my budget I might add. They are beautiful things, interesting things, status-escalating things. Perhaps I am missing something, and have been putting my watch on in the wrong place, I just don't know. It's not like men have any kind of reputation for lateness, is it?




*This post was written using Google Chrome - and the spell-checker on Google Chrome didn't recognise the word 'Google' - d'uh

The Father, the Son and the Only Bloke

I was sent a flyer through email last week, inviting me to a seminar dedicated to getting men (back) to church. It is to be called 

Reaching 'Unreached Men'

Perhaps a little perjorative in its titling, as it makes it sound like if you are not a God botherer when you are a lost lamb - men won't thank you for that. But anyway ...

I am unable to go, as 'life' happens, but I would have loved to, for good and healthy reasons as I have a specific interest and a specific perspective:

1. I am a man. The pants-tackle will confirm that, as will the gruff voice, and the fact that films with Hugh Grant make me feel queazy. Yes, dear readers, I am a man, dammit.

2. I am such a bloke as the seminar seeks to reach - and my ordained status only makes me an anomaly to the ordained, not to geezerdom. I have spent many good years working with the 'unreached' geezers in retail, know a little about what makes them tick, and share a heart with them on the whole.

I think men can be (mostly) sub-divided accordingly, each needing a specific 'approach' (sorry, fellas, I am now guilty of treating you like lab-rats too)

Blokus Grunt-Monkeii: Something of a majority state, I am quite clear that I fall into this category. 

  - Pragmatic

  - Family motivated, financially 'hand-to-mouth' on the whole

  - Sports interested

  - Retailing, manual/skilled labour, all that sort of thing, tired and needing of a beer in the evening

 Blokus Hairgeleii: The next largest state of man

  - Mostly graduate, or at least diploma'd, have some saving in the bank and a stonking mortgage

  - IT, Banking, management - all that sort of thing

  - Famly motivated (less likely to have kids that the other lot above, careers first, you see)

  - Sports interested, problem solvers, wine quaffers

Blokus Modernmanicus: An important, but slightly smaller subset

  - Caring professions, teaching, nursing etc etc

  - Almost universally graduate, union minded

  - Family motivated, gin and tonic types (or fancy Lagers)

  - Less sports interested, and less likely footy or wuggah for those who are sports interested

Homo Tweedicus: A small but influential subset

  - Movers and shakers, and often seen with a gold signet on their little finger

  - Sport is a minority interest, and almost always wuggah - brandy or single-malt types

  - Family motivated, but in the wider thirty generations of N and N sense

  - Orxbridge, or Durham if they bummed out

  - Politically minded and financially affluent

There are others, of course (Blokus Shavedheadimus - for those who love extremism; Homo Homo Blokus - for those who like other blokes; Laddus Hoodicoverupus - an intermediate state, sort of like a pupation state before full fledging into manhood and so on and so forth ...)

So, how does the church reach the 'unreached men'? The eternal question ...

My modest offering, born of my own perspective only, are these:

1. Meet men where they are, and in what they love to do. In simple terms, be a visitor to a pub once in a while - most usefully in a dog-collar. Get to know people and do not, and I mean it, do NOT use the 'G' word [God] - game over if you do, unless of course they rasie the subject unprompted. Build relationships with people, enter into chats with them, be interested in them without a heart to convert them - being an infectious Christian will do its own job (and God does the converting, not you)
2. Men want to feel in control of their own lives and more especially those of their family - engage with men at that level. Provide for their children, get to know them. No dad is immune to the goodness that a person shows to their offspring, believe me. 
3. Don't try and save men (in the Christian sense) - respect the caveman side of all blokes. Men don't need saving mate, and that's a fact - they are the hunter gatherers (even if they aren't really) - and to save one who saves others will earn you a poke in the eye. 
4. Talk work - what do they do for a living? We know that Jesus was a carpenter, so there is no failing in being just a little interested in what people do all day. Be interested, get to know thir work, and for God's sake, don't judge them. Binmen are as vital (if not more so) than merchant bankers. 
5. Most blokes have stuff to do on Sundays (I was in 'the wilderness' for two years due to working patterns, so Sundays were a dead loss [and no, I wasn't in the wilderness, just busy, so be careful about terminology) - they will put their family before church every time
6. Do not presume that because someone works in shop, supports Man U, has a tattoo of a spiderweb across their face, owns a Staffy etc etc that they arent committed Christians (just perhaps not a churchgoer) - someone made that mistake with me once and tried to introduce me to the Lord, which is fine, but they didn't ask the right (or any) questions and made some appalling (and offensive) presumptions about me (I was testing my vocation at that time too)
7. Men are interested in their own things. For me, it is fast cars, jet aircraft, rock music, films that expose giblets and gizzards, real ale, etc - I am not the same as my wife in my tastes or most of those who attend any given church on any given Sunday. Talk Aston Martins or Eurofighters with me, or the virtues of Exmoor Gold, and I will quickly become interested in you and what you stand for. The Christian contageon will do its work in proximity, not from a distance.
8. Think flatpack construction - men get there in their own way and prefer to work it out for themselves. Men's Curry Nights, a trip to a beer festival, tickets to the next Air Tattoo - they will do you better than a Service (or other in-church) initiative - to men they represent the Instruction Manual. Give men the opportunity to make their own connections, and they just might  - some might not, so be ready for that too. 

This is a daft brief list. I could batter on for days about this stuff, but for now will call 'Time'. I congratulate the fella from Grove on his initiative with his Seminar, and wish him every success. We need more men in our churches and even with my collar on, I feel like a minority. In St Mary Aylesbury, there are more Zimbabweans than men under 45 - six times as many.   

*Caveat - this is an English/British perspective for those who read this on distant shores!