Thread by @smashbaals

Young men don’t want to go to church.

Why?

Church has become feminized in its language, teaching, and worship.

If men don’t like this they’re told they’re bad Christians.

Yet it doesn’t have to be like this. 🧵

The language of Church has been feminized.

Christianity isn’t a religion but a ✨Relationship✨

While we’re in a relationship with our creator the relationship described by evangelicals is more of a boyfriend / girlfriend relationship instead of the Father / child relationship

However, this “boyfriend” relationship is quite accurate to how the modern church treats the Christian life.

The quality of one’s Christian walk is determined much like how a teenage girl determines the quality of her relationship.

Emotions.

Men’s Bible studies are emotional introspection sessions, but with bacon.

The first question is along the lines of “how did you feel towards Jesus this week?”

If you don’t feel like the Pinterest girl with her coffee and Bible looks then something is wrong with you.

The same can be said for modern worship music as it sounds more like the songs belong on a Taylor Swift album than in the book of Psalms.

Pastors have said, “if singing this song makes you feel uncomfortable as a man then you need to get over it.”

The question to determine “good worship” has become “how did it make you feel” instead of “how did this honor God?”

Even in most comp. churches men are told they’re basically the same as women and apart from the physical distinctions the only difference is women can’t be pastors

Then, in the same breath, men are told to lead their family but given no tools to do so.

The only thing offered to them is being a “servant leader.”

Christian men are told “servant leadership” is the only Christian leadership option yet if “leader” was replaced with “king” making men “servant kings” this would be rejected showing they don’t want men to lead but instead just be servants.

As @Brian_Sauve said demanding leadership without tools is no different from Pharaoh demanding bricks without straw.

It’s no coincidence that this leadership theory arose to prominence in the late 80s / early 90s coinciding perfectly with the creation of complementarian theology

These are massive problems in the modern evangelical Church that have led to men not attending church.

Many respond to these criticisms by saying, “well if they’re really Christian men they’ll put up with it anyway.”

This isn’t the correct response because these problems are rooted much deeper than simply the attendance of men in church.

To have the desire to get men back to church it’s important to understand why it’s important to have men in church.

When women convert first there’s a 17% chance the whole home follows with men it’s 93%.

While we are thankful for godly mothers it’s pivotal to understand the importance of godly fathers in the home and in Church.

The solution to most of these problems is as simple as having an orthodox understanding of the issues starting with the view of our relationship to God.

As stated before our relationship isn’t boyfriend/girlfriend but father/child.

Further, the relationship we have with God is covenantal, not that of a 21st century dating couple.

The best representation of this is how Abraham slept as God enacted the covenant signifying it’s 100% on Him as if even a portion of the covenant relied on Abraham it would be broken as Abraham was sinful.

Many have further conflated the relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church as between Christ and the members of the Bride by saying “we’re dating Jesus.”

This commits the fallacy of division by attributing the quality of the body to the individual.

Instead, Christ gave us marriage as an image to understand the relationship between Christ and His Bride.

“The husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church… Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”

Marriage and the family structure is to teach us about Christ.

However, real authority requires ability to exercise authority.

The church must teach men how to love their wives like Christ loved the church, not by becoming their errand boy but by being their prophet, priest, and king as Christ is to the church.

As the purpose of worship is to glorify God and edify the saints as we worship God in spirit and truth we need rich and true songs that reflect such truths.

Why sing: “Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest.”

When you could sing: “Christ shall have dominion over land and sea!Earth’s remotest region shall His empire be!”

Picking songs that can be sung by a congregation is also important as many contemporary worship songs are simply out of the range of most men.

Discipleship for men must look different than women sitting around sipping coffee.

Once in a men’s study and a guy was going through it and the leader kept asking him questions like a therapist about his feelings

The guy responded by saying, “I don’t want to talk about my feelings I want to shove them down deep and sit in a deer stand”

Sometimes that’s needed

Treating every problem in life like it requires a therapy session is going to drive men away.

Instead sometimes men need other Christian men to just be there and sit quietly in that deer stand with them.

These trips provide great opportunities to talk about real life and God’s word. Some of the best conversations I’ve had about God’s word have come on the boat, on a dock, and on a beach waiting for a bite.

The Church needs men and Jesus called 12 men to be his disciples for a reason.

The church needs men and if they’re going to come back we need to make church masculine again.