I had been up for over an hour this morning before it registered with me that it is International Womens’ Day, but some people are not so lax, and I had an email from commenter Alan in my inbox by the time that I got to work. I am sure that Alan wouldn’t mind me quoting a couple of excerpts:

Well, there’s a most peculiar development going on in the churches at the moment.Archbishops and ethics lecturers are mounting a new campaign to get men into church.The argument runs like this:men hate the church(that of course will be news to women who look around and find its men who run the place),for five reasons:
*church meeting styles are feminine
*church leadership model is weak
*church is boring and safe:no risk
*church doesn’t relate to a man’s world
*blokes like to get their hands dirty
(”Five reasons why men hate the church”,Jeremy Halcrow,29.1.07 Syd Anglican website)
But maybe there’s another reason.
Perhaps men look around the church and don’t like the way other men are treating women.Maybe there’s too many men now comfortably and easily working with, working for,being directed by,in partnership with, women, that they are uneasy about the kind of blokey culture about in too many of our churches, and dont want to be a part of it!

I don’t know whether I agree with the latter commentary, but I find that there is a real paradox about the church/gender debate. First it seems clear that there are many more men in formal leadership in churches than women. If anything this is even more true of church plants and alternative model churches. As much as I embrace the “emerging” discussion, the movement does seem to have a more than usual affliction with the “angry young man” syndrome. No offence intended to any angry young men in the audience.

However, at the same time, there is a concern about the fact that men as a demographic are under-represented among church attenders. The NCLS says that only about 39% of church attenders in Australia are male and suggests a number of theories as to why. Part of this imbalance is almost certainly due to the fact that the elderly are over-represented in churches and women on average live longer than men. But what of the rest of the difference?

Increasingly, as Alan has pointed out, I have heard people discuss the idea that men are less likely to be involved with the church because church culture is somehow uncomfortable or anti-male. These are the arguments for people who endorse or at least condone a “bloke”inisation of leadership and culture in the church to “correct the balance”. I find these positions to raise some logical conflicts. I think we can point to the following facts that seem to be fairly well established.

• More women than men are regular church attenders
• More men than women are in formal leadership in the church

Which raises a whole bunch of questions. If the culture of the church is anti-church, then who creates the culture? If the leaders create the culture, then why are a group of predominantly male leaders creating such a “feminine” culture so as to be anathema to men? What about the culture of the church is feminine? The worship? The openness? The confessional? The singing? What?

In response to that, if the culture of the church is too female, then what changes will make the place more attractive to men? Surely most men are more sophisiticated than to respond to an increase on the ‘bloke’iness dial? So I have a couple of simple questions I would like an answer to, and I think that the commenters at signposts on this day are well qualified to give me those answers:

1. Why are there more men than women in formal leadership in the church?
2. What can be done to encourage more women into formal leadership in the church?
3. Why are there more women than men amongst regular church attenders?
4. What can be done to encourage more men to be in regular church attendance?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 2:00 pm by dan and is filed under chicks in church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.