I was once in a prayer meet-ing where I heard a sister pray something like: "Jesus I love you so much, I could just hug you and kiss you." My eyes opened, and they remained open for the rest of that prayer meeting. Homophobic fibres of my being were aroused. For you see, in corporate prayer, she was praying on the behalf of those present - including me.
I don't relate to Jesus dem kinda ways. I can relate to Him as Lord and servant, Shepherd and sheep, Branch and vine. But this feminine "I could just hug you and kiss you," is not me. No thanks.
But then I thought, the sister was not wrong to speak to her Lord in the way she did. The trouble is that the church as the 'Bride of Christ' is one of those metaphors that just does not resonate with my masculine psyche, and the same is true for a lot of other men. I have often wondered, to what extent the way we do church serves to repel men, especially chronically homophobic men.
For churches to attract and retain men, they need to intentionally develop masculine modes of doing evangelism and pastoral care. For as Leon J. Podles in his excellent book The Church Impotent: the Feminisation of Christianity, has said, the popular perception is: "The more masculine the man, the less likely he is to be interested in religion; the more feminine the man, the more likely he is to be interested in religion".
Perhaps it is that the church has become unwittingly feminised. In most churches women outnumber men perhaps as much as seven to one. (To confirm this look at your church choir the next time they perform).
Women can't be blamed for the feminisation of the church. It is the few men who are there who must shoulder that blame and it is they who must inject masculinity back into the life of the church. Failing this the churches will continue to be faced with the perception that it is a kiddies and/or women's club. Furthermore, some Christian women who desire marriage and having hardly an eligible man to choose from within the church community will opt to marry a 'nice sinner man' with the hope that he will soon become a believer. Such folly often comes at a high emotional price.
TAILORED
The long and short of it is that the church must deliberately tailor its evangelistic efforts to win men. What obtains at present is that evangelistic meetings try to win everybody and invariably end up with a handful of men at best and a ton-load of women and children. That is perhaps where the church has gone wrong.
Is it not significant that the very first evangelistic activity recorded in Genesis is that of God, after the Fall, calling out to the man, "Adam where are you". Why didn't God call Eve? It is not because Eve was unimportant. But could it not be that he was creating a paradigm for evangelism? Is it not true that if you win the man, you win his wife/girlfriend, his children, his dog and goldfish.
Then there is the question of what kind of church will the man convert find. "Conversion can lead men into the church, but the church they enter must also have a spirituality that allows them to be both men and Christians - they cannot be real Christians unless they become real men," says Podles. Men, he rightly argues, will tend not to stay in a feminised church no matter how conservative or liberal such a church may be. As Christians pussyfoot about discipling men, Muslims are making serious gains. This is noticeable in the United States where by some estimates, Islam is the second largest religion there. Look at the Nation of Islam, it is doing something right to make men feel thoroughly masculine when they show up at the mosque. And don't forget Jamaica is on the radar for Nation evangelism. Have you forgotten that Farrakhan has pledged significant engagement in inner-city renewal in Jamaica. Which gender do you think he is going to go after as his prime mode of doing evangelism.
In his book, Adam! Where are you: Why Most Black Men Don't Go to Church, American pastor, Jawanza Kunjufu, points out a few things the Nation of Islam is doing right. A new convert to the Nation is firstly assigned a mentor. Then he is encouraged to attend gender classes three times weekly. Men are taught separately from women because it is believed "many males lack the discipline to acquire knowledge while in the presence of women". In the Nation, Kunjufu notes: Men are taught Islam "not only historically and scripturally but also in terms of day-to-day living... a man is taught that his position in the household is the head: he is taught to respect his wife and his children, to be the provider... to respect his body.... He is also expected to give 10-20 hours per week to Nation activities, which could include doing work around the building, selling newspapers or being involved in special programmes".
One can't maximise the discipling of men without at some time addressing the content of pulpiteers. There are certain metaphors in Holy Writ which I believe will usually resonate more favourably with males vis a vis females and vice versa.
The metaphor of 'the Bride of Christ' will almost always resonate more favourably with women than with men. The challenge of pulpiteers is to preach metaphors which will positively resonate with the psyche of men.
For this to happen there should be more focus on the manliness of Jesus. The blue-eyed effeminate-looking wimpish white Jesus made famous in a painting by Michelangelo will not do (especially if He is seen holding that lamb). Here are my suggestions: the Jesus who cracks the whip at the moneychangers in the temple; the Jesus who embraced martyrdom to bring salvation; the Jesus who is a winner; who spoiled principalities and powers and made a show of them openly; the Jesus who will rule the world with justice one day; the kingly Jesus who proclaims and demonstrates the Kingdom of God; the Jesus who spoke harshly to scribes and Pharisees calling them 'white-washed sepulchers.'
Secular and Christian scholars who write on men's issues tend to portray the ideal man as embodying: a King, Warrior, Problem-Solver, Priest and Lover. Jesus embodies these archetypes and so does King David and many other men of the Bible. Those archetypes should inform our preaching.
The Rev. Dr. Samuel Vassell, former pastor of the Bethune Avenue Wesleyan Holiness Christian Church has done yeoman service for the local Christian community by addressing the feminisation of the church in his publication Towards understanding and addressing male absence from the Jamaican Church. He makes the point that not only must sermons be reviewed but the liturgy must be designed to attract men.
REFLECTIVE
According to Vassell: "The ethos of most church worship situations is one where there is reflective and sentimental singing and/or music, public reading of poetic verse, and/or high (and often archaic) prose. Added to these elements of worship are symbolic rituals which are best described as dramatisations and/or re-enactments of historical events significant to the Christian faith.
Many of these 'worship activities' in concert with the sermons presented in the church in the Jamaican context are designed to enable people 'to get in touch' with deep emotions associated with adoration, submission, conviction, sorrow, grief, regret, repentance, gratitude and so on. Whereas much of this activity (that is singing, poetry reading dramatisation etc.,) is not uncommon among the typical Jamaican man in his daily life. These activities are in fact stereotyped in themselves as 'womanish' by many Jamaican men.
"The exception is in the popular music where the chant of the deejay and/or the throbbing.. of the dub poet holds sway. The Jamaican men who are comfortable in the performance of the fine arts so typical of the ethos of public worship in the Jamaican church are in the minority and are a departure from the usual. Most men voluntarily marginalise themselves in light then of the worship programme of the church. They are uncomfortable with that kind of thing".
Dancehall music in my mind though evidently cultural music, it is also in one sense masculine music. Which other music do you know of where drum and bass hold sway? And do not drum and bass evoke a distinct kind of masculine iconography as contrasted with say a flute. The dancehall genre is not intrinsically evil and those who haven't yet done so, need to wake up and catch the beat and not hesitate to use dancehall music for the discipling of men.
Targeting the man is such a fundamentally good evangelistic strategy that it deserves far greater attention in theological training institutions. But until seminaries get their act together here is a novel idea I stumbled on. Robert Morley, a specialist in men's ministry and author of the award-winning Man in the Mirror, argues in Newsletter No. 41 posted at www.maninthemirror.org., that churches should ideally invest in employing a pastor who will be charged with the men's portfolio. This, he said, should be given priority treatment over the employment of a youth pastor for indeed if the men's pastor ministry is a success, it will diminish the need for a youth minister.
According to Morley: "Men's ministry was the ministry of Jesus. In fact, the earthly ministry of Jesus was almost exclusively a men's ministry!" This should not surprise many people. Did Jesus not spend the bulk of his ministry with 12 men.
Morley continues: "By His example and teaching, Jesus showed the men what they were supposed to do. Jesus focused on making disciples of men, then He left it up to them to disciple their wives and children. Jesus is the foundation of the church, but He called men to be the backbone. Instead, today women often form the skeleton that holds the church together. But that's not the way Jesus would have done it". The time has long come for men to be treated as a special interest group in the church. If a very masculine Christianity becomes incarnate in the lives of the men in the church, it will play no small part to set the tone for appropriate masculine behaviour among those males outside the church so prone to picking up the gun, so prone to theft, so prone to wasting their lives, so prone to behaving like boys - instead of real men.
Mark Dawes is a Gleaner Staff Reporter. Send feedback to dawesmark@hotmail.com.
