Deer are herbivores - they eat no meat, only plants. If I eat venison, vegetable matter must have ended up in that meat. Surely that has to count for something, right?
Posted on 06/13/2006 6:25:48 AM PDT by hiho hiho
"We don't have to have hand-to-hand combat during the worship service to get men there," Murrow said. "We just have to start speaking [their language], use the metaphors they understand and create an environment that feels masculine to them."
"My background is in marketing and advertising, and one day I was sitting in church, and all of a sudden it dawned on me that the target audience of almost everything about church culture was a 50- to 55-year-old woman," said Murrow, a Presbyterian elder who's now a member of a nondenominational congregation in Anchorage.
The gender gap is not a distinctly American one but it is a Christian one, according to Murrow. The theology and practices of Judaism, Buddhism and Islam offer "uniquely masculine" experiences for men, he said.
Concern about the perceived femininization of Christianity-- and the subsequent backlash-- is nothing new.
"These guys have really come out because it's something they can do," Hale said. "They feel like they've made a contribution. . . . I think men like to do things that they feel comfortable doing."
Yet come Sunday morning, "we're going to sing love songs to Jesus and there's going to be fresh flowers on the altar and quilted banners on the walls," Murrow said.
Men aren't the only ones alienated by such an environment. According to Murrow, young people aren't that keen on it either. Both groups are challenge-oriented and appreciate risk, adventure, variety, pleasure and reward-- values some churches "ignore or vilify," according to Murrow.
Churches have to help men and women use their gifts, not just fit them into old religious molds, Murrow said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Moi? Catholic? LOL!
Read: The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity by Leon Podles. He is Catholic but his comments apply (and are directed) at Protestantism as well. Interestingly, he asserts that the Eastern Orthodox don't have this problem.
men's ministries are patterned after women's ministies. Men want to jump off cliffs into rivers and fish/hunt. Not sit around and talk about their feelings
Amen and Amen. The pagans are way ahead of us on how to have a really cool men's retreat
On a wing and a prayer, eh?
ecumenical ping...
"The pagans are way ahead of us on how to have a really cool men's retreat"
Saturday at the Elders meeting we had a presentation from one of the men in the church who is a supervisor for the state DEP. He wanted to start a chapter of a group called Christian Deer Hunters. Our new young Pastor didn't think that was appropriate since he and some of the young fathers were vegetarians. Sigh!
You put enough ranch dressing on a piece of venison and it will taste like a vegetable.
That would be 0.02 dollars.
Amen.
around here my opinion is worth about 0.02 cents
Very true. You can even see the feminization in the limp-wristed way they talk about it:
"We just have to start speaking [their language], use the metaphors they understand and create an environment that feels masculine to them."
Feelings, metaphors and environments? Give me a break.
The fact that more women than men attend church is telling a spiritual truth. Men ARE to be the spiritual leaders in the household, but God has been abondoned for power, money, cars, affairs, and more and more materialism. In other words, IDOLATRY...
Deer are herbivores - they eat no meat, only plants. If I eat venison, vegetable matter must have ended up in that meat. Surely that has to count for something, right?
"("Jesus is my boyfriend songs"--I've got to remember that one.)"
You find that crap mostly in the pseudo-pop "worship music" of today, not in the inspiring hymns we grew up with. Church should not sound like FM "easy listening" stations.
Having left the (thorougly-feminized) Episcopal Church for Orthodoxy a year ago, I can testify this is correct. Men (and families) are welcomed instead of blamed for evil patriarchy.
I find it interesting that most women respond well to a more masculine approach to worship. Maybe they are just happy at anything that will get their husbands into church!
On the other hand, I love Third Day's Agnes Dei, for example, or Mullins' (IIRC) Our God is a Mighty God. My congregation's worship leader uses both modern choruses and adapts Psalms, other Biblical passages, and traditional Jewish songs to be banged out on an electric guitar. You've not known Heaven's worship until you've sung:
L'Chaim b'Yeshua ("To Life in Yeshua") is another favorite.Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh,
ADONAI Elohim Tzva'ot
Asher hayah, v'hoveh, v'yavohHoly, Holy, Holy
Is the LORD God of Hosts
Who Was and Is and Is To Come
I think that the style of the music is not so much the problem as the feel-good, me-me-me lyrics that often (but not always) pervade modern Christian music. While there's definitely nothing wrong with singing about what God has done for us (look at the Psalms), we need to be careful about where the emphasis lies.
When they tossed out sin and any challenge to struggle to be holy and virtuous and replaced it with saccharine "God loves you no matter what" all the time in the liturgy, then naturally men will respond less well. Men don't want to go to optional Oprah sessions of a Sunday morning.
"You find that crap mostly in the pseudo-pop "worship music" of today, not in the inspiring hymns we grew up with"
Yeah, Buggman, like "I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses" done to waltz time. That's a real he man type song. I think the lumber jacks sing that some times while sipping tea.
I'm a lumberjack,
And that's okay!
I sleep all night,
And I work all day!
My husband corrected me just yesterday for referring to the Holy Spirit as the "Comforter."
That is imprecise, he practically bellowed. The Greek is more accurately written as "The Encourager." It's only because the church is being subverted by the passivity and feminization found most often in the RC church, the Orthodox and other "softer" denominations that we are told to look to God as a "comforter," one who weeps with us and consoles us when in fact, the Holy Spirit is much more robust and aggressive and militant and certain in His teachings and leadings.
There is a definite pattern to all this -- schools, government, church, all being dominated by women. Why is that? I think it is because women are more easily led, more easily persuaded, more grateful just to be given the job. And so women are quicker to do the bidding of whomever is pulling the strings.
And strings are being pulled all over the place. It can only stop when men stand up and assume their rightful place as heads of their households. Much more error is committed in the name of passivity than bold and confident assertion.
Written by Charles Miles, so he must have liked it. It's not from my tradition, so I'm not very familiar with it. I find hymns like "For all the Saints" and "God is Working his Purpose Out" to be quite inspiring, to name two off the top of my head.
If people sing hymns in a wimpy fashion, it's usually due to unfamiliarity. I often don't even have to open the hymnal.
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