Free Republic

New Berlin, WI - With a logo that looks like a coffee stain, it's clear The Ridge Community Church is a bit different. There won't be power-tool demonstrations at the pulpit when the inaugural service is held at 10 a.m. Sunday in the Marcus Ridge Cinema, 5200 S. Moorland Road. But other steps are being taken to make the target group - unchurched, beer-drinking, sports-loving 35- to-38-year-old guys - as comfortable as the wives and children with them. Think of it as soul improvement instead of home improvement. Consider also that the outreach activities of the launch team included cleaning...

It may not be inclusive or politically correct, but the unabashed aim of The Grove Church in Peoria, IL, is to attract one hitherto unreached demographic: men. Inspired by David Murrow's Why Men Hate Going To Church, Murrow and Pastor Mark Doebler freely admit they are inventing a new style of worship. "We're not going after low-hanging fruit," said Murrow. "We're building a ladder to reach men, the fruit most churches ignore." The first couple of rungs were hammered together in Peoria, IL, on a September weekend when the Murrow conducted a Church for Men Summit in the city and...

"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...