I want to talk about something that does not get discussed honestly very often.

Men are leaving the church. Not all at once. Quietly. One at a time. They stop showing up and eventually nobody notices because the service keeps running and the seats fill with everyone else.

The reasons vary. But there is one I keep hearing underneath all the other ones.

The church stopped feeling like a place for them.

Not because the doctrine changed. Not because the music is too loud or the sermons are too long. But because somewhere in the effort to be welcoming and inclusive and sensitive to everyone, the masculine soul got quietly squeezed out of the room.

Men need challenge. They need weight. They need to be told the truth without it being softened so much that it loses its edge. They need to sit in a room that assumes they are capable of hard things instead of a room that is constantly managing their fragility.

A lot of churches preach to the lowest common denominator. They sand the edges off everything so nobody feels uncomfortable. And men – who are wired to respect strength and respond to a worthy challenge – look around and feel nothing pulling at them. Nothing requiring something from them. Nothing worth showing up for.

So they stop showing up.

I am not saying the church is the enemy. The church is the bride of Christ and she matters. But a bride that does not know how to speak to her men is going to keep losing them one quiet Sunday at a time.

Men need to hear that they are called. That their strength is not a liability but a gift that God wants governed and deployed. That their leadership is not optional. That the family waiting at home needs the version of them that only God can build.

That sermon exists. More pulpits need to preach it.

And more men need to walk back through the door even before they feel like it.

 

 

Stephon Rudd

 

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