Friday, April 04, 2008
For years Christians have bemoaned the fact that more women attend the average local church than men. Social scientists and practical ministry professors have studied the issue and have arrived at their own conclusions.
However, there’s one explanation I haven’t heard out of any of them: more women attend church than men because most pastors I meet are effeminate.
ef·fem·i·nate (ĭ-fěm'-nĭt) adj. Having qualities or characteristics more often associated with women than men. Traits characterized by excessive softness, delicacy, self-indulgence, etc.
Think back to every church you’ve visited and every pastor you’ve met and tell me that more times than not this isn’t the case.
My first thought after moving to Princeton to go to seminary was, I’ve never met so many effeminate men in my life. No wonder the church can’t attract strong male leaders. The Christian community keeps sending Richard Simmons to get trained to lead its churches.
Why are there so many effeminate pastors?
1. Most denominations and churches operate from a pre-determined definition of what a pastor should be – a personal caregiver instead of a leader.
2. For most congregations their goal is not to wage battle against the kingdom of darkness, but to make everyone happy. As a result, they seek a leader who never upsets them with change and constantly seeks to keep everyone smiling.
3. Most congregations are not biblically structured around God-given spiritual gifts. As such, gifted servant leaders with the spiritual gift of leadership are not allowed to rise to leadership in the context of other strong servant leaders. In fact, most churches are structured to operate by appeasement and saving face. Hence they seek appeasing, face saving caregivers who are in turn dominated by weak governing boards.
4. Many pastors go into the ministry because they have emotional issues they need to work out, and they may have seen another pastor get loved on and cared for by a small group of people, and they want that.
Thoreau once said, “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one person,” which in my mind explains why so many women sit in our pews.
Simply put, women attend churches in disproportionate numbers, more often than not, because the guy up front leading the charge is a wuss.
Read other posts in this series:
Pastors Gone Wild – New Series Begins Today
Why Pastors Yield To Sexual Temptation (Part 1)
Does Your Pastor Really Believe In Hell? (Part 2)
Effeminate Pastors (Part 3)
Overweight Pastors (Part 4)
People Pleasing Pastors (Part 5)
Effeminate Pastors – Pastors Gone Wild (Part 3)
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15 comments:
Brian,
This is exactly why I read your blog. You have a way of presenting the truth while making me grin.
Seriously, the church atracts more women than men because like society, the church has a way of catering to women.
We are currently on a mission to defeminize the church. No more flowers. No dainty curtains. No more paisley cushions.
Our women do not completely understand it. We have to keep explaining it like this: "You can dress a baby girl in any color, but you can not dress a baby boy in pink." We are not anti women, we are just trying to create an atmosphere that men will be comfortable in.
Bake
I love this post. You nailed it. The efforts to effect change in the church I serve is not opposed by the men ... but by the women. The Sr. Citizen women. They have a death grip on so many committees and their men just really don't bother "stepping up to the plate." And I think the men have given up. They've stopped caring. I "fought a battle" last night at a meeting where the major issue is "why aren't we doing anything major to celebrate Mother's Day?" Nobody mentioned Fathers Day until I brought it up. It was quickly dismissed because, by golly, GIVE US OUR MOTHER DAUGHTER BANQUET OR GIVE US DEATH!" I wanted to scream. Still do.
The upside? There will be more women than men in heaven. Not that it appears (biblically speaking) that it will matter. Drat. (Hey ... you have to find the silver lining. (And yes, I'm kidding. But only about the last paragraph.)
I'm as manly as they come, girlfriend.
I think you've been just hanging out in the wrong circles. I'm 64 and have been in church all my life. I've been through a number of pastors. I was also a leader in an inter-denominational Christian renewal weekend ministry for over 20 years, where I worked with dozens of pastors. Out of all of those, I can think of ONE I would label effeminate.
Men do need different motivation to attend church than women. I like the first commenter's line about not dressing a boy in pink, but I think that when it comes to things like decor, most women do care - and let that be known, and most men don't care.
As for appeasement, I agree it can be a problem. I have no psychology training, but I don't think the personality trait of confrontational vs. non-confrontational is a gender issue. I come up as "results oriented" on the personality tests, and have been called confrontational. I have met many a woman who has been just as strong willed in my years of lay church leadership.
That's my two cents worth. Considering all the pastors I have known in my churches, in Tres Dias and in Promise Keepers, I think you missed the mark on this one.
You couldn't be more right. Thanks for the good interview today.
I personally have not noticed this, but then I was raised Catholic. I admired the priests that I knew and even wanted to be one at one time.
Regardless, from my experience, it is the women who seem to be more religious, more apt to pray for someone, and frankly more apt to worry about things perhaps leading to the need to pray. It might be the whole 'mother' thing.
We men are too strong to have to worry about anything (or so we may display) so to need help from a church or to need someone (Jesus) to lean on may be a sign of weakness and not many men want that because of the society in which we live.
I may be bringing this blog to another place, but I do not know many men that are excited about attending church as much as women...except of course for me, an Agnostic man who wears pink and notices decor.
-Mark
amen, and, amen.
Read also: Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow.
I have worked for my share of effeminate wussy pastors, and it's painful.
And I too have that band of Sr. women that are the only ones who have a voice.
i am also a woman in leadership in a church, and have also worked for my share of strong masculine pastors, who had found that balance between compassion and caring and biblical masculine leadership.
In the words of a button a professor of mine once wore: "Save the Males!"
-the youth minister from texas
I know you Mark and you are not that strange, just have too big of feet. Your tastes are a little off, just like Sammy, but hey, you are who you are and are loved by many, even your wife. You have to be who you are because of four females and a female dog in your house...by the way, why couldn't you at least get a male dog???!!!
i think that you might be about 37% right. women who are married drag their husbands to church and guys don't stay because it's too 'emotional' for them, not necessarily because the lead pastor is effeminate. i've actually attended your church before, about 6 months ago, and I thought it was a gay-friendly church because whoever it was that was speaking that sunday had a floral pattern on his button up shirt and shook my hand like i was his 97-year old grandmother, or his date for later that evening. but church is boring & the songs go on way too long. that's why it's full of women. they go because of the 'need' to go and get involved in COMMUNITY and for the kids, too. the guys want to drink beer on the couch or be involved in something that matters. effeminate pastors are 1/1000 so i don't think you're on target.
-tristan
Keep the women at home, barefoot and pregnant......just kidding.
Fascinating perspectives. As a women in sr. leadership position in the corporate world, and as a leader at CCV, I find it interesting that some of the responders seem to discount the fact that women are, by God's intent, feminine. So, if the 'feminine' is what is turning men off to going to church, then I can't envision that many of you would support women in church leadership - in the pulpit, in the executive pastor role, whatever. How could you without approaching some level of hypocrisy? For men I work with every day, a woman in a leadership role, one in which may put them in a subordinate role to me, is a fact of life in our culture today. If we are a church that brags on our cultural relevance, perhaps it's time for the men to stop using this as an excuse for staying away from God. Oh, and one final comment - perhaps those sr. citizen women are a strong force to reckon with because they've been the only ones with the kahoonas to step up and lead. Just a thought...
Brian,
I wouldn’t get too hung up on the whys of this phenomenon as I think it more important to figure out how to correct this big problem. I would bet there is some spiritual warfare going on over this effeminate issue. You could probably guess who is behind it.
I think two of Satan’s primary goals are to:
1. Break down the authority of Jesus’s local churches, and
2. Break down the authority of families
When the chief priests and scribes could not figure out a way to discredit what Jesus was doing in Luke 20:1-2 the only thing left for them to do was to attack Jesus’s authority. They asked, “By what authority do you do these things and who gave you this authority?”
Satan has been attacking authority for a very long time and still does today. Satan still attacks the authority of the leadership of the local churches and Satan still attacks the authority of the leadership of families. Attacking the leadership of any organization is the best way to make the organization less effective.
Satan started a movement to normalize homosexuality and the effeminate behaviors of men including men who are church leaders and male heads of families. When men far from God can not find strong male role models in churches where there are effeminate leaders they mostly decide not to go to church. These men may never hear the gospel because they can’t find a preacher who they can identify with who preaches with any authority. Church becomes a very wishy washy waste of time, and most men want nothing to do with it. For some reason women seem to be more tolerant of effeminate men so this is why you will find more women in churches than men.
By making homosexuality and effeminate lifestyles normal alternative lifestyles Satan wins because
#1 Satan has diminished the authority of the church leadership, and,
#2 Satan wins the souls of the men who can’t find a preacher and eventually most of their families, too. Since most men will have no respect for these effeminate church leaders, most of these men will not go to church. This sets the example in the family for the wives and children many of which will not go to church, either. Now some wives and children do go to church anyway, but most will follow the example of the man who can’t find an acceptable preacher. It is a numbers game for Satan. Taking out the leader is the best way to make the organization less effective.
So Satan does not care who you are. Satan will try to take you out. Satan went after Jesus’s authority using the chief priests and scribes. Satan is going after the local churches by going after our leadership. Satan is going after the men in our families by attempting to normalize homosexuality so that men and their families are less able to find suitable preachers. So what can be done about this problem?
Now I know that God wants all to come to repentance and salvation including all the people who claim homosexuality as normal alternative lifestyles but I do not think any of these people should be in any leadership positions in any of Jesus’s local churches. Any homosexuals and effeminates in authority at local churches should be demoted to membership only status assuming they have made Jesus the forgiver and leader of their lives. Just my humble opinion.
Ed
DK- thanks for adding some commonsense to this discussion.
I just want to add that there are enough people in the secular world who take potshots at Christians--should we really be slamming each other? I can't imagine a more difficult job in the American church than pastor--so I believe that we need to PRAY for them. There is so much pressure from modern church organizations to "waterdown" the message of judgement and grace that those who preach God's Truth each week are WARRIORS whether they wear pink or not.
BTW, the excuse of an effeminate pastor implicitly says that church is about US rather than about GOD--seems backwards to me...
In reading your list of reasons, it is clear that what you mean by “wuss” is someone who is not a leader. Why do you equate lack of leadership with feminine characteristics? Are being feminine and being a leader mutually exclusive? Only in the mind of a male chauvinist.
Can one be a leader AND be considerate of others?
Can one be a leader AND show compassion to others?
Can one be a leader AND be soft-spoken?
Can one be a leader AND be female?
I think so.
What is it about men that makes them so afraid to be seen following a woman (unless it is into the bedroom)?
come-on the church needs men and women with B@77s! it's called faith and wusses of either gender need not lead
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