Book: Why Men? (Ch 1)

Last week we went started taking a look at David Murrow's book Why Men Hate Going to Church? Now we're moving into chapter 1.

Murrow starts out with a "case study"-- which I use loosely-- about a man named Cliff. He's a hard worker, fishes, loves his wife and kids, drives a four-wheeler, enjoys cold beer, dirty jokes and doesn't go to church. Murrow argues that guys like Cliff are practicing their own religion called Masculinity [He uses this term a lot, but has yet to really define it]. Murrow quotes two men, notably Charles Spurgeon, who says, "There has got abroad a notion, somehow, that if you become a Christian you must sink your manliness and turn milksop." Christianity and masculinity do not go together [as popularly perceived].

Is Church a women's thing? On the outset, Jesus, a man, founded the Church with 12 male disciples and, to our knowledge the whole of the NT is written by men. Today when you look at the pastorate most are males. However, when we begin to look at the congregation, the majority are women. Further, those who are volunteering and most involved are women. Murrow offers this sad statement: "the only man who actually practices his faith is the pastor."

He argues that this affects the women as much as men.

The men we do find in church are not the "manly men" like Cliff (see above), but instead are "humble, tidy, dutiful, and above all, nice." This is a contrast with those men we see in the Bible-- Moses, Elijah, David, Daniel, Peter, and Paul [and Jesus?]. They were "men who risked everything in service to God...They had an intense commitment to God, and they weren't what you called saintly."

Murrow states that this is a book written for laywomen. He asks if they will allow men to take risks, dream big, push the envelope.

I ask this: Murrow states that one "cannot have a thriving church without a core of men who are true followers of Christ." Is this true? Why or why not?

Book: Why Men?

There's a book case behind the reference section in the library at North Park that holds the yearbooks from classes past. As this has no interest to me, the top of the hobbit-sized shelf is where I float over to when I'm looking to put off the necessary reading at hand. See, it is here that the newest books that have come into this compendium of knowledge start and I oft find something to divert my attention from my task at hand.

This week there were a couple books that caught my eye and one that I thought would be interesting to walk through on the blog. David Murrow, a Presbyterian (USA) from Alaska, who has had his hand in producing anything from the Discovery Channel to Dr. Phil, has put out a book entitled Why Men Hate Going To Church. I'll be honest, I've never heard of the guy, but I thought his book would be an interesting read no matter. It seems to look at facts and statistics, rather than our inner drive as men-- at least that's the appearance.

Murrow says that he's often wondered about why men hate going to church. He's seen it in all denominations. Those that do attend he states are "passive, bored or uneasy" (vii). How was a faith that had been started by a Man and entrusted to 12 men, so lacking in men today? As he looked around for answers, he didn't find any at the local Christian bookstore, so he decided to write the book himself. He claims neither to be pastor nor theologian, just a regular guy in the pews who is struggling to find his place in church (viii).

Before we delve into Murrow's search for the answer, what is the consensus of why men don't go or hate going to church? What has been your experience with men and church?

Manly Reads

This is my lazy man's blog for Monday. Last Tuesday, I sat down with another brother from North Park in regards to my posts back in November that caused such a stir. You remember those? While not agreeing with my position, he did share some concerns about the future of male leadership and the emasculation of male leadership. Further we talked about if the complementarian position is fully lived out, in regards to the vision in Ephesians 5:25-33, it would place women above men. I would say it does place women in a seat of honor as their husbands seek to love their wives a Christ loves the Church. Since then I've found some really good reads on being a Godly man and what that means in regards to women. And since I haven't caused much drama in the past few months, I figure it's about time again. So with that, here's my top-- well, we'll see how many I get.

1. Piper's still going with his sermon series on marriage. He said he was going to get to headship soon, so it could be yesterday's, which at this time is yet to be posted.
2. Tim Challies is a great blogger that posted a couple entries entitled The Extraordinary Value of Women I & II. Both of which I highly recommend.
3. Justin Taylor, who used to work at Desiring God Ministries and is now in Wheaton, posted an excerpt of an old sermon by Albert Mohler that he had recently reread entitled The Seduction of Pornography and the Integrity of Christian Marriage. He has links to both it's full text and audio.
4. Justin's also posted a few other dated posts to take note of: Wayne Grudem on his marriage, and an older sermon by Piper on submission.

So it's only four, but I think there are enough hyper links up there to give anyone ADHD. I do hope they're for your edification.