How Do You Get More Men Into Your Church

Mike Holmes | December 13, 2009 | View Comments Comments

USA Today recently showcased a church drawing men to church through football. This “football service” drew nearly 2000 people including a host of newcomers. The pastor believes he found a solution to this “longtime challenge.”

It’s a challenge indeed! Women outnumber men in every major Christian denomination. In fact, a typical US congregation draws a crowd that is 61% women and 39% men.

Kinda lopsided don’t you think? But how important is it for a man to come to church? Ross Sawyers, founder and pastor of 121 Community Church, says this:

“I have read that if a child comes to Christ, 12% of the time the whole family will follow. If the mom comes, there’s a 15% chance the family will. But if the man comes to church, 90% of the time the family will come along behind.”

Wow!

Churches are trying everything to attract more men: from football, to informal dress, to high tech gadgetry (9 out of 10 Bible software buyers are men).

But I want to hear your thoughts, your ideas, your concepts.

What do you do to attract more men to your church?

Filed Under: Christianity Today, Church Marketing

pamperry

This is good. I would like to interview for a story I am doing on social media and ministry.
Pam Perry
www.MinistryMarketingSolutions.com
http://www.twitter.com/pamperry
Mike Holmes

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Mike Holmes

That sounds awesome...what are the next steps?

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MichaelGonzalez

Truth be told, when the truth is preached, they will come. I think some of the problem is that the church failed to maintain just exactly what men's roles are in society and in particular in the family. This can be traced back to the "industrial revolution". Suddenly, young boys did not grow up or work with dad because dad now worked in a factory. Now mom was raising the boys because dad had to work outside the home. So started the long decline of what exactly the role of men were. They church failed to address this. Next big whammy came in WW I. Now not only did dad not work at home he went to war on a scale that up to that point was unknown. The result was that when dad came home from the war, he could not effectively re-adjust do to the exposure to the insanity of war on an unheard of scale. Next came WW II, to further aggravate that situation. That was followed by the "women's movement" or the "feminist movement". 40+ years of that nonsense and men are really confused. Bottom line is this, that men are the emotional and spiritual leaders of the family, that is truth. Society tends to say otherwise and the church which is suppose to be the check on society, for the most part is working hard to "fit in" instead of teaching the clear and truthful role of men. Men are so confused that if you were to ask 1000 men what the definition of a man is you would be hard pressed to even get 100 of them to give you that definition. For those of us that understand all this, it falls on us to get the truth out. When enough of us, one at a time, do that, they will come.

thanks
Mike Holmes

I agree with the truth being preached. I read somewhere that men appreciate relevancy more. Not "how does this work" but "how does this work for me." I love your analogies by the way:)
leroytrusty

This is so important. And I have met a number of men that feel the church has missed out on this one. Paul Coughlin is my favorite author and speaker on the subject of "no more Christian nice guy." We had a couple of long talks on the subject of getting guys into the church. He was/is one the founders of the godmen.org (of course they are making some changes right now. http://www.godmen.org/promo_movie.htm)
The main issues we discussed are how men are expected to be in order to be in church. And I agree. The biggest problem is in many settings I have been in is that once you walk through the door of the church, you are to be acting a specific way. Check the gonads with the usher and proceed.
Some feel there has been a wussification or oprahfication of the church. Men are suppose to act in a way that "I feel is the moral way to act." I know guys that think that Jesus was this passive blond hair and blue eyes that sat in the corner wringing his hands and planning the next day miracles while the disciples were beating themselves for failing again...
Heaven forbid should you even think that when Jesus and disciples were sitting around the campfire eating fish that Peter asked Matthew to pull his finger to see who was the greatest of all... That might be a bit overboard, but think about how Jesus approached the lepers or others. "Well John-Paul, you need to shave, clean-up and oh, by the way, since you have been hanging around that Peter guy, you need to change your language."
But really Jesus was a man's man. He knew what he needed to say to get the pharisees attention and it was not a passive tone. He was bold when He let Peter know that he had to "man-up." He did not wuss around. When He preached about turning the other cheek, he as not talking about being a passive putz. But that is not how we receive it. And that is too bad. And to think this discussion has been going on since the 1800s.
Several articles and views to consider:
http://www.godmen.org/blog/blog.html
http://www.churchformen.com/
http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/ChurchAndMinistry/menhatingchurch.aspx - http://christinyall.com/articles/men.html
http://unorthodoxfaith.com/2008/01/15/why-men-don%E2%80%99t-go-to-church/
http://www.whatdomenreallythink.com/howto/men-and-church.php
http://daneger06.blogspot.com/2006/09/black-men-and-church-long-article.html
http://www.archive.org/details/whymendonotgoto00myergoog (an old book)
http://www.crosswalk.com/1393422/ - Paul Coughlin writing this - read the points addressed
Mike Holmes

Wow!!!

These are some great resources LeRoy!

There's no reason we shouldn't be able to get these men through the door:)