I have been contemplating some of the things my last blog entry brought up, and I have been mentally going over some of the men I have met who came to church but were not a part of it. I never thought of it before, but many of them were very hesitant to talk with me as one of the “pastors” about pretty much anything but superficial stuff. Anytime I tried to have a “spiritual” conversation with them, they found a way out of it. Let me illustrate with two of my friends – I’ll call them Joe and Frank.

Joe is a mid-fifties father of two grown children. His wife is an insurance agent, and he works for the parks department of a nearby city and enjoys his outdoor work. He coaches basketball and is very masculine in pretty much every way. He was involved in the church early on when there were a lot of projects to be taken care of, lots of hands-on things to do. He even taught a Sunday School class for a time. But now, he mostly just sits in the back with his wife and occasionally participates in activities that interest him.

Frank is an avid fisherman. He is nearing retirement and looking forward to spending days on his bass boat and evenings with a cool brew and his family (not necessarily in that order). Whenever I tried to talk with Frank about spiritual things, he wanted to do it on a hike or fishing. He was not, in his words, “a sit across the coffee table and talk kind of guy.” His wife was one of the most faithful ladies in the church – always willing to pitch in, even landscaping the flowers at the entry of the church.

Sometimes Joe and Frank’s attitudes were frustrating, but I could not figure out why. It was just that I thought they should be excited about Jesus, about church. But they didn’t seem to be. And here they were – good men who had raised good families. They were believers, but it was clear that they were not (and as far as I know, still are not) enthused about the church.

Reflecting on Joe and Frank’s stories, things began to come into focus. These otherwise active men were not about to be trapped by the passivity of the modern church. Most of what we do requires passive attentiveness, not doing. Give these guys a task that involved something other than classrooms and lectures, and they were all over it. Give them a wall to paint, a gymnasium to build, a hike to go on and they were there.

Men do stuff…

We have this tendency built into our DNA. We’re not dominant because we want to be the “alpha males.” We’re dominant because we’re genetically designed to be the ones doing things. God has built men to ACT, not to receive. Whether this is in the sexual relationship or in the church (sorry if the word sexual offends any of my readers), men prefer to take the active role. We don’t want to be dragged into the mediocre; we want to take risks and venture into the unknown. Men like to do things.

Who invented parachuting? Figured out how to fly? Blew themselves up developing gunpowder? Figured out the printing press? Men did. It was not because they lived in a chauvinistic society. It was because when men are presented with the options of talking or doing, they generally do.

Maybe you’re not one of these kinds of men. You’re soft and sensitive and afraid of power tools and firearms. I recommend a healthy dose of reading Jesus, Paul, and most of all, David. These guys were MEN. Solomon – he let his wives and concubines boss him around and lost the kingdom because of it. David – when his first wife, Michal, tried to take over the leadership of his home, he called a spade a spade and God cursed her to be barren the rest of her life. Now, David wasn’t perfect (especially when it came to women) but the contrast should be pretty obvious.

Men DO; wimps have things done to them. Paul even has a Greek word for men like this, he calls them malakoi – literally, “the soft ones” in a homosexual sense. Men are not supposed to passive. We are supposed to be active. We submit to God’s authority and lead as he would have us to lead. When men are the doers, there will be things worthy of men to be done.