As I travel the country, nothing I say creates more controversy than this: men would benefit from shorter, simpler sermons. In my Go for the Guys Sunday Action Plan, I advocate a one-point sermon, ten minutes in length, built around an object lesson.
People are freaking out over this. I get comments like:
- David, you have a low regard for men’s intelligence.
- Short sermons “dumb down” the gospel.
- With Biblical illiteracy such a problem, we need more teaching, not less.
- We don’t need shorter sermons; we need better ones.
- My pastor is so interesting I wouldn’t mind if his sermons were longer.
- The apostle Paul preached for hours, and many were saved.
- Men just need to learn to pay attention.
Let’s take these one at a time.
Continue reading In Praise of Short Sermons
 As I write this, the world is gripped with sports fever. Here in North America big-league hockey and basketball have just crowned new champions. The rest of the planet is focused on the World Cup, where the best soccer teams are battling it out for football supremacy.
Men are the primary audience for these sporting matches. So if men can sit through a 3 hour-long hockey game, why is it so hard for men to focus for a 45-minute sermon?
Continue reading Why Men Watch 3-Hour Football Games, but Fall Asleep During a 45-Minute Sermon
 Second Chance Church in Peoria, Illinois, a church that publicly and unashamedly targets men, is growing. Pastor Mark Doebler concludes his worship services with something he calls The Men’s Huddle. At the end every service, “Coach Mark” calls the men forward for that week’s game plan. Here’s what Coach Mark has to say about the huddle:
“I must be honest…there are times that you have an idea and you know immediately in your heart that you just have to run with it. The huddle was not one of those ideas! I had a strong suspicion that it might just come off as cheesy, or hokey….I don’t care for either. But, in the spirit of an entrepreneur, I decided to give it a try.
Continue reading The Men’s Huddle
A report from the American Council on Education finds that U.S. colleges have lost millions of men in the past decade. In 1996, the male-female ratio on U.S. campuses was 50-50. By 2004, the ratio was 43-57 male-female. The college gender gap is growing by almost 2% per year. Some student bodies are now 2/3 female. USAToday put it this way: “To a data expert accustomed to the drip-drip of annual changes, that’s the sound of a waterfall.”
I believe churches and universities are having trouble attracting men for the same reason: both are in the business of dispensing precious knowledge in a classroom setting. Today, fewer men are in the market for this type of experience, which they find boring and irrelevant to their lives. Allow me to explain.
Continue reading College Gender Gap Mimics Church Gap
Some of you will be taking your children to college in the next few weeks. While you’re in the dorms, you might notice a difference in how girls and boys decorate their rooms.
Stop your snickering. This is a serious subject.
In a young woman’s room it’s not uncommon to find various keepsakes of her childhood, including stuffed animals, baby pictures and dolls. Go to a boy’s room and a different portrait emerges: it’s as if his childhood never existed. There’s nary a Lego, Tonka truck or Mutant Ninja Turtle to be seen. Instead the walls are plastered with the images of sports heroes, curvaceous models and alcoholic beverages.
Why the difference?
Psychologically speaking, young men have an intense need to separate themselves from childhood. Women, on the other hand, celebrate their childhoods for a lifetime. No shame accrues to a woman who revels in her youth, but in our society men are supposed to strain toward manhood. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but it’s the way things are and have been for centuries. Remember the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:11: “but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Young men are still eager to do this.
So we have another reason men avoid Christianity: there is a strong psychological link between church and childhood. Women, who are free to enjoy the delights of their youth, attend church without shame. But men are wary of an institution that has strong ties to their formative years.
Continue reading Putting Away Childish Things
Let’s say immigrants from a faraway land began moving to your city, and you wanted to reach them with the gospel. Few of them speak English or understand Western culture. Would you walk right up to them and start explaining the four spiritual laws? Of course not. Instead, you would learn their language, familiarize yourself with their customs, and discover their real needs. Then you would tailor your presentation of the gospel to make it meaningful to them.
This was the apostle Paul’s strategy as he encountered different cultures. In 1 Corinthians 9: 19-23, Paul made it clear that he tailored his presentation to the needs of the audience he was trying to reach. He never compromised the message. However, he was not afraid to make it understandable to his hearers.
We live among the world’s largest unreached people group — men. Guys have their own needs, expectations and culture. They speak a different language. Yet today’s Christians do almost nothing to make the gospel comprehensible to them. On the contrary, many of the terms we toss about in our churches have turned Christianity into a puzzle for men.
Continue reading How to Speak Man-ish
Men and boys don’t need teaching as much as they need discipleship – the kind of intense, one-on-one leadership Jesus provided his disciples. Unfortunately, the modern church has discarded the discipleship model in favor of a classroom model.
Have you noticed how many church programs are built around a school paradigm? We offer adult classes, seminars, Sunday school, Bible Studies, etc. The centerpiece of our worship is a lecture (sermon) from an educated person with a seminary degree. Christianity has become an educational pursuit. The path to Christ now leads through a classroom.
Why is this academic approach to faith so discouraging to men? Simple. Men are less comfortable in a classroom. Figures from the U.S. Department of Education indicate that women are more likely than men to go to college and earn 57 percent of all the BA degrees and 58 percent of the master’s degrees. Boys drop out of high school at a rate 30 percent higher than that of girls. Girls outnumber boys 124 to 100 in advanced placement courses.
Continue reading Church as a Classroom…
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