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
A recently released study seems to have blown a hole in one of the central premises of my book: that women are more verbal than men, which makes gals more comfortable in our wordy churches.
The study, published in Science found that men and women spoke virtually the same number of words during the course of a typical day. Researchers studied college students by placing an electronic recorder in their pockets. The device took a 30-second sample of conversation every 12.5 minutes.
At the end of the day researchers added up the words spoken, multiplied by 25 and had their answer: women outtalked men, but only by a little bit: 16,215 words per day vs. 15,669. The study also found women tended to talk about people and relationships, while men discussed concrete objects.
So this the final word on the subject? I suspect not, for several reasons.
Continue reading Say What? Men Talk as Much as Women?
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
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
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…
