Why Men Don’t Like Men’s Ministry (And What To Do About It)

The recent statistic that less than 10% of churches in America have an active mens ministry is quite surprising. As someone with experience in church leadership, I understand the challenges of running an effective mens ministry, yet it makes me question why this number is so low. This situation raises important questions about how we foster masculinity and faith within our communities.

If you’ve ever felt like men’s ministry was awkward, boring, or just not worth your time, this will help you understand why—and what needs to change. We walk through the real reasons men disengage and how to build something they actually want to be part of:

- Why most men’s ministries fail to attract and retain men
- The difference between how men and women connect
- Why social-based groups don’t work well for men
- The role of challenge, action, and growth in male engagement
- What men are actually looking for in a brotherhood
- How to create a men’s ministry that men show up for
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Episode 076: Why Men Don’t Like Men’s Ministry (And What To Do About It)
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
01:00 Why men’s ministry is so rare
02:30 Why most men’s groups feel awkward
04:00 The real problem: built for women, not men
06:30 The difference in how men and women connect
09:00 Why men need action, not just discussion
12:00 Challenge vs information: how men grow
14:00 Emotion vs trust in group environments
16:00 Why men “vote with their feet”
18:00 Why events don’t lead to long-term engagement
19:30 What actually works for men’s ministry
21:00 How to build something better

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Transcript

Don Ross 0:00

I heard a statistic recently that said that less than 10% of churches in America have an active men's ministry. Now, this kind of blew my mind as a guy who's been around the church, been on staff at churches, been a pastor at times. I know how difficult it can be to be able to run a men's ministry and to do it effectively. But I also kind of thought, gosh, is it really that. Rare for a church to have a men's ministry. It, it doesn't seem like it should be that difficult. I mean, we're talking about half the population here. Why is it that churches have such a hard time being able to engage men and to reach them in their own context? I wanna take that question and kind of use this episode today with a little bit of a different angle. I know that I'm usually speaking to you guys as men in terms of what you are dealing with, but today I wanna actually talk to churches directly about how they. Interact with you men and the way that they could do it better. And lemme tell you, if you're a guy who's ever been around a church or is a part of a church now, I know you're probably hoping that your church could do a better job of reaching and connecting with you as a man and finding ways for you to be able to be involved that feel relevant to you as a man. So that's what today's episode is really gonna. Kind of touch on is to be able to address this idea of why is it that men's ministries are so rare and often so bad, and what can we do about it? How can we help churches be able to figure out how to better connect with the men around them? My name's Don. I'm the founder here at Manhood Tribes, and I'm glad that you are joining together with us today. Like I said, we're taking a little bit of a different angle here on this episode to actually speak to churches, church leaders, pastors, anybody who works with men in a church context to just kind of address what it is that we need to do about this. And this episode is also gonna serve as kind of an opener for the next few episodes. I'm gonna be talking to a number of guys who are in the. Men's ministry space or create content for men online. And so I want to be able to hear from them what they see in terms of things that are working or not working within the men's ministry space, how we can be more effective at reaching and talking to men. And even some guys who may not come from a faith background at all, but are doing well at connecting with men and what can we learn from them that might apply in the faith space as it relates to reaching and engaging men. So I'm really excited for some of those upcoming interviews and what you're gonna get to hear in terms of what it looks like for us as guys to be able to be more effective in these ways. But for today, I really want to try to address this issue of men's ministries at churches and why men tend to stay away from them. Now as a guy who's been involved in a church for a long time and who's been on staff at a church at different points in time. I know that men's ministry activities at churches can often be, let's be honest, just really bad, right? They can be pretty difficult or painful to attend. They can often be awkward and kind of try to create forced connections. They can sometimes just like present messages that sort of pigeonhole men into this small box of, you've gotta be this like rah, rah, macho man who you know, like loves the wilderness and the outdoors or otherwise, you're not really a man at all and if you don't fit that bill. Then it can kind of feel like, ah, is men's ministry really for me? Is that even a thing that I want to be a part of? We wanna push past a little bit of those surface objections today in the way that we're talking through this episode, and try to actually drill down on what is it about the way that we think about doing men's ministry that even leads to some of those conversations in the first place, but also sets things up to fail as it relates to reaching and engaging and building men in a church context. What am I talking about? What do I mean by that when I say that most men's ministries are set up to fail? Okay. This is gonna take a little bit of unpacking, so just bear with me as I try to kind of dive into this here was, here's what I mean. Most men's ministries are set up based around the needs and the ways that women connect. Now, this might sound really counterintuitive, like why on earth would we set up a men's ministry based around the needs and the ways of women? What? What would be the benefit of that? Well, most churches probably, actually honestly aren't all that aware of what are the needs of women versus the needs of men? What are the ways that women connect versus the ways that men connect? And so those things aren't really top of mind in terms of the way to be able to build something for women versus building it for men. What churches are good at doing is putting on events and creating group environments that people do or don't show up to. And for a long time, churches have been really good at creating things that women show up to. They attend weekend services. They attend ministry functions. They attend events. They join groups. Women who are married get their husbands to join groups. Women who are involved in a church bring their kids along to the church. So it has often been a thing that churches have designed, things that are attractive to women and have relied on the women to be kind of the attendance. Engine of the church. And so churches try to do kind of similar things then for men, Hey, this worked for women. Let's try something that's kind of similar. Maybe we'll put a little bit of a manly spin on it. And there you go. We'll do the same thing for men. If we've got a women's event, we need to have a men's event. If we've got a women's retreat, we need to have a men's retreat. If we've got groups for women, we need to have groups for men and on and on it goes. But they're really all kind of packaged exactly the same. The problem is, is that women and men are different. I know it was shocking, right? But they are. We are different from each other. And so the things that work for women aren't necessarily going to be the things that work for men. And perhaps more importantly, it's the ways that those things are built that determine why they work for women and why they don't work for men. What am I talking about? Okay. Let's examine just the area of felt needs. Okay. What do I, what do I mean by felt needs? Felt needs are the things that live on the surface for a person in terms of their driving motivators. I have a felt need for something in my life, and so I'm going to pursue it with the things that I choose to do. Now for women, these felt needs, these things that are kind of like top of mind, that live on the surface very often. B, begin with just the whole idea of social interaction. Women, by and large are far more social creatures than men are. Now, that doesn't mean that all women are extroverts and all men are introverts. Okay? It doesn't mean anything like that at all. It also doesn't mean that. All women are social creatures. It simply means that along a trend line, you're going to see that women tend to be more social in the way that they interact than men do. So when churches think about putting together some kind of a group or event, they rely on the fact that women are motivated by social interaction. Women will get together just for the sake of getting together. They like being together in a group context. They like to socialize and to interact. They like to talk and to communicate, and they don't necessarily have to have a. Point in mind for the way that they do those things. It's just simply the act of doing those things that creates value for them in their lives. That's totally fine. That's the way that God has wired and built women. It's something that should be celebrated about women and appreciated about women, and affirmed about women. There's no reason to denigrate that or to shame women for it or to say that it's something bad. So we're avoiding that entirely. But we are just naming the reality that women tend to be more socially motivated. That is a top level felt need for them, but it isn't for men. So when an event or a group or any kind of activity within a church is built around the idea of social connection, meaning that the social connection is gonna be a motivator to get people there, it's no surprise that that works for women. But it doesn't work so well for men. Men aren't motivated by social interaction in the same ways. Again, it doesn't mean that men aren't social creatures. It just means that that doesn't live as a top level felt need for us as men. We don't go into something looking for, man, I would really love a little more social interaction in my life today. That's not the way that men think. And that's okay. That's okay as well. Men on the other hand, if they're going to get together with other people, and especially with other men, it's because they've got something to do. Men are wired for action and activity. And so the high level. Felt need for men is around having some kind of action or activity going on. Something to do. If I'm gonna get together with a group of buddies, it's because there's something that I want to do, and so I want some other guys around me to go do that thing with, or I want to get my friends together, so let's come up with something that we would all enjoy doing and let's go do that thing. And that is what gathers men together far more than the desire for social interaction. It's the desire to participate in some kind of. Action or activity and then to build group interaction around that. So when it comes to the way that guys think about that, they often aren't drawn to some kind of church group because church groups especially are built around social interaction and discussion and communication, and that's not the things that men are most interested in. They're most interested in action and activity and doing something. Now that doing something doesn't necessarily have to be going on a camping trip or axe throwing, or you know, going to the golf course or whatever. It doesn't have to be these kind of like masculine, stereotypical things that we sometimes get shoved on us if those aren't your interests. That's totally okay, but it does mean that men tend to want to have something to do, even if that doing is something that you're going to talk about, guys will get together and just talk about politics, and that's a reason to get together. That can be the activity that guys have for getting together, but that's something that they're all interested in and it's something to be able to share. Guys can talk about sports, and that's a great way for guys to be able to just interact, but that's because they have this activity, this shared activity of talking about sports and what they've enjoyed about it or what players or teams they relate to. All of those things are things that guys want to do, which is different than the way. That women operate. Okay. I think I've belabored that point, but it is really important to distinguish because it is kind of the foundational element of what it looks like to build something for men versus for women in a church setting. Another way to think about the felt needs of women versus the felt needs of men is that women often tend to feel like they've accomplished something if they learn something new. So a transfer of information or learning a new piece of information is a good way for a woman to feel like she has accomplished something. This is often why we see that girls are doing better in traditional school settings than boys are, because traditional school is about. Passing on information. It's about information transfer. And so if you can learn the information, if you can memorize something, if you can study something, if you can read something, if you can, uh, you know, regurgitate facts for a test that feels like you've accomplished something for women. Now, again, this is not across the board. True. Not all women are that way. Not all men are the opposite of that, but it tends to be more female centered than it is male centered. Guys on the other hand, feel like they've accomplished something when they've been challenged and they see results where there's actual growth or change. Men are wired for challenge. We want to have something being put in front of us and saying, try this, and if you try this, it's likely to produce this outcome in your life that you probably find valuable. Okay. That is what a guy is hardwired for. Okay, this thing is gonna make my life better in some way. Heck yeah, I'm gonna do that. That's what guys are oriented towards. Learning information doesn't really make my life better. It might be interesting and occasionally I might gravitate towards that, but some kind of challenge that's pushing me to be better and causing me to be better and producing new and better results in my life. I'm definitely interested in that. So these are the kinds of things in church groups and church events. We often see that they're wired around teaching. They're wired around study. They're wired around reading, whether that's a book of the Bible or some other Christian book or some other kind of content. It's about consuming information and it can feel to women like, yeah, we've accomplished something together because we've learned these new things. But for men, that doesn't necessarily feel like anything has been accomplished. We've just learned information, and that's not always that interesting or compelling for men, but being challenged with something in order to be able to accomplish something for men and to bring results into your life in a way that makes things different and better. Men are almost always going to be drawn to that. Okay, so learning by information versus learning by challenge are the ways that women and men are wired differently. Most church activities are set up in a way that meets the felt needs of women, but doesn't really address the felt needs of men. One last one. In that category of felt needs is just the whole area of emotion. Most of our church environments are done in a way to provoke some kind of emotional experience, whether that is humor or whether that is sadness, or whether that is just sort of a. Deep feeling a sense that I have been moved by something. All of that is meant to create emotional experience. Even something as simple as humility or vulnerability can bring a person to a place of emotional experience, and sometimes our groups are designed for that. Now, to be clear. Men are capable of all of those emotions, and I think should experience those emotions. It's just that they're not drawn to those things. Men are not seeking out emotional experiences, and in fact, they're often far less fluent in dealing with their emotions than women are. So groups that are designed to evoke emotional experiences are going to be effective at reaching women and making them feel like that experience was valuable, but not as much so for men. I think a counterpart to the emotional experience for men is the idea of trust. When men can build trust in a group encounter or in a group environment that feels like they've done something that adds real value to their life. Now, that building of trust may often be AC accompanied by other emotions as well. There may be hardship there. There may be. Tears there. There may be difficulty or conflict there. There may be all kinds of emotion that surround that building of trust, but the point is that those things lead to an improvement of a relationship. Something that feels shared and bonded together between men over time is the way that that trust gets built and that feels valuable. When men feel like they're building trust with another man, there's value created there. And that's something that a man would be motivated towards and would continue to show up for. And this is really the idea. Okay. We, I've talked a lot about theories, uh, and I wanna kind of bring it now into the practical realm when it comes to putting these things into place. We've got to actually take some of these theories and say, what do we do with them to make these things actually work? I had a mentor at one point in time who used to say, men vote with their feet, and by that he just meant that men will show up to the things that they consider to be valuable. So if your church is putting on a men's event or a men's group or some kind of men's activity and guys aren't showing up, or they might show up for the first one, but they're not continuing to come back. Men voting with their feet, they're telling you, Hey, this isn't valuable enough to my life that I'm willing to spend my time on this thing that you're putting together. So you need to take it back to those high level felt needs and just say, how can what we're doing be more valuable to men? Now, this is often why you'll see churches who will do things like a big men's event. They might hold a Saturday morning pancake breakfast or a men's night from time to time where you know, guys get together and they eat barbecue and they do some really cool men's activities. And those things can be fairly well attended because they do address some of those felt needs. Hey. There's gonna be action and activity. You're gonna get challenged in some cool and fun ways. You might build some trust with another guy around you as you talk about some things of significance together. Okay? All of those things can really happen at some of those men's events. But then churches get frustrated because men don't translate from those events into other places in the church. They don't show up more on Sunday mornings. They don't volunteer on different teams within the church. They don't get connected to a men's group. I was actually at a men's event one time where there were over a thousand guys that showed up for this men's group or for this men's event, and the goal of the event was to try to get men connected into small groups from there, and with over a thousand guys at the event. At the event, there wasn't a single man who signed up for a men's small group. I know that sounds pretty terrible, right? But I think it's because men know intuitively that the thing that you're asking them to do next isn't at all. Like the thing that they have participated in, the felt needs that are being addressed in that large men's event aren't going to continue being addressed in that smaller group environment. And so guys hear about that and they go. You know, this was fun for me to do as a one-time thing, but I sure don't want to commit to something on a weekly basis that's gonna look like what you're saying. It's gonna look like I'm not interested in studying together with other men. I'm not interested in talking about my feelings with other men. I'm not really interested in spending time on that because I just don't know how that's gonna add value for me. I don't know how that's going to improve my life. And just sitting around and talking about it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But this is what most churches offer, so we've got to rethink how we offer those things to men. Now, here at Manhood Tribes, that's one of the things that I think about a lot. I think really hard about how can we do a better job at creating especially group environments for men that can offer to them something that they actually do want to do, that will not only bring transformation in their lives, but will also allow them to get more connected and engaged and involved in your church setting. If that's the kind of thing that sounds like it's of interest to you, I wanna encourage you to go check out manhood tribes.com, schedule a call with me, and I would love to talk to you about how you can build your own tribe and your setting in your church, or if you are a church leader, how you can look at bringing these types of tribes to your church, what it could look like to be able to build those kinds of environments that men actually want to attend, that they can build the kind of brotherhood that they've always been looking for, and they can do it. Within the context of your church, I would love to help you be able to do those things and to see some of that kind of stuff get accomplished in your church setting and among the men that you are around. Now look, here's what I want to say to you guys that are church leaders that are involved in men's ministry that are hoping to see other men get connected in these kinds of environments. It is possible just because most churches struggle with it. Just because fewer than 10% of churches have an active men's ministry doesn't mean that doesn't mean that they're all bad. Doesn't mean that they have to be bad, doesn't mean that the things that you're going to try are going to fail. It does mean that you need to think a little bit harder about how to be able to engage the men around you, and the normal things that you offer might not be the things that you need to continue to offer. It's okay to say, Hey, our men's Bible study really isn't reaching our men. We need to do something different I know that might feel like we're crushing a sacred cow. How can you get together as a group and not do a Bible study? But there might be other ways to help your men be able to grow spiritually into the likeness of Christ that don't just have to be centered around information transfer and social interaction. There are ways to be able to do it. You just gotta think a little harder about the way that men tend to learn and tend to grow and tend to want to get together. That's what I would love to help you with. Again, go over to manhood tribes.com and check it out, and I would love to book a call with you so that we can discuss what would be the right next steps for you and for your church. Okay guys, I hope that this has all been really helpful for you today. I'm looking forward to these upcoming interviews with other men's leaders so that you can continue to learn what are some ways that we can do better at reaching men. And for those of you guys that are men, just wanting more content, I hope you're gonna be, uh, you're gonna enjoy getting exposed to some of these leaders voices in the men's space because I think they will help you out a ton. So stay tuned for those episodes and I'll look forward to seeing you here again next time on The Manhood Tribe Show. See you then.