Entrusting The Faith
Entrusting The Faith
Why Men Need Brotherhood and Challenge - David "Goose" Mills
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Why are so many men isolated, passive, and spiritually stuck, even while sitting in church every Sunday? In this powerful episode of Entrusting the Faith, Eric Rutherford sits down with David “Goose” Mills, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and founder of Men's Alliance, to discuss how men are being transformed through challenge, brotherhood, leadership, and practical discipleship.
Goose shares the surprising story of how one moment in church led him to launch a movement now impacting hundreds of groups across multiple countries. He explains why traditional men’s ministry often fails, why men bond through shared struggle, and how churches can better reach husbands, fathers, and sons.
The conversation also dives into Christian apologetics, raising children with conviction, spiritual leadership in the home, and why men need more than comfort, they need purpose.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why most men’s ministries fail to engage men
- How physical challenge creates brotherhood and trust
- The origin story of Men's Alliance
- Why men need standards, growth, and accountability
- How fathers can lead spiritually at home
- Practical apologetics for everyday family conversations
- Why Christian men must stop being passive
Why Listen:
If you care about biblical masculinity, Christian leadership, discipleship, fatherhood, men’s ministry, or helping men grow spiritually, this episode delivers practical wisdom and real solutions.
https://www.mensalliancetribe.com/
#MensMinistry #ChristianMen #BiblicalMasculinity #Fatherhood #Discipleship #MensAlliance #Apologetics #ChristianLeadership #FaithAndFamily #ChurchGrowth
Do all of the following at https://entrustingthefaith.com/
- Sign up for the newsletter
- Contact me about speaking opportunities
- Buy the book Leading Well at Home: Husbands and Fathers Can Biblically Lead Their Families
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Welcome to the entrusting the Faith podcast. I'm your host, Eric Rutherford, and today I am thrilled because I have with me David Morrow.
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He has the bestselling book of all time about men and the church Why men hate going to Church.
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He's helped thousands of churches become more welcoming and engaging to men and boys, and he is currently working on a sequel, Why Men Suddenly Love Going to Church.
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So David's been interviewed by the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, Moody Radio Networks, and many others. He's been interviewed on focus on the family, Family Life Today and Doctor James Dobson's Family Institute. And David's going to tell us why. For hundreds of years, men considered church unmanly, why they suddenly see it as manly and now give us advice on how a local church can share men's hearts.
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David, welcome to the show.
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Well, that's a tall order, so I but I will I'll do my best to answer those questions. Oh, I, I have no doubt. I have no doubt. And,
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I have to say, after, you know,
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read the book, it,
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it and there were so many
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things in the book when I read it.
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And so that's why I was thrilled to be able to, to just kind of go through that with you today and even more to talk about your new book that's coming up. Well, I'm in love.
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Going to church.
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And so, yeah, well, let me set the table for us here.
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So when I wrote Why Men Who Go to Church in 2005,
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I was describing a gender gap that goes back 700 years.
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There have always been more women than men in church.
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And so church was always kind of a feminine coded thing. If you went to church, you were less manly than the man who didn't go to church.
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You think about it. How do men signal their manhood?
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They fight
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the curse. They drink. They sleep around. They kill people.
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They commit crimes. They stay up all night drinking. They.
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These manly behaviors were off limits for Christian men.
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So the first thing you got to do when you become a Christian is you got to put away all those men, all those manly behaviors,
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and you've got to embrace a set of behaviors that a lot of guys would think are feminine.
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You've got to become sensitive, caring, loving.
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You've got to put away all those,
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you can't curse anymore.
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You can't sleep around anymore. I mean, how are you going to prove your manhood?
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And so that was kind of the world that I wrote that book into,
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20 years ago. And so I gave a lot of advice in that book about how churches can do subtle things to turn the knob a little bit more toward masculine without going all the way to macho,
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because that's the thing.
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Men appreciate men, and women appreciate healthy, life giving masculinity.
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What they don't appreciate is mojo posturing.
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So,
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that was sort of the basic premise of the book, and it's just gone crazy. It's, you know, it's in 12 different languages. I get letters from seminarians all the time.
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Pastors sit with them, and it's just become a very helpful book, especially with the
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return of men that we're seeing right now,
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because men are looking for guidance.
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Pastors are looking for guidance. What do I do with these guys? And so that's why I feel like I need to write a new book that'll be coming out around Christmas time of 2026.
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That's awesome. And it's true. It's true. It's
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you talk about this whole idea of of church behavior being unmanly and masculine.
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What what makes men,
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I say, ambivalent about church, but it's that I think, at best ambivalent.
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Oftentimes.
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Well, yeah, we can dive into some of those behaviors, like when you go into church,
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for the last
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couple hundred years,
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you might have to hold hands with your neighbor.
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You might have to sing love songs to a man named Jesus.
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It's gotten really kind of bad with the praise and worship movement.
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There's definitely this.
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We judge people's faith by how emotional they become in church. You know. Oh, look at that, brother. He's crying. He's waving his hands. He's obviously loves the Lord the most.
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So we kind of we kind of set up this expectation that the best Christian is the one who becomes the most emotional,
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or the one who is the most sensitive, the most caring.
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And, you know, those are those can be good things. I'm not anti emotion or anything,
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but when we set that up as the bar,
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women are always going to have an easier time doing those things than men.
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If you think about it,
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hey, finish this sentence for me, Eric. Big boys
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don't cry. Don't cry. Every boy learns that when they're little, right?
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If a five year old boy skins his knee, he tries to hold the tears back.
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Girl doesn't. Right. She's. She can do it
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in church. The man who cries the most is the one who's believed to love the Lord the most.
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And so we kind of judge men by how emotional they become.
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And this is really becoming an issue as the church becomes more and more Pentecostal
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because emotionalism is a big part of the package.
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And I don't think it's fair to men.
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You know, I love the words. I read this book by a guy named Jesus
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and he said, if you love me, you will become very emotional in church. If you love me, you will sway to the music. You know, he didn't say any of that. He said, if you love me, you will obey my commands.
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He set the bar very high. We've set it very low. And I think that frustrates men over time, because they simply can't compete on the emotionalism scale. Like women can.
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And I love that you brought the emotionalism up, because I know as a guy,
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you know, it's it's hard to.
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Well, it's hard to show emotion. It's definitely uncomfortable to show emotion around.
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A lot of men like there are some men I feel more comfortable with it, but that's even there. It's not easy and I still feel uncomfortable about it.
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And and yet it that is this progression that the church seems to have embraced is emotionalism.
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And which is,
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which is brutal.
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And again, let me be clear. I'm not against emotion.
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If two guys are praying together and one guy, his marriage is falling apart and he begins to shed a tear, that's a good, solid thing, right? What I'm talking about is emotionalism,
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which is,
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in a lot of churches today, you're going to come in and they worship leader is just going to berate you for not raising your hands.
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Come on. Let's praise the Lord. Let's get those hands in the air. Haven't had.
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You know, you're just going to go after you to make you
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do this big display of emotion. And here's what I'm seeing as part of my research for my book. I'm visiting a new church every weekend.
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Men are quiet, quitting worship.
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I have not found a church yet.
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And first of all, they're all the same.
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It's it's amazing. They're all the same. And,
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they,
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I
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have not found a church yet where even half the men sing.
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They they're just they're just standing there watching the band,
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enduring the songs, enduring the music. Now, there's always guys up front, you know, that
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got their hands in the air.
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But most of the guys have their hands in their pockets.
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So the way we've defined worship, primarily in
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in emotional terms, really, I think men are getting sick of it.
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I think Paul Paul really gave us a clear definition of worship is,
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he said present your bodies as living sacrifice. This is your true act of worship.
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And we've just redefined it as no.
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Your true act of worship is getting all emotional.
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And that's just a tough,
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a tough thing for men to do. Men pay a social price for that, that women don't.
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It is. It's like, okay, I need to turn this on when I walk into a worship service. But
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it it immediately turns off the moment I go outside.
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It's like I have to be two different people. There you go. Yeah. Good observation. It's it's rough.
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one of the things that I found fascinating at the beginning of your book is you have this quiz with this chart that gives two sets of characteristics.
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And you ask the reader, hey,
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what? Which one better characterizes Jesus and today's disciples and said, assess competence, power, efficiency, achievement, skills, proving oneself results, accomplishment, objects, goal orientation, self-sufficiency, success and competition. Set B
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says love, communication, beauty, relationships, support, helping, nurturing. Feeling. Sharing. Relating. Community. Loving. Cooperation.
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Personal expression.
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So those are my two sets.
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And then you ask which one better embodies Jesus as we in the church think is is correct.
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And I love this quiz. I'd love for you to to elaborate on this where you know and what results you've seen.
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Okay. Well, listeners
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here, which one do you think best characterizes the value of Jesus and his true followers? Now, I've given this quiz to hundreds of audiences over the last 20 years.
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Christians and non-Christians, men and women.
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Everyone always picks the second set.
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Everyone is much more comfortable assigning those values to Jesus than the first set.
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And then I tell them where they come from. They're from chapter two of the book, men are from Mars, women are from Venus,
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and the first set of values are men's values, the Mars values. These are the values that are commonly found among men.
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The second set of values are the Venus values. Those are the values commonly found among women.
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And so the point of the quiz is we are much more comfortable assigning feminine values to our thing,
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and we're not very comfortable thinking of our faith in terms of competence, power, achievement, efficiency, the things that men bring to the table.
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And that was an ouch for me as I as I read it and then saw where you got the list from, it was like, oh yeah, we're doing a horrible job of of of of representing
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Christ well in the church. And like later in the book, you talk about this,
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it's this comparison of, of the Lion of Judah
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versus like the Lamb of God and, and just those two things and how we,
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we don't hold those together.
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Well, would you elaborate on on that?
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Yeah.
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In fact, I wrote a follow on book about this called The Map The Way of All Great Men.
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And the theological or biblical
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case I'm making is in the first seven chapters of Matthew's Gospel. Jesus is all lamb.
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And then chapters eight through 25, he's all lion,
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and then 26 through 28 he's lamb again.
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And so
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I've been teaching this. I teach this as men's retreats. And when I'm doing men's groups, I teach them this map demands. But you have to go lamb first, then lion, then lamb.
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Now, in the church we tend to only present Jesus the lamb,
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the suffering Savior, the kind, the gentle, the nurturing. And these things are true.
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He is those things.
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He came as a helpless baby. He submitted to baptism. He
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he didn't. He. He wept over Jerusalem. He welcomed children to his side. Those things are all true.
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But that's only part of who he was.
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And I think over time, men get the message that you're supposed to be a lamb all the time. You're supposed to let people run you over.
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You're always supposed to, you know, do whatever your wife says. Keep her happy.
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It's gotten into some really,
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bad theology. So,
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I like teaching this framework. I teach men the first act in your faith is to become more lamb like. Then you've got to become a lion.
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And if you skip that lamb stage, you become an angry legalist.
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If you just go straight to lion and you don't learn to softness. Gentleness is not the basis of your faith. You become the angry legalist.
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And we see a lot of that matures today, especially in the in the very online men.
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So,
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there's just a lot of work to do to help men understand how to balance the land and the lamb.
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And we need to express that in the church, not just through our words, but through our actions as well, which actions we approve of.
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It's true. And it is about it's not like one or the other, like both have to exist,
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at the same time and coexist. And but I like that framework where you're talking about, yeah, we do have to humble ourselves.
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We do submit when we come to faith in Christ, there is this
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softening and and repentant. But then there is the standing firm in your faith. Turn that.
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Absolutely,
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never, never truly relinquishing
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that the softness.
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But it's there while it's tempered with with the firm. Yeah. I say it's foundational.
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I use a lot of it in, in the map.
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I use several metaphors. Like with a horse, for example, you break the horse, you humble the horse, and you work the horse. The horse has a journey. It starts with a journey of submission, then a journey of strength. And then when the horse is too old to work, you send about the stud. And that's his journey of sacrifice, where he pours himself into the next generation of horses.
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So,
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there's a lot of things in life that follow this three step pattern
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and,
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you know, some my book here, the map. It's a fun read. I wish you'd pick it up the map or the way of all great, man, because I think it will help you understand
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when to be iron and when to be a lamb.
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And it's not just Jesus, it's every great man of Scripture followed the same pattern. You start off as a lamb, you move up to a lion and you finish the lamb.
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That's awesome. So if you're listening, I'm going to drop a link to that book in the show notes as well.
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I know I'm going to check it out and because it sounds like a great description and, and and, you know, map, you know very much for what we need to, to do as men
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that and then so let me
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ask as well about passivity.
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You know,
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how does passivity play into,
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this,
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this gender gap of the church, this sort of feminization of the church? Is it
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are men passive when they go to church, or do they become passive at church, or does it just attract passive men? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
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Okay, well, let me ask Eric, when's the last time you went to church?
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Sunday.
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All right. What happened to your body in church?
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Yeah, I sat,
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I stood,
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I endured, I smiled, you know, I, I, I had to do small talk, which I don't like doing.
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You know, it's one of the other. Oh, man. Like, oh, I had to, I had to do the forced shake of hands. And I'm like, oh, please, just let me be,
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But yeah, I was just there.
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Yeah, we
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I've coined it. I'm going to coin a new phrase in my new book. I'm taking a noun and turning it into a verb. So if you're an English teacher, I apologize this, but this is my new word.
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The main thing we do in church is we audience.
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We audience for preachers and musicians.
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Now
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that's a fine. You do need to hear the word. Do you need to sing?
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But we do a lot of audience,
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and most of my Christian life has been audience.
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So
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you're talking about passivity. We are modeling passivity. We're modeling consumption
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every time we gather.
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And if you want to do something more active, you have to do something besides church.
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You have to
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go on a mission trip. Great. Do this, do that, volunteer. Great. Those are wonderful things,
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but they're not fully integrated into most people's Christian lives. Most people's
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interaction with the church is to is to come watch the show and then go home and forget everything they learned.
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That's that's the reality
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of what's happening. And so,
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we're going to need some new tools.
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We're going to need some new ways of being the church that is, that are more active. Because again, let's go back to that verse from Paul. Our true act of worship is to present our bodies as living sacrifices, not just as pew sitters.
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Yeah, it's it's very much a consumer mentality. We go, we consume, we leave,
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and
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anything else has to come separate
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from optional add on.
00:14:48:14 - 00:15:05:03
Yeah. It's. Yeah, it's an optional add on. I love how how you describe it because it's so true and and and so that is something I'm looking forward to hearing about some of those things. And in this book you speak to several things in the new book. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you,
00:15:05:03 - 00:15:07:02
what you break out and elaborate on.
00:15:07:02 - 00:15:09:08
I think that will be incredibly helpful to churches.
00:15:09:12 - 00:15:09:23
I hope so.
00:15:10:03 - 00:15:10:12
What
00:15:10:15 - 00:15:12:15
in in your book you also talk about
00:15:12:19 - 00:15:16:23
man law is now we've, we've talked a just a
00:15:17:03 - 00:15:23:13
we sort of touch the surface of it a little bit here. So what are man laws and how do they play out at church.
00:15:23:17 - 00:15:27:03
Okay. Well I don't know if you remember, but a few years ago there was,
00:15:27:03 - 00:15:28:02
a series of
00:15:28:07 - 00:15:30:01
commercials from Miller Beer
00:15:30:04 - 00:15:32:11
and had the men of the roundtable.
00:15:32:16 - 00:15:38:07
And if you haven't seen these, they're on Google, they're on YouTube, they're hilarious. These funny commercials.
00:15:38:10 - 00:15:43:00
The men of the roundtable are sitting around discussing what is acceptable manly behavior.
00:15:43:04 - 00:15:46:17
And they make fun of men who do things that are feminine.
00:15:46:21 - 00:15:55:15
They make fun of men who go to the bathroom together, the men who carry bags on the side, the men who have tramp stamp tattooed across their backside,
00:15:55:15 - 00:15:56:22
men who do anything.
00:15:57:00 - 00:15:59:03
There's always been this one way barrier.
00:15:59:05 - 00:16:02:08
I call this Murrow's ironclad rule of the genders.
00:16:02:11 - 00:16:04:19
Women can do masculine things,
00:16:04:23 - 00:16:08:21
but men are absolutely prohibited from doing feminine things.
00:16:09:01 - 00:16:11:22
In fact, if a woman does a masculine thing,
00:16:12:01 - 00:16:14:03
her she gains social status.
00:16:14:08 - 00:16:19:01
Imagine Cindy goes to work on Monday morning and she says, yeah, girls, you know what I did this weekend?
00:16:19:06 - 00:16:21:07
I, change the spark plugs in my car.
00:16:21:12 - 00:16:22:22
What are his girlfriends thinking?
00:16:23:03 - 00:16:26:01
Oh my goodness. Wow. Way to go. You go girl.
00:16:26:05 - 00:16:28:11
Now let's say Bart goes to work on Monday morning
00:16:28:16 - 00:16:34:07
and he says to his buddies, hey guys, guess what I learned to do this weekend? I learned how to make decorative pillow shams.
00:16:34:10 - 00:16:35:14
What are his buddies thinking?
00:16:35:19 - 00:16:39:03
What a. I can't even say the word because this is a Christian podcast means,
00:16:39:03 - 00:16:48:08
men lose status among their peers when they do something that is feminine, whereas women gain status when they do something that's masculine.
00:16:48:13 - 00:16:57:00
So this all kind of ties into what we're talking about here with with church. If church is perceived as something for women, men won't go.
00:16:57:04 - 00:17:06:12
But it's if we put a masculine, a healthy, life giving masculine spirit into the church, you will have both men, women and their children
00:17:06:16 - 00:17:17:06
fully engaged. And that's kind of been my mission for the last 20 years. Try to help churches put a masculine accent, not a macho accent, but I'm a healthy masculine accent on what they do.
00:17:17:10 - 00:17:18:20
And that's been a, you know,
00:17:18:20 - 00:17:20:02
a great formula for growth.
00:17:20:07 - 00:17:26:12
And I love that, that idea, that masculine accent, not macho but masculine. And you're right, it's
00:17:26:17 - 00:17:29:19
men won't do anything they consider to be feminine.
00:17:29:22 - 00:17:31:00
They just like
00:17:31:04 - 00:17:38:14
they would rather they would rather go to the dentist. They would rather like, I mean, whatever, like they would choose the horrible thing
00:17:38:17 - 00:17:41:19
over and over, being associated with
00:17:41:22 - 00:17:42:15
the feminine.
00:17:42:19 - 00:17:43:10
Yeah. It's true.
00:17:43:13 - 00:17:44:23
It does. And
00:17:45:03 - 00:17:46:06
how does church language
00:17:46:09 - 00:17:49:03
play into that. Because the words that we use
00:17:49:07 - 00:17:51:16
in our worship services and our prayers.
00:17:51:19 - 00:17:55:12
How does our language make men uncomfortable and not want to be there.
00:17:55:15 - 00:17:56:03
Well I think
00:17:56:07 - 00:17:59:11
I think a lot of it is starts with our song lyrics.
00:17:59:11 - 00:18:01:00
Love songs to Jesus.
00:18:01:00 - 00:18:03:02
I tell a funny story in the book about,
00:18:03:02 - 00:18:04:01
two hunters
00:18:04:05 - 00:18:05:10
who are in a duck blind,
00:18:05:14 - 00:18:11:06
and one of them turns to the other and begins reciting the words of a popular praise song.
00:18:11:08 - 00:18:14:00
You're so precious to me in our secret place. And
00:18:14:04 - 00:18:18:00
it's very romantic. So of course, the other hunter pulls his gun on.
00:18:18:04 - 00:18:24:05
I'm the first one, you know. You don't say those sort of things to a man, especially if he has a loaded shotgun. No. So,
00:18:24:10 - 00:18:27:03
Yeah. No, I'm. You're so precious to me in our secret place.
00:18:27:06 - 00:18:30:23
What what we're asking men to do is express their love to Jesus.
00:18:31:02 - 00:18:36:04
A man who is alive using words no man would ever use with any other man.
00:18:36:08 - 00:18:39:08
And it's a it just kind of feminize us the whole
00:18:39:13 - 00:18:48:11
whole prospect. Again, it back to this emotionalism and and it's an emotionalism in a kind of quasi romantic sense. It just doesn't it men.
00:18:48:15 - 00:18:53:02
I think men would rather be led onto the battlefield than into the bedroom.
00:18:53:06 - 00:18:57:10
And that's true. And and I've, I've definitely seen it as well. You know,
00:18:57:13 - 00:19:03:01
I have had this unease that I couldn't put my finger on
00:19:03:04 - 00:19:05:22
about a lot of things in the local church
00:19:06:01 - 00:19:08:12
and, and I and that was like this
00:19:08:12 - 00:19:09:14
moment as I was reading.
00:19:09:14 - 00:19:10:03
And I'm like,
00:19:10:05 - 00:19:14:19
that's why. Oh, okay. That's why language is another thing. And,
00:19:14:23 - 00:19:16:09
you know, I, I am,
00:19:16:13 - 00:19:26:19
you know, you can get into the music wars and I'm not going to go there because I appreciate the way I, the way I've taught my kids, the way I speak to other people is there are hymns that are just not good
00:19:26:23 - 00:19:27:20
and not biblical,
00:19:28:00 - 00:19:30:16
and there are hymns that are sound and biblical,
00:19:30:21 - 00:19:36:11
and there is contemporary Christian music that is sound and biblical, and there's some that's just garbage.
00:19:36:13 - 00:19:40:17
So you can't you can't put the genre with the value.
00:19:40:21 - 00:19:43:18
But we have I think we've gone away from
00:19:43:23 - 00:19:46:08
praising God for who he is
00:19:46:12 - 00:19:50:08
and into this, this love letter mindset.
00:19:50:12 - 00:19:52:00
Okay, let me jump in there.
00:19:52:00 - 00:19:57:06
I think we need songs that praise God for what he does rather than who he is. Okay,
00:19:57:06 - 00:19:57:20
men,
00:19:57:20 - 00:20:03:01
praise and worship has it's become this quasi romantic thing where we just tell God how wonderful he is.
00:20:03:03 - 00:20:09:14
You know, no man would do that for another man. Eric, you're so strong. You're so beautiful. You're such a great. No,
00:20:09:18 - 00:20:13:08
you say, Eric, let come over and help me work on my car. Thanks, buddy.
00:20:13:11 - 00:20:17:01
We're going to praise a man who helps us or does something.
00:20:17:06 - 00:20:19:03
Who does something worthy of praise.
00:20:19:07 - 00:20:20:18
So I'm calling on,
00:20:20:18 - 00:20:21:15
composers
00:20:21:18 - 00:20:23:09
to focus more on God's,
00:20:23:11 - 00:20:24:07
mighty works
00:20:24:11 - 00:20:26:20
rather than just telling him how wonderful he is.
00:20:26:20 - 00:20:27:05
Because
00:20:27:05 - 00:20:29:03
a man won't do that for another man.
00:20:29:07 - 00:20:34:00
No, no, it is, it is. It is rare and only occasion
00:20:34:03 - 00:20:35:01
that a man would do that.
00:20:35:04 - 00:20:41:20
Yeah, yeah, but but the doing things, man, you killed that out there, man. Excellent job
00:20:41:23 - 00:20:46:08
man. I couldn't have done that if you had to help me lift this thing or do that.
00:20:46:08 - 00:20:52:15
Like, all of those things are absolutely true. Guys in general are much more open to doing those types of,
00:20:52:18 - 00:20:59:20
yeah, types of things. And here's the thing. We're not making something up. God is doing mighty works among us all the time.
00:20:59:23 - 00:21:03:22
There's plenty to praise him for. That's not just how,
00:21:04:00 - 00:21:06:00
beautiful he is. Lord. You're beautiful.
00:21:06:00 - 00:21:06:11
Come on,
00:21:06:16 - 00:21:07:00
you know.
00:21:07:04 - 00:21:07:11
So.
00:21:07:16 - 00:21:13:11
So let's talk about single guys in the church, especially young, single men. Why are they so reluctant
00:21:13:14 - 00:21:14:12
to go to church?
00:21:14:16 - 00:21:15:08
Well, I think,
00:21:15:10 - 00:21:17:20
there's still. We're still in the vapors of the old,
00:21:18:00 - 00:21:24:16
you know, 80s, 90s culture where men are going back hundreds of years. Like I said in the introduction, where men define themselves by sin,
00:21:24:21 - 00:21:26:17
the manliest man is the one who sins the most.
00:21:26:20 - 00:21:40:04
So there's a lot of young, single men who still define themselves that way. But here's an interesting thing even among non-Christians, the stereotypical sinful behaviors are pulling back, drinking among the young is at an all time low.
00:21:40:04 - 00:21:41:06
Young men are,
00:21:41:06 - 00:21:46:01
paying lower insurance because they're not driving as much. They're not driving as fast.
00:21:46:01 - 00:21:47:05
They're smoking less.
00:21:47:10 - 00:21:53:00
They're a fight. Young men. It's much less likely that young men get into a fistfight than they did when I was a kid.
00:21:53:00 - 00:22:00:20
So these typical manly behaviors, how men define themselves, they're kind of going away on their own. I don't think this is due to some religious revival.
00:22:01:00 - 00:22:06:23
So I think that's also part of the reason we're starting to see more men come to church, because they're paying less of a social price.
00:22:07:02 - 00:22:10:13
They've already given up a lot of the sinful behaviors
00:22:10:16 - 00:22:12:13
that they would have had to have given up
00:22:12:17 - 00:22:14:10
coming to church 50 years ago.
00:22:14:14 - 00:22:16:00
That's a good point. And
00:22:16:04 - 00:22:16:15
what
00:22:16:19 - 00:22:28:13
that is a good point because I, you know, I'm I'm 51 and, you know, I grew up in the 80s of the 90s and yeah, there's a definite I remember in school and everything else, there is a definite behavior
00:22:28:17 - 00:22:29:09
shift.
00:22:29:09 - 00:22:31:17
And like I say, drinking, smoking, all of those things have
00:22:31:21 - 00:22:32:19
have decreased
00:22:32:23 - 00:22:38:15
even even. So, I know young men are a difficult group to get it. Is there something
00:22:38:18 - 00:22:41:07
that churches can do to combat this?
00:22:41:10 - 00:22:42:00
Yeah. Well,
00:22:42:04 - 00:22:44:22
here's okay. We got to get into a bigger issue here. Okay.
00:22:44:22 - 00:22:46:13
Young men today
00:22:46:17 - 00:22:47:05
are
00:22:47:08 - 00:22:48:05
consuming
00:22:48:08 - 00:22:49:23
streams of content
00:22:50:04 - 00:22:51:01
on their devices.
00:22:51:05 - 00:22:56:19
So the world's strategy for discipling them is to provide a constant stream
00:22:57:00 - 00:23:00:15
of content that baptizes them into a certain worldview,
00:23:00:18 - 00:23:02:15
whether that's conservatism,
00:23:02:19 - 00:23:03:19
progressivism,
00:23:03:23 - 00:23:04:08
or,
00:23:04:08 - 00:23:09:06
gaming or whatever it is. The world provides this constant stream of content.
00:23:09:09 - 00:23:10:04
And so,
00:23:10:04 - 00:23:15:10
in the church, the typical Bible has been under the building. I'm going to talk to you for 30 minutes, 40 minutes.
00:23:15:10 - 00:23:16:07
See you next week.
00:23:16:11 - 00:23:20:17
We're not providing men with any sort of follow up. We just send them home with no follow up,
00:23:20:21 - 00:23:26:07
no chance to review, to practice, no exercises, to practice what was preached.
00:23:26:07 - 00:23:35:20
I think in the future, in the future, the churches are going to have to wake up to the reality that they are going to have to not only just produce a single talk that they give on Sunday morning.
00:23:36:00 - 00:23:41:05
I put it I'm going to put it this way. In my new book, The Pastor of the future, the pastor of the past was a content creator.
00:23:41:08 - 00:23:49:18
He locked himself in his office for 20 30 hours, came up with a talk, gave it, and then everybody went home and thought about it all week because there was no media.
00:23:49:22 - 00:23:50:03
The
00:23:50:03 - 00:23:52:14
pastor of the future is going to be a content curator.
00:23:52:18 - 00:23:58:20
He's going to give maybe a shorter message on Sunday, but then all week long he's going to provide a stream of content,
00:23:58:23 - 00:24:06:12
and this will be content from other pastors. He doesn't have to generated himself, but reliable teachers, readings, etc., so that
00:24:06:16 - 00:24:12:06
we're putting the gospel into the channels where men already go
00:24:12:10 - 00:24:14:09
and we're not just preaching on Sunday.
00:24:14:09 - 00:24:15:06
See you next week.
00:24:15:09 - 00:24:21:15
We're introducing a concept on Sunday, and then all week long we're teaching you how to live it out using,
00:24:21:17 - 00:24:23:23
combination of digital in in real life.
00:24:24:02 - 00:24:25:17
So I'm actually working on
00:24:25:17 - 00:24:30:15
something called Coaching Church right now, which would be that sort of a church, much shorter sermon.
00:24:30:18 - 00:24:36:14
But then all week long, you guys get something called playbook and they're, they're they're being trained.
00:24:36:18 - 00:24:39:11
I think that's ultimately what we're going to have to do with young men.
00:24:39:14 - 00:24:41:21
If we plug them into the existing model of church,
00:24:42:02 - 00:24:44:14
where they come once a week. See you next week.
00:24:44:18 - 00:24:48:06
You stand while the band plays. You sit while the pastor speaks. That's going to get old,
00:24:48:10 - 00:24:49:06
that's going to get old.
00:24:49:10 - 00:24:51:06
And these optional add ons,
00:24:51:11 - 00:24:53:01
not everybody is going to be able to do them.
00:24:53:04 - 00:25:01:03
I was talking to a pastor just this week, you know, and I was telling him this story. You know, we we send people to church and we send them out with no follow up. And he says, well, all of our small groups
00:25:01:07 - 00:25:02:01
do a follow up
00:25:02:01 - 00:25:06:10
on to the sermon. And I said, well, that's great, but what percentage of your people attend small groups?
00:25:06:14 - 00:25:12:09
And he says, oh, probably 20%. I said, you're lying. Probably closer to ten. And all the guys around that they were, yeah, he's lying.
00:25:12:12 - 00:25:19:04
10% of your people do this. And I said, and the reality of small groups, as they get canceled, kids get sick. Sometimes they don't meet.
00:25:19:08 - 00:25:23:10
But what if you were putting something in their hands every day on the devices they already carry?
00:25:23:14 - 00:25:26:21
And his eyes got really big and he says, well, I don't have time to build that. I says, well,
00:25:27:00 - 00:25:29:21
I can do the gathering. And then you do the curating.
00:25:30:00 - 00:25:37:22
You just say, oh, this is good. This is not good. This is a trusted source. This is not a trusted source. I mean, we've got to get we've got to up our game with men.
00:25:38:03 - 00:25:41:15
Men will stay with us if they really see life change, if they see progress.
00:25:41:19 - 00:25:43:22
But if they're just audience week after week,
00:25:44:02 - 00:25:45:14
it's not they're not going to stay with us.
00:25:45:17 - 00:25:51:16
No, that is so true. And I love that that idea of that content flow. Because that's that's you're right.
00:25:51:21 - 00:25:59:08
We today especially young guys like they've grown up with it like I you know, again I remember
00:25:59:10 - 00:26:02:12
life before Google, I remember life before,
00:26:02:12 - 00:26:03:09
smartphones.
00:26:03:12 - 00:26:03:21
But
00:26:04:01 - 00:26:07:03
a lot of a lot of guys who are in our churches,
00:26:07:08 - 00:26:09:17
they don't like that is just what they've always been.
00:26:09:21 - 00:26:12:04
And so this content stream
00:26:12:07 - 00:26:22:04
is incredibly helpful because, as you say, they're already there. I think the hard part for pastors is almost is this humbling of themselves to be able to say, I don't have to do it all.
00:26:22:09 - 00:26:24:13
I just need to put some good stuff in your hands.
00:26:24:17 - 00:26:27:05
Yeah. And we've sort of already been doing this. I mean,
00:26:27:05 - 00:26:29:04
pastors recommend books all the time.
00:26:29:07 - 00:26:34:19
Here's a great book by Francis Chan. Here's a great book by, you know, D.L. Moody. Whatever. Whoever it is.
00:26:34:19 - 00:26:41:19
The problem is people don't read books anymore. We we've got to get those sorts of recommendations on to these devices
00:26:41:23 - 00:26:43:02
where people already are.
00:26:43:05 - 00:26:45:04
I mean, okay, I'm going to imagine two guys,
00:26:45:07 - 00:26:46:19
they both went to church on Sunday.
00:26:46:23 - 00:26:48:09
So Eddie comes in,
00:26:48:12 - 00:26:55:06
he goes to church, he stands while the band plays. He sits while the pastor speaks. He goes home. And then all week long, you never thinks about the sermon again.
00:26:55:10 - 00:26:58:07
Now Fred goes to this different kind of this coaching type church.
00:26:58:11 - 00:27:06:01
He stands while the band plays. He sits while the pastor preaches. But then on Monday morning, the first thing he does, he picks up his phone. And there's this playbook for the day,
00:27:06:05 - 00:27:11:14
and there's a scripture reading that refers and devotion that refers back to the message he learned.
00:27:11:18 - 00:27:16:01
So all week long he's being trained to do to practice what was preached.
00:27:16:04 - 00:27:21:07
It would be so easy to generate this, but I can't find a single church in the world that's doing it yet.
00:27:21:11 - 00:27:25:10
And so that's what I'm trying to do, is get this going and tell pastors,
00:27:25:13 - 00:27:29:20
it is so easy now to gather these things and create a content stream. Why don't we do this?
00:27:30:00 - 00:27:32:07
Why don't we, instead of letting our sermons die?
00:27:32:10 - 00:27:43:18
Or, you know, Eddie, when he picks up his device, there's no content. He just goes to Fox News Channel or he goes to whatever, and he's more discipled by his by the secular influencers than he is by his pastor.
00:27:43:23 - 00:27:44:13
Let's not
00:27:44:13 - 00:27:49:20
let's not let this opportunity go by. Let's use the digital tools we have in our tool belt
00:27:49:23 - 00:27:51:14
to train to.
00:27:51:16 - 00:28:03:11
We introduced Concept on Sunday, but then we train people every day. And if and if you're a pastor out there and you want to get this going, please contact me at David Worldcom. I will help you get your coaching church going.
00:28:03:16 - 00:28:08:00
I love it, and that really speaks into this question of discipleship too, because
00:28:08:04 - 00:28:12:15
you know, as you know, I as you know, I've, I've talked to people and I've pointed out like
00:28:12:19 - 00:28:13:06
you,
00:28:13:10 - 00:28:17:13
you become something by, you know, someone else giving it to you.
00:28:17:13 - 00:28:18:12
You become a man
00:28:18:15 - 00:28:22:20
by being around men. You don't become an electrician by
00:28:22:23 - 00:28:30:14
learning it from an elementary school teacher. You learn it by being with an electrician. You know, the trades get this right. And and yet we
00:28:30:19 - 00:28:35:03
we in the church, don't we? We have men's groups that don't work
00:28:35:07 - 00:28:39:21
and and men's ministries that just don't do that are not helpful.
00:28:40:00 - 00:28:40:12
So
00:28:40:16 - 00:28:43:13
what's that look like as you're seeing is is
00:28:43:18 - 00:28:46:16
how important is this discipleship aspect from that?
00:28:46:19 - 00:28:52:03
Okay, I'm glad you brought up men's ministry because there's a lot of really great innovation going on in that sphere,
00:28:52:06 - 00:28:54:01
and I'll be reporting on that in my new book.
00:28:54:06 - 00:28:57:11
But a lot of us are still based in the old model,
00:28:57:14 - 00:29:00:00
which men's ministry equals Bible study.
00:29:00:03 - 00:29:01:18
It equals a pancake breakfast.
00:29:01:18 - 00:29:02:13
It equals,
00:29:02:17 - 00:29:05:10
a service project. Nothing wrong with any of those things.
00:29:05:14 - 00:29:05:22
But,
00:29:05:22 - 00:29:06:09
the
00:29:06:13 - 00:29:10:20
what's interesting is whenever we gather men, we often gather them for a mini church service,
00:29:11:00 - 00:29:20:13
like, okay, we're going to come at 630 on Wednesday morning and there's going to be a praise band, and we're going to sing three songs, and then there's going to be a speaker, and then we're going to do breakout groups.
00:29:20:17 - 00:29:23:04
The only thing we do different than church is the breakout groups.
00:29:23:08 - 00:29:25:19
And a lot of guys have to go to work so they miss group breakout rooms.
00:29:25:23 - 00:29:30:04
So the churches are the men's ministries that are really having huge impact
00:29:30:08 - 00:29:30:18
are,
00:29:30:21 - 00:29:33:13
they're getting men up at 630, but they're meeting out in the field
00:29:33:17 - 00:29:34:20
and they're doing some laps
00:29:34:23 - 00:29:37:08
and they're they're doing things with their bodies.
00:29:37:11 - 00:29:40:14
And then there's a talk. And then as they go around the circle again,
00:29:40:17 - 00:29:50:20
they do a challenge. And there's an object lesson and they try to carry something and that represents their sin. They're they're being innovative. They're they're involving men's bodies, not just their minds.
00:29:51:00 - 00:29:51:10
And
00:29:51:13 - 00:29:55:04
they're doing tremendous thing. These guys are getting transformed, walking around a track,
00:29:55:08 - 00:29:57:01
and they're having a book in their hands.
00:29:57:04 - 00:30:06:02
As precious as that book is, merely knowing the book doesn't lead to transformation. And so the Pharisees, they knew the book, but they weren't transformed.
00:30:06:05 - 00:30:13:06
But Jesus took his men around and did things with them, and they were forever changed. So I think this is actually we've got to work,
00:30:13:06 - 00:30:16:13
full body experiences into men's ministry
00:30:16:17 - 00:30:20:10
if we're going to attract and retain and transform
00:30:20:14 - 00:30:24:08
next to the next generation of men, it can't just be another mini church service.
00:30:24:12 - 00:30:29:10
So true. And so I've, I've been part of a men's Alliance tribe since,
00:30:29:12 - 00:30:45:23
since January. And so that's been that's been fabulous. I have to say. That's been fabulous. Have you, have you interviewed goose yet on the show? Actually, I'm interviewing him Tuesday next Wednesday. Yeah. So I'm thrilled he accepted the invite. And, and
00:30:45:23 - 00:30:48:04
and that group has,
00:30:48:04 - 00:30:51:06
sort of redefined some things for me.
00:30:51:06 - 00:30:59:03
Like it? Yeah, it really has. And I'm like, well, okay, tell everybody what. Don't tell everybody what you do in Men's Alliance and share some of my time. Yeah. Oh.
00:30:59:07 - 00:31:04:19
In Men's Alliance we meet once a week. It's for an hour. It's a hard cut. At an hour we do
00:31:04:22 - 00:31:08:21
25 to 30 minute workout, and then we do a 25 to 30 minute devotional.
00:31:09:02 - 00:31:16:06
It's all, you know. Everybody leads, everybody builds a fire, everybody leads a workout. And it's
00:31:16:10 - 00:31:21:19
it's a good time. It's pretty. It's a low barrier to entry. But but yet there is this challenge,
00:31:21:19 - 00:31:26:19
to men to to sweat beside one another. And we suffer together. And,
00:31:26:19 - 00:31:28:08
we share together. It's it's
00:31:28:12 - 00:31:28:20
it's
00:31:29:00 - 00:31:29:17
really cool.
00:31:29:20 - 00:31:30:15
Yeah. It.
00:31:30:17 - 00:31:32:02
Yeah, it's amazing when,
00:31:32:02 - 00:31:33:12
I did some research and I,
00:31:33:16 - 00:31:39:03
at the time I wrote Women Go to Church, Islam was the fastest growing religion among men in America.
00:31:39:06 - 00:31:39:16
Wow.
00:31:39:19 - 00:31:48:19
And so I, I saw what they did in the mosque. You're up, they're down. It's almost like a military thing or almost marching in place. And there's no women in the room.
00:31:49:00 - 00:31:50:01
It is only men.
00:31:50:05 - 00:31:51:09
So they were actually
00:31:51:13 - 00:31:53:02
kicking her butt there for a while.
00:31:53:02 - 00:31:54:18
Yeah. Especially among African Americans.
00:31:54:22 - 00:32:05:04
And black men grow up in a very feminized church culture, very much about emotion, very much about the church ladies and their hats and their gloves and, you know, three hour long sermons.
00:32:05:09 - 00:32:10:10
So a lot of black men were finding a home in Islam because Islam felt masculine.
00:32:10:15 - 00:32:16:07
So it comes back to my main point. If you want to engage men and make them feel like it's something for them,
00:32:16:12 - 00:32:20:03
you have to speak with a masculine accent. You have to do things
00:32:20:07 - 00:32:21:01
that men do.
00:32:21:06 - 00:32:22:15
Not macho, but masculine.
00:32:22:19 - 00:32:24:04
It's true. And
00:32:24:08 - 00:32:28:11
as I've seen it, as I've read it, it's like, man, that makes such,
00:32:28:16 - 00:32:29:14
such a difference.
00:32:29:14 - 00:32:32:16
Let me jump into your new book that's coming out
00:32:32:20 - 00:32:33:11
now.
00:32:33:11 - 00:32:38:22
Why Men Love Going to Church. So why why write that one?
00:32:39:02 - 00:32:46:19
Okay, well, we are seeing this historic return of men to church. For 700 years, churches have always had more women than men. All of a sudden
00:32:46:23 - 00:32:55:01
studies from Barna, from Pew are all showing higher identification among men, Christian identification among men and women.
00:32:55:03 - 00:33:02:16
And we're hearing anecdotal reports from all over the world that men are showing up in split missions than showing up in Episcopal churches, are showing up in
00:33:02:19 - 00:33:04:15
churches and in costal churches.
00:33:04:19 - 00:33:06:13
They're coming to all sorts of churches.
00:33:06:17 - 00:33:07:03
So,
00:33:07:03 - 00:33:08:18
I thought often, why is this happening?
00:33:08:18 - 00:33:15:22
So I'm, I'm going to chapter one of the book. I think it's a sociological phenomenon as much as it is a religious phenomenon.
00:33:16:02 - 00:33:24:16
In 2005, when I wrote while I'm in here going to church, I've already established the fact the church spoke with a feminine accent. It was more feminized than culture.
00:33:24:20 - 00:33:26:17
Then let's go into the 20 tens.
00:33:26:22 - 00:33:30:06
Something new came onto the stage called wokeness.
00:33:30:10 - 00:33:31:07
Progressivism
00:33:31:10 - 00:33:40:12
and the right way of being was being caring, sensitive, nurturing. Don't offend anyone. I apologize all the time.
00:33:40:14 - 00:33:43:23
Tribal land acknowledgments. We're we're so sorry.
00:33:44:02 - 00:33:51:01
This this was how the government how businesses, how every institution became feminine
00:33:51:04 - 00:33:52:10
in their expression.
00:33:52:13 - 00:33:54:11
Even companies that catered to men.
00:33:54:14 - 00:33:58:20
Bud light showed a transgender influencer on a can of beer.
00:33:58:23 - 00:34:01:14
Gillette showed a transgender
00:34:01:14 - 00:34:02:03
shaver
00:34:02:07 - 00:34:05:02
and men were just like, what the heck is going on?
00:34:05:07 - 00:34:06:12
Every institution
00:34:06:17 - 00:34:10:05
has abandoned the traditional roles of men,
00:34:10:05 - 00:34:12:10
toxic masculinity men.
00:34:12:16 - 00:34:15:19
It there was this all this cultural movement towards feminine.
00:34:15:22 - 00:34:18:00
The one institution that didn't move
00:34:18:04 - 00:34:19:16
was the evangelical church.
00:34:19:20 - 00:34:24:21
We didn't go in for wokeness. We didn't go in for transgender surgeries.
00:34:25:01 - 00:34:27:10
We weren't all in on the Palestinians.
00:34:27:13 - 00:34:30:12
So what happened is church didn't move.
00:34:30:17 - 00:34:35:08
Society moved all the way from being more masculine to being more feminine.
00:34:35:12 - 00:34:36:11
Are you following me here?
00:34:36:15 - 00:34:40:04
They'll they'll be a graphic in the book to show you what I'm talking about. But,
00:34:40:07 - 00:34:44:07
and then there's these two unhealthy extremes. There's extreme wokeness,
00:34:44:07 - 00:34:46:17
on the left, which is very feminized.
00:34:46:21 - 00:34:50:17
And then you have this unhealthy masculinity on the right call, which I call,
00:34:50:17 - 00:34:51:14
the manosphere,
00:34:51:17 - 00:34:56:07
where, you know, it's all about, you know, doing terrible things to women and all these things.
00:34:56:10 - 00:35:12:00
The church, really, the evangelical church really provides a healthy in most evangelical churches, a healthy middle ground that avoids either of those extremes, the macho preening of the manosphere or the unhealthy nurturing of progressivism.
00:35:12:05 - 00:35:15:04
And so men are feeling like the church is a refuge for them.
00:35:15:07 - 00:35:16:06
The church never
00:35:16:10 - 00:35:19:14
called them toxic. The church never called,
00:35:19:16 - 00:35:22:21
never said, you're not supposed to provide or or,
00:35:23:01 - 00:35:23:21
care for a woman.
00:35:24:01 - 00:35:26:15
The church was always pro marriage. It was always pro-family.
00:35:26:19 - 00:35:28:08
Now you've got women on the other side.
00:35:28:12 - 00:35:30:03
Women have become much more progressive.
00:35:30:07 - 00:35:34:02
And women are actually for the first time, they lose status
00:35:34:07 - 00:35:35:08
by saying, I'm a Christian
00:35:35:11 - 00:35:37:06
because they're not woke.
00:35:37:09 - 00:35:40:06
You know, being a being an evangelical Christian, you're not woke.
00:35:40:09 - 00:35:41:23
And women are supposed to be woke.
00:35:42:03 - 00:35:46:13
They're supposed to be all about caring and nurturing and sensitivity. And for these various victim groups.
00:35:46:18 - 00:35:54:03
So what's happened is men are actually gaining social status by saying, I'm a Christian. It's a way of signaling to each other, I ain't well, brother,
00:35:54:07 - 00:36:01:18
but women are losing social status. I'm an evangelical Christian. Oh, you're a Trumpy. Oh, you're a you're a, you know, whatever,
00:36:01:22 - 00:36:02:05
right.
00:36:02:09 - 00:36:02:23
And so,
00:36:02:23 - 00:36:08:10
we've had this complete shift in the last ten, 15, 20 years. So back to my original premise.
00:36:08:14 - 00:36:12:12
This is as much a sociological phenomenon as it is a religious one.
00:36:12:17 - 00:36:17:00
And we've got a church. I think we got 2 to 3 years to catch this wave.
00:36:17:03 - 00:36:19:06
And we can't just turn these guys into,
00:36:19:06 - 00:36:20:01
Charlie Kirk
00:36:20:06 - 00:36:20:23
disciples.
00:36:20:23 - 00:36:25:02
You know, I'm not saying anything about, you know, Charlie's fine, but but but I'm saying
00:36:25:07 - 00:36:37:02
they've come because of Charlie Kirk. They've come because of. They hate wokeness. We've got to turn them from their political. They're sociological into true disciples of Jesus. That's our challenge.
00:36:37:05 - 00:36:42:22
In the next 2 or 3 years, they're in the house. Let's not turn them into the next generation of passive pew sitters.
00:36:43:03 - 00:36:46:15
I, I did not realize that shift
00:36:46:19 - 00:36:53:12
to the church for men in the last few years, but it makes total sense because men have nowhere else to go.
00:36:53:17 - 00:36:56:19
And not and not. And being a man.
00:36:57:00 - 00:37:02:19
Yes. You cannot go with what culture holds right now and, and say I'm a man
00:37:03:00 - 00:37:06:16
and like you just can't, you can't land there, you
00:37:06:20 - 00:37:07:13
know.
00:37:07:15 - 00:37:10:14
And there's a lot of unhealthy on both extremes. Oh yeah.
00:37:10:18 - 00:37:11:03
Yeah.
00:37:11:08 - 00:37:15:05
The macho preening of the right. I just, I just can't stand it, you know, and all the.
00:37:15:05 - 00:37:15:23
The sickening.
00:37:15:23 - 00:37:23:03
We need to we need to we'll children into operating rooms and turn them into amputees in the name of kindness. You know what? What?
00:37:23:07 - 00:37:25:15
It's just it's just insanity on both sides.
00:37:25:17 - 00:37:31:14
But I think a lot of churches are doing a great job not falling for either of these deceptions.
00:37:31:18 - 00:37:34:00
You know, there's there's two genders
00:37:34:04 - 00:37:35:01
and we love them both.
00:37:35:05 - 00:37:41:01
Yeah. And and I love that. But but I agree I think we just have we've got a narrow window
00:37:41:01 - 00:37:43:09
to do that before things shift
00:37:43:14 - 00:37:45:10
or before something else happens.
00:37:45:10 - 00:37:45:21
And then
00:37:46:01 - 00:37:50:01
and we lose this, this influx or before they say,
00:37:50:05 - 00:37:53:20
yeah, I mean this is better than out there, but this isn't great,
00:37:54:01 - 00:37:56:06
you know? And. Oh, you nailed it. Yeah,
00:37:56:09 - 00:37:56:16
yeah.
00:37:56:16 - 00:37:57:17
Let me audience
00:37:57:20 - 00:38:04:09
we've got to do something besides audience. And it can't be an optional add on. It's got to become a regular part of what we do.
00:38:04:12 - 00:38:08:11
You know, I will guarantee you, Eric, the longer you stay with Men's Alliance,
00:38:08:15 - 00:38:10:21
the more you're going to hear this sentence from guys.
00:38:11:01 - 00:38:12:19
Men's Alliance is my church.
00:38:13:00 - 00:38:13:20
Have you heard that yet?
00:38:13:23 - 00:38:20:23
I haven't, but I've seen I, you know, some guys who were like, this is the only place I feel welcome.
00:38:21:04 - 00:38:21:10
Yeah,
00:38:21:14 - 00:38:24:01
I hear CrossFit is my church.
00:38:24:03 - 00:38:26:04
May is my church. Yeah.
00:38:26:10 - 00:38:28:18
The what we consider the parish church,
00:38:28:18 - 00:38:31:00
is often a better
00:38:31:05 - 00:38:33:04
disciple, making vehicle
00:38:33:08 - 00:38:33:21
than
00:38:34:01 - 00:38:34:21
regular church.
00:38:35:02 - 00:38:48:00
So regular church, let's learn from their example. Let's see what's actually discipling people and figure out how to harness those things. There was a really courageous guy 500 years ago named Martin Luther. If you heard them.
00:38:48:04 - 00:38:53:00
Yeah. He wants to train illiterate, information starved, isolated Germans.
00:38:53:04 - 00:38:56:19
How to follow Jesus. There's this new invention called the printing press.
00:38:57:00 - 00:39:05:05
So he figures out a way. He invents the modern sermon, stand up in front of a stage, put a learned man with a book in his hand, and lecture for 40 minutes.
00:39:05:08 - 00:39:06:18
This was an amazing
00:39:06:21 - 00:39:07:13
innovation.
00:39:07:17 - 00:39:09:09
Here we sit, 500 years later
00:39:09:14 - 00:39:10:16
and we're still
00:39:10:21 - 00:39:12:06
doing it Luther's way.
00:39:12:10 - 00:39:16:20
And we have not adopted any hardly any of the new technologies.
00:39:17:00 - 00:39:20:02
We're still putting a learned man on a stage with a book in his hand,
00:39:20:06 - 00:39:22:20
lecturing for 40 minutes. See you next week.
00:39:23:00 - 00:39:42:23
That is not going to get it done with men. Well, and you make a great point, because Protestant Reformation, Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and all of those that really came about because of the technology of the printing press and the dissemination of information, and they leveraged that to the hilt.
00:39:43:03 - 00:39:47:17
I mean, that's, you know, suddenly the people who couldn't afford
00:39:47:21 - 00:39:48:13
a book
00:39:48:16 - 00:39:50:06
now had access.
00:39:50:11 - 00:39:55:06
Yeah. And they could read it and they could read it. The church taught them to read. Yeah.
00:39:55:10 - 00:39:57:10
So revolutionary, life changing,
00:39:57:13 - 00:39:59:08
destabilized Europe politically.
00:39:59:11 - 00:40:00:18
I mean, it was huge.
00:40:00:22 - 00:40:07:08
It was huge. We have. Okay, I'll I'll share real quickly. I'll share you one of my favorite verses, acts chapter 17
00:40:07:11 - 00:40:08:18
Paul goes into Athens
00:40:08:23 - 00:40:10:07
and there's this place called the area
00:40:10:07 - 00:40:10:15
agus.
00:40:10:18 - 00:40:20:18
And pardon me, I'm going to paraphrase the verse from memory. It says it was a place where everyone did nothing but sit around all day and share the latest ideas and talk about them.
00:40:20:22 - 00:40:21:11
And I'm like,
00:40:21:15 - 00:40:22:16
that's social media.
00:40:22:19 - 00:40:28:06
We have a new area, agus. People do nothing but sit around and discuss the latest ideas.
00:40:28:10 - 00:40:32:05
And yet what we put into that area, agus is so bad.
00:40:32:09 - 00:40:35:23
We have the the Christian judgment. You know you're going to hell.
00:40:36:02 - 00:40:37:23
Abortion is murder. You're a murderer.
00:40:38:03 - 00:40:43:03
We're we're just so angry in that area. Agus, was Paul angry?
00:40:43:06 - 00:40:45:02
There was false gods all around him.
00:40:45:06 - 00:40:49:15
He could have gone full Old Testament and started killing these false prophets. Did he do it?
00:40:49:18 - 00:40:52:17
No. He sat down and he reasoned with them.
00:40:52:19 - 00:40:58:04
He put the gospel into the terms they understood. And some were saved, some weren't.
00:40:58:08 - 00:41:08:13
So I think this is another thing that we've got to do. We've got to start training our people how to be good online citizens, how to win people to Christ online
00:41:08:16 - 00:41:11:08
instead of just a, you know, verbal sales pitch to Jesus.
00:41:11:11 - 00:41:14:17
Because I think Christians are doing tremendous damage online
00:41:14:20 - 00:41:16:00
because of what we post.
00:41:16:03 - 00:41:20:17
And so that this is an area where we really do need to train all of our people, especially our men.
00:41:20:22 - 00:41:27:09
I hadn't even thought about the whole training process, but that's so true. It's how do we engage in a social media world
00:41:27:12 - 00:41:28:13
and be a believer
00:41:28:17 - 00:41:29:07
and not
00:41:29:11 - 00:41:35:07
be angry? It's okay to have anger, but not to lash out in that anger.
00:41:35:10 - 00:41:37:03
Yeah, no. Here's the way I put it.
00:41:37:03 - 00:41:41:02
When you are on social media, you can be loving or you can be right.
00:41:41:06 - 00:41:44:15
Now, a lot of people just they're right, but they're so unloving.
00:41:44:20 - 00:41:45:09
They just.
00:41:45:12 - 00:41:47:11
I mean, to stand up for biblical truth.
00:41:47:15 - 00:41:48:10
You're a sinner,
00:41:48:15 - 00:41:51:03
you know, it's the planks in my eye and I'm going to tell you about it.
00:41:51:03 - 00:41:52:04
You know, it's it's just,
00:41:52:08 - 00:41:52:16
you
00:41:52:20 - 00:41:55:21
you can be loving and you can be right, but
00:41:55:21 - 00:41:57:06
but you have to lead with love.
00:41:57:11 - 00:42:01:01
Paul said, you know, if I have not love, I'm like a clanging cymbal.
00:42:01:05 - 00:42:03:18
So we've got to train. Especially men,
00:42:03:22 - 00:42:08:17
how to interact online, how to win their friends to Christ with love and in masculine love.
00:42:08:23 - 00:42:10:01
Hey, dude, let's do this.
00:42:10:06 - 00:42:11:12
And I think, I think
00:42:11:12 - 00:42:13:17
as you were saying, we've got this way we can catch it,
00:42:13:22 - 00:42:16:03
but we've got to. We've got to make,
00:42:16:03 - 00:42:21:09
I'll give you another one. Here in the modern church, worship is mandatory and discipleship is optional.
00:42:21:13 - 00:42:25:02
Worship is mandatory. Discipleship is an optional add on.
00:42:25:06 - 00:42:27:07
Now, was that Jesus's priority?
00:42:27:11 - 00:42:31:03
No. Jesus said discipleship is mandatory
00:42:31:07 - 00:42:32:02
and worship
00:42:32:06 - 00:42:37:16
is a very low priority. I'm going to blow your mind here. Jesus never brings up the subject of worship.
00:42:37:20 - 00:42:41:01
He never teaches. He never tells anyone to worship.
00:42:41:06 - 00:42:43:00
He never leads the crowds in song.
00:42:43:03 - 00:42:53:02
It's not that it's wrong to worship or that it's wrong to sing. We have given it this such a huge amount of our time, energy and attention, and we've got to ask ourselves if we're doing this with our time.
00:42:53:02 - 00:42:53:22
What are we not doing?
00:42:54:03 - 00:42:58:17
We're not making disciples. We're making a great show that gives people all the fields.
00:42:58:20 - 00:42:59:03
But
00:42:59:06 - 00:43:02:18
we're we're we're training them to come to church and have the fields.
00:43:02:21 - 00:43:05:20
We're not training them to courageously follow Jesus.
00:43:05:23 - 00:43:14:11
It is it's cotton candy Christianity. And it really is. It's just nothing but sweet and sugary and empty.
00:43:14:15 - 00:43:15:17
Yeah, it's all the fields.
00:43:15:21 - 00:43:32:00
And again, I'm going to qualify this. It's not wrong to feel emotion. It's it's not wrong. I have a strong feeling toward Jesus. But if that's the end point, if that's the goal, if we're using the smoke machines and the lights and the subwoofers and the and you know, if we're trying to create this feeling,
00:43:32:04 - 00:43:33:17
we're just we're missing the boat.
00:43:33:17 - 00:43:37:05
Because discipleship is not about feeling Jesus.
00:43:37:09 - 00:43:39:05
It's about following Jesus.
00:43:39:08 - 00:43:45:12
And we've got to ask ourselves if we're spending 20, 30 minutes doing this, what could this 20 or 30 minutes, how could we're
00:43:45:16 - 00:43:46:00
re
00:43:46:00 - 00:43:50:06
Re apportion this time to actually doing the thing Jesus told us to do?
00:43:50:09 - 00:43:50:23
Indeed
00:43:51:03 - 00:43:57:13
man indeed. So as we wrap up here, any last takeaway you want to leave with our audience?
00:43:57:16 - 00:44:01:20
We can do this. We have a we have a powerful God who wants to see this done.
00:44:01:20 - 00:44:02:21
What we've got to do,
00:44:02:21 - 00:44:04:05
we've got to have courage.
00:44:04:09 - 00:44:08:15
It's so hard to give up what we've been doing for 500 years. It's hard to
00:44:08:20 - 00:44:10:05
if we're going to make people mad.
00:44:10:07 - 00:44:14:01
I'm sure every worship leader who was listening to me on that last sentence,
00:44:14:05 - 00:44:14:18
it has,
00:44:14:22 - 00:44:16:14
slammed their phone to the ground or.
00:44:16:18 - 00:44:17:01
But,
00:44:17:04 - 00:44:21:14
again, I'm not anti worship. I'm just saying that we've got to do it the way the New Testament tells us to do it.
00:44:21:14 - 00:44:23:21
But back to your point. Final words.
00:44:24:01 - 00:44:27:00
We've got to have courage to reimagine
00:44:27:03 - 00:44:27:19
what we do
00:44:27:23 - 00:44:29:08
through the lens of discipleship.
00:44:29:11 - 00:44:31:02
Is this making a disciple?
00:44:31:05 - 00:44:32:14
Are we making a disciple?
00:44:32:18 - 00:44:37:07
And we've got to have the courage to say, if it's not making a disciple, we're going to do something else?
00:44:37:10 - 00:44:43:14
Yeah, that is powerful. So and I would agree. And then as we
00:44:43:17 - 00:44:49:19
as we wrap up, if people want to know more about you, they want to know more about your books. Where do you want them to go?
00:44:49:19 - 00:44:56:08
Pop this up on the screen for me. It's, David McCombe. That's all things related to the books,
00:44:56:13 - 00:44:58:00
to the coaching church.
00:44:58:03 - 00:44:58:19
I've got a lot of,
00:44:58:19 - 00:45:06:01
exciting projects going on that I'd love to help your church implement so that you can catch this wave of men and boys
00:45:06:04 - 00:45:06:15
and,
00:45:06:15 - 00:45:09:10
experience the harvest that Jesus promised.
00:45:09:13 - 00:45:13:05
David. Mural.com. It's going to be in the show notes. You can put it on the screen for you.
00:45:13:09 - 00:45:15:11
David, this has been phenomenal.
00:45:15:14 - 00:45:25:19
I had to cut it because we ran out of time and I didn't even like it. Just slipped by. It was it was just that kind of conversation. So thanks for joining us today I appreciate it. I know the audience does too.
00:45:25:22 - 00:45:26:15
Thank you. Eric.