What do men want?
That’s not a question you want to pose to the demographic that listens to sports-talk-radio. If the ads are any indication, men want babes, beer, wings, and victories. Throw in discounts on diamond rings for their ladies and on the meals where young men bestow such rings, and you have pretty much met the wants of the average American male, between 25 and 54.
What if you put the question to Christian men? When I heard the question this was exactly the intended audience since the inquirer was an associate pastor who had the responsibility for attracting the adult males of his congregation to a Friday night activity at church. The answers that followed were not that far from sports-talk-radio, though certainly more sanctified (see, at old we do affirm sanctification even if it comes less swiftly). No mention of women, but food and games were high on the list. If the event were not at church and a little more Calvinistic, I suspect that tobacco would have also been an incentive for Reformed men. (At which point the fundamentalists accuse Calvinists of looking as sanctified as Lutherans.)
So the pastor’s plan seemed to be to concoct a program and circumstances that would appeal to men to give up their Friday night and do something spiritually useful – an appetizer of ribs followed by the main course of inspiration. Chances are the portions would have been vastly uneven and inappropriate for their place on the church program menu.
It struck me that this pastor’s question is what must constantly challenge the minds of most seeker-sensitive church leaders. We need to persuade people to go contrary to their wants when it comes to religion by giving them something that they really do want as a way to switch them to what they don’t really want. Of course, the church’s package can never be as enticing as the world’s – that is why Christian radio differs from sports-talk-radio. Still, the idea is to get people to consider the difficult matters of life and death by pleasing them with goods and services that they really enjoy.
This might work for non-believers, but how it could possibly function for Christians is beyond me. For someone who has never been to church, going to a place less removed from the “regular†world might help overcome the initial hurdle. So if the service feels more like a variety show than a worship service, a non-churched person might go. But for church members who have already experienced the bait-and-switch, who have become accustomed to the inferiority of the pastor’s jokes compared to those of Stephen Colbert, will they really consider going to the church’s Friday night entertainment or meal instead of a ball game, meal, or party?
What dawned on me while considering the difficulty this pastor faced was a solution that modern church experts seldom try. They would find that if they looked at the mom-and-pop churches, the ones far away from the Walmarts of Saddle Back and Willow Creek, churches get people to go to events like a men’s meeting not on the basis of want but of duty. This is a form of motivation that certainly works in my own congregation. Men meet for book studies and fellowship – at very odd hours – not because they think it will be fun but because they know it’s the right thing to do. (Does anyone really study the Puritans because doughnuts are supplied?) Duty-sensitivity may not generate the religious affections that experiential types want to see in committed Christians, as in the man doing cartwheels to get to church and be with his “brothers.†But duty is enough to prompt many men to attend and from that point they often find the results are rewarding.
The lesson would seem to apply to attracting non-believers to church: they need to come not to be entertained or amused or even inspired but because they have an obligation to their maker and sustainer. I have no delusion that the current crop of church planners and growth experts will ever reach this conclusion. Nor do I suspect that a duty-sensitive church will generate a large following. But it sure makes a pastor’s job easier.
Old Life 