Two weeks
ago I
wrote about the Christian dating scene. A shortage of dateable men
is making it easier for guys to play the field – and harder for women to
find godly guys for romance and marriage. Gina Dalfonzo writes in Christianity
Today:
These days,
the old courtship formulas no longer apply: A devout woman, instead of being
likelier to marry, may very well find herself alone.
In response
to this anxiety, women position themselves to compete for fewer single men.
[Journalist Jon Birger] recalls anecdotes of Jewish girls starting strict
diets in their teens, escalating to anorexia in adulthood. Many single Mormon
women embrace elaborate beauty routines, plastic surgery, and breast implants.
The statistics on dating in their communities—discussed in this
chapter excerpted in Time—back up the contention that there’s a very
real demographic issue at work here.
So what happened to all the devout men?
Simple. We screened them out of the church as boys. Picked ‘em off one by one.
The way we raise boys in the faith eliminated the
very kinds of men women find attractive.
Metaphor
time: you’re standing in an asphalt plant. The operator loads pebbles of every
size into a hopper. The pebbles are shaken through a series of screens that
remove every stone that’s either too large or too small. The resulting gravel
mix is perfectly suited to road surfacing.
Now, let’s apply that metaphor to the local
church. Children of every kind come into the hopper. They are screened through
children’s ministry and youth ministry. These programs remove the ones who are
poorly suited to church culture. The final mix of adult churchgoers is heavily
female, and very short on high-testosterone men. But it’s perfect for
perpetuating the church culture we presently know.
SCREEN 1:
SUNDAY SCHOOL
Little boys
love going to church. There’s no shortage of lads in nurseries, VBS and the
lower grades of Sunday school. But around the 4th or 5th
grade, boys start disappearing, because that’s the age when males begin losing
in church.
Losing in church? You didn’t realize church was a competition, did
you? Well, with boys everything is a competition. And it’s a contest most boys
can’t win. The rules of Sunday school are stacked against them: sit still, read
aloud, memorize, find passages in the Bible, and receive instruction from a
female teacher. So if these are the rules, who’s more likely to win, girls or
boys?
By the age of twelve, many boys have been losing
in church every Sunday for years. Girls possess superior verbal skills, reading
skills and finger dexterity (for finding Bible passages). They can sit still
longer and instinctively know how to express themselves in small groups. The
average girl is made for Sunday school, whereas the average boy is made for the
soccer field.
And that’s where increasing numbers of young men
can be found on Sundays – kicking a ball, doing something they’re good at. Many
of the dropouts are the wiggly, high testosterone boys who grow up to become
leaders, athletes and alpha males.
Of course
some boys DO make it through Sunday school, where they encounter the next
screen: Youth Group.
SCREEN 2: YOUTH
GROUP
When I was
an adolescent, youth group was fun. It was based on the three Gs: games,
goofiness, and God. We sang simple songs. We played nutty games. The
teaching time was brief but meaningful to teens. I loved it. And it attracted a
lot of guys. Church services were sometimes boring, but youth group was always
a kick. Youth leaders of the 1970s were always men – that big brother role
model the boys craved and the girls looked up to (and had secret crushes on).
Fun and
games are still a part of youth group, but there’s been pressure to make it
more “spiritual” by increasing the amount of time devoted to teaching. Singing
time has also increased. And today many youth groups are led by young women.
These three trends are screening boys out. Let’s take them in reverse order:
Female Youth
Leaders. Here’s the politically incorrect truth about teenage boys: they
are blatant sexists. Most young men will not follow a female leader unless they
can be flunked, fired or court-martialed. And women bring a different style to
youth group – more emotive, more introspective and more focused on feelings.
I’m not saying it’s impossible for a woman to minister to teenage boys, but
it’s a lot harder.
Lengthy “worship sets.” Praise and worship arrived in youth group during the
early 1990s. The goofy songs disappeared. Singing time expanded to twenty
minutes or more. The whole feeling changed from a fun group activity to an
intimate personal time with God.
The youth meeting is quickly evolving into a
music-centric experience. Teens stand in a darkened room and sing love songs to
Jesus, led by a praise band of their peers. Singing can occupy up to half of
the meeting. This has been great for the musicians—they get lots of stage time.
But for the nonmusical, lengthy singing can be a drag.
Girls thrive in this emotional hothouse, but boys melt
and evaporate. Many guys stand in the crowd with their hands in their pockets
thinking, “I’m supposed to like this, but I don’t. What’s wrong with me?”
Before you know it, you’ve got nineteen girls and five
guys at youth group. And there’s not a jock among the guys.
Then there’s one more screen: evangelical
Christianity’s approach to dating, sex and marriage. Some seriously weird
teachings got sown in the church during the 1990s, and they’re producing the
fruit of loneliness in our generation. We’ll talk about that next week.
