Why guys leave the church, Part I

About 90 percent of boys raised in the Church abandon it by their 20th birthday according to David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church. Many of these men will only return later under the influence of a spouse, girlfriend, or because "the kids need to see Dad at church."

Murrow's thesis is that the church focuses more on the needs of women and young men are jumping ship. In a video for a John Piper's Desiring God conference, Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle says this the church is packed with "church boys" wearing "sweater vests, walking around singing love songs to Jesus." Driscoll believes that the problem in the church today is that we have a lot of "nice, soft, chic-a-fied church boys." Church is a turn-off to young men when they walk in and see walls painted "sea-foam green, fucia, and lemon yellow," he says. "The whole aesthetic and the whole architecture is feminine."

"Most churches," says Driscoll, "are built to cater to 40-something-year-old women and their children and the guys are nowhere to be found." A recent Barna study reported that the least likely group of people to attend church are men between the ages of 18 to 29. Murrow offers this explanation:

"Almost everything about today's church-its teaching style, its ministries, the way people are expected to behave, even today's popular images of Jesus-is designed to meet the needs and expectations of a largely female audience. Church is sweet and sentimental, nurturing, and nice. Women thrive in this environment. In modern parlance, women are the target audience of today's church."

This is most obvious in the "contemporary" music played in many churches today which are nothing more than prom songs and love ballads with "Jesus" inserted in lyrics instead of "baby" or "my darling". Here's are lyrics from the praise band Underoath:

Oh sweet angel of mercy

With your grace like the morning

Wrap your loving arms around me

Oh sweet angel of mercy

With your grace like the morning

Wrap your loving arms around me

Yeah, I can just see the men 18-29 years-old flocking to churches grabbing guitars to softly serenade the one from whose mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, "King of kings and Lord of lords" (Rev. 19:15-16).