Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.
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Posted on 11/17/2004 7:43:47 AM PST by sionnsar
Tim Bayly on getting men involved in church
First, I just want to say I am back online since our phone service has been restored, and now that we have most of our move behind us. This has been an experience, to say the least, and I have a healthy respect for those hardy souls who move every few years due to work or other reasons.
I'd like to call readers' attention to an article by Tim Bayly, Go for the men and the women will follow. In many churches we see much diminished attendance by men--Rev. Bayly cites membership in the United Methodist Church as comprising 40% men, down from 47% in the 1950's. This is likely the case in many churches; I have read complaints among Roman Catholics that men are often abandoning church attendance, for example. And George Barna has said, according to Bayly, that women are twice as likely to attend a church service during any given week.
Rev. Bayly discusses this trend, and prescribes some remedies for it, in his article. I think his third one is quite important:
Resist efforts to emasculate the Bible, the great traditional hymns of the faith, or the content of our sermons and teaching.
The ideological climate of our day is one that renders certain of the challenges we face unique, without historical precedent. One Sunday I was preaching on a Scripture passage which emphasized spiritual warfare. The sermon ended with a call for all of us to fight for the Lord, to be faithful warriors, to strive for the Kingdom without fear and to boldly oppose the forces of darkness. The closing hymn was “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
Later that week a leader in the church told me that as soon as the hymn was announced one of the older women had exclaimed to those sitting in her general vicinity, “I hate this song!”
This wasn't a total surprise to me; earlier that week when I was getting the order of worship together I'd hesitated choosing this particular hymn knowing there were probably some who thought it was sub-Christian. “But,” I thought to myself, “Is this kind of language and imagery biblical, or isn't it? That's the question. And if it is biblical, how can I justify being ashamed and keeping it out of our worship?”
Open any hymnal and we find a wealth of hymns in which battle themes are central; “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?” “Who Is on the Lord's Side?” “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and “Fight the Good Fight.” Today, however, such hymns often seem hopelessly militant and masculine. “We are to love, not fight. We are to bring peace, not battle. Let's get rid of such inconsistencies,” is the opinion of many.
Yet the are numerous reasons why pastors shouldn't abandon these hymns and other aspects of military imagery in the life of the church.
Military imagery is appropriate, first and foremost, because it's biblical imagery. Count the number of times the Bible uses such terminology to speak of the pursuit of godliness; it's an endless theme.
Not only is this theme a divine one but bold statements concerning the war which is waged for the souls of every man and woman appeal to the male understanding of spiritual reality, just as the male relates positively to other forms of competition and conflict. It's not accidental that many of the ads aimed at men appear in the sports section of the newspaper. So the loss of such themes from the church would be another setback for men because it would remove another point of reference which is distinctively masculine.
The constant pressure our generation faces calling for the removal of the language of battle from the House of God is nothing less than the emasculation of our liturgy. We must resist it. God's revelation is trustworthy, not just in principles but also in imagery and metaphors.
The emasculation of the liturgy has FOLLOWED in the wake of the Self Emasculation performed by the males who preceded these decisions.
It's not accident that at sex change hospitals, 95 percent of all patients are men who can no longer bear the responsiblity of the equipment they were born with.
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