By Harold Vaughan
If your church feels more like a quiet parlor than a training ground for warriors, something may need to change.
This is not a ladies’ tea or children’s church! Stop wasting time with endless announcements targeted to only a handful within the congregation. Most men have attention deficit disorder! So respect that.
Men are drawn to challenge, purpose, conviction, courage, sacrifice, brotherhood, and mission. They want something worth giving themselves to. They are not inspired by softness, endless sentimentality, or lifeless routine.
Leadership Matters
Weak Leadership Produces Weak Churches
Weak leadership produces weak churches. Low-energy leaders often mentor low-energy followers. Passionless preaching creates passionless people. A church that feels emotionally flat and completely predictable will eventually struggle to hold strong men.
The answer is not worldly entertainment or carnal hype. But many churches could benefit from a little more holy intensity. Add some spiritual adrenaline to the service. Let there be conviction in the preaching, life in the singing, expectancy in the praying, and urgency in the mission.
Men respond to leadership
that calls them upward.
The Call
Challenge Men to Rise
- Challenge men to fight sin.
- Challenge them to lead their homes.
- Challenge them to protect their families.
- Challenge them to pray.
- Challenge them to sacrifice.
- Challenge them to live for something eternal.
Most men do not want to be endlessly coddled—they want to be enlisted. The popular church model is hopelessly outdated. We must think outside the box, but not outside the Bible!
A Biblical Model
Men Still Respond to Courage
Churches that emphasize spiritual battle, biblical masculinity, courageous leadership, meaningful responsibility, and wholehearted worship will often attract serious men. Whatever happened to strong sermons on self-denial, taking up the Cross, and total surrender? So much preaching today limits itself to the benefits of the cross instead of the implications of the Lordship of Christ.
The early church was not built on comfort and convenience. It was built on courage, sacrifice, truth, power, and spiritual fire.
Men still respond to that kind of Christianity.
Start Going for the Men!
Three Stages of a Dying Church
Every church has a life cycle. Discover the warning signs of moving from ministering to maintaining—and eventually becoming a monument instead of a living, gospel-centered church.
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The Fear of Man
The fear of man can quietly control our choices, silence our witness, and lead us into compromise. Through nine biblical examples, this article exposes the snares of people-pleasing and insecurity and points us toward the freedom that comes when we stop fearing men and start fearing God.
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Eternity
We live in a world consumed with the here and now, but the early Christians lived with eternity in view. This article explores what happens when our sense of eternity fades—and why the church desperately needs a fresh vision of what lies beyond this life. Like Arthur Stace’s simple message, “ETERNITY,” may we once again be reminded to live for what lasts forever.
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