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Originally posted by LutheranChik:

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conjures up the image in my mind that worship of God is reduced to putting on a show for an audience, catering for the audience's tastes and personal preferences.

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I think you've hit on something here. I think that, unlike in churches with a sacramental understanding of worship, other churches tend to see church as an evangelistic tool.

Historically, becoming fully integregrated into the life of a faith community happened after someone was drawn into faith - hence the dismissal of catechumens before the Eucharistic part of the service, etc. I'm not saying that that's a particularly desirable thing to return to, but I am pointing out that,in the beginning, worship services were for worship by the Christian community and not for hooking in converts. The conversion process was assumed to be happening through Christians' interactions with others throughout the rest of the week , and the non-Christian community's observance of Christians' behavior (the "Look at how they love one another!" -- which really did seem to make a mark in pagan antiquity).

I would argue that that is the model that we should follow -- not using worship as a sales pitch to the outside.

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Incidentally, my church still dismisses the catechumens, and it isn't just a token gesture. We are actually expected to leave.

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Originnaly posted by Nightlamp:
A church I used to go to had a group that catered for people that liked dressing up and getting ritual correct they were called servers. Another church I want to had bell ringers and they had a wild social life. I went to a group, when I was into that kind of thing, that said the used the Rosary an silence for an hour and then went to the pub. Many churches have choirs who consist of people who like singing.

None of these seem like particularly protestant activities to me.

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Originally posted by PhilA:

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
I'm trying to avoid jumping to the conclusion that that is the mentality behind the concerns raised here, but I've asked and nobody has attempted to explain otherwise. Now PhilA's post very much conjures up the image in my mind that worship of God is reduced to putting on a show for an audience, catering for the audience's tastes and personal preferences.

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Its based on 1 Corinthians 20:23 for a start, but also on plain common sense.

As it says in the OP, this is about 'attracting men'. Not just how the services are run on a regular basis. If some people on the thread are talking about how to run weekly services, and some are talking about outreach, and others that don't differentiate between the two, then we will never get close to talking to each other, let alone learning anything from what each other is saying.

As I said in my post you quoted it is not about changing the message for different groups of people, but it is about putting the message across in a way that is best understood by those listening to it so they can respond knowing what it is they are responding to.

I don't see thins as individualism at all. I see it as plain common sense.

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Originally posted by Matrix:
Sitting with a friend drinking coffee, my heart sank as I heard another variation on what had become a familiar complaint; “Don’t get me wrong, I love Jesus, it’s just the church I can’t stand. It’s not a place that I belong.”

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Originally posted by Freddy:
Young women are supposedly an easier sell.

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Originally posted by PhilA:
a nice pink church with lots of candles and flowers with a 'Jesus wants to be your boyfriend' message

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AAAGGGH!!! Barbie's Dream Church!

No, never encountered that at all, myself. Well, yes I have, but not any church, more the glurge department of the local religious bookshop.

I have to ask one possibly relevant question --

How do we know that the uneven numbers of men/women at church have to do with the church not attracting enough men? What if it's more a matter of the church attracting too many women for the wrong reasons?

This is just a hypothesis, but it occurs to me that it's a tenable one. The assumption that what is needed most is to fill the most pews is perhaps false. Maybe there are indeed men (and women) who are called to be Christians and attend church who aren't doing so, but why might it not be women (and men) who are going to church for some cultural, non-religious reason? Say someone who otherwise might not bother with prayer and faith but loves being on committees and so on? In that case then making more groups to attract men for cultural reasons would be just the wrong thing to do. It might even be better if fewer people of either gender attended church, and reached out to the people most in need, rather than some elements of churchy culture which might really be the main factor at work.

And while we don't want to put a stumbling-block in anyone's way, in some ways Jesus Himself is a stumbling-block for people, and if His being loving and kind (there's a whole thread on God and gender here in Purg which I'm kind of fatigued by right now, myself, but going on) is considered too "feminine" then, well, maybe that's just something for those "macho" guys to get over -- or redefine their understanding of what manliness means -- as part of their Christian journey.

David

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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity

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Originally posted by ChastMastr:
So perhaps that might be a factor, but again not one connected to finding ways of getting men to join church, unless one proposes disenfranchising men from political and economic power in the secular world so church becomes more attractive.

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Hmmmm.....

Just kidding.

Hey, is this common? I just realised, yes, I know I've only been an Episcopalian for a whole three years, but I've seen three seperate parishes and four vestrys-- and in three of the four there was a female Senior Warden and a male Junior Warden.

Do I just pick the wierd parishes, or what?

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Looking for a simple solution to all life's problems? We are proud to present obstinate denial. Accept no substitute. Accept nothing.
--Night Vale Radio Twitter Account

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:

I'll be honest. My suspicion is that the focus is too heavily on the individual. I know that this is one of the main problems that I have with the way theology is worked in in many protestant traditions (and it is actually how the protestant tradition came about in the first place), but I didn't want to jump to the conclusion that this sort of individualism was what was causing this unease of certain groups in church without discussing it first.

Fr Alex, on another thread, noted the trend he has noticed of what he called the church of I - I want, &c.

I'm trying to avoid jumping to the conclusion that that is the mentality behind the concerns raised here, but I've asked and nobody has attempted to explain otherwise. Now PhilA's post very much conjures up the image in my mind that worship of God is reduced to putting on a show for an audience, catering for the audience's tastes and personal preferences.

If I'm wrong, then I apologise, but someone please tell me what the actual understanding of worship is from a protestant perspective, so that people like LutheranChik and me can understand why "masculine", "feminine", "old", "young", &c. preferences are so much depended on to make people feel that going and taking part in it is worthwhile.

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:


Regarding the servers and Rosary group, these examples don't work. I'm guessing that they weren't a bunch of people, all from one particular grouping,

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:

who had come to the church because their grouping was targetted.

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:

At my church, we aren't a large community. Our Sunday attendance can vary between 8 and 30, although there are a few other people associated with the parish. We have Russians, Greeks and Ukrainians. Now as Orthodox churches are hardly to be found on every street corner, I can hardly use that as evidence in the point I'm making.

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Originally posted by Nightlamp:
Of course they were, they were people who liked a particular kind of ritual and not unlike a mens group that liked curries or the mothers Union.

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Originally posted by Nightlamp:

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
Regarding the servers and Rosary group, these examples don't work. I'm guessing that they weren't a bunch of people, all from one particular grouping,

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Of course they were, they were people who liked a particular kind of ritual and not unlike a mens group that liked curries or the mothers Union.

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It seems to me that in your mind that you have good catholic kind of groups and bad groups and I can see no difference.

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
who had come to the church because their grouping was targetted.

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I thought 'Father' asked us to become servers.

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
At my church, we aren't a large community. Our Sunday attendance can vary between 8 and 30, although there are a few other people associated with the parish. We have Russians, Greeks and Ukrainians. Now as Orthodox churches are hardly to be found on every street corner, I can hardly use that as evidence in the point I'm making.

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It is evidence of small church dynamics I have seen it in a small pentecostal church on an estate.

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Worship is for God. It may be offered communally, or individually, but it is essentially, a sacrifice of praise, not only with our lips but with our lives. It also contains the notions of encounter and invocation. Encounter in the sense expressed in Psalm 100 (metricised for effect)

"O enter then his gates with praise
Approach with joy his courts unto"

Invocation in the sense that God inhabits the praises of his people. A classical illustrative scripture would be 2 Chron 5 v 13-14.

This is the sense in which I understand worship as a sacrament (and it may not be precisely the same as LutheranChik's understanding). If worship is evangelistic, it is so incidentally. If worship degenerates into performance or entertainment it is at best a delusion and at worst a blasphemy.

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If worship is evangelistic, it is so incidentally.

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A classic modern formation in the renewal movement is to say that worship is for an audience of One (that is the proskuneo understanding) and the correct posture is "face down". I think this meaning of worship has been rediscovered in the protestant renewal movement, but has often been distorted as well.

Within this understanding, the notions of catering for tastes, or gender distinctions, or musical preferences, get put into a proper perspective. The consumer approach to worship is not necessarily protestant, or catholic, or orthodox. It is the prevailing spirit of the age and it therefore affects the way we are together. Viewed correctly, worship is actually the complete opposite of self-satisfaction.

I do not claim this to be the prevailing protestant view. It is my best understanding, as a protestant, of a good view of worship.

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Originally posted by Jonathan the Free:
I am sure it often degenerates into selfishness but that is because the individuals are selfish rather than the church promoting it.

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The things emphasised in Christianity are all things that he said Islam considers a bit effeminate - serving, letting your enemy slap you back etc.

Mohammed on the other hand (in this guy's description) was a proper manly type of chap who had wives, permitted holy war and the like, unlike Jesus who ended up with the ultimate disgrace of being crucified

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There was a very interesting article in there by a Muslim guy explaining why he considers Islam superior and more appealing religion to Christianity. His main reason is that he considers Islam to be a more manly and virile religion. The things emphasised in Christianity are all things that he said Islam considers a bit effeminate - serving, letting your enemy slap you back etc.

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I guess our loss is their gain, then.

Maybe he can convert some of the whining Protestant he-men who can't bear "peace, love and understanding" either. Line forms on the right. 'Bye!

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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com

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Originally posted by RuthW:
What is any of that stunning display of cultural bigotry supposed to prove, duchess?

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:
This is, of course, an exaggeration and many a priest will be able to sensitively perform the liturgy so as not to create this image. However, this is what comes across to me a lot of the time, and it becomes all the more apparent when one regularly worships in a largely eastward-facing context and then goes back to westward-facing and notices the difference in emphasis throughout. I can't help but feel that it's very much a part of the same "us" mentality, existing in Catholic circles perhaps as much as elsewhere.

PhilA earlier made me realise the significant difference between the appropriateness of tailoring evangelism to individuals' needs and the inappropriateness of tailoring worship to individuals' wants, and we need to find a right balance, especially in places where a sermon is customarily used as a break from worship time.

I really do think it's a much bigger issue than what men and women prefer in church.

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BtF and Barnabas62,

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[Nino points a gun at Chiki]
Nino: Now... tell me. Who started the war?
Chiki: [long pause] We did.
~No Man's Land

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Originally posted by duchess:
What I have seen of Islam is for more demeaning to women than anything I have seen from other religions and I find it a macho religion.

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Originally posted by RuthW:

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Originally posted by duchess:
What I have seen of Islam is for more demeaning to women than anything I have seen from other religions and I find it a macho religion.

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And how much of what you saw can you be sure stemmed from religion and how much from culture?

This is not altogether irrelevant to the main thrust of the thread, either, as I continue to think that what we're talking about are cultural things, not religious or spiritual things.

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:

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It seems to me that in your mind that you have good catholic kind of groups and bad groups and I can see no difference.

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I'm sorry, Nightlamp, but I'm not sure I see what you're trying to say here.

I'm drawing a distinction between what we're talking about on this thread, which is tailoring church to particular people's (specifically, men's) tastes, and some of the situations you cited, which were not examples of this, but were rather examples of people who wwre already in the church just exercising their ministries and spirituality.

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Originally posted by Nightlamp:

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:

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It seems to me that in your mind that you have good catholic kind of groups and bad groups and I can see no difference.

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I'm sorry, Nightlamp, but I'm not sure I see what you're trying to say here.

I'm drawing a distinction between what we're talking about on this thread, which is tailoring church to particular people's (specifically, men's) tastes, and some of the situations you cited, which were not examples of this, but were rather examples of people who wwre already in the church just exercising their ministries and spirituality.

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Sorry if it is unclear you seem to be saying that,
Good groups are; Servers (people who like ritual) choirs (people who like to sing) Mothers unions and a Rosary group and Bell ringers.

Bad groups are for instance, men's discussion groups, women’s prayer breakfasts, support group for the depressed.

I struggle to see any difference between them for they all providing something for sub-groups within the church and each one is tailored to differing people's interests. The only conclusion is that you feel the church should not provide for certain sub-groups which seems a little weird.

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Originally posted by ken:

And I still think the idea that there are such things as "masculine" or "feminine" spirituality is <words I get told off for swriting in this forum>

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Originally posted by Alogon:
The structure of a scout troop descends from the antiphony between cantoris and decani.

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I'm confused here.

Scout troops didn't start in church - they were secular educational organisations set up by Baden Powell and his mates.

Their structure and organisation was based on military ideas mixed with some Kipling. With some hangover from the Boy's Brigade - a specifically Christian and evangelical organisation that came out of the Scottish Presbyterians and was itself at least party inspired by the Salvation Army. The Scouts were founded to take that sort of boy's club away from the church and make it more nationalistic and less reglious.

Now in those days lower-middle-class English life had a strong Anglican veneer, and education especially was very associated with the church, so they soon got involved in their local churches. And some of the early boy scouts would also have been choirboys. But thats not where it came from.

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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Originally posted by Caleb Woodbridge:

I think the answer is simply to seek to live and preach Gospel in all its fulness and glory, not chasing after different demographic segments.

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Originally posted by Br. Scapular:
(Uh oh, it’s only my second post; of your charity don’t drive the nails in too hard.)

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No nails here - I thought that was a marvellous summary of some of the issues facing 'traditional' (for want of a better word) men in the Church.

I'm not so sure about your "Troubadors" solution though...

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Hail Gallaxhar

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Originally posted by Br. Scapular:


It threatens our egos to “deny ourselves,” to be in the position of worshipper, creature, sinner, etc. Women and men are in the same boat here. Traditionally, however, women have more often been put in the position of the one who must defer to the man as head of the household, so for men, bless their little hearts, it’s seen as doubly difficult to be in second place (even to God) as this is somehow not a masculine or macho role. The issue of same-sex relationships and of gays in the church has only made this more difficult for the traditional male ego, which now must take a kind of double draught of “not only might it be woman-like to submit to God, it might even be gay-like” (seeing something it considers effeminate and blending that with presumed gayness).

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Originally posted by Nightlamp:

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Originally posted by Back-to-Front:

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It seems to me that in your mind that you have good catholic kind of groups and bad groups and I can see no difference.

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I'm sorry, Nightlamp, but I'm not sure I see what you're trying to say here.

I'm drawing a distinction between what we're talking about on this thread, which is tailoring church to particular people's (specifically, men's) tastes, and some of the situations you cited, which were not examples of this, but were rather examples of people who wwre already in the church just exercising their ministries and spirituality.

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Sorry if it is unclear you seem to be saying that,
Good groups are; Servers (people who like ritual) choirs (people who like to sing) Mothers unions and a Rosary group and Bell ringers.

Bad groups are for instance, men's discussion groups, women?s prayer breakfasts, support group for the depressed.

I struggle to see any difference between them for they all providing something for sub-groups within the church and each one is tailored to differing people's interests. The only conclusion is that you feel the church should not provide for certain sub-groups which seems a little weird.

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Sun-reading, football-obsessed, 15 pints-of-lager and 3 shags of a Friday/Saturday nighters

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