Thursday, March 04, 2010
blokes in church? growing petrol heads and art lovers
A really thoughtful post on blokes and church here, from Dr Richard Beck here. The whole piece is fascinating, using Mark Driscoll’s views on masculinity as a starting point for the suggestion that we have an educated/uneducated split that creates deep fissures in our church communities.
The educated [men] teach, preach, and have the public leadership roles. The uneducated [men] are marginalized. Worse, if you are an uneducated male, you are force-fed those feminine metaphors. Educated males, being chickified, don’t mind or even notice the feminine metaphors. But Joe Six Pack notices the metaphors. All this creates a disjoint in the church. Two groups of males who find each other alien and weird.
Which is further clarified here.
people tend to focus on four big issues when it comes to church life: Gender, socioeconomic status, race, and sexual orientation. But I think one of the most pernicious fissures is the education issue. This problem is particularly acute in Christian churches as Christianity has been, from its earliest days, unapologeticly cerebral and intellectual.
He names something that is pretty real and was certainly my experience at Opawa, the challenge to form men spiritually, whether petrol head or art lover. And why I found the Opawa men’s camp last year so moving, the way that the repeated use of lecto divina (of which this is an outcome), inviting men to use their diverse hobbies, their relationships and life experience, their “caves”, as ways into sharing faith and life. People were asked to bring something from their shed, which equalised and normalised everyone, from petrol head to art lover. And that became the starting point “going to your favorite spot in your “shed”” for engaging the Biblical text. Which is such a long way from cerebral and intellectual.
The most helpful book I’ve found in framing this for me is Phil Culbertson’s New Adam: The Future of Male Spirituality
- Abraham struggling to connect with his son from his first “marriage”;
- David, and whether can we let him enjoy a deep male friendship with Jonathan without it becoming homosexualised in innuendo;
- David who hides behind his work desk when his family comes crashing in
The author (and friend), Phil Culbertson, comes back to Jesus, who he explores from the angle of a person who enjoys deep male friendships, with working class fishermen and with budding intellectuals and poets (like John).
“Jesus appears to have modeled a style of male-male friendship that was committed, intimate, honest, open and even dependent … But there is no record that Jesus and his male followers did “men’s things” together. They did not go hunting together … nor did they share off-color jokes. They did not compete with each other … Christians can recognize the new Adam in Jesus insofar as he was willing to cherish his own human nature, in all its vulnerability, and yet to turn his face bravely toward an unknown future in which he and the world that he knew would be very different.” (105, 106).
It’s such a missionary challenge and we desperately need some working-class missional churches working in and around these issues.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
lectio lenten offerings: men and the Easter story
When you leave a church, you always wonder what will emerge, especially in the interim space while the search for new leaders takes shape.
So a great delight to get an email last nite from friends at Opawa Baptist, with news of a new initiative, a group for men, using lectio divino, with a particular focus on men and the Easter story. A sort of baptist approach to Lent!
The three guys organising it all have their own story: one baptised the last Sunday I was at Opawa, one blossoming in his creative writing, abilities, another recent to Opawa. So great to see some men coming together to simply making space to sit around the Bible. Classy visuals, which include some personally crafted opening and closing prayers.
Great stuff. Wish I was there!
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