The Toxic Nature of Evangelical Masculinity

Many years ago, back when I was an evangelical pastor in the Portland, OR area in the United States, we used to attend a “Great Commission” conference every year at a large church near Salem, OR. What I recall about that conference the most was how the pastor shared insights of how he had successfully built such a large church, even though it was located in the midst of a fairly small, rural town. The church had over 1,000 people attending — where did they all come from? What mysterious church growth formula accounted for these incredible numbers?

As pastors all desperate to grow our churches numerically, we hung on his every word. Clearly, the man was a success, and was willing to let us in on what had worked for him. As pastors, our hope was to take his secrets for successful church growth back to our home churches and institute them there — and experience huge numbers, just like he had.

If you want to grow your churches, the pastor advised us, this was his top tip: get the men involved. Too many churches, he maintained, had a predominance of women in attendance. He would hastily add that this was not a bad thing, of course, but one of the major crises facing American churches today was a dearth of men — not just in terms of general church attendance, but especially in the paucity of key leadership positions.