This last week, Trailhead Church in Edwardville had our first Fight Club big group meeting. We talked about why it is vital that we fight with each other for the right things. So, I am going to post the notes from that meeting here in case you were not able to join us. Read this and fight with us. (Special thanks to Darrin Patrick for writing his great book Church Planter and to John Bryson for posting his fight club material online!)
The Crisis of Manhood
Welcome – and good morning
Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. (1 Corinthians 16:13)
Trailhead’s vision is to create a culture that encourages manhood, not to start another men’s program. We don't need – one more thing to do.
We need a men’s culture – where men are expected to be men – where we have high standards for ourselves and for each other.
This is going to be a huge challenge because we are facing a crisis of manhood in our culture. This is not an overstatement – I am not sensationalizing this: we have a crisis of manhood.
Today – I want to outline the challenge in front of us – to give us a context for the crisis. Most guys only have a vague idea of what manhood is. And I think most guys secretly still question their own metal.
Am I a man? Do I have what it takes? If I stood in the company of real men, would be I accepted as a man?
Darrin Patrick calls this new breed of men, BANS – boy men – 20 and 30 somethings that have extend adolescence indefinitely. Modern culture not only tolerates it – it accepts it and even endorses it as positive.
The boy man sees his job as a necessary evil to continue his play – his true vocation is being a boy. ½ American males 18-34 play video games 3 hours a day (more than their younger male counterparts!). That is 21 hours a week – 44 hours a month – over 1100 hours a year. That's a part time job – a full week’s work of productivity a month – spent on what? Killing virtual aliens? Accumulating virtual achievements?
That is a tremendous amount of wasted productivity. Think about this: John Calvin started studying theology seriously when he was 14; he was 23 when his first commentary was published and 27 when the Institutes was published.
What if he lived today?
In addition to wasting time, BANS are screwed up sexually – they have the sexual drive of men but the commitment level of boys. The only thing BANS spend their money on as freely as video games is pornography. Instead of working hard to earn the respect of respectable women, BANS pretend to be men with their computers on and their pants off.
The average age of marriage is later than its ever been and more people are living together instead of getting married.
Men – corrupted by the fusion of porn and violence in our culture have become more abusive of women. One out of three women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime.
Think about that: 1 out of 3 of our daughters will be sexually assaulted.
America has the highest rape rate of countries that publish such stats – 4x greater than Germany / 13x higher than England / 20x greater than Japan
BAN's delayed commitment to marriage and career enable him to stayed focused exactly where he wants to look: on himself. He is a boy living a masturbatory life – its all about self – self-pleasure – self-fulfillment – self-advancement.
As a result, these guys are confused, angry, bored, and restless.
So, how did we get here?
Historically, there has been a progression that has undermined a healthy culture of father-son relationships. in the African-American culture, it started with slavery. Men were targeted for kidnap and removal from family – created a horrific culture of fatherlessness.
It hit the rest of the country with the industrial revolution. Before that men worked at home – they labored with their family to survive and thrive. Boys were apprenticed by their fathers and there was no such thing as a teen ager. You were either a boy or a man.
Boys became men who helped support their families and then stepped out to start their own. The Industrial revolution took men out of the homes – away from the farms – away from their families. Raising children became women’s work – men worked and came home and checked out in front of the TV.
Boys lives became dominated by women – women raised them, women taught them, women shaped their manhood. But it takes a man to teach a man how to be a man – and culturally we abandoned all rights of manhood. Think about it: We are one of few cultures that do not have a designated cultural process by which a boy becomes a man
So boys made their own rites of passage: first sexual conquest – or repeated sexual conquest; First dollar earned – never enough; First fight – then another and another.
Others – just felt left behind, and learned to avoid things that made them feel less than masculine. They became passive and lived in fear.
Then came the influence of feminism, because the fight went from equality to sameness. Culturally, there was a commitment to blur of the gender lines. And men already immersed in a woman’s world were subtly told that they should be androgynous in their identity.
There were numerous other influences – WW1 and WW2 and introduction of modern warfare – where men were no longer fighting at home with neighbors for protection of family and land. Instead they were shipped overseas to fight with men they did not know for ideas of freedom and liberty. I am not undermining my respect for our soldiers - just saying that war moved from an act of community to another isolated act that, in the end, actually separated them from community.
In addition, increased technological advances have taken the challenge out of survival. It became work to find work. So there was a cultural shift toward the accumulation of luxuries instead of survival.
This, eventually, led to culture of extended adolescence. Men now dominate things that don’t matter but have become useless in things that do.
This is why we started fight clubs
If our church is going to thrive – we need men to be men. And if men are going to be men – they need to be in a company of men who challenge them – encourage them. They men to call them on passivity. They men to encourage them to be bold – to dream – to fight the right fights.
Guys – we as a church community are fighting to make our sisters and wives strong. But most churches are filled with assertive women who drag along their men and tell them to sit still, be quiet, and not to make problems.
Dudes, we need to be men who lead, not follow. Our wives, our sisters, our daughters - need men who will be strong and lead themselves, their families, and their church well.
They need men who are worthy of respect and worthy to be called men of God.
We need men who are in the trenches – fighting for holiness – fighting to be men as God created us to be
So, if you are not in a fight club small group – get in one. Join the online group and find others who want to meet. You don't have to meet face to face - you can connect by phone or Google video chat. But it's too important to stay disconnected.
Our church - our families - our church - can't afford to stand by while our culture wallows in a crisis of real, godly masculinity.
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