While my brain is on the idea of dreams, of broken dreams, of pursuing dreams, I wander to a major observation.
We often wonder: Where are all the men? I believe women are asking this question, a song with the words “Where have all the cowboys gone…” floats through my mind. (I am not sure this is even a real song, honestly, or just something I made up. I also have the image in my mind of a woman with hairy armpits singing it at some Woodstock type event, maybe ‘Lilith Fair’?. I want to answer the question that she is scaring them away, but that would not be true. The men have been hiding since Adam.)
On this World Race, the ratio of women to men is at least 3 to 1.
I remember my dad reading a book, titled, I believe, “Why Men Hate Church”. I could have wrote that book, except it would have been 3 volumes long.
We wonder, how do we attract more men to this amazing and life changing adventure? I have a theory that we should not pursue church boys, because if men have not left the pew by the time they are 21, they sure as heck are not going to leave the breast of mother church and her affirmation, validation, religion,safety and security for a life of danger, risk, adventure, challenge, relationship…to join the world race. Men leaving the work of effecting eternity to women. Beautiful Daughters of Zion, Xena Princesses, taking the risk, taking the challenge, because, honestly, that is what women want.
I hear men complain that women don’t go for the nice guy. I see men try to be nice. I hear songs like the Dixie Chicks singing “Cowboy Take Me Away”, and watch men hide in cubicles and careers. I see men in unhappy marriages, hen pecked by disgruntled wives while while the man tries so valiantly to please her. We believe a woman wants safety and security, but that does not seem to work very well, with my observation.
As men develop, I believe, we internalize what a feminized society has to offer. We believe the lies. We hunger for power and success. Stability and security, because we believe this will get us laid. Or, if that term is offensive, my observation that so many 20 something men are attending college and career small groups because they are lonely or depressed and figure some Godly woman will have the answers to their insecurities. Maybe some woman will fill the void that mommy left long ago. Maybe some perfect woman is looking to get herself married to a man with no testicles.
So, many of us wonder why more men do not apply to ‘missions’. I just assume it is our experience with the church that causes us to decide we dont want to propagate this around the world. I remember sitting in sunday school and getting told christians are supposed to ‘evangelize’ and we should invite our friends. But I was not going to invite my friends to someplace I did not want to be. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
Our leaders are true men with fully functioning organs which make them men. These leaders are not feminized priests or hypocrites in frocks. How do we communicate this?
Chris Telfer, who is one of my teammates here who gave me the following idea, which I will build on. He was asking God, how do we reach out to the men? He believes the answer is that men are satisfied with the spiritual food they are eating. We thought of this spiritual food as the filler, the weird flour we hand out to the malnourished to keep them barely alive for a few more days. That men in the United States have no idea we are the spiritual equivalent of these skinny kids with big bellys. We need to point out that life back home is not actually satisfying. I would say we need to point out that the food we eat spiritually, like the food we eat physically is full of high fructose corn syrup, chemicals, trans-fatty acids, carcinogens. We need to communicate that the food we are eating is filling our bellies and killing us slowly. Chris and I thought that might be the first step.
Once a man realizes, as Thoreau did, that he is not satisfied with his current lifestyle, what is the next step? Thoreau went out to Walden (which was maybe 2 miles from my work) to ‘live deliberately’. He realized life the way it was taught to him was killing him. The issue is, Thoreau, as far as I understand never found the true bread of life. He seems to believe, and I agree, that there is no true altruism. He pointed out the selfish motivations, the hypocrisy, of philanthropy, and never, to my knowledge, taking that next step in life of pursuing a selfless dream. (which makes me wonder if there is such thing as a selfishly motivated selfless ambition, but I guess the people being fed and clothed probably don’t care about a person’s deeper drives).
So I don’t really have an answer to these thoughts, what does it take to encourage more men to take a leap of faith, to leave the boat as Peter did. To risk getting wet, to risk failure, for the slight chance that God is real, and for a short time in life, actually walk on water?
My wife, who is much better with people, who is sensitive to others, told me I might need to put a little disclaimer on this. I do believe people are called to be ‘market place apostles’. That God calls his people to all walks of life, that God does not call all people to do this, what we are doing. I just have a difficult time believing that 3 or 4 times as many women are called to this lifestyle than men, especially when all 12 of Jesus’s disciples as listed in the gospels were men. (of course I know Jesus had many female disciples and supporters)
