With Four in Five Members Female, Churches Want to Again Reach Men
23rd December 2012
Rev. Nancy Talbot feels like one of the more blessed female clergy. When the North Vancouver minister looks out on the pews on any given Sunday, she feels fortunate her small congregation is slowly growing and that at least men make up roughly three in 10 of those at worship.
Metrosexuals all, I have no doubt.
The gender imbalance could be far worse. The minister at Mount Seymour United Church is painfully aware men have been quietly, but in huge numbers, streaming away from many of North America’s Christian churches.
“I don’t think many of us have answers to why it’s happening,” says Talbot, who has led Mount Seymour United for eight years while raising two boys in a same-sex relationship with her partner, Brenda.
I am not making this up.
December 23rd, 2012 at 18:25
Honestly I’ve found the gender balance at a church to be a REMARKABLY accurate gauge of its orthodoxy.
If women make up significantly more than 50% of the church, and that isn’t because:
A) The church has a ton of older widows, whose husbands aren’t there because, well, they’re in the cemetary behind said church
B) The church has a ton of women whose husbands are fighting in a war, and aren’t there because, well, they’ve been drafted
then they’re probably being led by heretics. The dead giveaways are lots of families minus husband. Men go where they’re wanted and stay where they’re well treated. Churches that talk exclusively about male responsibilities and female rights deserve what they get, in this world AND the next.
December 25th, 2012 at 07:00
My local churches can reach me by (1) stopping support of all communist causes (0% chance), (2) abandoning ugly and hate-filled modernity (0% chance), (3) believing and acting on the belief that there is more to life than the Bible (0% chance), (4) abandoning modern interpretations of Christianity (pacifism != Christianity; food faddism != Christianity, etc.)(0% chance).
For example, were the Pope to declare a new Crusade to liberate the Holy Land and North Africa from its Moslem conquerers, I would convert to Roman Catholicism despite its other errors.
December 26th, 2012 at 19:32
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven….