How The Church Can Reach Men

What's the church missing when it comes to connecting with men?

I think that the average leader in the American church is like a fish in water. Fish don't even think about water. They're just in it. It is what it is. And I don't think we recognize how oriented our churches are to women.

It's just the water that we swim in and the way it's been forever, and we're just not thinking things through in a different and fresh way. these things are messed up. A lot of people been saying a lot of these things for a long, long time. But in Islam, the most ardent adherents of Islam are men. In American Christianity, the most ardent followers of our churches are women.

That there's certainly good men who are early in their lives. There are some, but we all know that the bulk of the ministry and everything is getting done by women. We had recently a women camp experience, but just last weekend our women were out having women can't we women can't. Man camp, couples camp, vet camp, father son camp, daughter durable camp.

All kind of all kind of different camps. And like our volunteer ranks were decimated. They were utterly decimated. Yeah. Because and then and in order to amount of our volunteers are women. Yeah. That's that's where we are as churches and it and you see it in our music, you know, the, the nice love songs that we have that guys scratch their heads about.

Like, I like the song. What a beautiful name. It is the name of Jesus Christ, my Lord. What a beautiful name it is. I heard that, and I like that song, by the way. I worship the song like a lot, but I. I don't want anyone calling Brian a beautiful name that just want. And we're calling his name a beautiful name.

Did the male disciples ever go to Jesus, say, boy, Jesus, like I tell you, your name is just beautiful. I wish they would have led with what a powerful name which is also in that song. What a wonderful name. But that's the lead song at lead. It's just something that that guys disconnect. We don't we don't want to sing songs about gazing into your face.

The disciples never song sang songs to Jesus. I want to gaze in your face. I want to touch your face. I know that's that. That's that speaks to women. It doesn't speak to men. Our songs tend to not speak to men are events are people sitting in a living room with a book on their lap? Or so? Our small groups are come to the living room instead of book on our lap and talk concepts.

You and I might be okay with that, rusty, because we read way more than the average male does, but the average male doesn't read books, and it was sit in a freaking circle with a book in their lap and talk about it. They want to do something, and out of something they're doing, maybe something will pop out of that.

So there's just a lot of things that we're not doing to speak the language of men that, that we that we need to do our, our most, without question, the best thing we've done a crossroads for a long time is we we just recently broke a wild horse on stage. Did you see about that one or take it one up?

No. Yeah. So, so I met a buddy of mine. The buddy of mine, Todd Pierce. You you really find that funny? Yeah, I do, I just this one, I think. I can't hear anything new. Okay, let's do that. Yeah. So, Todd Pierce, Todd Pierce, he's in, he's in Idaho. He's got this ministry goes to prison stuff, and he breaks a wild horse, and he's got spiritual things about it.

?And as I was hearing what he said, I said, I'd like to have a cup of crossroads and do that. And he said, churches always say that, but no one ever does. And I said, well, we will. And I said, all right. But I'm telling you, churches say they want to do it, but as soon as they look into the legality of it, into this and that, they're just the they don't do it.

So if you do, if you actually follow through, you'll be the first, like, we will follow through. That's all you needed to hear. That's all I need you. So I came back, I told all of our financial folks, our community pastor. They said, look, this weekend is happening. It's going to happen. I don't know if you want to tell insurance or not if you're gonna tell the insurance carrier and they shut us down there, we're just going to break the law.

We're going to do it so you can figure out whether they're going to auto insurance or not. But we're going to do this. So we had three service on a Sunday. They had brought a horse corral. And we had to find three different wild horses for each service. And Todd comes in and there's sawdust on the floor and a band plays along with it, and he can break a wild horse in under 60 minutes.

Here's the thing. What is so stunning about this broken horses are healthier than wild horses. They live longer than wild horses, and they're stronger than wild horses. One guy on the back of a broken horse can outrun and corral an entire herd of wild horses, because when it's been broken by a powerful human being, his capacity increases. That's what it's like with God in us.

When we get broken by God, our capacity increases, our strength increases. And what Todd does when he brings people these horses in all these horses have pain and they have difficulty, and he tries to find where that pain is, where they were hit, where they've been club. Maybe where they were branded multiple times or something like that. And when he finds that pain area, that's what he presses into, because that's the thing that if he can get the horse to trust him with that pain, that's the thing that's going to unlock it.

That was like one of our best attended services weekends ever. And people just boo whoo and all over the place. I did that in large part because that was going to be a straw man move. Yeah. Now, women love that as well. In fact, we're going to do it again next year that we did. On Father's Day.

I realized Father's Day. It's not the right time. for a couple reasons. One is if I did Father's Day again, the women start to feel slighted. They go, well, if you don't care for the women, you don't care that we do care for women. We just thought Father's Day be a cool thing. We could do a mother's day.

Once the women know that we are as equal equally for mothers as we are for fathers. secondly, Mother's Day comes sooner. I want to do this again because I think I go really big. And thirdly, mom could tell her husband, I want you to come to church with me this weekend. Yeah, well, Father's Day, you get to do whatever the heck he wants to do.

Yeah, but mom says, I want you to come to church, man. You never come to church. We got something for him. So, Great idea. That's kind of one of those aggressive things like, yeah, what are we going to do that's beyond standard church? Because guess what, rusty, if you want standard church and by standard church, I mean great music and great preaching.

We know we need that. But that's just the table stakes that just gets you into the game. Yeah, but we've got to be doing things that are churches that are outside the norm in order to stoke the imaginations of men. That's fantastic. Oh, I got to get Todd Pierce's number. yeah. The craziest thing we ever did with an animals.

We had a lion outside for kids to see. Hilarious. Brian. Because, I mean, these these are working actors out here in LA. So, you know, the lion rolls in and, in a motor coach, you know, air conditioned cage. They put him out in this pin. And all I'm thinking is if that thing gets loose, I'm on CNN, you know?

Yeah. Right. And all these kids of surrounded the cage to see the lion. And what's a cat do when he gets into a new territory? He just walks around and sprays everybody. Hey, that. That's good. It was awesome. That's great. Yeah. John Acuff, you know, he had the book stuff Christians like. Oh, yeah. Sure. Oh, so he says, what a Christian love live animals.

They do love it. There's nothing that's going to drive the church down the street out of business faster than you having a live camel. You do that. Your church is growing.