Many Christian men who have had some exposure to men’s ministry have heard the list of dysfunctional behaviors that men’s ministry leaders often cite: males are more likely than females to be involved in gangs, commit violent crimes, abandon their households, spend time in prison, commit mass murder, drop out of school, be addicted to drugs, gambling and pornography, die at a young age, and on and on. We men’s ministry leaders recite these facts because we want to show the need for men’s ministry and the difference Jesus Christ makes in our lives.
But there are two problems with this approach. One is theological and the other is cultural.
The theological problem is that the Bible tells us that men and women are both equally fallen and equally in need of redemption. “All of have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “None is righteous, no not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12).
True, the original man and woman may have participated in different ways in the Fall (1 Timothy 2:14), and as a result the consequences of the Fall are different for men and women (Genesis 3:16-19), but the Bible always describes men and women as equally sinful and equally in need of a savior. I believe our failure to hold this truth that men and women are equally fallen in balance with the obvious reality that men tend to be more socially dysfunctional than women leads to a second problem – a cultural problem.
The cultural problem is that by focusing only on male cultural dysfunction, modern men’s ministry inadvertently encourages female chauvinism: the idea that women are inherently better than men. True, male chauvinism has been, and in some circles still is, a problem in our culture. And it might be asserted that female chauvinism simply balances the scales. But neither male nor female chauvinism are legitimate options because both devalue the opposite sex.
The real solution is the biblical solution: men and women are equally created in the image of God, have equal standing before God, are equally fallen and sinful, are equally in need of salvation, are equally saved through faith in Jesus Christ, and are equal members of Christ’s body. But within this framework, men and women experience their fallenness in different ways. This balanced perspective on the sexes provides a path forward in addressing our current predicament without denigrating either sex.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
For the past sixteen years New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry
Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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