Is church youth work failing lads? Article

Originally published in Youthwork Magazine www.youthwork.co.uk when i was a youthworker…

There are many advantages of being in youthwork for a long time, one is that you see young people who you worked with become your friends, but you also see things come and go. Even people and practices that were commonplace when i started as a full-time youthworker are no longer around. For instance on my facebook page is a picture of me and Jimmy Saville (!), Jimmy is a slightly odd legend here in Leeds, but the other day a twenty three year old said “who’s that man with you on that picture” – i was gutted!

So here is an old timer ready to say a controversial statement in an evangelical magazine – ”I think we are letting down the young men we work with by doing too much bible study and worship!”

Let me explain…one of my youthwork heroes is Pip Wilson. He used to run ‘the rolling magazine’ tent at Greenbelt for many years, when i was thirteen ‘the Rolling magazine’ tent was the place to be – it was mad group games that had a healthy sense of competition, snappy two minute talks and famous special guests. By the end of the two hours you were sweaty and tired with a massive smile on your face and if you were lucky you had met simon Mayo! Pip is a legend, but where are the ‘rolling magzine’ style youthwork these days?

As youth-workers I believe we get are partly paid (or volunteer!) to be ourselves, so whatever journey we are on it is bound to spill over into our work. So as I have written four books for men, that has obviously spilled over in to my thinking, and i have started to ask the question that Dave Murrow poses in his book ‘why men hate going to church’ – Is the church / youthwork becoming more feminine?

I wonder whether we have changed some of our youthwork into something it was never meant to be, it has become a quiet group in a house listening to Tim Hughes cds and then doing an hours bible study on the twelve greek words for worship. By the way…asking that question doesn’t make you a male chauvinist or a sexist pig – its just a fundamental question to ask, like ‘what is Church?’

Dave Murrow says about modern worship…
‘Many of today’s most popular praise and worship songs are feminine in nature. They envision God as a lover rather than a leader. A lot of these songs would be considered homo-erotic if sung by a man to another man. What would you say if a man walked up to you and spoke the words of this popular praise song:

I can feel your presence here with me, Suddenly I’m lost within your beauty, Caught up in the wonder of your touch, Here in this moment, I surrender to your love

Men don’t call each other “beautiful.” Nor do they talk about being in love with each other. Yet every Sunday we invite men to express their love to a male God using language no man would dare say to another. Even at Christian men’s events the praise music is often feminine in nature.’

Dave would also say we are setting our young men up to fail. Lads don’t read as well as girls (they are usually two years behind) and because of the testosterone racing through their veins they don’t sit still very well, but what do we often do – tell them to open a big book, read out loud and sit quietly ‘waiting on God’.

My friend Dave is a child Psychologist he said ‘we must keep the lads in our youthwork active, mad games are great, especially for young to mid-teens.’

All i am saying is lets get some balance.

If our youthwork is cerebral in nature then let’s have mad outdoor competitive times as well. If we always allow girls to win, we will lose our lads. Dave Murrow says that ‘women do masculine but men don’t do feminine’ So if we make our youthwork more male-friendly it is not off putting to the girls we work with.

Also where are the rights of passage in our youthwork?

Many other cultures have them, but we have defaulted the rights of passage in the UK to having your first drink, fight or sexual experience. I spoke to my friend Luke yesterday, a youth worker in Leeds and he is going to do a rights of passage residential next year, setting outdoor challenges for the lads, with the chance that they will fail! We don’t talk about failure very often do we?

‘What if we stopped begging young men to be saved and started challenging them to follow Jesus Christ?’ and why can we openly question everything in the church except ‘why do we think worship is singing songs?’

We invite your response!

Lee Jackson is the co-author of the mens book ‘Cut to the Chase’ see www.leeandbaz.com

Further reading:
‘why men hate going to church’ book and dvd by David Murrow www.churchformen.com
‘boys becoming men’ Lowell Sheppard http://www.lowellsheppard.com/boys.htm