Mishandling Twenty-something Men in the Church

Challies.com linked to a very brief article that is worth your time:

Let me tempt you with just a snippet:

“Most churches have no idea what to do with spiritually mature men in their 20s, so they wrongly direct them to seminary or to a ministry with kids, hoping these guys will rub off on the youth and keep them coming to church and out of trouble. The consequences of this mishandling have been dire …

I am pained, for example, by the number of guys directed to seminary or formal ministry who never should have been because church communities were confused about what is normal for men in the church …

This trend actually reveals the sad state of an American evangelical gynocentric church: Spiritually interested young men are the exception rather than the expectation. These men tend to stand out because their twentysomething men peers are generally absent in most churches and many of the others present are going through religious motions, attending because of parental legalism, or because of girlfriend or wife pressure …

Whatever the reason, it would be great to see local churches so healthy and full of twentysomethings that the presence of spiritually vibrant twentysomething men would be so normal that we would have better criteria for sending men into ministry beyond being ‘on fire for Christ’ and having a desire to teach and serve. That should be simply normal for any man following Jesus.“