Ok let me try to make some conclusions about the guys and church thing, though really this is a problem that is not solved in my mind.

In order to determine why young men are not coming to church I think we need to compare church with the things that young men are attracted to.  What do men like to invest their lives in?  What do they spend most of their time doing?

Here’s a list of some of the things I think they like to do:

sports
entrepreneurial business
video games
sex
riskier outdoor activities

I didn’t include things that I think both sexes enjoy equally.  I think one thing that all of these things have in common is competition.  I don’t know of this is true, but its just a weak hypothesis.  Perhaps the church lacks any competitive drive.  Perhaps guys view church as stagnant and going nowhere.  It doesn’t compete against anything.  It doesn’t do anything really.  You sit there and develop yourself, develop relationships, but you don’t “accomplish” anything.

What about the mission field you say.  Don’t you need to accomplish things on the mission field.  Isn’t the mission field risky.  Isn’t it competitive?  First of all, I don’t think the mission field is competitive in a concrete way.  Second I think the mission field is so far removed from the thoughts of an ordinary unchurched male that it can’t even begin to become a thought until they are spiritually developed.

In a sense some of this is similar to what Eldredge says in Wild At Heart.  But Wild At Heart is more on a personal level.  Even at a personal level I don’t necessarily know if his solutions would really work.  But now I want to look at this from the point of view of the church.  As a church what can we do?  Well I suppose this still doesn’t come up with any conclusion.  First of all my hypothesis is shakey because its just based on flimsy generalizations.  Second of all, even if my hypothesis were true, isn’t competition against the spirit of the gospel?  How can we introduce more “risk” into the church without offending everyone in the church?  Does the church even need to be more risky?  Does it even glorify God?