What men love to do, as you have stated, is discuss, cogitate, digest, form a list and then draw conclusion for themselves. Personally when someone tells me the conclusion for what they have just talked about is x, y and z it just switches me off further. I am an intelligent human being, as most men like to think they are!!!! I am able to draw my own conclusions, usually from the first 15 mins!! In teaching we are actively encouraged to ask the students to draw their own conclusions at the end of a lesson about their learning experience that lesson. As the previous poster identified the method of teaching most Sunday mornings goes back to the arcaic methods of learning that are no longer encouraged within education. Why were they not accepted? Results in schools were telling people that boys were underperforming in exams. Does this sound similar to men becoming disinterested in regimented meetings?

There is something more relevant out there, I know there is, I just don’t know what at the moment. I shall look forward to the rest of Carl’s thoughts and inspirations but it certainly is a topic that needs addressing. I get excited when I think about the prospects of a ‘church’ that attracts a higher percentage of men, including myself. There is a potential there and men that I talk to are looking for it but not in it’s current concept. Exciting, masculine times ahead. Are men ready to be men, stand up, take risks and enjoy being that ‘band if brothers’ you talk about?

Also, the very format of a sermon makes many people (not just men) switch off. In schools, we have employed various methods of making education more interactive for years, simply because we know that standing at the front of the room talking at people is the *least* effective way of teaching them. Churches, it seems, have yet to understand this.

Oh, and of course, there’s the songs. I’m a heterosexual man, and Jesus is not my boyfriend. I am not in love with him. I don’t think of him as “sweet” or “beautiful beyond description”. I certainly don’t want to sing songs that say he is all these things, repeatedly, with hands in the air and a soft, gentle tune.

However equally not every sermon can be orientated exclusively towards the work place, and given that many people preach sermonettes of about 20 mins, there is not much time to apply a text to all the different groups of people that make up a church family.

Maybe this is one of the things that should be heavily targeted in home groups?