The Godmen

[southsider2k5]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationw...23.story?page=3

 

Gospel of manliness

Crusade invokes a rugged Jesus to counter pressure to be a `Christian nice guy'

 

By Jenny Jarvie and Stephanie Simon, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times

Published December 13, 2006

 

 

NASHVILLE -- The strobe lights pulse and the air vibrates to a killer rock beat. Giant screens show mayhem and gross-out pranks: a car wreck, a sucker punch, a flabby (and naked) rear end, sealed with duct tape.

 

Brad Stine runs onstage in ripped blue jeans, his shirt untucked, his long hair shaggy. He's a stand-up comic by trade, but he's here today as an evangelist, on a mission to build up a new Christian man. "It's the wuss-ification of America that's getting us!" screeches Stine, 46.

 

A moment later he adds a fervent: "Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone!"

 

It's an apt anthem for a contrarian movement gaining momentum on the fringes of Christianity. In daybreak fraternity meetings and weekend paintball wars, in wilderness retreats and X-rated chats about lust, thousands of Christian men are reaching for more forceful, more rugged expressions of their faith.

 

Stine's daylong revival meeting, which he calls "GodMen," is cruder than most. But it's built around the same theory as the other experimental forums: Traditional church worship is emasculating.

 

Hold hands with strangers? Sing love songs to Jesus? No wonder pews across America hold far more women than men, Stine says. Factor in the pressure to be a "Christian nice guy"--no cussing, no confrontation, in tune with the wife's emotions--and it's amazing men keep the faith at all.

 

"We know men are uncomfortable in church," says Rev. Kraig Wall, 52, pastor of a small church in Franklin, Tenn., and is at GodMen to research ways to reach the husbands in his congregation. His conclusion: "The syrup and the sticky stuff is holding us down."

 

John Eldredge, a seminal writer for the movement, goes further in "Wild At Heart," his best-selling book. "Christianity, as it currently exists, has done some terrible things to men," he writes. Men "believe that God put them on Earth to be a good boy."

 

Cue up the GodMen house band, which opens the revival with a thrashing challenge to good boys:

 

Forget the yin and the yang

 

I'll take the boom and the bang

 

Don't need in touch with my feminine side!

 

All I want is my testosterone high.

 

The 200 men in the crowd clap stiffly. Stine races through a frenetic stand-up routine, drawing laughs with his rants against liberals, atheists and the politically correct. Then Christian radio host Paul Coughlin, author of "No More Christian Nice Guy," takes the stage. His backdrop: a series of wanted posters featuring one Jesus of Nazareth.

 

"Jesus was a very bad Christian," Coughlin declares. After all, he says, the Son of God trashed a temple and even used profanity--or the New Testament equivalent--when he called Herod "that fox."

 

"The idea of Jesus as meek and mild is as fictitious as anything in Dan Brown's `Da Vinci Code,'" says Coughlin, 40.

 

So what's with the standard portraits of Jesus: pale face, beatific smile, lapful of lambs?

 

"He's been domesticated," says Roland Martinson, a professor of ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. "He's portrayed now as gentle, loving, kind, rather than as a full-bodied person who kicked over tables in the temple, spent 40 days in the wilderness wrestling with his identity and with God, hung out with the guys in the street. The roughhewn edges and courage ... got lopped off."

 

Martinson considers the experiments with high-testosterone worship "an important attempt to address at least one aspect of the difficulty Christianity is facing with men." He just worries it might go too far. "Too often, it turns into the man being in charge of the woman," he says. "Christianity has been there before, and we learned how wrong it was."

 

Take-home testosterone

 

In fact, men taking charge is a big theme of the GodMen revival. At what he hopes will be the first of many such conferences, in a warehouse-turned-nightclub in downtown Nashville, Stine asks the men: "Are you ready to grab your sword and say, `OK, family, I'm going to lead you?'"

 

He also distributes a list of a real man's rules for his woman. No. 1: "Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down."

 

Stine's wife, Desiree, says she supports manly leadership; it seems to her the natural and God-ordained order of things. As she puts it: "When the rubber hits the bat, I want to know my husband will protect me."

 

The virility crusade is, in part, a response to a stark gender gap. More than 60 percent of the adults at a typical worship service are women. That translates into 13 million more women than men in the pews on any given Sunday, according to David Murrow, author of "Why Men Hate Going to Church."

 

Women are also significantly more likely than men to attend Sunday school, read the Bible and pray regularly, according to the Barna Group, a Christian polling firm.

 

Murrow, 45, blames men's attitude on the feminization of mainline churches: "Lace curtains. Quilted banners on the wall. Pink carpet. Fresh flowers at the podium."

 

As for the music, "Onward, Christian Soldiers" is long gone. Instead, there are ballads about Jesus' eternal embrace. "Very Barry Manilow," says Mike Smith, Stine's manager.

 

Millions of men, of course, find such worship peaceful or inspirational. And some staunch defenders remain of the Christian nice guy.

 

"It's a wonderful thing to see a man welling up in tears," says Greg Vaughn, who teaches men nationwide how to write love letters to their wives. "It takes a lot more courage to do that than to talk about football."

 

The most famous men's ministry, Promise Keepers, packed stadiums throughout the 1990s with men who wept and hugged one another as they pledged to be dutiful and pure. Men at Promise Keepers rallies today make the same vows, but in a nod to the new ethos of manliness, the conferences carry titles such as "Storm the Gates" and "Uprising." This year, the theme is "Unleashed," as in unleashing the warrior within.

 

"It is not about learning how to be a nicer guy," the Web site declares.

 

Coughlin and others in the manly Christian movement are unconvinced. Promise Keepers still emphasizes obedience and purity, and participants still shed tears.

 

Honesty, not `safe places'

 

Stine argues that the genteel facade of a Christian nice guy inhibits introspection and substitutes cliches for spiritual growth. GodMen is his attempt to encourage men to get real. His speakers admit to masturbation and adultery, for example.

 

Such honesty, Stine contends, molds better, more godly men than a typical Sunday service.

 

"We want to force you out of the safe places that have passed for spirituality," Stine says.

 

A similar approach is taken by Men's Fraternity, which was founded in Little Rock, Ark., in 1990 and has expanded around the world, with hundreds of chapters meeting weekly at 6 a.m. in churches, office buildings, even car dealerships.

 

"It's testosterone-friendly," says Rick Caldwell, global director of the program.

 

He urges chapter leaders to have NFL bloopers on the big screen when the men come in, and oldies or country music on the radio.

 

"Do not think Sunday morning worship," he says. "Think Saturday afternoon tailgate."

 

GodMen, in its own words

 

GodMen believes:

 

Being a guy is a reason to be proud--not a problem to be fixed. We connect men to their spiritual masculinity--making them dangerous in a righteous way.

 

GodMen is for:

 

- Active churchgoing men who are looking for a fresh challenge and a larger experience

 

- Men who attend church but seldom participate, who wish it spoke more directly to the issues that affect their lives

 

- Men who have stopped attending church, even though they consider themselves Christians

 

- Men who have never been to church

 

Source: www.godmen.org.

 

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Los Angeles Times

[bmags]

this is...too easy

[sox4lifeinPA]

at least they're trying to do something with church...

[Soxy]

Actually, this reminds me of the Warrior Christ depicted by the ancient Celts. Nothing new. I would argue not incredibly theologically valid, but whatever.

[sox4lifeinPA]

Actually, this reminds me of the Warrior Christ depicted by the ancient Celts. Nothing new. I would argue not incredibly theologically valid, but whatever.

 

This seems to be a trend over the past 3-5 years from John Elderidge's Book "Wild at Heart" to this Godmen thing, it's simply men trying to figure out their place in church.

 

I don't know what you mean by "not incredibly theologically valid" but certainly not something that should overshadow the Gospel. It's kind of like a fad diet...if you forget that ultimately you need to eat a balanced meal, you'll die from the mismanaged lifestyle.