Looking for a few good men is the Marine Corps recruiting cry. The same should be said for churches across America as well. Looking for a few good men. Churches are less and less dominated by male leadership, the gaps have been filled by necessity, by motivated, Godly ladies who are keeping the doors open to far too many churches, the alternative is; the leadership is left vacant, and the church eventually dies or is merged with another church within the “mother” denomination. In today’s culture, fewer men attend church at all. Think about your workplace, how many men that you work with go to church? Of those, how many are involved in church leadership or service?
Many of our coworkers or those within our sphere of influence are professing unbelievers, therefore, how could they be expected to attend church let alone lead or serve, so let’s cross the professing unbeliever off the list. There are those who claim to be believers, who check all the right boxes for salvation yet are not exercised by their faith, showing no repentance, no true fruit of being a believer, no church, therefore no leading, no serving, concluding no true saving faith.
Now that we’ve eliminated the unbelieving, let’s look inside the church. There are few who have accepted the God ordained responsibility of leadership and service with all humbleness, tenderness, and boldness of heart. Why are there not more?
Genesis 3:8
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
Here, Adam is playing the invisible man. It is the shame of his nakedness that causes him to cower back to keep from being noticed by God. Because Adam is mentioned by name and Eve simply as “his wife” it is implied that he is leader of his house and has made a conscience decision for he and his wife to hide from God. Similarly, there are men, who are the leaders of their homes that shrink back and try to camouflage themselves amongst the trees, amongst the crowd in the church. They are believers but they are ashamed because they are not studying to show themselves approved, they’re not leading their families toward a biblical worldview they’re very shallow in their faith, they’re ashamed and hide when it comes time to lead or serve. You want to see this type of man vanish in front of your eyes; ask him to lead in a prayer.
It's not manly. Many years ago, I had a coworker tell me that faith is for the weak, religion is just a crutch for someone who can’t deal with life like a man. What a horrible way to be duped into eternal damnation; one minute you’re facing life like a man, the next you’re in torment wishing you had taken another path. Believing men are like this as well. You might hear one say “praying, oh that’s for the women” or looked to someone less manly but more spiritual. He won’t disappear but he will defer because he might get labeled as a sissy.
It’s too manly, this would apply to the up-and-coming generations who have been bombarded with demasculinizing from the new “woke” culture. Masculinity is offensive therefore, filling traditional male roles of leadership and service is an overt display of male dominance and not to be tolerated. Boys being indoctrinated into “wokeism” are told in various forms and various ways that being masculine is a bad thing so when it’s time to step forward in leadership, they can’t because he feels it’s not suitable for a man to lead.
No Time, a 1969 song by the Guess Who, “No time left for you” is how the song goes and how this group of men escape leadership and service. I got my work, I got my boat, I got a game, I got a lot of things to do but I got no time to lead or serve. Like Adam and his wife, hiding behind the trees (things of this world) escaping responsibility and accountability. “If I step up, I’ll have to give up all the things I love to do, especially on the weekend.”
How do we strip the excuses and inspire men to become Godly men and step up and lead the church like God intended? As always, we find our answer in scripture, Matthew 9:37, 38 and Luke 10:2 have the same answer; Pray.
Therefore, said he unto them, the harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.
Pray that God, who is the Lord of the harvest would send laborers. In our earthly wisdom we want to create a program or class for men to attend or employ some type of marketing strategy to attract or entice them to step up. While God can use these, it’s not what he told us to do, He said “pray” and He will send. The context in Luke is this, Jesus is commissioning seventy disciples who were willing to forsake all leaving the dead to bury the dead, no goodbyes to those at home, no looking behind the plow. Pray that laborers are provided, Jesus will call those who are qualified, gifted, and ready to step into the roles that God has already prepared and currently vacant. Are you that man or are you the invisible man?
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