Men Are In Crisis
I am not sure we care that much, based on our response
Men are in Crisis
And we are not giving them much help.
The network I lead, Missio Nexus, is a missions association representing some 50,000 to 60,000 globally focused missionaries. It has long been a fact that women outnumber men in missions by almost, but not quite, 2 to 1. This is not a new phenomenon, so I don’t think it is fair to blame this disparity on contemporary cultural shifts. But since missions lives downstream of the church, I expect that the “men’s problem” will be coming for us in a more concerted way in the years ahead. I can see a future in which closer to three out of four missionaries are women, with most men being married and almost no single men on the field.
What “men’s problem” am I referring to? You can do your own internet sleuthing if you want and there is plenty of reporting on the issue. But here are three quick points I grabbed from ChatGPT:
1. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on men’s mental health. According to a survey conducted by Cleveland Clinic, 77% of respondents said their stress levels increased during the pandemic, while 59% reported they felt isolated. About 45% said their emotional and mental health declined during this difficult period.
2. In addition, the percentage of men with at least six close friends has fallen by half since 1990, from 55 percent to 27 percent. The study also found the percentage of men without any close friends jumped from 3 percent to 15 percent, a fivefold increase. Single men fare the worst.
3. One in three American men with only a high school diploma — 10 million men — are now out of the labor force. The biggest drop in employment is among young men aged 25 to 34. And it gets worse (read more here).
The AI did not pick up on the fact that suicide is four times higher among men than among women. Men are in crisis.
I was recently at a small gathering of women in the missions community. I was there in part to talk about the status of women’s and men’s relationships. We had a good, spirited discussion (not about the men’s crisis) but one thing came up that astonished me. In the course of the discussion, the question came up, “Is there a difference between men and women?” The answer, beyond biology, was pretty much summed up by the phrase, “Not in the Bible there isn’t.” When I asked them to define masculinity, they could only tell me what it was not. It was not Promise Keepers, Beer and BBQ, or shooting guns. Fine with me, but what is it? There was no answer, except to say that past attempts have all fallen short.
No wonder there is a men’s crisis.
As I have reflected on this more, I think we need a new approach to men. In the Missio Nexus community, we have a fabulous group focused on women in leadership (I think they would prefer it if I said, “men and women working together”). We also have a ministry that is focused on single people in ministry. These are good and I am glad they are actively working to serve in this way.
But there is no ministry in our community focused on men.
I suppose opponents to any sort of specific men’s ministry would say, “all ministry focuses on men.” If that is true, we are doing a poor job of ministry. Men are not thriving in the church.
Our culture has lost its ability to differentiate between men and women. The church has fallen into internecine debates on egalitarianism and complementarianism. Meanwhile, men are in massive crisis and there appears to me to be little thought about what might be done to help them.
This is an area of ministry ripe for innovation.