With male attendance declining at some South Valley churches,
leaders look for new approaches to get men into the pews
Nothing else seemed to work, so the pastors at South Valley Community Church in Gilroy are taking drastic measures to get men into the seats of their church: They’re holding a motorcycle show on Sunday morning.
“We wanted to reach out to men, and we thought this would be a good way to do it,” said Mark Turner, outreach pastor at the church. “So, we’re going to have the show, have guys come out and see over a hundred bikes, and maybe see that good things can happen at church. We realize that men, for some reason, don’t like coming to church. We’re hoping this is an opportunity to show them that it can be a spiffy place to hang out.”
The show will follow what Turner described as “the world’s shortest service.” Pastor Eric Smith at South Valley Community Church will have his Harley Davidson on display, as well as other motorcycles owners from around the South Valley will bring to the church parking lot for the occasion. Bikes on display will range from choppers to dirt bikes.
The church plans to eventually have a “tool Sunday,” too, featuring all kinds of power tools in an effort to draw more men. Plans are also in the works for a men’s ministry that will organize sky diving, rock climbing and white water rafting trips for men in the church community.
Turner and his associates may be on to something. According to the organization Church for Men, which offers seminars to teach church leaders tools to attract men to services, 61 percent of church congregants in the United States are women and just 39 percent are male. An estimated 25 percent of married women attend Sunday services without their husbands.
Reverend Ardyss Golden of Hollister United Methodist Church said she has problems getting men into the pews on Sundays, too.
“It’s not that men just don’t have anything to do with our church – that would be a false statement,” Golden said. “If we ever need something fixed, we’ve got a line of men ready to help. Men come to our social functions, and they do a number of other things for the church. It’s just that I can’t seem to get them here on Sunday mornings. I wish I could figure out why and solve the problem. It’s something I think about often.”
The problem may be a generation issue, Golden said, because, on average, men of older generations come to services more often than those who are younger. She also pointed out that younger families have more activities happening on the weekends and people are working more on Saturdays and Sundays now than ever before, which may contribute to the lower attendance.
But not all churches have a shortage of men in the seats. Senior pastor Jim Achilles of Grace Bible Baptist Church in Hollister said he sees equal attendance of men and women of all ages in his church.
“I don’t want to make it sound like we’re the only ones doing it right because I think many churches don’t have a problem getting men to come on Sundays,” Achilles said. “But I think there are a lot of churches out there who have really feminized services. Some churches really focus on love or emotion and get really touchy-feely about the word of God. There are two sides of scripture: love and truth. You’ve got to deal with both. The truth part is what I think appeals to men. That’s the hard facts, the analytical, logical side of scripture that men understand.”
Turner agreed that men have a hard time with services that focus on feelings rather than facts. He added that even a church’s decor can turn men off to coming to services if it’s too feminine.
Pastor Anita Warner of Advent Lutheran Church in Morgan Hill also said her church doesn’t have a problem getting men to come to Sunday services, but pointed out a broader attendance trend.
“I think in general church attendance is lower in California than in other parts of the country or in other parts of the world,” she said. “I don’t see attendance problems as a particular gender issue. I think it’s more of a regional issue. I wish more people in general came to church services.”
For now, pastors at South Valley Community Church just hope the motorcycle show works.
“In research I’ve read, the key to a successful family life is having a strong faith focus and a religious orientation,” Turner said. “It’s important to men to be successful in life, and I’m hoping that by getting more men into church we can show them how church can help them at home, be better husbands, be better fathers and be more successful in life. We’ve just got to get them in the door first.”
