David Murrow doesn't buy the idea that church is a men's club. While church leadership has remained dominated by males, he says that has done little to attract men to the larger church body. Murrow is the author of Why Men Hate Going to Church (Nelson, 2005).

Why are men turned off by the church?

Men don't do church very well. You have to be able to speak, read, and pray out loud in church culture, and the average man is not going to be as good at that as most women.

Secondly, we do almost nothing to try to attract men. We're constantly putting books in the hands of Christians telling them that the way to Christ is through a classroom experience and Bible studies. This whole idea of church as a "learning process" is going to attract more women than men.

On top of that, so much of the imagery used in the church is feminine. In the last fifty years, the dominant metaphor used to describe the Christian life has been "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ." Jesus' command was not to "have ...