Posted on Thursday, May 21, 2015

Why You Parent the Way You Do

by Joshua Reich

Recently I made a comment on Facebook about babywise and quickly learned that discussing parenting styles on Facebook is akin to talking about global warming and vaccines.

But I learned something in the process, something I didn’t expect.

I learned two things about Christian parents that day and I think it can be incredibly dangerous.

The first, when it comes to parenting, Christians are very relative.

In fact, let me make a bold statement. By and large, most Christian parents care very little about what the Bible says about parenting and what science says about parenting.

Most Christian parents care very little about what the Bible says about parenting.

Parenting styles aside for a minute.

There were almost 50 comments on the thread (which I deleted because it hurt my heart and made too angry), but almost every comment started with, “Well for my kid…”

No one ever started a sentence with, “The Bible or scientific research says…” Or, “my goal as a Christian parent because of the Bible is…”

It largely boiled down to what is easiest as a parent.

Now, we couch that in language about how its working for our kids, but I know for years I fell into the parenting trap of what is easiest and most convenient for me.

No Christian would ever say they don’t care what the Bible says about parenting, but many of the ways we parent say otherwise. It doesn’t matter what your parenting style is, how you communicate with your child or how you discipline them. If you are a follower of Jesus, what the Bible says about those things is way more important than what you think works for your child. For the most part, you are guessing at what you think works for your child because you don’t know until it’s over and they’ve moved out. That’s why what the Bible says and what scientific research says is so important.

When it comes to scientific research, I realize some Christians can get weird about that and start to wonder if God was taken out of the picture. While that happens, at the same time, there are incredible discoveries being made about our brains, how we are created and wired and all of that comes from God, whether a Christian discovers that or not. While this might be another blog topic, I think Christians needs to stop fearing science and start seeing how it confirms our Creator and his great plan for us.

The second thing I learned about parents is, we don’t really want to learn anything new.

Almost no one in the over 50 comments asked, “How did you come to that conclusion? What do you know that I don’t? What books have you read that led you to that?”

Not wanting to learn or be stretched is an incredibly dangerous place to live, but many Christians stay in that zone when it comes to a lot of issues.

Are there things that Christians should reject out of hand without researching? Yes. This is why it matters so much to know what the Bible says about parenting (stay tuned for another post on that).

Now, like the first, no Christian parent would ever say they don’t want to learn. In fact, most feel incredibly inadequate as a parent (I know I do more times than not), but I think in an effort to feel better about ourselves as parents and what we are doing as parents, we shut down anything that might be new because we don’t want to be told we may have been doing the wrong thing.

I know a couple of years ago when we were going through our adoption classes and reading The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family and The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind, all I could think of was “how did we mess this up as parents?” What I learned in those resources and classes had way more to do with how I and Katie parented all of our kids than just how to relate to the kids we adopted.

As a parent who claims to be a follower of Jesus, don’t settle for “this worked for me or my friend.” We have way more wisdom than that out there. What does the bible say about parenting? What are you called to be and do as a parent? That’s where we should start.

Next week I’ll share what I think is the most important question for any parent to answer as it relates to your child. It is the question that shapes our parenting style, the books we read, how we communicate, discipline and teach our kids. It is that big of a deal and most parents never even think about it.

The Entrepreneur (Church Planter) Roller Coaster

Recently, I’ve been reading some great books written by entrepreneur’s. Mostly because the application to church planters is uncanny. A few of my favorites are The Hard Thing about Hard Things, Chess not Checkers, The Everything Store, Creativity Inc., and How Google Works. If you are a pastor or a church planter, you are an entrepreneur and the wisdom in these books are incredibly helpful to those tasks.

Even though most pastors don’t believe that.

Enter Darren Hardy, the publisher of Success Magazine and his latest book The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: Why Now Is the Time to #Join the Ride. Darren share some of his best insights, but also many from his interviews with the world’s top CEO’s and leaders for his magazine. Simply fascinating. The insights were incredible. I felt like I kept highlighting parts of the book!

Here are a few that jumped out (if you are a pastor or planter, simply insert church/church planter when it says business and you’ll see the wisdom):

The first and most important factor in building a successful business is that you have to love it.
The mistake people make is that they judge one person’s “front of stage” persona with their “back of stage” reality.
Work is gonna suck 95% of the time. But that other 5% is freaking awesome!
After years of studying the success of the world’s leading achievers across a spectrum of disparate fields, my conclusion time and time again has been that those who are at the top of their game are really just people who have found something to love.
When you step outside the status quo, you become a giant mirror for those who stay, reflecting back their cowardice.
The higher you climb on the ladder of success, the more people will dislike you. Climb high enough, and people might even hate you.
We spend most of our lives pursuing success, but I’m not sure we stop often enough and ask ourselves: What does success mean to me?
The person who knows how to get, keep, and cultivate a customer gets paid the most. Period.
One of the fastest (and most common) ways to derail your roller coaster car and send it to a fiery death is to hire and keep the wrong people.
Your people are your most important recruiting tool.
Great leaders know that businesses are nothing but a group of people brought together to accomplish a mission.
You cannot shape or create the culture. The culture of an organization is not a whiteboard exercise done with executives sitting around a conference table spit-balling ideas. The culture of an organization evolves around the people who make up the company. The culture is the personality and character expression of the people in it. The only way to shape that culture is to focus on hiring people with the attributes you want your culture to have.
Great people want to work with great people. It’s self-perpetuating. It’s the number one thing people are looking for.
Great people want to be a part of something great.
People don’t go as fast as they can. They don’t work as hard as they can either. They aren’t as disciplined as possible. They aren’t as positive-minded or enthusiastic as they can be. They’re only as fast and disciplined and positive as you are.
The leader’s responsibility is to draw out the talent, drive, and capability of the people on your team. Your job as a leader is to grow your people.
Activity is not productivity.
The greatest threat to your productivity is keeping yourself from getting awash in low-value activities.
Any time you feel overwhelmed, there’s a good chance the culprit is a lack of clear priorities.

As I said, if you are a leader, this is a great book to have on your summer reading list.

Posted on Monday, May 18, 2015

5 Reasons Relationships Fall Apart

by Joshua Reich

Healthy relationships take work. Healthy marriages that people want to stay in don’t just happen. Although we think they do. We think two people magically just work together, never fight, never have an issue or disagreement to work through, but they do.

So, where do things go wrong? How can a friendship that was working so well, a marriage that seemed so right all of a sudden seem all wrong?

Here are 5 ways relationships go from working to broken:

5 reasons marriage stop working.

It’s too much work. Healthy relationships take a lot of work. It means being patient, listening, hearing someone out, putting your wants and privileges aside. That’s work.
It’s hurts too much to face their past or do the hard work. As we’ll see later, almost every fight in a relationship is not about what you are fighting about. You are fighting with a past incident, a hurt you haven’t dealt with, a person you see in the person in front of you. They remind you of your dad, your mom, they said words similar to an abuser or someone who you were supposed to trust. Healthy people face their past and in the power of Jesus see it redeemed. Unhealthy people use their past and stay the victim instead of finding healing. This is hard work, this can be incredibly painful. Any argument you have to ask the crucial question, “Are we actually fighting about this? What are we really fighting about? Who am I really fighting with?”
They’re lazy and selfish, they want the other person to do all the work and all the changing. Just like #1, being lazy and selfish in relationships is easy, serving, putting in the work, putting the other person’s needs and wants first takes work. Often too, we want the other person to put in the work to become the healthy person while we stay unhealthy. I’ll hold on to that incident and bring it up whenever it suits me. I’ll remind them of my hurt instead of dealing with my hurt.
They think they are better than their spouse or the other person. Sometimes people are in an unhealthy relationship because they think they are less sinful than the other person. They look down on them. They wouldn’t say this but they hold the other person’s sin in contempt, thinking, “How can they not see that? Why do they struggle with that?” They turn their noses up at the thought of putting in the hard work to reconcile with a spouse or a friend. They will say it is the other person’s fault but deep down, they are the less sinful person they know.
Confuse what reconciliation means. Reconciliation doesn’t mean you are friends with everyone, you might need to protect yourself from an abusive situation, and you may need to protect your kids as well. Reconciliation does mean that you don’t hold it against the person anymore; that you don’t bring up the past, you stop saying, “Remember…?”

So what do you do?

We prefer the absence of conflict to the closeness of intimacy.

Be honest. Many people are not honest about their past, about their hurt or even where their marriage or relationship is. Almost on a monthly basis I’ll have a couple tell me, “We never fight.” That’s a lie. They are avoiding relational health when they think this. They are putting off the hard work of changing for a facade of peace.

Posted on Thursday, May 14, 2015

How to be a Better Communicator

by Joshua Reich

I watched the Preach Better Sermons conference yesterday. So much great stuff when it comes to preaching and growing as a communicator.

Here are some things I learned that are dynamite for preachers:

90% of unchurched people choose a church based on the lead pastor & the preaching.

The First 5 Minutes of a Sermon – Jeff Henderson

If you don’t engage people in the first 5 minutes, it is very difficult to grab their attention again.
When you start a sermon, you have to assume the worst. You can’t assume that people are already are listening.
In the first 5 minutes, great communicators are shrinking the gap: the physical and emotional gap between the person speaking and the audience.
Connect with the audience first, then bring on the content.
Connection is the most important thing in the first 5 minutes, not content.
Communicate that you are there to help people, not impress them.
5 tips for the first 5 minutes: be like able (smile), tell a story, create tension (make them wonder what the solution is), ask, “Have you ever felt like this?” (this creates understanding), and tease the solution (say, “there’s a way to get ahead in ____”).

Jud Wilhite

Preaching is a gift. Ask God to steward his gift in you.

The Pain of Preparation – Jeff Henderson

If we aren’t careful, we skimp on preparation.
If we don’t get ahead on our preparation, our preaching suffers and our church suffers.
The better you prepare, the better you preach.
Preparation starts with empathy. You have to be empathetic towards the people you are preaching to.
When you have empathy, it causes you to make sure you are prepared.
Questions to ask for preparation:
1. What does my audience currently think about this topic? Where is the pain point?
2. What do I want my audience to think about this topic?
3. What is my single most persuasive idea?
4. What do you want them to do?
Until you can say “because of that, this is what I want you to do” your sermon prep is not done.

Transformational Preaching – Derwin Gray

Consecrate yourself.
You preach out of the overflow of your time with God.
Always preach the good news. People need good news, not advice.
Be compelling and clear.
Too many pastors are not overwhelmed by Jesus so they look for other things to be compelling.
Preach convicting sermons.
At the end of the sermon, people should want to join Jesus’ cause.

Feedback:

What was working?
What could have made this better?

Crafting Memorable Phrases

A sticky statement is one that someone can memorize and utilize in their life.
One sticky statement repeated several times.
Sticky statement is your big idea, it is your elevator pitch of your sermon.
Can people take your sermon and remember it?
To create sticky statements, you must P.R.E.A.C.H.
- Give people a word picture.
- Rhyming is key to a sticky statement.
- Use an echo in your statement: Nobody expected no body.
- Use alliteration (contrasting): your soul is more important than your stuff.
- Contrast different things.
- The hook is what makes it memorable and tells them what you want them to do.

Posted on Wednesday, May 13, 2015

One of the Deepest Hurts in Your Church

by Joshua Reich

When I was 23, I was interviewing for a job at a large church outside of Washington D.C. The interview was going well and it looked like I was going to get the job. At the end of my final interview, Katie and I sat with a group of 12 people around a table and we’re grilled for 3 hours on everything anyone could think of.

Finally, the interview was coming to a close and the person in charge asked if anyone had final questions.

The lead pastor who had been there the whole time but had yet to say anything spoke, “I have one.” He said. He looked at me and said, “Josh, what is your deepest hurt?”

I’ll be honest, the question caught me off guard.

Who talks about hurts and wounds in an interview?

As I fumbled through my answer, not because I didn’t have one, but because I had never shared it. When I finished, he looked at me and said something I’ll never forget: “I’m afraid of someone who can’t identify their deepest hurt, who can’t talk about how Jesus has redeemed that and how they are moving forward because I don’t know when that hurt will rear its ugly head in a situation.”

That was the end of the interview.

Fast forward a few months and Katie and I are meeting with a Christian counselor. He talked with us about how our past affects our present and future in ways we often don’t realize.

We replayed an argument that we had and he asked each of us what from our past did that argument remind us of, what people, places, etc. Amazingly, that argument reminded us of a lot and the brokenness of our past and upbringing. He looked at Katie and said, “When you hear Josh say that, it is reminding you of this. That is the tape that plays in your head.” The same was true for me.

That tape may say, “You aren’t good enough, smart enough, capable enough, beautiful enough.” It might say, “You always screw up, you aren’t good for anything, you aren’t organized enough, strong enough.”

So, when we hear someone say something and it is close to what we heard growing up, we react not to the person in front of us but to the person or situation from our past.

Often, you will find that these feelings center around our desire for control, power, approval and comfort.

This is often where our deepest hurt is found. Often, but not always, it will center on your relationship with your Father so I often encourage people look there first. Something about it has a way of affecting so much of our life.

Once you uncover it, talk through it with someone close to you. Ask them if they see that in you. Do they agree? What evidence do they see in your life of this hurt?

You may need to have a conversation with the people you have hurt but also where this hurt stems from. This will be the hardest road you walk but is also the only way to swing the relational pendulum into the joy and peace that God has for you. Don’t run from this, do the hard work. Even if the person who hurt you scoffs at you or treats this like a small thing, keep digging into it.

I know it is hard to do this, I know that we dislike hurt and pain from our past, but we will never truly be free from our past until we face it. Know that in the cross, Jesus redeemed your past, present and future. He is there and has been there and will use for his glory, but we have to walk through it with him first.

Until this happens, you will play your life out of this hurt.

One of the problems we have and it goes unspoken in our lives is that we are so accustomed to this hurt we don’t even realize it. We are the girl who can’t stop buying something she can’t afford. We are the guy who can’t be kind or give a hug. We are the person who keeps everyone at arms length, we are the over-achiever. Slowly, our hurt becomes a part of our personality and who we are. It is incredibly deceptive, but that isn’t freedom, that is bondage in your sin.

If we don’t deal with our hurt, it becomes a part of our personality, who we are.

Posted on Monday, May 11, 2015

When You Aren’t in the Mood for Sex

by Joshua Reich

At some point, all married couples hit a point in their relationship when sex feels like more of a chore than something they look forward to. Many couples struggle with a difference in desire, how often they want sex and even finding enjoyment in it.

This sets many couples up for fights, a disconnect relationally and frustration. It can open the door to manipulating each other instead of seeking to serve each other. It can open the door for temptation and bitterness as well.

Because life is constantly changing and moving, one month things seem to be going well in the romance and sex department for a couple, they can quickly find themselves angry, let down and frustrated.

What then?

Here are 4 questions to ask and two pieces of advice when you find yourself not in the mood for sex with your spouse:

Here are 4 questions to ask and two pieces of advice when you find yourself not in the mood for sex.

1. What is your pace, sleep and diet like? Your diet, sleep and pace affect a lot in your life. When someone says, “I’m too tired for sex” they more than likely are too tired for sex. The older you get, the more kids you have (especially when they are young) this becomes even more important. Make sure you are getting as much as you can, that you are eating well so that your body is refueled and that you are watching your caffeine and alcohol intake. Is this only for sex? No, you should do this to live. I am always amazed at how little we seem to think about how much we sleep, how much we work and what we put into our bodies as it relates to our energy level.

Your diet, sleep and pace affect how much sex you have with your spouse.

2. What is your stress level like? Often frustrations come into the bedroom when we have frustrations in other areas of our lives. Too much work and not enough play can be a damaging thing when it comes to relationships. Are you able to disconnect from your work and life while you are at home? One study found that 36% of people check their phones right after sex, which seems crazy. You need to make sure that you are keeping boundaries in your life because they will affect what happens with your spouse in the bedroom if you aren’t careful.

3. How open and honest are you being as a couple? One reason couples see a drop in how often they have sex is because they don’t feel connected as a couple. They are keeping secrets, not sharing their life and when this happens, having sex becomes less of a priority. You aren’t sharing your life and energy for sex and connecting goes down. A simple way to get into the mood is to set the table so to speak. Open up, talk, share about your day. This can be seen as an issue when you fight right before having sex or when things start to get closer to sex. You are shutting down because you feel a lack of emotional connection with your spouse.

If you don’t connect with your spouse outside of the bedroom, connecting inside goes down.

4. How pure are you being? One reason couples don’t have much sex (and it doesn’t get talked about often enough) is that they aren’t being pure. They are looking at porn, emotionally connecting to someone they aren’t married to, reading romance novels or fantasizing about someone other than their spouse so they don’t need their spouse for sexual fulfillment. This is a dangerous place to be. Remember this truth: your sexual relationship is the barometer of your marriage. People argue against this, but it is true. If you find yourself not desiring sex, not having as much sex as you used to or think you should be having, the purity question might be worth exploring.

Now, two pieces of advice when you find yourself not in the mood for sex.

5. Think ahead. This isn’t romantic but often you need to plan sex. Whether that is saying in the morning, “we’ll have sex tonight.” Or, texting your spouse in the middle of the day what you want to do that night, plan it. This can build anticipation, but also helps to make sure it happens. This helps both people let go of stress from the day and get into the mindset for sex.

6. Sometimes you need to bite the bullet. Sometimes, for the good of your relationship, you just need to have sex. You are tired and want to go to sleep, you don’t feel like it, you don’t feel connected, but for the good of your marriage, you should have sex. Now, if this becomes the rhythm of your marriage (ie. you are never in the mood), then I would figure that out. There is more than likely an underlying issue that has yet to be dealt with.

Posted on Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Why Pastors Think about Quitting

by Joshua Reich

I heard at a conference recently that 2 out of 3 pastors are thinking about quitting. While many statistics often feel made up, I can say that as a pastor, this stat rings true.

Pastors know this.

Many people in their churches do not.

There are a few reasons why pastors think about quitting:

1. Ministry is hard work. Every job is hard. Whether you are a pastor or an electrician or an engineer or a barista. Life and work is hard. Ministry is no different. You can’t be naive about this. Too many pastors have rose colored glasses about putting out a church sign and just expecting people to show up and the people who show up will be bought in, not messy and without difficulty. Yet, the leader and the people who walk through the door are sinners.

Handling your energy is a stewardship issue.

2. They aren’t sleeping or eating well. There is a direct connection between how eat, how you sleep and the level of energy you have. Handling your energy is a stewardship issue. Leaders have a lot of meetings over meals, drink a lot of coffee or energy drinks. They stay up too late watching TV, surfing social media instead of sleeping, taking a sabbath or doing something that is recharging and refreshing.

There is a direct connection between how eat, how you sleep & your energy level.

3. They don’t have an outlet. Whenever I find myself getting tired, it is often because I am not taking my retreat day, hanging out with friends or doing things that are fun. Leaders and pastors are notorious for being bad friends, having hobbies and doing things that are fun. You will start to think about quitting, not being thankful, begrudgingly going to meetings or counseling people. Get outside, take a break, slow down.

4. Misplaced idols. If pastors are honest, they struggle with an idol of ministry. In our hearts, many pastors struggle because they want to have a larger church, a larger platform, they want to be known, they want people to be changed by their sermons. Not all of these are wrong, but the motives often are. You will run out of steam if you have an idol. Be honest with someone, have someone ask you hard questions and hold you accountable.

You will run out of steam as a pastor if you have an idol.

5. Not leading from a place of burden. Leaders are idea machines. We read books, go to conferences, listen to podcasts, look for the latest trend, but those are ideas, not a vision. It is easy to confuse the two. A vision, what drives you comes from a burden. Any leader, if you want to know their vision, ask about their burden. You must keep that in the forefront. I wake up and want to lead and build a church that helps to reach 20-40 year olds. This burden is ingrained in experiences growing up and watching churches fail to reach not only this demographic, but men in particular.

Vision is not an idea, it is a burden.

6. Not dealing with emotions. One thing I was unprepared for was how emotionally tiring ministry and leadership can be. It can be hard to walk with people who get a divorce, get fired, wreck their lives, funerals, miscarriages. This can wreck your heart. You must learn to deal with the emotional ride that pastoring is. If you don’t, you will become a statistic.

Posted on Monday, May 4, 2015

What Should Christians Think about Sex?

by Joshua Reich

The response to sex among Christians is usually predictable: embarrassment, hushed tones, guarded. Looks that say, “don’t talk about that here.”

In fact, one guy told me as I’m preaching through the Song of Solomon at my church that he’s surprised it is in the Bible. Another called it biblical porn.

What should Christians think about sex?

I looked at a popular pastor’s website out of curiosity. This is a pastor that preaches through books of the Bible. In his ministry career, he has preached through every book of the Bible, except one.

The Song of Solomon.

Why?

The Song of Solomon is just as inspired as the book of Romans!

The Song of Solomon is just as inspired as the book of Romans.

By and large, Christians don’t know how to enjoy sex in the way God created it.

We know how to corrupt it, we know how the culture thinks about it and so we either run the other direction (don’t enjoy it, don’t explore with your spouse, never talk about it with your kids) or we simply give in to the culture and live like them (adultery, sleeping around, porn, selfishness, sex as a weapon).

Neither one of those is a good option or even a biblical one.

The Song of Solomon to me is one of the most relevant books of the bible for our culture. For this reason, it shows us what marriage is supposed to be like. Spouses who adore each other, pursue each other, serve each other, seek to please and pleasure each other, all for the good of their marriage. Spouses who complement each other, knows what the other likes and dislikes and then uses that information to make the other happy.

Our culture from broken homes, divorce, adultery, porn, has no idea what sex is supposed to be like. Sex is seen as a weapon to get your way so women wield it with power in their relationships. Many wives operate from the perspective of: I’ll give you my body, but only as I manipulate you to do what I want.

One of the other struggles our culture has is that our sexual identity has become the trump card and the most important thing about who we are, it is who we are. That is not what the Bible teaches and when we make that the trump card, we limit ourselves to simply who we are sexually and what we do sexually. We then have a broken image of ourselves and see our value only through the lens of sex. Which isn’t surprising when we think about how prevalent porn is.

Your sexual identity is not the most important thing about you.

The Bible, particularly the Song of Solomon, show us that sex within marriage is not only to be celebrated, enjoyed, gratifying but it is also an act of worship to God.

The reason Christians often take the stance they do on sex within marriage (seeing it as dirty, a chore or are prudish about it) is that is the easy stance to take. To have a healthy view of sexuality will often mean dealing with past addictions, past hurts, past abuse, dealing with body image issues and all of those are in places we push down, pretend are not there and try to move forward from without dealing with them.

Sex, intimacy, and affection are the barometer of your marriage.

Sex, intimacy, and affection are the barometer of your marriage.

If you want to know the health of your marriage, where you are in dealing with past hurts, how you and your spouse are pursuing each other, simply look at your view of sex, how often you have sex, how intimate you are (sharing your hurts, dreams, joys and secrets; how open your are) and your affection and that will tell you everything you need to know about the health of your marriage.

The reason I know this to be true is who argues with that statement.

If God is good, and if God created all things (including you and your body), and God created you to enjoy his creation, God also created marriage and sex.

See where I’m going?

Then sex, as created by God to be enjoyed within marriage is something that should be seen as a good gift from a good God used to glorify Him and for your enjoyment.

Posted on Friday, May 1, 2015

9 Keys for Your Church to Reach More Men

by Joshua Reich

In most churches today, as has been true for the last few decades, it is made up of more women and children, than men. Yet, in most churches, it is still the men who lead and make decisions.

When we started Revolution Church and we started with the idea that the target of our church would be 20-40 year old men. Last year when we did our yearly church survey, we were 49% men, 51% women, and the average age of our church is 28 ½.

Our church isn’t that unique. Most churches plants are filled with younger people, but what we have learned over the years is how to reach men. This won’t surprise you:

Reaching men is different than reaching women.
Most churches are set up to reach women.

Reaching men is different than reaching women. Most churches are set up to reach women.

According to Focus on the family:

Did you know that if a child is the first person in a household to become a Christian, there is a 3.5 percent probability everyone else in the household will follow?
If the mother is the first to become a Christian, there is a 17 percent probability everyone else in the household will follow.
But if the father is first, there is a 93 percent probability everyone else in the household will follow.

We know this to be true, we know the impact a father has on the life of a family. Many people have their view of God tied up with their view of their earthly father. We talk about the father wound and the impact a father has on us. Yet, many churches have simply chosen not to reach men.

Companies have figured this out and largely market to 18 – 35 year old men. Are they neglecting women? No. The reality is that most women like a lot of what men like when it comes to marketing, but the reverse is not true. Churches need to learn from this.

Having a target

Every time I talk with pastors or Christians and say we have a target as a church, I get interesting questions. The reality is, your church has a target. The style of music, dress, what time church is, what kind of building you have, what ministries you have and don’t have.

How do you know if you are hitting your target?

Who comes to your church?
Who gets baptized?
What comments or questions do you get?
My favorite comment is the one I hear from a wife all the time: I wasn’t so sure about this church, but Revolution is the only church my husband would come back to, so here we are.

Here are 9 things you can do to start reaching men and see impact in the lives of people, families and your city:

9 keys for your church to reach more men.

Think about men when it comes to the atmosphere, name of your church, structure and songs. Most churches are filled with pastel colors, flowers everywhere. Why? Women designed it. Not a bad thing, but it won’t appeal to men. One other thing that I think is important when it comes to thinking through the lens of men (and women) is preaching once a year on relationships, marriage, what it means to be a man or a woman. Our culture has so many questions, so many thing are unclear to our culture on these topics that people are wondering.

Most churches are naturally geared towards women, not men.

Preach to men. Most churches, the win for men is to stop looking at porn. While porn is destructive and pervasive, every man is not looking at it every day. There are more things a man struggles with or has questions about. Men in a sermon tend to want logic, clarity and action steps. Women tend to want more stories, feelings and emotions. While a sermon should strive for both, most pastors end up on one end of the spectrum and their church reflects that. I often think about men I know when I preach on a passage and try to discern questions they would have about it. When men leave a church, they tend to talk about if they were challenged to think in a new way, while women tend to talk about how they felt after a service. Not all are like this, but I’ve found this to be typical. With a sermon, what do you want people to do? How clear is the main idea?

Have a clear win for your church. If your church doesn’t have a clear win, a clear vision, men will not sign up for it. Men want to know what is on the line, what impact something will make, why they need to show up. This especially matters to businessmen. This may take you out of your comfort zone, but learn the language of the men you are trying to reach. How do they talk? What books do they read? What is important to them?

Men want to give their lives to clarity and something that matters.

Show them how actions affect their legacy. Men are concerned with legacy, how things will end up, how they will be remembered. When you minister to a man, keep this in mind. Date night with his wife is not just something for today, but has an enormous affect on the marriages of his kids. Purity in his life will be passed on to his kids and grandkids. Whenever possible, show a man who what he is doing right now, good or bad, will affect his legacy. Men think about the future in a way women do not.

Give them clear examples worth following. One of the reasons I didn’t want to become a pastor when I was 18 was I had never met a pastor I wanted to be like. Most men look at church leaders and see people they don’t want to be like. Or, they don’t see men they would want to become. This doesn’t mean every pastor needs to drink beer or have a tattoo, but when men follow another man, they are following someone they want to emulate. Put leaders in your church, in visible places who men would want to emulate. This will sound sexist but I’ll just say it. Men follow men. If you want to reach men, have strong male leaders in your church who exemplify Ephesians 5. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have women leaders (if you are a true complementarian church, you will have strong women leaders in your church), but many men who are pastors aren’t actually leading, they are just shepherding. And men know the difference. One thing that is important and few men can articulate this but I’ve found this to be true: men want a pastor who is working hard on his marriage, is honest about his marriage and has a marriage they want to emulate. Is this pressure on the pastor? Yes, but so is everything else about his life and ministry. Too many pastors do not have a passion filled marriage and the men who walk into their churches know it.

As sexist as this sounds, Men follow men.

Expect men to succeed. It is amazing to me what happens in someone’s life when we expect them to succeed or reach a goal. People pick up on our expectations and they have a way of reaching our expectations. If you expect men to lead family devotions, tell them, tell them you believe they can do it and give them resources to do it. If you expect men to reach something, tell them and help them get there. Too many churches seem to say, “We’re content if men just show up.” Or, “You should do ___” and then never give them any tools to accomplish this. Men will often not do something if they are afraid they won’t succeed. This is why men don’t lead at home, don’t pray with their wife, they are afraid of failing.

Men will often not do something if they are afraid they won’t succeed.

Give men something to do. What do most men’s ministries tend to be? A male version of a women’s ministry. They are discussion focused, a large event with men listening or trying to get men to share. While women will share before they serve, men want to serve first. Give them something to do. Help them see how their actions can make an impact. Which leads to the next one…

Men want to serve before their share & open up.

Help them see how their job is a mission field. This is something churches have failed in. Give them a missional theology of work. Not everyone should be a pastor at a church, yet most of the time a pastor meets a businessman he makes him feel guilty for not being a pastor.

Ultimately: The reality for reaching men is they have a habit of becoming what we expect them to be. Whatever bar you have for men, they will reach it. Men are able to do impossible things in life, but the church has by and large held up a broom stick they can jump over and wondered why men didn’t come back.

Men become what we expect them to become. Expect more.