Transcript
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And welcome back to Pastor Plek's podcast.
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I'm your host, pastor Plek, and joining me in studio today is none other than the great and amazing Pastor Lanier.
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Holland-greg III, holland, great to have you Great to be here.
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You know we're talking about something that is kind of fresh on the minds of the New York Times, of the Atlantic, all across media is a notation that for the first time in really recent history, probably even more than recent history, men are trending in a positive direction, in church more so than women.
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So the men are now more likely to be in church than their female counterpart.
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And I was just wondering, Holland, have we seen that, and what does that mean?
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Yeah, in terms of have we seen that?
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I feel like our church, eastside Community Church we're not quite there yet.
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We're in a kind of unique community and situation, the community that we're serving there, where, yeah, I think we're seeing a trend move that direction, but not quite there yet in terms of like men and women in the church but overall, obviously, like in our culture in America.
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All the evidence does seem to be pointing that way and I think there's a couple reasons behind it.
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I have my guesses at it.
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Yeah, I would say for our church here at Wells Branch Community Church, we've got two men's groups and then we have two women's groups, and the two men's groups are probably about 75 men, whereas the women's groups are like a total of 20.
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So you already see this.
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Yeah, like big time In terms of like male involvement over female involvement.
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It's wild, is that across the board, with like serving as well and like attendance on Sunday?
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Yeah, it's wild, yeah.
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And so even in our children's ministry we have a lot of men that are serving in children's ministry, which usually that was like a predominantly female-driven thing.
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In our connections ministry we have a lot of men as well.
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Yeah, I would say, across the board, the interest level for men being involved is greater.
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Now there is part of that where, for example, our thing here is worship one, serve one.
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Now there is part of that where, for example, our thing here is worship one, serve one.
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So sometimes the ladies take kids home while the husband stays and serves.
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There are a couple people, I know that, where the husband takes the kids home while the wife serves, but for the most part, when I think about single people, it's the men that are way more inclined to be serving, more so than the women, which I think is sort of a fascinating trend and one that I think the news media has been taking notice of, and let's just talk through kind of some stats that I've seen.
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One is that there's about 2.4 million more women in college and a university setting than there are men.
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Thoughts on why that is.
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That's a good question.
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First thing that comes to mind for me is there's a lot of jobs that are more like trade-type jobs, that are pretty male-dominated in terms of you know—.
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Construction Handyman construction, plumber, mechanic, you know a lot of these different things that are—you're not going to college for those jobs, Right?
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And those are like 80%, 90%, 99% men doing those jobs.
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And, to be fair, they're making a killing.
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Yeah, like you know, know back in the day when especially since covet, I feel like prices jumped up so much for a lot of those kind of like necessary services um well, yeah, and and because, um, men don't have skills now or maybe, maybe, maybe not men, but people in general don't have skills, and so if you can do something like change a tire, you're a wrench, yeah, yeah, turn a wrench, you.
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And so if you can do something like change a tire, turn a wrench, yeah yeah, turn a wrench.
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You're the king.
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You're the king like you know.
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A couple things I thought about like it.
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It was frustrating that I was one of those people, but um, not long ago.
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Uh, we couldn't figure out why our sprinklers were leaking.
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So I dug up the sprinkler.
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I found, you know, I was able to repair the PVC pipe that had cracked and I put a you know a joint in there to connect it and it fixed it.
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But then there was something to do with the valve replacement in the sprinkler box.
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Blah, blah, blah.
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A lot of words I don't know.
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And so eventually we gave up and we called for help and the guy looked at it, did like 15 minutes of something and we paid him $150.
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And you're just like I should have known how to do that.
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Right, I mean, it was a simple thing and I looked all over YouTube and it explained what it was, but I clearly could not figure it out.
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So I think there is a real.
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I like that what you say, because it's not necessarily that men aren't working, but it's more of like they're getting really great pay to do jobs that other people don't want to do I would also say like there's been a like very heavy shift leftward in all of our institutions at that um, that really, uh, even prioritize, intentionally prioritizes um, uh, an emphasis on women and um, and so some of that shift, the, the ideological shift leftward, the emphasis on women and stuff.
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I think some of that has to play into the college issue as well.
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Yeah, I agree.
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I think there's like this thing of like, if you are a man in college, it's we're gonna make life.
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I don't want to say this is where I don't want to get overly um, like, like general, but we're not here to make your life easy, whereas for women, we really want to emphasize just the, the way men should men have been in leadership too much.
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We need to emphasize women to lead, I think, is where colleges have sort of shifted toward and I think that becomes something like when you hear that sort of language, even as a young man, you're just like okay, I don't need this.
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Yeah, that goes to like my hypothesis about the church thing.
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Is that, or I don't know what you were planning to say about this, but I think a lot of it just has to do with where do you go If you're a man?
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Where do you go, you know, to find encouragement about masculinity?
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Where do you go?
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It's somewhere that is going to celebrate masculinity, somewhere that's going to see it as a positive thing, not just a negative, toxic thing that needs to be muzzled, but like, actually celebrates masculinity, and there's not a whole lot of places left in our culture today where you can get that.
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I think maybe in some sports.
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Yeah, sports and conservative churches are pretty much, are it?
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That's it and I think when you look at, maybe there's more than that.
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That's all that comes to mind for me.
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That is what comes to mind.
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But I think that that, because we do celebrate men, we want people at our church.
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We celebrate men.
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I think recently you told me and if you don't want to go here, you don't have to, but you experienced a baby shower or a wedding shower or some sort of shower where the dudes were taking on girls names.
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Was that was that?
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you told me that uh, no, no comment okay, all right, but I heard somewhere that there are these baby showers and instead of the baby shower, you know, like, was it a baby shower or maybe a wedding shower, somewhere where there's a man and woman?
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And then I've heard that men were taking on women's names, like saying, like I'm going to be, you know, don't call me Chris Plekkenpol, call me Chris Carpenter.
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I'm now taking on my wife's name, or I'm hyphenating my name to now we're both Plekkenpol, carpenter or Carpenter Plekkenpol, however that goes, there's been a big move in that direction in terms of trends, of just even questioning the idea of, you know, taking your husband's last name.
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There's been.
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I would say just overall, our culture has really downplayed a masculinity, the idea you know, you say a word like patriarchy it's a bad word, right.
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Instead of seeing, like you know, seeing male headship and leadership and responsibility and stuff as a really positive thing, it's viewed negatively and rebelled against.
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And so where does that leave men going?
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Hey, where do I go?
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Where the things that the way that God has made me is actually celebrated instead of?
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criticized.
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Yeah, let's talk about some of the things that men uniquely and I think this might be that men uniquely are called to do as Christians.
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And when I think about this.
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I think of.
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I go with the three Ps and this might be overly simplifying, but tell me what you think about this.
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Men are called to provide, men are called to protect, men are called to pursue, and so those have been kind of in general, the three Ps I stick with like provide for a family, pursue their wives, protect their family, protect the church, protect people.
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I would add a fourth one, preside, preside.
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So oversee so it's the idea of God calling men to being a husband is the head of his wife having spiritual authority and oversight over the family.
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And again, that's presented positively in the Bible but it's really ridiculed and criticized in our culture as that's a negative thing, that's a harmful thing, and you can see for a lot of people that criticize it it's because they have seen wicked men abuse authority, abuse power, you know, use it in selfish ways, for selfish ambition, and so because of that, there's this pendulum swing against it to say, well then, all you know, any men in leadership, male authority, all that stuff's bad and we need to avoid it.
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Rather than saying what is, how, does the Bible actually present it in a way that is life-giving and good?
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So when you talk about the distinct things about men and women, like how has God uniquely created men, all the things you listed protect, provide, pursue, preside, if you want to add that, yeah, yeah, I like that.
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I think all of it kind of ties into the fact that God has made men in a unique way to be strong.
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That, if you were to like Proverbs 20, 29 says the glory of young men is their strength.
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Now, men and women can both be strong, obviously, but when you look at the male versus the female sex you go, okay, which one's the stronger sex?
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Men have been built differently by God and that's not by accident, right?
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God, when he created Adam and Eve in the garden, created men and women.
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I would say it's very intentional by God.
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And the biological, physical differences actually are related to our spiritual callings and giftings and roles and responsibilities in the home, in the kingdom, in society, and roles and responsibilities in the home, in the kingdom, in society.
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And so why is a man called to protect and provide?
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God's built him to be bigger, to be stronger, to be able to do that kind of manual labor to care for something that is worth caring for, right, and I think it goes back to probably when you're trying to get to root cause.
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Why the shift?
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Because I think there was a time when you know patriarchy was just sort of was sort of the thing and, and I think you know, starting with women's suffrage, uh, and obviously not starting.
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But there is a move like, hey, let's go back to paul, right, let's.
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I'm going back to the Bible.
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In Christ, there is neither male nor female, Jew, greek, slave or free.
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And so.
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I think there's this real sense of elevating the value of equality with men and women, which I think the church did a really great job promoting and in the early church, killed it at that.
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And still men were called to lead and that was just assumed, I think, for the most part just because the culture was very much male dominated.
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But then over time, I mean, and it took many, a couple thousand years, but here we are of now, um, there's just this uh shift from men and women are equal in value to now they should be equal in role, which has been way more prevalent and has led to, I think men at least and this is the part I loved, maybe this is true or not true, I'm not sure, but men have like sort of disengaged with church when they're not called upon to lead, because it's then you're not in the God-given role that you're in.
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There's been a disconnect, and so I think a lot of the churches that are more liberal and maybe this is I don't want to go assume something and I don't know if you would know this but it seems like men disconnect from those type of churches and then they lean into churches like ours which are male-led, see women with equal value, but are male-led.
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Any thoughts on that trend over the course of history and maybe what some of the things that shifted it?
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Yeah, um, I definitely I agree with what you're saying about men.
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You know, seeing what they're looking at a church and going am, am I going to be able to be who god's made me to be here?
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right and I think, for as a result of you, when you talk about like you brought up women's suffrage, feminism in general if what you mean by you, know elevating women, is this idea of like.
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We are equal before God as image bearers.
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Amen and hallelujah.
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We have the same standing before God in Christ Right co-heirs there's no co-heirs, equal in value, equal in worth, Amen.
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But that was never really the whole.
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That was not all that feminism was about, though there was very much.
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Several of the leaders of the feminist movement were very anti-Christian, anti-Bible, hated the idea of differences in roles and despised, you know, the idea of being a stay-at-home mother and things like that.
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Women shouldn't be allowed to do that, Right, you know, like really despised the role what Scripture would call is a really precious and valuable and special role of caring for children in the home and really tried to say it's not just that men and women are equal in value.
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Right, they must be equal in every way.
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They are interchangeable.
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Yeah, in fact there's no difference.
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Yes, and so that if you say they're interchangeable in every way, then eventually you can see how that will logically lead to transgenderism homosexuality.
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Egalitarianism is connected to those things because it is saying we are removing the difference between male and female when God created them to be equal and yet complementary, right and having different strengths and roles.
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So you remove that and you see how we end up today where transgenderism homosexuality is, you know, becoming the yeah is the norm in our culture now, and it's that taking away of the you know, unique design for male and female and saying that they're interchangeable.
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Yeah, I think that that I think that weakness of of our cultural weakness I guess that might be of our cultural weakness.
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I guess that might be, or that maybe cultural gap between the church and culture is that we've had guys that have come to Christ here and I think of John Milton, one of the guys that came to Christ and he's been on the show.
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He said that when he came to church as a non-christian never heard any of this.
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You know, hadn't really only heard negative things about the church ever until chris dayton uh, met at work and started challenging him to come, but before that he said I'd only heard that men are bad, that I'm worthless, and all of a sudden I come to a church and men are called to lead.
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Men are asked to like there's a clear delineation in role and he said it was for him.
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He had never seen anything like that and I think he came to our church when he's 37.
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So like, when you think about that as a non-christian, so there is like a um draw for people when they see the culture sort of like give up on men, maybe because of some very real, very problematic issues in the past, but give up on men and say because these men have failed.
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So therefore, let's give up on men.
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It's like saying, since the police have failed in these areas of abuse, therefore let's just get rid of all the police.
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And that leads to complete chaos.
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And I think we're seeing that culturally with the transgenderism stuff, with homosexuality kind of peaking, and I think you're seeing a real pushback of men saying they weren't even asked to choose a side before, but now it's like well, what I want to lean into where I'm wanted.
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So I think that might be due to or might be where we're seeing more men coming to the church.
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Yeah, I think so, and I mean there obviously is a real, like you're saying, there's been examples of men who have taken advantage of power and authority, who have been oppressive, abusive, but the answer to that is not to abandon men in leadership and authority.
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You can't do that.
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Actually.
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What will happen is just that wicked men will fill that role again and again and again.
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Who is it that is strong enough to overcome wicked men?
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Righteous men?
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godly men who have courage and integrity and character, and that's actually that is God's design for leadership of the church and the home and society is for righteous men who rule with integrity and character, rule with integrity and character.
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But because we haven't seen that, so many people have just never seen that before.
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I think is a big part of the problem is seeing what I can't even imagine what it would look like for a godly man to be in charge of something you know, who really cares for the people under his authority, who really I think it's Psalm 128, blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.
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His wife will be a fruitful vine within his home.
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His children will be like olive shoots around his table.
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Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.
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It gives you this picture of what does righteous leadership look like for a man in his home.
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His family is like a well-watered garden, flourishing there.
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And so I think so many of us have just never seen that All we know is abusive, oppressive, selfish, arrogant men.
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And so you know, it kind of makes sense in a way of like, yeah, we don't believe, we don't believe in men anymore, and the church is the only place that, if it's a Bible preaching church still says no, god has called men.
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God has created men for this.
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God has called them to it.
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God wants to redeem wicked men and make them righteous men and for the blessing of other people.
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So the church is, you know it's a place where men can go.
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Like what other places can men go and find encouragement to be a good dad, right, to be a faithful husband you know to be integrity and fidelity?
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Where else can a man go to talk about that stuff with other men who are interested in those things?
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Yeah, and I think let's talk about church.
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I'm going to go now overall church, Big C Church.
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I think it was the SBC, the Southern Baptist Convention, and it had a huge debate of the place of women in leadership and in family life.
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In fact, their denominational statement of faith says that only men may serve as pastors.
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But did that get through?
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I thought that was—or they made it optional to make that a thing.
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Isn't that true?
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No, it's kind of complicated.
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They're trying to pass something called the Law Amendment.
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So I don't know if you want— Law Amendment?
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Yeah, and it didn't pass with a—they needed like a majority.
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I don't know if you want Law amendment yeah, and it didn't pass with a.
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They needed like a majority.
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I don't know if it's a strict majority or they fell just short of getting it passed, but it had something to do with churches.
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That, yeah, it was the law amendment is one of the most crucial issues facing messengers headed to Indianapolis for the 2024 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.
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It needs a two-thirds majority.
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The so-called law amendment is an effort to change the SBC Constitution to clarify the only kind of church in friendly cooperation with the convention is one that affirms, appoints or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.
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Right and so when they did it, how did the there was a lot of debate online and stuff about it.
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A lot of people came up against it saying you know, oh, this is just going to hurt the SBC by.
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You know, there's some people who they have a.
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You know a woman on staff and she's a children's pastor Right.
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Or you know they're using that language, but you know they're examining.
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Okay, is she really pastoring just children or is she— Right.
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Are you saying that she's an elder because she has the title pastor?
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There's a lot of confusion about that, a lot of debate online about it and it ended up not passing.
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Who have women pastors that are still technically in friendly cooperation or fellowship or whatever with the convention?
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And you know a lot of the people that were proponents of the law amendment were saying we've got to understand that there is a connection between you know, not being faithful to scripture and its rules about who is called to be pastors and elders and just some of the drift that we see theologically and morally in the Church.
00:21:41.101 --> 00:21:44.619
We've got to tighten things up essentially to really be faithful to Scripture.
00:21:44.619 --> 00:21:46.930
That was the proponents' argument.
00:21:48.532 --> 00:21:53.864
And here's a question, and I think this might be part of the pendulum swing that we constantly face.
00:21:53.864 --> 00:22:01.942
I remember the—I'm just going to use the sbc uh, because back in the day in the 70s, um, there was a push to kind of go more towards a liberal way.
00:22:01.942 --> 00:22:06.951
I think charles stanley was actually the president then and he kind of pulled everyone back toward a more conservative route.
00:22:06.951 --> 00:22:08.334
And so here we are.
00:22:08.334 --> 00:22:09.435
You know what?
00:22:09.435 --> 00:22:12.563
How many years later, 70, to like what?
00:22:12.563 --> 00:22:16.582
50 years later, roughly to same sort of place.
00:22:16.582 --> 00:22:18.690
Where is this a drift?
00:22:18.690 --> 00:22:22.260
Or is this the fact that there was 61% that voted for that?
00:22:22.260 --> 00:22:23.353
Is that a hey?
00:22:23.353 --> 00:22:26.882
There's a reality here where a lot of churches are still online and we should celebrate that.
00:22:26.882 --> 00:22:34.536
Or where do you think that's going as far as the way that churches are wanting themselves to be perceived and drawing men?
00:22:37.741 --> 00:22:40.049
are wanting themselves to be perceived and drawing men.
00:22:40.049 --> 00:22:52.163
Yeah, I think there's been an explosion of shifts in different churches, bringing on affirming and approving and welcoming female pastors Right.
00:22:52.163 --> 00:23:02.759
So going against 1 Timothy 2, not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man and churches that used to hold to only male pastors have shifted.
00:23:02.759 --> 00:23:12.111
And to me it's pretty clear that there's been a major cultural shift about gender, sexuality, men and women.
00:23:12.111 --> 00:23:23.329
So a lot of churches are shifting, egalitarian, I think, in response to the culture of like, hey, we don't want to upset people, we don't want people to leave our church, we want everyone to be empowered or feel empowered.
00:23:23.691 --> 00:23:25.596
Have you seen that effect at your church?
00:23:25.596 --> 00:23:33.351
Yeah, talk to me about, like just when you, I guess, I don't know made a hard call, I don't know made a righteous call.
00:23:33.351 --> 00:23:34.132
Yeah.
00:23:34.172 --> 00:23:49.684
So we teach through books of the Bible, you know, like Wells Branch, and we were teaching through 1 Timothy, and we get to that passage 1 Timothy, 2 and 3, talking about men and women and elders and stuff and said, hey, here's where we land on this, our position.
00:23:49.684 --> 00:23:50.766
We want to be faithful to Scripture.
00:23:50.766 --> 00:23:51.967
We have only male elders here.
00:23:51.967 --> 00:23:59.355
And I explained this is not just some random rule in the New Testament.
00:23:59.355 --> 00:24:05.056
This is, you know, accords with God's design from the garden, from the beginning that Adam, even before the fall, adam had authority.
00:24:05.056 --> 00:24:10.214
God's design for male and female was set this way, let's go hold on back to-.
00:24:10.536 --> 00:24:11.239
So a bunch of people left.
00:24:11.239 --> 00:24:25.873
Yeah, so when you went there, when you said Adam in the beginning had authority over Eve, and people were like, is that where the pushback was from your people, or just the like?
00:24:25.873 --> 00:24:30.083
Let's just realize that if it were now, Adam and Eve would just be.
00:24:32.111 --> 00:24:33.310
A lot, a lot and not you know.
00:24:33.310 --> 00:24:37.733
We had some people who were like, hey, this is hard for me, but you know, I want to stay and learn and be discipled.
00:24:37.733 --> 00:24:46.819
We had other people who just said, no, the idea of authority in marriage is because of the fall.
00:24:46.819 --> 00:24:49.602
Yeah, hierarchy in general is because of the fall.
00:24:49.602 --> 00:24:53.183
All of this is a result of sin and it's more of like a curse or a punishment.
00:24:53.183 --> 00:24:59.607
Whereas I was teaching, no, even before the fall, Adam was the head of his wife, because that's God's design.
00:24:59.710 --> 00:25:01.777
So when people heard that they're like I'm out.
00:25:02.118 --> 00:25:03.242
Yeah, that was the yeah.
00:25:03.242 --> 00:25:07.430
They said I don't want to be under this kind of teaching that you know, they said, is oppressive toward women.
00:25:07.430 --> 00:25:19.915
And I was like what the godly biblical picture of a head is is not to push down and oppress, it's to lift up, it's to care for, it is to meet the needs of those under your care.
00:25:19.915 --> 00:25:22.846
Biblical authority is covenantal.
00:25:22.846 --> 00:25:25.173
It's mutual commitments right.
00:25:25.173 --> 00:25:30.250
The person in submission to authority is hey, I give you my respect and obedience.
00:25:30.250 --> 00:25:37.644
The person in authority says I'll protect you, provide for you, preside over you, pursue you, I will take care of your needs.
00:25:37.644 --> 00:25:41.877
I've pointed to Psalm 23 as a great example of this right.
00:25:41.877 --> 00:25:42.839
The Lord is my shepherd.
00:25:42.839 --> 00:25:43.961
I shall not want.
00:25:43.961 --> 00:25:46.215
That's the covenant I submit to my shepherd.
00:25:47.073 --> 00:25:48.337
And he's going to take care of every need.
00:25:48.337 --> 00:25:50.076
He's going to make me lie down in green pastures.
00:25:50.076 --> 00:25:51.656
He's going to lead me beside still waters.
00:25:58.170 --> 00:26:00.695
So this past Sunday we at our church we talked through Acts 16, and there's two women involved in Acts 16.
00:26:00.695 --> 00:26:05.174
Lydia at least two women that are specifically called out, lydia and her group and they're at the place of prayer.
00:26:05.174 --> 00:26:08.221
Paul meets them, sits down with them, which is wild.
