I’m going to start this with a quote from David Murrow’s new posting at Boundless.

If you’re looking for a church with young, single men, they’re generally harder to find in small, traditional congregations, and easier to find in megachurches. This is no accident: These jumbo congregations work hard to make guys feel at home. Megachurches have nixed many of the feminine cultural elements ingrained in traditional churches: group hugs, handholding, emotive displays, personal testimonies and prayer-and-share. They’ve removed the banners, quilts, curtains, doilies and flowers from their worship spaces. Some have zapped every “Jesus is my boyfriend” song from their worship sets.

Megachurches are into excellence – and so are men. Guys love a challenging sermon that doesn’t stray into condemnation or moralism. They like mind-stretching discussions and healthy debate. Men appreciate a nice facility that’s well kept.

Now, this is half correct. Getting rid of theologically dubious songs (particularly the latently homoerotic “Jesus is my boyfriend” ones) is obvious. Cutting down praise and worship works. Professional music and non frilliness work for Western males, as any bar owner knows.

But if you don’t deal with some of the issues that beset men things will go horribly wrong. We (even in the church) do not want things discussed and emoted on. We want to solve things — and help. Not be hugged or cried over.

We want to see our children, not be shamed from attending church by the sisterhood who have decided that the breakdown of our marriages was all our fault. And we don’t want to date the women who have destroyed three other men, but still see themselves as righteous.

In short, we want equal preaching. We are prepared to correct our lives. But we want to know that we will not be the only people held accountable by the leadership. It is quite easy to market a church to men. It is a lot harder to make it safe for men:. the current dating and sexual environment, which allows rapid and easy separation and divorce (of the person, but continuing access to the ex’es chequebook via alimony and child support)  has to be confronted.

Because divorce is destroying the middle aged men and women in the church. And here I speak as someone who has been divorced. The church needs to stand for the vows people have made… in the congregation. There need to be prayers for the married people, and teaching that destroys the memes of entitlement, selfishness, false self sacrifice and non biblical submission that seem to take strong men and remove their spine: gentle, godly women and make them consumed with bitterness and hate.

In short, we need to change. As a church. My boys do attend church: but our church is making some of these moves. For the current path of accommodating the fashions of this world will lead to the loss of effective witness against the idols of the age. And we will be held accountable, for we have not done our duty. We will have been neither salt, nor light.

Yesterday the news from the family got worse. I told the boys, I then had to tell my ex-sife directly so that she did not get it distorted from the boys… I takled to the people involved: I we were cracking quite bad jokes at each other and discussing gossip. . I used the goodwill and networks I have built up to get those I trust to pray, giving enough details that they can pray wisely.

Then the boys distracted me by looking at odd computer equipment, I read camera reviews (from ones that I would like to buy to medium and large format cameras) and I did a LOT of photo blogging.

The trouble is that I can name the coping styles I used, and grade them. I am trained tn them. The biggest challenge yesterday was dealing with people who do not have such a vocabulary, where the simplest and correct action is not to share, It will harm them and you.

For no one said that this life was going to be easy in Christ.

Hebrews 12:12-24

¹²Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, ¹³and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

¹⁴Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. ¹⁵See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and through it many become defiled. ¹⁶See to it that no one becomes like Esau, an immoral and godless person, who sold his birthright for a single meal. ¹⁷You know that later, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, even though he sought the blessing with tears.

¹⁸You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, ¹⁹and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. ²⁰(For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.” ²¹Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”) ²²But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, ²³and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, ²⁴and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

In our anger and grief, in our rage, in our hope: we must still act wisely. We must not let ourself be ruled by our emotions. In the end, love is a choice. Saying the words of peace is a choice.

And if you cannot work out what to do, do what needs to be done today. Our life is made of the choices we make habitual. If our emotions are in turmoil our body may help as we move and do. At times we will be polite and not fully truthful. But none of us ever is, for our hearts are desperately wicked, and we lie to ourselves about this.

And our character comes to fpre in a time of crisis. If you don’t practice the disciplines of prayer, study, living in peace and  acting by choice when times are good, you will act rashly and harshly in crisis. At the time you need help, it will be lost to you: and people then will not return to help, even if you. like Esau, repent in tears.