Are men our biggest pastoral problem today?

If someone were to pin me down and ask me the question: “What is the most common underlying cause of pastoral problems in the church today?”, I wouldn’t hesitate to give an answer. It might be controversial and provocative, but I would say it anyway.

Men who abdicate their God-given responsibility.

And for the sake of absolute clarity, I mean men, adult males. Men who invariably prefer a quiet life and prefer skirting around a crisis to identifying it in plain words. Men who do not take the time to think ahead, let alone plan ahead. Men who throw up their hands in defeat at the first sign of opposition or discouragement. Men who are inclined to indulge their own priorities and pleasures, rather than consider the long-term good of the souls for whom they are responsible. Men who instinctively adopt a defensive posture when they are challenged, no matter how reasonable the challenge.

I wonder how many men are still reading this column? I suspect that most men will recognise themselves in these descriptions. The man who is writing these words certainly does – in all of them. Especially the last one. How many men’s hackles do not rise when they hear the words “Can I just make a suggestion about … ?”.

Let me put in a genuine plea for my fellow men. We are in this condition as a society, largely because our culture has jettisoned the Biblical, godly understanding of what it means to be human, made in the image of God; and essential to that image is maleness and femaleness (Gen. 1v27). I never went to watch the Barbie movie back in 2023 – it’s not the kind of thing that real men do – but I understand that the plot gives expression to a false polarity: that men are either toxically masculine, misogynistic, MMA-obsessed (Mixed Martial Arts) Triple Alpha Males; or else they are Ken, lazing around on the beach, dependent on the attention of Barbie, or whoever it might be, for his own validation.

What godly men must do – and godly women too, every bit as much – is to insist vehemently that these are not the only two alternatives. And neither should we shuffle into some kind of “centrist Dad” middle ground. No: we need to rise far above this and to meditate on the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11v3: “the head of every man is Christ.” The head leads, the head directs, the head controls what the body does and where it goes; this is the picture we should see here. And that head is Christ.

Every man, in whatever framework of activities and relationships he finds himself, whether married or unmarried, employer or employee, is to model himself on Jesus Christ, the Servant King. The idea of joining together the concepts of “servant” and “king” seemed bizarre and contradictory when Jesus first spoke to His disciples (Luke 22v24-27; John 13 v12-17); it is no less so today. Authority has been confused with authoritarianism, service with servility. To be in a position of authority is necessarily to be oppressive; to be in a submissive role is to be a victim, and victims are always right.

In the beginning, the First Adam was entrusted with responsibility, with stewardship, to be God’s Servant-King over the creation entrusted to him. He failed in that duty; he submitted his judgement to his wife, who in turn had been swayed by a mere creature. The Head became the Tail, and disorder and dysregulation set in from that moment. The plot for Barbie was hatched in the Garden of Eden.

The only way to overcome the crisis of manhood is for men, everywhere, to lift up their heads and follow the one Luther called “The Proper Man”, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Last Adam, the True Leader, who “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12v2). Soldiers of Christ, Arise, and put your armour on!