What
follows are three places where I think the ELCA in particular and the mainline
church in general, could engage with a demographic that it feels like we’ve
largely abandoned–young men.
Offer Individual Confession and Forgiveness
In a
Historical Jesus class I took in undergrad we watched the movie Jesus of
Montreal. One aspect of the movie that scandalized me at the time was a
scene where a priest who had ceased to care what Jesus really was all
about justified himself with the argument that his ministry, confession and
forgiveness in particular, was the closest thing the average person would ever
get to mental healthcare, counseling, or social work. I’d have to go back and
watch the movie again, there was likely more nuance to him than that, but I’ve
grown sympathetic with this argument. Not, please understand, because I don’t
believe in the radical transformational nature of Jesus’ person and ministry,
but because I have eyes; living in a neo-liberal society where care of any sort
has been firmly attached to a person’s job and economic worth, and has to be
navigated by the individual in distress, my ministry often times involves being
the only person who pauses to notice that: someone is acting atypically and
might have an infection, that a person is starting to lean toward an addictive
behavior or unhealthy ideation, and that someone isn’t able to make ends meet. On
one hand, I think naming that as part of ministry is worth doing, on the other
hand I think it points back to how to minister to men well.
As much
as our society makes noises about how men ought to: open up, go to therapy, and
take more intentional care of themselves, we also, in a myriad of ways, glorify
those who do not. One of the few traditional places where these sorts of things
come up, where vulnerabilities can be shared, where the unnamable can be named,
where one’s life can be looked at front and center, is the ritual of Individual
Confession and Forgiveness. Throughout my years of ministry, I have found
informally “offering confession”, just letting people know that there are a
couple pages in our liturgy addressing this rite, brings out a different flavor
in my ministry. There are folk—men in particular—hungry for confession, to name
failings and hear words of forgiveness, to be returned to the font of baptism and
find the cross of Christ again sealed upon their brow.
I wonder
what a more formal confession ministry, more like the Roman Catholic model,
might look like in the mainline? I wonder what the experience of “Evangelical
Catholic” Lutherans is with young men in our current moment? I wonder if, in
this moment where masculinity is being pandered to by podcasters and flim-flam
men and stigmatized by wider society, which has left so many young men feeling
objectified and alone, if the Ministry of Confession and Forgiveness is the
Church’s answer, if it is the good news men need today?
Monastic Challenge (Deconstructed Hours)
For
around a decade, I have participated in #NaNoWriMo, where I try to write 50,000
words in a month, and hope that they will come out in a vaguely novelish form.
It is a practice that forced me to give up other things in order to take time
to do one thing. It focuses my life. And #NaNoWriMo is just one of quite a few
different challenges out there that young men are using to bring structure and
focus to their chaotic lives. There are all sorts of challenges out there,
everything from abstaining from smartphone use to avoiding “Onanism” to No-Shave-November.
The commonality in all of these challenges is imposing a meaning on to a period
of time, to cut things out of life that don’t correspond to that meaning, and
to be devoted to something bigger than oneself.
All of
that sounds quite a bit like a desire for the monastic life, or perhaps secular
attempts at Lent. I think the Church has quite a bit to offer men hungry for meaning,
focuses, and devotion! What would it look like if you offered a Monastic
Challenge to your congregation? What might happen in your church if you offered
prayers for dawn, noon, dusk, and evening, and expect people to actually pray
them? My guess is the men in your congregation between 15 and 25 will be
grateful that you saw fit to challenge them, that you pointed their restless
hearts on an adventure of the soul, that you offered them devotion, focus, and
meaning.
Some questions you need to be able to answer
Finally,
if you are serious about ministering to men, you need to be able to engage with
at least some of the following questions:
-How do you talk about shame?
-What can you say to visceral impulses toward revenge?
-How do you talk about sabbath in a way that combats
workaholism?
-What’s your strategy when confronted with finger pointing
and deflection?
-Do you have a non-theoretical understanding of the
experience of having scruples?
-Young men feel so alienated, what’s your message to that sense
of omnipresent exclusion?
-When you talk about baptism, do you do so in a way that
affirms the dignity and self-worth of young men?
-If you are going to ask young men to express their
emotions, are you ready to see and hear all that has been repressed?
-There are so many critiques of faith out there, from
pre-modern version of pluralism to acidic modern scientism to post-modern
puncturing of metanarratives. Most young men have a popularized sense of all
of these from videogame narratives and memes. Can you take that sort of
theology seriously?
Conclusion
If you would like to better
minister to young men in your congregation, three things to consider are: Reflecting
theologically on the concerns of young men, challenging them with prayer, and
offering individual confession and forgiveness.
