Encouraging Men to Get Involved

I recently posted “A Fireside Discussion” and received a comment requesting follow-up information about how to encourage men to get involved in the Church.  Here you go…

Men won’t get involved in stuff if they don’t see a value.  Also, they aren’t likely to attend an event, group or club unless they know someone else, and know them well.  (These are all generalizations; please keep this in mind.)  Another reason men won’t get involved is if they see the stuff as weak, lame or feminine.  Unfortunately, many men see Mass, Church events, groups and retreats through this lens.  From my previous post, I mentioned that the Church is “by women, for women”, and this is a big reason why men aren’t involved.  Men shouldn’t be forced into praying like women pray, it doesn’t work for us.  Men need to pray the way men were created to pray.  There’s a difference, and that difference is important.  (Maybe more on this in a future post?)

So how do you encourage men to participate?  It’s tough to know, exactly.  I think that a great way is to get to the heart of a man, that which God put deep inside each man.  It’s different from anything else in the world, and hard to explain.  See, men want to be rugged and tough.  They want to shoot stuff, and fix stuff, and build stuff.  They want to protect and defend, they want to love and be loved.  They want to feel a purpose and be accomplished.  Unfortunately, so many men don’t know how to do any of that stuff.  If we want men to participate, we have to encourage them, build them up and GIVE THEM A PERSONAL INVITATION.  Personal invitations, from men they trust and respect, might just be the thing to get a man involved at Church.  The event better not suck, or be lame, and it better not be associated with ‘sissiness’.  If it does, he’ll never come back.

I encourage all the faithful, if they know a man who needs to be involved, to be like St Monica.  St Monica, the mother of St Augustine, prayed unceasingly for her son.  Augustine was a wandering-soul.  He lived a life of incredible sin and his mother still prayed.  He became on of the greatest writers of the Church.  That man who you know might just be the next St Augustine.

Man up!