Reaching Men for Christ

This is an article that first appeared in Christianity Today on 27th Oct 2025 by Joe Barnard, Minister of Holyrood Evangelical Church and Executive Director of Cross Training Ministries.  

When was the last time that there were more men interested in Christianity than women? Not in the early church; not in the medieval church; not in the 18th century revivals; certainly not in the 20th century. The real question is whether this has even happened before. In all my travels, from Egypt to Argentina, I’ve always noted the same thing in churches: There are more women than men. The current rise in religious interest among men may not be unique, but it is anomalous. 

We should infer something from this: God is doing something extraordinary at the moment. We should also feel compelled to act. Unusual times mean unusual opportunities.

But before jump-starting new initiatives, a problem to be confronted. The evangelical church in most cases is currently unprepared to be fishers of men. There are five symptoms of this.

First, evangelical churches are out of fashion. For decades, we’ve been moving toward informality, egalitarianism, and anything dubbed as “contemporary”. This is the opposite direction that young men are traveling. They hunger for formality, hierarchy, and the past. This explains why so many searching young men are by-passing the doors of Baptists and Presbyterians for Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. 

Second, our men’s material is ineffective. Most books and courses produced for Christian men should have the subtitle “for dummies” attached to them. We have been acting as if all men are cut from the same cloth as Homer Simpson. But this isn’t the case for men who are drinking the milk of Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, and Tom Holland. They may not be academics, but they are thinkers. One of the few benefits of the digital age has been the way in which podcasts have elevated the intellectual appetites of Millennial and Gen Z men.

Third, we’re embarrassed to acknowledge maleness. This is a bigger problem in the UK than the US. For decades, we’ve been trying to erase as many of the distinctives of each sex as possible. This has left us unable, even unwilling, to address men in particular. We feel the same discomfort when someone speaks directly to men that we feel when someone drops a racist comment. Thus, to avoid awkwardness, we choose silence. 

Fourth, the church has become more emasculated than it realises. A typical evangelical worship service provides ample evidence. A lot of men no more want to sing dewy-eyed love anthems than they want to watch rom-coms. Likewise, they get tired of each and every sermon being a form of pop psychology. Men want truth; they want to be reasoned with; they want a king that is worthy of self-sacrifice. Not enough evangelical churches provide this.  

Finally, men’s ministry is typically the weakest part of a church’s discipleship ministry. Most churches invest heavily in children and youth work. Women are remarkable for their spontaneous abilities to gather and organise. Men? Not so. Left to themselves they roll apart like marbles on the floor. Sadly, most churches do little to gather them.

So, the problem: On the one hand, there is a dramatic rise of religious interest among men on both sides of the Atlantic; on the other, evangelical churches are negligently unfit to engage with these men. 

How can this change? After three years of reflection and finally writing a book, here are my suggestions for making disciples of religiously curious men.

First, the church needs to help men escape the spiritual black hole that is modernity. Men today feel as if they are living in a cultural wasteland. They are not delusional. All of the great Christian cultural critics of the last three generations have more or less said so much. Modernity is like a cancer eating itself up from the inside. A lot of guys are feeling the symptoms of this. They are fed up with materialism, individualism, consumerism, egalitarianism, liberalism, digitalism, capitalism, and progressivism. They want something better to make sense of their lives and to fill their souls with purpose. 

The opportunity here for Christians should be obvious. The same gospel that offered an exit out of paganism also offers an exit out of modernism. The church needs to help men find this door. 

Second, we need to brandish the credentials of tradition. For years, evangelicals have been trying to use the authority of science and psychology to validate the truth claims of the Bible. We have been assiduous in our attempts to demonstrate that the gospel is neither anti-science nor emotionally harmful. 

We need now to realise that a lot of young men are not that bothered by evolution and not that interested in psychology. Their interest is in tradition. They want to dig up the floorboards of the past to figure out what was underneath it. 

Christians don’t need to be intimidated or annoyed by this. We can comfortably talk about Aristotle and Aquinas, Plato and Paul, Cicero and Calvin. The roots of our faith go as far back as Abraham - and beyond. We need to get better at exhibiting the richness of this tradition in order to attract more men into our evangelical churches.

Third, we need to remove both the intellectual and non-intellectual barriers to faith. Men don’t have one type of religious need; they have many. Some need to be prompted to think; others need to be stung by truth; others need their imaginations baptised; others need to be liberated from their isolation. Kierkegaard famously spoke of three stages of life: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Modern men need to be brought through a similar circuit of experiences. 

How will this happen? It’s time for men’s ministries to regear themselves to make tools more suited for modern men. Not every man wants to talk about father wounds around a campfire. A growing number want to grapple with Stoicism or dismantle what Paul Kingsnorth calls “the Machine”.

Fourth, we need confidence in the durability and relevance of the gospel. The same power of God unto salvation in Paul’s day is the power of God unto salvation today. We must be careful in our cultural apologetics not to become too clever. It’s not the wisdom of the world that converts sinners; it’s the foolishness of the cross. This never changes.

Fifth, we need to tell men to go to church. So many guys are listening to podcasts and reading books in isolation. Inevitably, this means they are filtering their religious interests through a consumerist mindset. They want God on demand, on their terms, at their convenience. This is not the path of genuine discipleship. If guys want to find truth, they need to go where Truth discloses Himself. That’s not YouTube, Spotify, or X. It’s church. The message of Jesus cannot be abstracted from the people of Jesus. When it comes to Christianity, there is no Deliveroo option. To meet with Jesus, we must be willing to take a seat at His table. 

For more on reaching modern men, Joe’s new book, The Road Back to God: Faith for Men Dissatisfied by the Modern World (Christian Focus Publications) 

What is Meditation?

This is an article by my friend Joe Barnard from Holyrood Evangelical Church, Edinburgh and Executive Director of Cross Training Ministries.  We highly recommend that you get a copy of 'The Saints Everlasting Rest' by Richard Baxter.  This updated and abridged version from Crossway is an absolute gem.  Cross Training are doing a podcast series on part of Baxter's book.  You can listen to our podcast series here.  

Those who know me know that I talk a lot about meditation. This is not because I’m new age or trendy. Quite the opposite. I’m a proponent of meditation because, like JC Ryle, I stick to “the old paths”. Meditation is the porridge of the Christian life. It’s a tried and true meal that has sustained the faith, peace, and joy of Christians over many, many generations. 

Now, I like to rehearse the same ideas often because, if you’re like me, it takes more than one lesson to drive home a point. With this in mind, what I want to do here is to ask a question, “What is meditation?” The term confuses a lot of Christians, especially evangelicals. Somehow we manage to get through a lot of years, even decades, in churches without having a clear idea of what Christian meditation is. This is sad. After all, we can’t put into practice what we don’t understand. 

Here is a somewhat clunky definition of meditation. I’ve adapted it from the great Puritan, Richard Baxter. Meditation is the solemn acting of all the powers of the soul in the consideration of dimensions of reality that are accessible to faith, not sight. Wow. That’s a mouthful! Let’s break it down.

First, meditation involves all the powers of the soul. What this means is that meditation is not merely an act of the intellect. In addition, it involves the will, the affections, memory, even imagination. In the same way that an exercise like rowing activates all the major muscle groups of the body, so meditation activates every tissue and fibre of the soul. Think about what is required to meditate, for example, on the ascended glory of Christ? The memory must recall familiar truths and present them to the intellect; the intellect must then consider the truth in all of its particularity until goodness and beauty begin to shine; the will must subsequently delight in the excellence of Christ and submit to his majesty; and finally, the affections of delight, joy, and hope must cling to Christ - not as a mere object of thought - but as an object of worship. Baxter says, “Meditation turns truths received and remembered into warm affection, firm resolution, and holy conversation”. It’s not just a part of the soul engaged in the process, but all of it. 

Second, meditation is a solemn act. If spiritual reality was trivial, then our attitude when thinking about it could be casual and frivolous. There is no need to be soberminded when reflecting on a favourite TV show or upcoming holiday. But when the subject matter to be contemplated is of the order of heaven, holiness, resurrection, lordship, and Pure Spirit, then a different mindset is needed. This is especially the case when the truths being contemplated are not static, but dynamic - indeed living! Think of the attitude of Queen Esther as she awaited the golden scepter being extended before approaching the Great King.  If such reverence was required for drawing near to earthly majesty, what must be the condition of a heart before lifting its eyes to divine glory? Or reflect on what it would have been like to be invited into the company of Peter, James, and John as they ascended the Mount of Transfiguration? Walking up the hill would not have been an opportune time for chit chat and banter. The atmosphere would have been heavy as they approached the crest of revelation.  

Third, meditation is considering the deepest and most ravishing dimensions of reality. Baxter says, “That which will make us most happy when we possess it, will make us most joyful when we meditate upon it”. Stop and think about this statement and you will find it to be true. There are all kinds of things we can contemplate. These range from good health, to a nice meal, to seeing an old friend. It is the degree of joy experienced when enjoying a good that determines the degree of joy experienced when meditating on a good. This explains why meditating on spiritual things brings the greatest delights and comforts to a Christian. What can compare to the prospects of seeing Christ, of being resurrected, of attending the wedding supper of the Lamb, or of being eternally invigorated in the light of divine holiness? These are not just “goods”. They are the summum bonum. They encompass what we mean by “eternal life”. 

The application should be plain. Meditation is putting the heart in contact with dimensions of reality that are real though unseen. And the more we invest in the practice of meditation, the more excited we will become about “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven” for us (I Pet. 1:4).

Do you want more joy, peace, and hope? Then meditate. 

Now, I don’t need to belabor the point that much of such blessedness is inaccessible in our present condition. One hymnwriter says, “Jesus, these eyes have never seen/that radiant form of thine”. So it is in the vale of years. However, what we cannot yet enjoy experientially, we can enjoy meditatively. By faith, we are able to go beyond our senses and delight in truths that are real even if they are transcendent. This is the joy of meditation. Meditation is not speculation; it is anticipation. To meditate is like picking up a book about a foreign land and looking intently at the photographs and reading the pages. The photographs and narrative cannot physically change our location so that we can hear the noise of distant streets and taste the foods of unexplored lands. But, the more the book is studied, the more the heart will be thrilled by anticipation. What cannot yet be touched and tasted can indeed be imagined. 

“When death these mortal eyes shall seal,

And still this throbbing heart,

The rending veil shall thee reveal,

All Glorious as thou art.”