July 2007
Understanding Men by David Murrow 
(excerpts from the book "Why Men Hate Going to Church")
What Biology Teaches Us About Men - Part 2
Last month we talked about the hormonal differences between men and women. This month we'll cover how men's brains differ from women's, and how that can inform our ministry efforts to men.
Differences in the Brains of Men and Women
Men have a larger amygdala than women. This explains why they have a greater fight-or-flight impulse, and why men are prone to flashbacks when they encounter a situation that resembles a threatening one. Men who had negative boyhood church experiences may panic at the sight of any traditional church elements or symbols that put them back into that painful or uncomfortable situation, even decades later.
Reading is a relatively complex task that draws on both sides of the brain at once. To read well, you need a big corpus callosum (CC). The CC in women's brains is much larger. This may explain why males are diagnosed with reading disorders such as dyslexia at four times the rate of females.
Sunday services are often full of reading, and reading is regularly upheld as one of the pillars of the faith. How can we make things easier on boys and men?
- Christian educators should find other ways to involve their students besides reading aloud
- Church leaders should remind their flocks that the Bible is now available on tape and CD. Computer programs can now read the Bible to you.
- Many churches are using easier-to-read modern Bible translations. This helps men.
The regions of a female's brain that are devoted to language are larger than their equivalents in the male. Women are comfortable in the world of words; men are comfortable in the world of objects. Yet today's church has become an almost entirely verbal experience. Christianity is big on verbal learning and small on active learning.
The centerpiece of most Protestant services is the sermon - a nonstop torrent of words. According to many studies, a long, uninterrupted monologue is the least effective way to teach people anything! Men find sermons boring not so much because of their content, but because of their format. When the church returns to the visual, hands-on style favored by Jesus, men, young people, and women will all respond.
Read the other articles in this issue:
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