Thinking Out LoudI recently heard about Gym Church where about 40 men meet on a Saturday morning in Melbourne’s inner suburbs to push each other to train hard, be better men, and to pray.
This group reflects a broader men’s movement that is responding to the sense that men are in crisis, struggling with loneliness, purposelessness and a feeling of being left behind.
Lots of men’s groups are recognising the need for mental, emotional and physical health and how each is related to the other. What Gym Church knows is that spiritual health is vital as well.
Could it be though that Gym Church is more of a club—coalescing around one common interest—than a church, which invites everyone into an unfolding narrative with deep ties to history and each other? More Gen Z men than women are attending churches these days, reflecting a need for young men to feel part of something bigger than themselves; to find identity within a story they can play a role in.
It matters though, what kind of story of masculinity is being told. At gym Church would a guy who is not a fitness nut feel welcome?
One concern is that the group could perpetuate a vision of masculinity that is unnecessarily narrow. The male predicament requires more than the manosphere with a religious gloss.
Popular images of what a man is are much deeper and richer than when I was a boy. We mustn’t lose that.
But if Gym Church takes its cue from Jesus, a clear message will be that the full life will come to these men by deploying whatever strengths they have—physical, intellectual, creative or emotional—in making other people’s lives better.
In an age of instant gratification and self-focus that is a radical way to be a man.
This Thinking Out Loud was first published on Facebook.