Light of the World, a City on A Hill

…thinking out loud about living missionally in the city of Sydney so that the city will come to know Jesus…

Archive for men

Fatherhood and Faith

April 4, 2008 at 10:32 am · Filed under men, personal, relationships, scripture

I am a father twice over, about to make that third time lucky in June.

My eldest is almost 5 and is my budsky, my little man.

I am convinced that God invented fatherhood as a way of helping us dopey blokes understand, in some small way, how he relates to us as a father, indeed the Heavenly Father.

Consider Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Matt 7:9-11 [ESV]

Since becoming a dad, this verse has made so much more sense to me. I LOVEto give gifts to my kids, especially my son. Sharing their joy at receiving a toy or gift is wonderful and enough to make my heart almost explode at times. I actually have to restrain myself from buying them more gifts than I do, lest I foster an expectation and lack of appreciation.

Being the gift giver also helps you understand that giving kids everything they want, when they want it does not produce thankfullness and character. Of course you then realise God does the same for us - not indulging our every want so that our character will be shaped and formed in Christlikeness.

Amen to that.

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Reclaim your life…really?

February 26, 2008 at 8:57 am · Filed under culture, men, personal, women

**Begin Rant**

I inadvertantly switched onto Mix FM this morning while station surfing on my way to work.

What an unfortunate accident that was.

Morning radio is terrible at the best of times, but Mix have decided that Todd McKenny, of Dancing with the Stars fame, would make a good morning slot host.

Anyway, McKenny and co-host Sonia Kruger are discussing motherhood and McKenny asks listeners to call in and tell them when and how they “reclaimed” their life after motherhood.

What???? Huh?

Reclaim…like when you become a mother you suddenly don’t have a real life anymore and you have to some how get back to what you were before in order for it to be life again.

I may be swimming against the tide here, but that is just crap. I felt like ringing up just to let him know what I thought of his question (and him).

I mean what if I wanted to “reclaim” my old life pre-kids? I could take up a few sports with training a couple of nights a week and a game for half of Saturday. I could go out with the boys every Saturday night and come in sometime in the wee hours. I could hang around for Friday drinks with my work mates and get home late. Etc Etc.

But I’m not going to do that.

My life is changed, but it’s still my life to live now.

**End Rant**

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Stanhope Headline Demographics

January 3, 2008 at 11:20 am · Filed under culture, men, missional, women, work

As promised, I have pulled together some key stats on the wonderful place that is Stanhope Gardens. For those of you unfamiliar with the location, Stanhope is in the North Western sub-urban area of Sydney, about 40 minutes out of the city.

So who lives here…?

There are over 21,000 of us Stanhopians living in the suburb, and this is growing rapidly as new housing continues to be built, particularly in the Newbury Estate where I live.

Unsurprisingly, it is a young suburb. Over 75% of residents are <44 years of age, and there are two clusters in the 0-10 range and 32-34 range. Clearly this is a young family dominated area. By contrast the over 65’s only represent 4% of the population compared to over 15% nationally.

Most people were born in Australia (about 60%) with Filipino, Indian and Great Britain being the biggest contributors to the other 100 or so other nationalities. Correspondingly only 59% of people speak English at home with another 90 or so other languages spoken.

One interesting statistic is the percentage of people who are officially married (i.e. excluding de-facto relationships). For those over 25 years of age, 72% of them are married. This compares to 59% for the whole of Sydney. My completely unsubstantiated theory on this is that while couples are happy to live together initially, when they want to have children for many there is a compulsion to get married.

So what do people do?

The biggest single sector in terms of occupation type is “Professionals” who together with the other white-collar types make up about 60% of working people. What surprised me was that blue-collar jobs make up 36% of the population, compared with only 26% for total Sydney. I have already touched on what I believe is the significance of this in a previous post.

So who is working?

About 75% of males over 24 y.o. are in employment, mostly full time. Almost 70% of females are also working in at least a part time capacity, though most who are working are doing it 5 days per week. Given the high number of small kids in the area, it’s no wonder that local childcare facilities are bursting at the seams. Just under a quarter of women are not in the work force, presumably most being stay-at-home mums. These stats are right on the average for Sydney.

Most people are in the process of buying their homes and only 16% of households are rentals.

Households are pretty tech-saavy with 60% having a Broadband connection. In total less than 20% have no internet access.

So, onto Religion…

It seems Stanhopians are generally as spiritual as the rest of Sydney with only 19% indicating they have no religious label. The biggest sector is Catholic and they represent 31% of residents which is higher than the national and Sydney averages. The Anglicans are down vs the average. One of the most obvious anomalies is that Hinduism at 5% is more than 4 times the Sydney average and 10 times the Australian average.

There’s a lot more stats that I could quote, but that will do for now.

I’ll come back to some thoughts on what all this might mean soon…

Jeff

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Stanhope Stats…

December 30, 2007 at 8:01 am · Filed under culture, men, women

I have pulled together all the Demographic data on Stanhope…some very interesting things come out. I think I’ll grab Kellyville Ridge as well, just to see if anything else is significant.

I’ll try and post on some tonight…

Jeff

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He’s my bro…

December 29, 2007 at 9:13 am · Filed under Mark Driscoll, men

I am now Facebook friends with Pastor Mark Driscoll…very cool.

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Counter Cultural Living…Part 3

December 20, 2007 at 3:52 pm · Filed under books, culture, men, women

Do you want to be “counter cultural”?

Be like me.

I am married (and never divorced), and live with three of my own children (admittedly one is still on the way) with aforesaid marriage partner.

According to social researcher Hugh Mackay, I am now a complete minority…on the fringe of Australian society.

The mainstream is now people living alone, or perhaps with one other person. No wonder ‘community’ (whether in the flesh or in the digital sphere) is so sought after.

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It’s Raining Men, Hallelujah

November 14, 2007 at 10:37 am · Filed under attractional, churches, men

I really do feel sorry for those poor hacks auditioning for Australian Idol who can’t hold a tune. Fortunately for many of them they are oblivious to their own dearth of vocal talent and hence suffer little embarrassment. I can actually sing in tune and so singing in public doesn’t usually cause me shame…usually.

A few years ago I was at a work function for a few days which included the obligatory “evening activities” (translation…lots of people getting hammered and doing things they normally wouldn’t with their work colleagues). Anyway, one of the activities was Karaoke. Being someone who could sing equalled automatic nomination for me from my work team, which would have been OK except the song in question was ‘It’s raining men’…hallelujah.

So anyway, I’ve recovered my sense of manhood since that night, but the story serves as a (admittedly convoluted) intro to today’s topic: Men…Blokes…dudes.
I’m particularly interested and concerned with the fact that the Christian Church in Sydney and Australia generally is largely failing to reach men. The stats bear this out. Examine the “Religion” question from last years Census and the numbers across all main denominations are the same: the ratio of Women to Men is about 55:45. Bear in mind, however, that these results represent the whole population, both church-goers and non, and hence include many people’s ‘nominal’ affiliation. It’s not until you examine the gender mix from last years NCLS survey (which is only church attenders) that you see the true picture. On average across the Christian denominations, the ratio of church attendance is 60% women, 40% Men.

If you went to public school like me, I’ll spell it out…this is bad.

Do the maths. There are fifty percent more women in church than men. Fifty percent.
Now some of this can be explained by factors such as the natural gender mix (51:49) and the fact that women have a longer life expectancy, however another stat is telling. With the exception of Islam, the only other religious declaration where men outnumber women is No Religion i.e. I have no religious faith whatsoever.
I have to admit, this really depresses me. The question is why? Why is it so (to quote a famous Australian scientist).
This article from the Sydney Anglicans website has some views
http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/indepth/articles/five_reasons_men_hate_church/ some of which are helpful.
One problem the article highlights is “(the) Church leadership model is weak and not compelling”. I wonder if this is true. If you look around, the identity of males has been decimated over the past few decades. Ask any bloke what it means to be a man/male and you are likely to get a confused, wishy washy answer. Through the progressive models of SNAGs, metro-sexuals, uber-sexuals etc we have seen society’s attempts to define or redefine what “ideal” manhood looks like.
The church, it seems to me, has at times not being helpful in this process. Anytime the various Bible passages on male headship in marriage comes up in a preaching series it seems to be prefaced by apologetic tones lest our cultural sensitivities be offended. Are we ashamed by what the bible says about maleness (and femaleness)?
Coupled with this is the view that church is not equipping men to live out their faith in the context of who they are for the rest of the week - husbands, fathers, employee’s, boss’, mates. The result is a disconnectedness between their “Christian” life and their “normal” life. Now clearly there should be no distinction. We are Christians and that should define us. It seems to me, however, that men are struggling to do this in practice.
I believe the consequence of this is a version of maleness which bears little distinction from that of the average, secular bloke. So how does this impact mission? I would contend that before a bloke is ‘attracted’ to church, they are attracted to Christianity lived out by Christ’s men. Christianity that reflects the masculinity and maleness defined by the bible without shame or apology.
On mission,
Jeff

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