Estrogen in the Pews, Why Strong Men don’t stay in Soft Churches

Fifty-five people in attendance, and only fifteen of them were men. That’s what I saw at the church we visited last Sunday. That means one man for every 3.7 butts in the pews. I suppose it’s because of my passion for biblical manhood that I notice seeming trivialities. But wait, is this truly a trivial matter? It’s certainly easy to dismiss it as such. After all, the problem of estrogen heavy churches is certainly not a new phenomenon.

But seriously…four to one?

What could possibly lead to such disparity?

Did all those missing men suddenly decide they don’t like the pastor?
Was there a playoff game on?
Did some secret memo go out telling men to stay home?

I don’t want to oversimplify things. I’m sure there are multiple factors involved. But there is one massive, unavoidable bottom-line truth that towers over all the rest:

Men don’t go where they don’t want to go.

Pretty obvious, right?

Think about it. Given the choice, men will avoid weddings like they’re radioactive. When they do go it’s for a couple reasons: to keep out of trouble with the wifey or support family or friends. Mr. Blue Collar will dig his dusty suit out of the closet, squeeze his overgrown midsection into screaming slacks, and endure the whole ordeal, when he must. But make no mistake, he’d rather bash himself in the forehead with a sledgehammer until the ceremony ends.

Why do you suppose that is? I believe it’s primarily because no part of the event is geared toward him. Contrarily, it overflows with the elements that light the female fire. Decorations, ceremony, drama, pageantry, and emotion…did I mention emotion?

Now tell me honestly… doesn’t that sound exactly like the modern evangelical church?

When We Walked into the Estrogen Hurricane

Sunday, when we arrived at the church, we were greeted at the door by a reserved, polite man who introduced himself as the pastor. A few quiet men surrounded him, hands extended, ready to shake. Everything looked normal. Calm. Respectable.

Then we walked into the sanctuary.

And suddenly we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

We had just walked into a brewing estrogen hurricane ready to touch down.

A booming voice rocked the building. And when I say booming, I mean no microphone required. And the brahma bull behind it left no doubt who was in charge. Now, for my own safety, please don’t tell the pastor’s wife I compared her to a raging bovine.

I had flashbacks of Fort Jackson, South Carolina, standing at attention as a teenage recruit while my drill sergeant paced in front of us, breathing fire like a caged animal. Frankly, I think the pastor’s wife could’ve given him a few pointers.

As the service moved forward, the pecking order became impossible to miss.

A handful of men quietly fumbled through prearranged motions while the fire, fury, and authority poured out of the so-called “weaker vessels.” The place shook under the sheer force of the pastor’s wife’s voice as she pounded piano keys like Jerry Lee Lewis on a bender. That woman didn’t need amplification. A glance or a sharp jerk of her head brought instant compliance.

Across the platform stood two men and two women forming the worship team. I’ll let you guess which gender grabbed the microphone, waved the congregation into silence while she launched into a spontaneous mini-sermon.

And I’ll also let you guess who didn’t appreciate being momentarily upstaged in her own domain. The glare said it all.

Of course, being a Pentecostal church, emotion and the Holy Spirit were treated as interchangeable terms. If it felt powerful, it must be God.

As I scanned the room, I noticed the pastor himself standing nearly motionless throughout the entire “worship service.” The two men on the platform mirrored him perfectly. Silent. Passive. Submissive. Meanwhile, the women took full control.

The few men scattered throughout the congregation sat in defeated postures, like men hoping not to be noticed. Afraid to breathe too loudly.

And I thought to myself, huh, I wonder why there are only fifteen men here.

Is this representative of all modern evangelical churches? I’d say yes and no. Obviously this situation was the extreme, although a slightly tamped down version is not far from the norm.

Where It All Started

The roots go straight back to the Second Great Awakening, when American Christianity took a hard turn away from doctrine and toward experience. Truth was no longer enough. Feelings had to confirm it. Emotion became the evidence of spirituality.

When experience was elevated over doctrine, biblical guardrails collapsed.

And right on cue, women seized the moment. They began stepping into more visible, authoritative roles within the church.

The two developments went hand in hand. In order for the latter to happen, the former had to happen.

For the first time in church history, the clear instructions of the Apostles Paul and Peter regarding women’s roles, conduct, and authority were pushed aside. In their place arose creative interpretations that allowed Scripture to be ignored while claiming fidelity to it.

This movement paved the way for Pentecostalism, which took everything dangerous about the Second Great Awakening and multiplied it. Emotion-based worship exploded. Experience became unquestionable. This was fertile ground for the rise of women preachers and later, even women pastors.

After all, God told me trumped printed doctrine.

To challenge it was to challenge God Himself.

The Feminized Church

Put it all together.

Emotion as the standard.
Experience beyond critique.
Women freed from biblical restraint.

And what do you get?

The feminized church.

Men who once declared the power of God with fearless authority now stood hand-in-hand, tears streaming down their faces, murmuring emotional love ballads to the Lord. Baritone proclamations of God’s greatness were replaced with soft, introspective lyrics aimed inward.

Within a few short decades, the early church model wasn’t just forgotten, it was openly mocked. Patriarchal leadership was rebranded as oppression. Biblical order was labeled misogyny.

While claiming to be a New Testament body, they conveniently forgot that in the first-century church men and women sat separately. Men led. Women learned. Men taught. Women served.

Oh the horror!!

In those days women didn’t need to beg their husbands to go to church. Men gathered their families and led them to worship.

And the church wasn’t three-quarters female.

Why?

Because the focus was on the masculine, not feminine. The service was designed for leaders, not helpers. For men created to drive, spearhead, protect, and rule.

Scripture is clear:

“The woman was created for the man, not the man for the woman.” (1 Cor. 11:9)

Women even displayed visible signs of her submission. (1 Cor. 11:15

Weak Men Stay, Strong Men Leave

Here’s the truth modern churches refuse to admit:

Even weak men hate feminized churches.

When a strong man finds himself in a wet noodle church, he leads his family to something better. When a weak man finds himself in that position, he either stays home or checks his manhood at the door and says yes ma’am.

Let me be unmistakably clear:

A feminized church is not a Christian church.

Shall I say that again for those in the back?

Church services with sprinklers spraying estrogen on the folks are incompatible with Biblical Christianity. They are mutually exclusive.

Christian homes are led by men.

Christian churches are led by men.

There are no Christian homes where the man takes the subordinate role and there are no Christian churches led by women.

Does the Bible give us a clear play by play of what a church service should look like? Not really. Scripture leaves flexibility on music, seating, coffee, and many other things. But on leadership and gender roles, it is not ambiguous.

Interestingly, most biblical instruction concerning church operation is focused on the behavior and roles of men and women.

And virtually everything it tells us is ignored or even demonized within the church today.

Overseers must be men. (1 Tim. 2:3) But it doesn’t stop there.

It’s not good enough to simply be male. Verse 4 mandates that the man rule his home well. Sorry, it’s not sufficient to simply be the “spiritual leader”, a “servant leader”, or “mutually submissive” or any of the other highly popular yet biblically erroneous catch phrases. None of them make you qualified to hold position within the church. You must be a man who rules.

Why?

“If a man does not know how to lead his own household, how will he take care of the church of God? (1 Tim. 3:5)

Likewise, 1 Timothy 3:12 makes it unmistakably clear that those who hold the office of deacon must be men.

And before anyone tries to blur the lines, deaconesses were servants to the church, not holders of ecclesiastical authority.

We’re talking about the office of a deacon. Not “servant roles.” Not honorary titles. The office.

Just like elders, these men were not selected simply because they were willing bodies. They were required to be strong leaders at home. A man who could not govern his household had no business serving in leadership within God’s church.

The pattern is consistent. Leadership in the church flows from leadership in the home.

The scriptural example:

Jesus chose men as his inner 12.

The apostles were men.

Deacons were men.

Appointed pastors? Men.

Judas’s replacement? A man.

Stop Pitching Church to Women

The bottom line: we must end the trend of pitching church services toward women. The soft, lovefest singing: be gone. Mushy gutless preaching that challenges no one but lights a fire in the feminine belly needs to go.

Churches are targeting the wrong demographic.

While every salesman knows that you sell to the woman, church isn’t about sales, it’s about eternity and it’s about truth.

Women and children need to follow the man of the house to the House of the Lord. They need to sit, be reverent, be quiet and learn. The wife has a question? She asks her husband at home. (1 Cor. 14:34-35). That way the husband can wash his woman with the word. (Eph. 5:26).

Time to open the service; that’s on you sir.

We need to pray; that’s you too.

Communion needs served; you again.

Scripture reading; get up there brother.

“Open your bibles”: that better be a man.

Can a woman sing on a worship team? Of course she can.

But her quiet and meek spirit cannot disappear the moment she steps onto a platform. Talent never cancels command. A microphone does not nullify submission. Visibility does not grant authority.

The church has no shortage of work that must be done.

Children need to be taught.

Hospitality needs hands.

Service roles need bodies.

Support ministries need faithful women.

There is plenty for women to do. The problem is not lack of opportunity. The problem is lack of contentment.

Too many women are no longer satisfied doing what God clearly called them to do. Just like Eve in the garden. She had access to every tree, every fruit, every provision God supplied. But that wasn’t good enough. Obedience didn’t cut it. She had to reach for the one thing God explicitly forbade.

And that pattern hasn’t changed.

Put it to the Test

Here’s a simple exercise. Go to the websites of the churches in your area. Click the “About” page. Scan the leadership section. Count how many women carry the title pastor or co-pastor.

We don’t need to complicate it. We can just call those women Eve.

Not because they lack value. Not because they lack intelligence. But because they reached for authority God never gave them, and the church applauded instead of correcting.

And just like the garden, the consequences never stop with the woman who reached.

Scripture doesn’t leave women without purpose in the church. It gives them a clear assignment.

Older women are commanded to teach the younger women.

Not leadership theory.

Not platform presence.

Not self-empowerment.

They are to teach them how to love their husbands, love their children, be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, and subject to their own husbands.

That’s not my opinion. That’s Titus 2:4–5.

And Scripture even tells us why this matters: “So that the word of God will not be slandered.” In other words, when women abandon this role, the reputation of God’s Word takes the hit.

So here’s the uncomfortable question. When’s the last time you saw that on the agenda at a Christian women’s conference?

Not how to walk in your authority.

Not how to find your voice.

Not how to step into your calling.

But how to be a godly wife.

A disciplined mother.

A reverent helper.

God already assigned the work. The modern church just decided it wasn’t prestigious enough.

Church Should Be A Gut Punch

Everything in the church should be direct, hard-hitting, impactful, and challenging. Yes, men must be challenged. And whether the modern church wants to admit it or not, men want to be challenged.

But that’s not what they get.

In today’s church, men aren’t challenged, they’re bored out of their minds.

We don’t sit in the pew being sharpened into strong, capable, God-fearing men because we never hear what that actually looks like.

No one calls us up. No one calls us out.

So instead, we check the clock. We shift in our seats. We plan lunch.

We aren’t absorbing truth. We’re enduring time.

Week after week, we hear messages that float safely above real responsibility. Nothing confronts our sin. Nothing demands leadership. Nothing presses us toward courage, sacrifice, or authority.

And then pastors scratch their heads and wonder why the men are gone.

Men don’t flee challenge. They flee irrelevance.

Give a man something worth standing up to and he’ll lean in. Give him fluff and he’ll mentally clock out.

I’m reminded of a recent Sunday where I was nearly comatose in the pew while the pastor tiptoed his way through week four of his so-called exposition of Luke 19.

Four weeks. One chapter. And somehow still nothing actually said.

Now, I wear hearing aids, which means I can pipe audio from my phone straight into my ears. Somewhere around minute forty of spiritual anesthesia, I had a stroke of genius. I pulled up a sermon from a real preacher. A man who actually preached. I figured I had outplayed the system. Turns out, I hadn’t. The man sitting in front of me could hear it. He turned around and shot me a sideways scowl.

Plan foiled. Back to the snoozefest.

So, what was the problem? As a man, I cannot stand safe, empty, cherry-picked sermons that use a lot of words but don’t actually say anything.

I don’t want to be gently affirmed. I don’t want to be coddled. I don’t want spiritual cotton candy that dissolves the moment it hits my mouth.

I want to be—no, I need to be—confronted, challenged, and inspired.

I don’t need to learn how to be less threatening. I need to be more dangerous.

I need to be grabbed by the collar, smacked upside the head, and set straight. I need to learn how to fearlessly and forcefully lead my family, not just how to smile politely while “serving.”

Yes, yes, I know. I serve. I’ve heard it a thousand times. I’m supposed to communicate better, listen more, pray more. I’ve got all the limp-wristed, female-friendly clichés memorized. They’ve been drilled into my head so deeply I could recite them in my sleep. What I need now is for all that empty fluff to be ripped back out. I need the other side of Jesus.

I already know the long-haired, soft-spoken, endlessly tolerant version that modern churches parade around.

I’m well acquainted with the Jesus who never raises His voice, never draws lines, and never demands anything uncomfortable.

What I need is to be reintroduced to the real Jesus. The Christ of Scripture. The One who makes rules, sets standards, issues commands, demands obedience, and holds men accountable. I need to be challenged.

I need to learn how to stare down the enemy and face hell without blinking. I need to hear how to stand like Moses before advancing armies with nothing but God behind me and faithful brothers holding up my arms.

The last thing I need is another self-help fluff talk that offends no one and changes nothing.

Let me remind you of something the modern church seems to have forgotten: the Gospel of Jesus Christ is offensive. The truth of Scripture never makes the sinner feel better.

It enrages them.

Frankly, if your preacher ain’t offending, he ain’t preaching.

You know what else I need? I need a big, nasty size-12 work boot planted squarely in my tail. I need my heart pounding out of my chest while a preacher looks me dead in the eye and calls out my complacency, my compromise, and my hidden sin.

I need a man of God who will come at me with the scalpel of the Word, slice me open, and keep cutting until the rot is exposed and my sin pours out like blood.

And don’t bandage me up too fast. I need to walk out of those church doors bruised and battered, but also cleansed, equipped, and finally free.

If you haven’t driven me to repentance, you’ve wasted my time.

You don’t make a man better by appeasing him. You make him better by confronting him.

So preacher, listen closely. I don’t need you to make me feel better.

People love to say the church is like a hospital. Fine. Let’s talk about what actually happens in hospitals. Surgery. Tests. Scans. Colonoscopies. Amputations. And sometimes fifty-thousand volts ripping your body off a gurney to get your heart beating again.

You know where you usually go to rest and feel better? Home.

Church isn’t supposed to be comfortable. It’s supposed to be curative.

I need you to lead me to wholeness. I need to walk out of that building a new man, strapped up and ready for battle, not soothed, sedated, and sent back into the fight half-dead.

And hear me clearly on this:

Don’t you dare preach to my wife. You preach to me.

You bring the Word straight to my face. No apology. No hedging. No soft edges. You bring it with guts and fire. I’ll take care of my wife. That’s my responsibility, not yours.

And here’s the truth that might shock you: although she may think she needs the soft, pandering fluff she’s grown accustomed to, what she actually needs is the exact same Word of God I need.

Uncompromised.

Powerful.

Life-changing.

So, what do the women do while their husbands are getting pummeled, gutted, and sewn back together? Exactly what Scripture says.

They close their mouths.

They sit reverently.

They learn.

And men, that brings us to the real issue. It’s time we stop shopping for churches that cater to comfort and start looking for a man’s church. One that kicks the soft and mushy out the door right alongside the cowards hiding behind pulpits. It’s time to replace them with strong, convicted, dangerous men who fear God more than they fear complaints.



So the question isn’t whether the church needs to change. The question is this:

Are you man enough to demand it?