The Church Revitalization Podcast - Episode 359 - Engaging Men In Church
Why High-Capacity Men Are Quietly Checking Out of Your Church
Engaging men in church is one of the most talked-about challenges in pastoral leadership, and yet most churches keep trying the same approaches and wondering why nothing changes. Consider this scenario: a man in your congregation manages a team of forty people during the week. He makes high-stakes decisions daily, solves complex problems under pressure, and carries real responsibility. Then Sunday comes, and the only ask he gets from the church is whether he can hand out bulletins. He shows up, sites, and leaves. And slowly, Sunday by Sunday, he checks out, not from his faith, but from any meaningful investment in the church.
The statistics back this up. Men volunteer less than women across the board, 27% versus 32%. But the gap widens significantly among men aged 30 to 49, where only 29% of men volunteer compared to 39% of women. That middle-aged demographic, the one with the most professional experience, organizational skill, and leadership capacity, is the most disengaged. That is not a coincidence.
This is not a men's ministry problem. It is a role design problem. The church often communicates, unintentionally, that it does not need a man's best. It just needs his availability. When that message lands, high-capacity men do not argue with it. They simply stop investing.
The "Just Help Out" Trap
Many volunteer asks inside the church are built around slot-filling, not problem-solving. Greeting, parking lot duty, and ushering all have genuine value, and every church needs people willing to do those things, including high-capacity men! The problem is not the roles themselves. The problem is when those are the only roles on offer.
When men see that every ask from the church requires zero professional skill, they draw a conclusion: "They don't trust me with anything important." Whether or not that is the church's intent, the message lands that way. Men who spend their weeks solving hard problems, managing budgets, leading teams, and making consequential calls are not going to stay energized by a role almost anyone off the street could fill on day one.
There is also a language issue. "We need some help" and "We have a problem that needs your expertise" are entirely different invitations. The first asks for a body. The second asks for a person. Most churches default to the first without realizing it, and most high-capacity men respond to it by quietly stepping back.
Low-barrier entry points are still worth keeping. Greeting, parking, and similar roles can function well as on-ramps. Men will endure something they find less compelling if they can see it leading somewhere more meaningful. The issue is when those roles feel like a dead end rather than a starting point. A cul-de-sac, not a pathway.
Auditing Your Volunteer Roles for High-Leverage Opportunities
A practical first step is to list every volunteer role in your church and tag each one as either task-based or judgment-based. Task-based roles require availability and a willingness to show up. Judgment-based roles require skill, experience, and the ability to solve problems. Most churches have plenty of the first category and too few of the second.
High-leverage roles worth creating or filling include financial oversight, facilities planning, legal review, IT infrastructure, security leadership, strategic planning input, and mentorship. Many of these roles do not currently exist in most churches, which means the work is not just about recruiting. It is about designing new opportunities before you can invite anyone into them.
Think about the question your church may never have asked: "Where are we making decisions without the expertise we already have sitting in our pews?" A man with 25 years in construction may be attending your church while your facilities committee struggles through a building project without anyone who understands contracts, timelines, or subcontractors. A financial advisor may sit three rows back while your leadership team makes budget decisions without a second set of trained eyes. That is waste. Stewardship isn't only about using money well; it's about using people well.
The Healthy Churches Toolkit (available at healthychurchestoolkit.com) includes a leadership pipeline tool that helps churches map out every volunteer role and categorize them by level of responsibility. Building out that list forces the kind of honest audit that most churches skip.
How to Identify and Invite the Right Men
You cannot invite men into roles that do not yet exist. The role has to be designed first. Once it exists, the invitation needs to be specific, not a general pulpit announcement. Generic calls for volunteers consistently underperform with high-capacity men. A direct, personal ask nearly always outperforms a broad one.
The invitation should name what you know about the person. Something like: "I know you manage large projects for a living. We have a significant facilities decision coming up, and I need your mind on it." That kind of ask communicates respect. It signals that the church sees who the person actually is, not just that they need another warm body in a volunteer slot.
Tools like spiritual gifts assessments and DISC profiles can help match men to roles before you ever make the ask. The Divine Design Assessment in the Healthy Churches Toolkit gives you a starting point. Going further, capturing a person's work background and professional interests alongside those assessments builds a searchable picture of what people bring. When you know that someone has a dominant D-type profile and runs a construction company, you have exactly the information you need to make a meaningful invitation.
The spiritual framing matters here too. This is stewardship. God built specific skills, experience, and capacity into this person over decades of work and life. Inviting him to bring that into the church is not just a pragmatic move. It is a theological one.
Building a Pathway, Not Just a Program
Getting men into high-leverage roles is only part of the work. Keeping them engaged requires giving them real authority, not just advisory input that disappears before any decision gets made. When men sense their contribution is performative, they exit quietly and do not come back.
Peer credibility plays a significant role here. When one respected man is visibly and meaningfully invested in the life and work of the church, other men take notice. Leaders follow leaders. A church that celebrates contributor wins, not only pastoral wins, creates a culture where men see themselves as participants in something real.
The pathway matters too. Low-barrier entry point, growing trust, higher-leverage role, leadership development. That progression has to be visible. Men who do not see a track to something more consequential will not stay on the on-ramp for long. But when the pathway is clear and the destination is worth reaching, many men will do the unglamorous early work because they know it is going somewhere. That is likely the exact progression they invested in professionally.
This is also, underneath everything else, discipleship. Men grow spiritually when they carry real responsibility, face accountability, and get stretched beyond what they already know how to do. Meaningful contribution in the church is not a substitute for spiritual development. For many men, it is the primary vehicle for it.
The Question Every Pastor Should Ask This Week
Walk through your congregation mentally and ask one question: "Who here is solving hard problems for a living, and are we actually leveraging that for the Kingdom?" The men who feel most underutilized inside the church are often the ones with the most to offer. They are not waiting for a pulpit announcement. They are waiting for someone to see them clearly and ask directly.
Engaging men in church at this level is both a growth strategy and a retention strategy. Men who find genuine purpose inside the church bring their families deeper in. They invite others. They stay through difficulty because they have skin in the game, not just a seat in the row.
Start with the audit. Know what roles exist, create the ones that are missing, and build a real picture of who is sitting in your congregation and what they carry. The Malphurs Group and the Healthy Churches Toolkit exist to help churches do exactly that kind of structural, strategic work. You can explore those resources at healthychurchestoolkit.com or malphursgroup.com. The tools you need are probably already in your congregation. The work is learning to find them.
Also check out:
Volunteer Burnout in Churches: Warning Signs and Prevention Strategies
Signs Your Church Is Trapped in the Consumerism Cycle
Three Volunteer Recruitment Mistakes
Watch this episode on YouTube!
About A.J. Mathieu
President
A.J. Mathieu is President of The Malphurs Group, serving churches and denominational networks around the world. He and his wife Erika live near Fort Worth, Texas, with their two sons.
