In his fascinating book Why Men Hate Going to Church (Nelson Books), David Murrow discusses a variety of ways in which today’s worship is oriented toward the way women learn, not men. He explains that it’s a problem rooted in the brain:
“The regions of a female’s brain that are devoted to language are larger than their equivalent in the male. Girls outperform boys by huge margins on tests of verbal fluency. Studies reveal that women use more of their brains during speech, which makes them much better at expressing themselves verbally. Other studies show that a typical woman speaks 20,000 to 25,000 words a day, while a typical man speaks just 7,000 to 10,000…
“Brain differences play out in the entertainment men and women choose. Women buy romance novels; men buy pornographic magazines. She’s stimulated by words; he’s stimulated by images. Women watch TV shows in which people talk about their problems; men watch sports and crime shows where words are secondary to the action…
“Yet today’s church has become an almost entirely verbal experience…Sermons put men in an impossible situation: They must remain alert as a flood of words rushes forth from the pastor’s mouth. Men must not only comprehend those words, but also, using the other side of the brain, respond emotionally to the pastor’s appeal. Very few men are physiologically capable of this feat. Their brains are simply not wired this way. 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 all will respond.” (Click here to learn more about Why Men Hate Going to Church.)