The Four to Six Mix Stays Steady (Nearly)

Photograph: Countryside collection - Homer Sy/Alamy

During a recent church service I revisited my 15 year old project of counting male and female church attendees with the aim of getting the mix. I sampled a large block of attendees that were visible from where I was sitting - that is, I didn't take a count of the whole congregation. I did two counts and came up with the numbers 28 males to 54 females and then later in the service I counted 35 males to 55 females.  (There were some comings and goings during the service).  Those two sets of figures give returns of 35% :65% and 38%:62% respectively.  That might point to a slight drop in the male proportion since my last counts but on the whole that's fairly close to the four to six mix which has otherwise been stable over 15 years; after all, we've been through a lock down which has definitely perturbed churches in many as yet unforeseen ways, not to mention the ongoing decay of church populations. There may be a differential in the way these two factors are effecting men and woman.  But given these factors it's surprising how steady the 4 to 6 mix is. 

For more see here:

Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: FourToSixMix (norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com)

Analysing UK Church Statistics: Logos vs Pneuma

From https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html

(click to enlarge)

The above chart shows how church attendance in the UK, for a variety of denominations, has changed in 35 years since 1980. The general trend is obviously downwards, although it will be noted that the Pentecostal denominations and what are termed "New Churches" have increased their numbers as have the Eastern Orthodox church. Some of these church groupings may be clusters  of church cultures with only marginal commonalities: For example, "Baptist" covers churches affiliated with the Baptist Union and also the Strict and Particular Baptists. "Independents" may cover Brethren,  FIEC and various independent evangelical and reformed leaning "Free churches" (Indeed "Brethren" itself breaks down into further sub-groupings). The so-called "New Churches" probably cover various "charismatic" leaning churches such as New Frontiers, Hillsong, Vineyard, Calvary Chapel, Bethel, Potters House, Jesus Army etc.

On a couple of occasions now I have heard some church goers lauding the "New Churches" as perhaps having found the holy grail of church life, namely the spiritual secret of church growth, in so far as they seem to have bucked the trend of decaying church population. But in the absence of more information this is a long shot.  Let me explain:

 If one of the components effecting church population is an exponential decay then we will have:

Rate of decay = a constant x church population

This means that the bigger a church population is the faster it decays. If this is one of the components at work it would explain the huge drop in the large traditional church populations of Anglican, Catholic and Methodists and the relatively smaller drop in other smaller traditional churches like baptists and evangelical independents.

However, exponential decay is clearly not the only component involved: Pentecostal churches, which are of a similar size to Baptists, have increased their population whereas Baptists have dropped. Also, the "New Churches" have increased. This might suggest that they've cracked the problem of church growth were it not for the fact that they are relatively small and therefore more resilient to decay; they only need a small "trickle-in" component to more than cancel their slow rate of decay. For example, if just some people coming out of the jaded traditional churches are looking for a new exciting church scene and in consequence turn to the lower end population New Churches that may explain the growth among these churches; after all these churches tend to address today's Christian existential crises by offering the security of "spiritual intimacy" and personal epiphany, not to mention the simplicity and certainties found in their style. But even so the New Church growth is not spectacular: It's taken 35 years for this relatively small population to grow by over 100% to 160k - that's  about 2.6k per year..

It's worth noting that the tiny orthodox church (and therefore with a small decay rate) doesn't need much input from the Eastern European immigrants to buck the trend and grow by 160% in 35 years. (that equates to a mere 0.5k per year growth!)

The Pentecostals have grown by 36%; that is, by about 2.2k per year; that's lower than the per yearly growth of the New Churches. That may be a bad sign: Pentecostal traditionality may be part of the reason, but the Pentecostals are quite a bit bigger than the New Churches and so their lower growth rate may, ominously, be evidence that their greater size means that they are starting to show the underlying exponential decay component at work. If this is correct and the decay component is actually there all along in both the Pentecostal & New Churches and that they are actually partly being fed by the decay of traditional church it follows that their growth will slow down as their populations get bigger and become more vulnerable to the decay component.

This foregoing analysis is rather precarious. After all, it's a case of looking at the data and attempting to resolve out a superposition of growth/decay components in a background of a lot of random noise. But then to my mind this is no less precarious an analysis than those who look at the data and conclude that the New Churches have cracked the problem of church growth by waiting on the "spiritual revolution" and therefore the traditional churches only need drum up the same enthusiasm for this new dawn to solve their population problem. Moreover, I think we need to factor in here the pattern often shown when the church feels culturally marginalised; namely, that it tends to become more spiritually internalized and shifts from an emphasis on the articulations of "logos" to the intimacy of "pneuma"! Sometimes the latter starts to skirt the boundaries of fideism and gnositicism

My best guess is that the real problem is what that background component of exponential decay really means; that's likely to be societally systemic and there is not much we can do about it. The nub of the problem is in the culture beyond, in society at large: The spiritual revolution needs to grab the outside culture (and not just the church) and turn its nihilistic malaise on its head! When that happens churches of all sorts may be left wondering why at one time it all seemed so hard!

The Four to Six Mix and the Feminisation of Church Culture

Some years ago on this blog I did a series of posts that resulted of some head counting I did at my church; my aim was to get an idea of the ratio of males to females. This little exercise was carried out on and off for about three years. I was surprised at the approximate constancy of the ratio over the period. The ratio turned out to be about 40% males to 60% females, hence I termed it the "four to six mix". The project was linked to an another theme and that I referred to as the feminisation (in the stereotypical sense of the word) of the Western church in its spiritual attitudes and culture; in particular the move to a more emotional, intuitive and  passion based church along with a drift toward an almost gnostic interpretation of the faith. (This is not true, however, of the kind of evangelicalism which strongly identifies with the reformation and majors in doctrine and "Truth" - such churches tend to eschew the emotional and experience based excesses of churches influenced by "Charismatic" culture. They also tend to be more "masculinised" in their ethos)

Anyway, the sequence of posts between June 2007 and January 2011 on this subject can be accessed using this link:

http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com/search/label/FourToSixMix

Now here's what I want to come to. Recently the 4:6 mix has surfaced again in two independent connections: The first connection is the "iknow" church management software my own church uses. The iknow software generates this  monthly report:

The 4:6 statistic here is, I assume, taken from membership numbers rather than the rota population expressed by the bar chart. This 4:6 ratio has been static for at least a year if I recall correctly. 

I now turn to the June edition of Premier Christianity magazine where we find an article entitled  Your Church Needs More Men. This article includes the statistical schematic below:

Yes, that's right, up pops the 4:6 mix again, this time presumably based on extensive church surveys. The fact that my small sample reflects this survey is,  as I have put it before, statistical "magic" which would have made Arthur Koestler proud (See "The Roots of Coincidence" Pages  26-27 and see also my book Disorder and Randomness)

One of the concerns (and this has long been a concern of mine too) of the Christianity article is the obvious implication of the statistical imbalance: Namely, that unless young church women are prepared to stay single many will not find a male partner within the confines of the Church and will have to find husbands outside the church. In fact given that a large percentage of the more senior church population have successfully paired off it follows that the gender imbalance among young people will be even more skewed than 4:6. 

Looking through my "4:6 Mix" posts I notice that Christianity magazine has published articles on the gender imbalance and the related feminisation of the church on at least six occasions: There was a spate of articles and book reviews in 2007 & 2008: Viz: July & September 2007,  February, and March 2008 and two articles in May 2008.

In my previous posts I toyed with idea that a factor strongly related to the 4:6 mix was the "feminisation" of church; that is, a cultural skew entailing a move away from stereotypically male traits and this is evidenced in the feminisation of worship. For example, quoting from my post of Feb 22nd 2008 where I quote a church leader called Carl Beech....

As for the state of worship in church with its male alienating ‘Swoon for Jesus love ins’ Beech seems to understand this as well: “Our terminology is that Jesus is our lover – press yourselves into his arms and let him embrace you”. Beech goes onto to say: “I’m very grateful for the charismatic movement, but I think we need to recast the terminology. Some of the songs which emerged in the 90s were very cathartic.” It was a lot worse than that Carl: the mid nineties was the heyday of the Toronto Blessing when, if you didn't want to be accused of resisting the Spirit, you emulated those 'in the Spirit' and got down on all fours and barked!

This is not to say that a "feminine" style of worship is wrong in itself: Also there is no necessary inference to be drawn which stereotypes genetic "males" and genetic "females" into particular roles. Some males may prefer the feminised worship and some females may prefer more masculine styles. The statistical clustering of genetic males and females around what are conventionally thought of as feminine and masculine traits is going to be a cloudy affair subject to many exceptions. The problem, however, arises when there is an imbalance of culture  that alienates a section of the congregation.

To be frank the premium placed on a soppy "swoon for Jesus" gnosticism in some Christian quarters alienates me as it does other males. There have been some gallant moves in an attempt to create events that cater for a more male orientated "laddish" culture (such as the 4M movement). This is good and gets full marks as a nice try but what little I've seen of these events suggest to me that the epiphanies of "Jesus gnosis" are still regarded as the acme of Christian experience. While this situation persists the statistics will remain the same. 

It is probably not as simple as a trend toward a uniform feminisation; rather it may actually be a  polarisation between hyper-feminisation and hyper-masculinisation with the latter evidenced by a dominating male leadership which on occasion can be a mix of patriarchary, authoritarianism, and bullying, all of which chimes well with fundamentalism and is a complementary fit with a feminised, obedient and compliant church membership.  My current guess is that such is the reaction of church communities to cultural stress and marginalisation in a changing world. 

STOP PRESS:

Talking about bullying leaders: The abrasive and domineering Mark Driscoll is back according to a Premier Christianity web article entitled Mark Driscoll is back but he hasn't learned his lessons.   See here. But I wonder if it's not just Driscoll who has to do some learning but also a fundagelical culture which is inclined to give such characters a free ride on its back. 

https://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-mark-driscoll-affair.html

https://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-mark-driscoll-affair-part-ii.html

THE FOUR-TO-SIX-MIX REMAINS STEADY

At NCBC's first prayer meeting of 2011 I counted 12 males and 19 females. (excluding employed male leadership which is overwhelmingly biased toward males) That ratio rounds nicely to 4:6. It's remarkable how averages like this hold up over all causes. Koeslter would be proud (See his "The Roots of Coincidence", page 26-27 )

See this post for more details.

THE FOUR TO SIX MIX

A survey at NCBC last Sunday returned a male to female mix  of 37% to 63% . So, after first posting on this subject three years ago what I refer to as the “four to six mix” of males to females is being approximately maintained. My previous posts on this subject can be found in these monthly postings:

http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html

http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

http://norwichcentralbaptistchurch.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

YOU CAN COUNT ON IT

Tonight in the evening service, still with are eye on the male:female ratio and the feminisation of church, I did a quick count. This returned 30 males against 36 females, which reduces to a five to six mix. This, I suppose, is not far from the four to six mix I was averaging a few months back.

THE FOUR TO SIX MIX: AGAIN

‘Christianity’ magazine has run two articles (see February and March) on the disparity in the ratio of males to females in churches. Here are my comments, as promised. As I have been aware of this issue for some years (and have written about it) I’m rather disturbed that only now have I found an article airing the matter. Anyway that’s an important start – my own church remains utterly unaware of it.

The two articles cover an interview with Carl Beech Chief executive of Christian Vision for men. I’ve got to hand it to him, Beech does seem to know how to connect to men, although his take on masculinising the church is to give occasion to the issue driven laddish sporting bravado that many men enjoy and engage in. If Beech’s succeeds here then he would have done the church a service.

In my case the way of being a male is slightly different. I have never been one for the laddish culture, as I approximate closer to that male preserve of the quasi-autistic loner who focuses relentlessly on single goals - stereotypically represented in the media by the likes of ‘The hit man’, ‘the terminator’, the lone hobbyist or geek etc.

But in common with the lads it isn’t just a case of me feeling that church just isn’t getting through; in actual fact it’s more a case of that church being proactively against the masculine model and its various manifestations. In modern evangelicalism conversion is all about a personality change that seeks denial of one’s masculine traits in favor of an intuitive reverie so aptly summed up by the phrase ‘The Heart Knowledge Christian’. What church wants, as Beech puts it so well, is chatty friendly ‘small talkers’, effeminacy, wimpishness, a passive submissive imbibing of homiletic monologues on Sunday, indifference to technical gadgetary, and drivers of cutsie feminine cars instead of real manly cars. As far as masculine pursuits are concerned, Beech says that the signal from the church is ‘Stop it because it’s all really sinful’.

As for the state of worship in church with its male alienating ‘Swoon for Jesus love ins’ Beech seems to understand this as well: “Our terminology is that Jesus is our lover – press yourselves into his arms and let him embrace you”. Beech goes onto to say: “I’m very grateful for the charismatic movement, but I think we need to recast the terminology. Some of the songs which emerged in the 90s were very cathartic.” It was a lot worse than that Carl: the mid nineties was the heyday of the Toronto Blessing when, if you didn't want to be accused of resisting the Spirit, you emulated those 'in the Spirit' and got down on all fours and barked!

Not news really, but having identified the problem what do we do next? In some ways the loner like myself is much better placed than the lads; I can simply ignore all these soppy goings on and pursue my own projects. But what does jack the lad do when he can find no social outlet for his laddishness? He says: "Fuhgeddaaboutit!"

THE FOUR TO SIX MIX

The November edition of 'Christianity' magazine contains the results of its reader survey. The male-female gender mix of the survey respondents was reported to be 43%-57%; once again the approximate 4:6 mix ratio pops up. By way of comment ‘Christianity’ adds ‘This mirrors the majority female church attendance in the UK’.

MALE_FEMALE HEAD COUNTING RESULTS

Here are the latest male-female head counting results at NCBC.
Morning Service 23/7/2007: 48 males and 79 females: 38%-62%
Evening Service 23/7/2007: 36 males and 47 females: 43%- 57%
The evening service ratio remains stubbornly static. The morning service shows an even greater preponderance of females, perhaps because it includes the older members, many of whom are widows.

MALE-FEMALE HEAD COUNTING RESULTS

On the Sunday night service of 15/7/2007 I counted 34 males and 45 females and 34 males – that’s a 43%-57% ratio. At the church meeting of 19/7/2007 I counted 20 males and 27 females and 20 males – that’s a 43% - 57% ratio. So, the roughly 4:6 ratio seems to be holding up. What’s it mean? I’m working on it....

MALE-FEMALE HEAD COUNTING RESULTS

Last night I did another male-female head count at church and got 41 males against 57 females – that’s a 42%-58% cut and very close to the previous cut of 41%-59%. It is interesting to note that although we had 17 more people at the service last night the male-female ratio was more or less constant – that’s suggestive of a general background ratio, although it has to be admitted that it is rather early to be sure about this.