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Friday, April 27, 2007


More Men

Lots of talk about getting more males on board. Just over a third of the electoral roll is men With differential longevity, something around 45% male would quite probably represent equal participation.
So for every 3 men at present, we would need to add a fourth.
I feel a bit short of hard information. Do we have any counts of the gender split for typical services? Do we have any information by age bands or family circumstance? What's the make-up of homegroups? of the Church Council? of our regular organisers ?
Is it at heart a gender issue at all, or is it a function of complications of lifestyles at different stages of life? Maybe attendance is more affected by the conflicting demands for time based at home being greater for people who are away from home during the working day?
And actually it doesn't strike me as a priority matter, unless we have some good reason to believe there are men and boys out there who are on the margin of coming along, but are deterred by some specific omission in what we do.
And away from our own navel, how do we stack up vs other churches? Does the diocese have any analysis, and can it point to any similarly located churches which have increased men's involvement. And is there any information out there as to whether the gender ratio in church participation is affected by sexual orientation ?

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