Yes, Karen, girl! I can attest to the fact that you are likable and quite a jokester. In fact, I’ve heard all your jokes 6,000 times each. Just sayin… Anyhow, you wanna know what really impresses me? You have been famous for always saying to me, “I don’t like to be controversial”. But, alas! Yu bruk out, girl! Yes! I guess this crisis really has your hackles raised, huh? Me too. And it should.
I am agitated. Why am I agitated? I reside in Queens, NY, and have been a bona fide Christian since I was a young teen. Let’s put it this way, at this point in time in my life, I don’t approach things like a “day trader” on Wall Street anymore. I can’t. Day traders participate in markets with the intention of making small, but frequent gains. Studies on day trader performance, however, have shown that most lose money over the long term. The western church has been day trading, happy to have globs of women in the church, like worker bees, because…well, we can do it all and the church “functions”. Yayy!
Not! Not interested in that anymore. I’ve become a long term investor, desiring maximum gain, looking at things from a broader, time-tested, bird’s eye view. Sadly, I don’t like what I see. I’m so tired of seeing women do the bulk of the work in church. It’s unseemly – day trading. I see painfully incremental additions of men to the church being “overly” celebrated – day trading. I see the constant analysis by some as to the “reasons” why there aren’t more men in the church, most notably, the Black church, but no real action – definitely day trading. I see the utter cluelessness (some willful) of our leaders that this gender imbalance is so abnormal and unjust – day trading. And of course what Karen spoke of so aptly, the lack of Christian marriages, which is utter foolishness – extreme day trading!
All these tactics have caused us, the church to lose precious gains over the long term. Badly.
Karen and I wrote the article, “Toward a New Church: Male and Female”, hoping to begin a dialogue with you. We want to agitate as many as possible, disturbing the norm, to thrust this “Missing Males” crisis front and center.
Your agitator and friend,
Sandra Barnes