Men for God is by David Pawson (1930 to 2020), the British Bible teacher, and comes out of the seminar series of the same name that he ran for years (ISBN 978-1-913472-20-7).
It started as spoken teaching
This is transcribed seminar material rather than a book written as a book. That has consequences. It is direct, it repeats itself the way live teaching does, and it moves in the order a speaker moves rather than the order a writer would choose. Some readers find that immediate and easy. Others find it loose. Worth knowing before you buy.
Pawson’s argument
His starting observation is a demographic one: most churches have more women than men, and he thinks the church has largely stopped trying to reach men. He puts it sharply, saying churches often look like lifeboats, saving women and children first.
From there he works through several questions. Why is it easier to get women converted than men? Is a man’s daily work a necessary evil to be endured between church activities, or is it his actual service to God? He notes that Jesus built his church around twelve men, most of whom worked with their hands, and that the New Testament letters address their readers as brothers.
The section on work is the most useful part and the part most likely to be new to you. Pawson takes seriously that a man spends most of his waking life at a job, and refuses to treat that as spiritually neutral time.
Where the book goes further than we do
Called to Better holds that men and women have different but equal roles, equal in worth and dignity before God. We deliberately do not define what those roles are beyond what Scripture plainly says. We do not publish role charts and we do not rule on the contested specifics.
Pawson does go further. He held that church leadership is restricted to men, and argued the case at length elsewhere, including in a book titled Leadership is Male. That position is present in the background of this material.
We are naming that rather than hiding it, and we are naming it in both directions: a book that argues no role distinctions exist would also be going further than we do. This is a live disagreement among Christians who all take Scripture as authoritative, and we are not going to pretend our own restraint is the only faithful reading. Read Pawson on his merits and weigh that piece yourself.
What we removed
The old review described our team’s experience reading the book together and claimed it contains discussion questions for small groups. Neither is true. Both are gone.
Where we land
Worth reading for the material on work and on why men disengage from church, which is sharper than most treatments. Go in knowing you are reading a strong complementarian teacher, and knowing the format is a transcript.
Men for God by David Pawson on Amazon