Misdirecting twenty-something men in the church

This is a good, brief article discussing twenty-something men in the church today. It looks at how spiritually mature men are often misdirected by their church community to seminary or vocational ministry when they have passions and gifting for other things. The reason this is happening is because "spiritually interested young men are the exception rather than the expectation." Here's the conclusion:

When a younger brother says to me that “he feels called to ministry,” I usually understand that to mean that he craves and needs validation and would like to use the church to make him feel good about himself. Or even worse, as Leon Podles explains in his book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, many young men feel called to the church because uninitiated men find the church to be “a safe place, a refuge from the challenges of life and therefore attracts men who are fearful of making a break with the secure world of childhood dominated by women.”

Whatever the reason, it would be great to see local churches so healthy and full of twentysomethings that the presence of spiritually vibrant twentysomething men would be so normal that we would have better criteria for sending men into ministry beyond being “on fire for Christ” and having a desire to teach and serve. That should be simply normal for any man following Jesus.

(HT:Challies)