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Toxic masculinity.
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That's all we've been hearing from the world recently in regards to masculinity, but what is the church saying?
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How is the church treating masculinity?
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This is a question that needs to be answered, and the church has woefully answered this.
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The church is supposed to be a place where men feel welcome to come to, but a lot of times they don't, because at some point we have taken the church and we have feminized it and because of that men have suffered and they have nowhere to turn.
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But they are finally starting to rise up and they are tired of it and they want to feel like they belong and they're coming back to Christ.
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So now is the time that the church needs to take hold of that desire and work through it, because when you capture the man, you capture the family.
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Today's guest is Sean McManus.
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He is the owner of McManus Strength and Nutrition.
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Not only does he help you with your physical health, but he helps you with your mental and your emotional health as well, through a spiritual discipleship.
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He is a phenomenal guy.
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I enjoyed this conversation so much.
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You are going to take away so many good nuggets that maybe you can take to your church and you can start implementing them so that men feel welcome and men can start taking their families to church and we can start healing this country through this masculinity.
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Let's get to it Before the episode starts.
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Make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode.
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Sean, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to discuss masculinity issues.
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This is a thing that a lot of churches don't really touch on.
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I've noticed.
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I've been to several churches.
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My church that I go to right now is doing a pretty good job of trying to put the man first, because they understand the principle if you capture the man, you can capture the family.
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So we've been doing a pretty good job of making sure that our church is more man-friendly.
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But the church in general isn't doing that great of a job to address issues that men have or to make their church service more man-friendly.
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I guess and your whole ministry, your McManus, strength and nutrition is for men and I couldn't not have you on during my summer tribute to masculinity.
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So I am thrilled that you were willing to come on and we're going to tackle some issues that men have.
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But before we do that, give us an overview of how you came to Christ.
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Anna, thank you so much for having me.
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I'm looking forward to our discussion today.
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You really hit the nail on the head.
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A lot of the stuff that I put out, a lot of stuff that I preach, is, you know, church, for the most part, really does not do a good job of this, you know.
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I think it's a really big part of the reason.
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Particularly Christian men are kind of where we are today in our culture, and you're very blessed and lucky that you found a church that kind of focuses on that and, like you said before, if you can capture the heart of the man, the family will follow.
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I'm honored to be here.
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A little backstory on me is I never had one of those Paul and Damascus kind of moments when it comes to my faith.
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I grew up in a Christian home and I was around it from day one, and so that was just a really big blessing to witness my mom and dad live out their faith on a day-to-day basis, and I really credit a lot of my faith to them.
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I had that really strong example of faith from my father growing up, and I had that really strong example of a godly woman in my mom, so I was just extremely blessed in that moment.
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But as far as just making my decision to follow Christ, I've followed Him from a very young age and we always have that kind of ups and downs in our faith and there's obviously times in my life where I feel like I was really focused in on Him and on my purpose and on serving Him.
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And then there's been times in my life where not that I stepped away from Him, but that maybe my priorities were in a not aligned where they should be.
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I can always kind of see when my thoughts or my mental health or you know life is really not aligned.
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I can usually tell it's like OK, I have, I have put something else first, that should not be first and I need to get back to putting putting Christ on the on the throne where he belongs.
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That is very good wisdom.
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To have that, and having the foundation that you had, I think it was definitely beneficial for you being able to understand okay, something's off, I know what it is.
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I need to get right with God.
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I'm at that position now in my 40s, but I wasn't always that way.
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I grew up in the church as well.
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I've been going since I was in a car seat, but I had the legalistic style.
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So I always felt like I was never enough or I never did enough or all those things.
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So it would have been really hard for me to have that moment of why am I feeling distant from God.
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Maybe I need to do more for me to have that moment of why am I feeling distant from God.
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Maybe I need to do more.
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That's just where I went was maybe I need to do more, instead of taking a step back and saying you know what Are my priorities?
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Right?
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Am I giving too much to work, or am I giving too much to my kids?
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Am I giving too much to my hobbies, that I'm forgetting that God needs to come first and I need to plug in with Him first.
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We get so focused, especially as parents and even just people who are married, we give so much to the other person that we forget we are going to run dry and we need our source.
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And I'm right there most of the times.
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I've got five kids and I'm married, so I've got a lot that I'm going through and I have learned to be in tune to.
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When I'm feeling off or feeling extra agitated or emotional about something and I have no idea why, I take a step back and I say, okay, something's off, I need to go to God and I need to figure out what this is.
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And it is a very wise man who can humble himself enough to do that and say you know what something's off?
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What do I need to fix to be right and have everything in balance again.
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And I think for you, especially because you deal with health and nutrition, I think balance is important for your field of work.
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So therefore, it's going to be important for every aspect of your life and you're going to be very in tune with that, because with nutrition, you have to have a good balance.
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So I think that's another reason why you're extra good at it.
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Yeah, that's 100% true.
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And if we talk about the balance when it comes to health and nutrition, or fitness and nutrition, I make a lot of my clients laugh sometimes because I am not your average fitness and nutrition coach.
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I'm not the guy that's going to tell you to never eat anything good for the rest of your life?
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Obviously.
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All the men are going, whoo.
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Exactly, exactly.
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Obviously, we love our cake, we love our cookies, we love our ice cream.
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Doritos is a thorn in my side, so that's a big thing for me.
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Yeah, pizza for me.
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Oh man, yeah.
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So, believe it or not, we actually do pizza once a week.
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Yeah, we kind of do too.
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I'm supposedly lactose intolerant, but I won't give up pizza.
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I tried.
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I tried to do pizza without dairy on it.
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It's not pizza.
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Sounds gross, not gonna lie.
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I was like no, I'm just going to deal with the side effects, I can't give up pizza.
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Some things are just worth dealing with consequences.
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Yes, yes.
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But you know, we talk about balance and these things are they're.
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They're good and we talk about food that's not good for you.
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Obviously, we we probably all know whether you're in shape or not.
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You probably have a pretty good idea of the foods that aren't good for you.
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Obviously, we probably all know whether you're in shape or not, you probably have a pretty good idea of the foods that aren't good for you.
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The main issue is those are our primary source of nutrition.
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So when you're eating things that are not good for you all the time, that's when it becomes a problem.
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You can be in very good shape.
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You can be very healthy and occasionally enjoy some chips or a cookie or a bowl of ice cream with your family.
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Yeah, it's okay.
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It's all about that balance and just moderation, which we talk about a lot in faith in general.
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Moderation is the key to a lot of things.
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Yeah, yeah, I like that principle and it's definitely it overlaps between our physical and our mental health.
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We have to have moderation on certain things.
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If you're doing something a certain way for a long time and it's not yielding healthy results, perhaps you should try something different.
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The man who's constantly overworking himself, his kids are missing, seeing him at home, his wife saying, hey, I miss you, we don't talk anymore.
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At some point you have to get to a point where you hear what they're saying and you do something about it, because something is out of balance, out of whack, unhealthy, and God's giving you that grace that you're hearing it from a loving source, rather than, hey, you're fired.
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You know, yes, you've been working overtime, but we're downsizing.
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Sorry, I mean, nobody wants that at all, especially the man who's been working overtime and sacrificing his family for it.
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Yes, 100%, and you better hear those warnings and heed those warnings before it's too late.
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We give so much to our jobs or to our businesses.
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Whatever you're doing, whether you're an entrepreneur or an employee, at the end of the day, at the end of your life, your job.
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It doesn't matter whether you gave them everything you had or you didn't.
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If your family sacrificed at that, then you missed the mark.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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I, my dad, was a hard worker and as a child I really felt like I missed opportunities with him.
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It's it's so crazy to talk to him now, because he remembers things, that I don't remember him being there for Thinking to myself he was there.
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How do I not remember he was there as I grew up to be a teenager.
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We just kind of drifted apart and we didn't connect again until I was going through my second marriage.
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But yeah, it's just, the father is instrumental in the home in so many ways than just financial.
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Their presence is important and that's why God created him first and made him the head of everything, including everything on the earth, and there's a reason for that.
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He holds everything together.
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It doesn't mean that you aren't going to have situations where maybe your children fall away from Christ and they do that for the rest of their lives.
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It's not meaning that the family will be perfect, but there is a reason that he created a male and female and he created marriage and that union is important and to have a family.
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If it wasn't that important, he wouldn't have specified the importance of it throughout the Bible.
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He wouldn't have used marriage as an example of him and the church.
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So, yeah, more churches need to step up and help put this into perspective.
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For men especially, I've noticed that a lot of the songs that we sing at church have a little bit of a frilly feeling to it, and even I don't like singing some of them.
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It's like he's not my husband, he's not my boyfriend.
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Why does this sound so gooey?
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And I don't blame the men for not wanting to sing that, because I'm a woman and I don't want to sing that.
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Why don't we tailor our songs for men Well, not for men, obviously, for God but in a way where a man can also relate.
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There's some men who are a little more sensitive than others, yes, and there's nothing wrong with that, and they might resonate with that.
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But what about the ones who don't?
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They're going to feel that sense of, oh, I don't belong here or I can't worship God because this isn't my jam.
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Get some skillet in there, or something.
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I would go to a church service that had some skillet.
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That's for sure, yeah, yeah, I've been to a couple of their concerts.
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It's pretty cool.
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Yeah, but I mean it's so true, because even to the point of what tone are you singing the song in?
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I'm definitely not going to sit here and act like I'm extremely musically talented, but I have a deep voice and I cannot keep up with sweet, sweet little Betty that is singing very, very high keys.
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I just can't do it yes.
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Between that and, like you say, the songs that are, you know you don't know if you can sing them to God or if you can sing them to your wife.
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You know it's a very.
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It's a very odd line there that we that, we, that we follow.
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But yeah, I'm with you there.
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I'm glad that you brought up about the tone of the person singing, because I've been mulling it over in my head for several months now.
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Whenever I go to church we have a lot of females who will sing, but we also have some men who lead the singing and I know this is probably going to get me canceled by a lot of people, especially women.
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But I'm starting to feel like maybe women shouldn't be the lead singers during worship for that reason that you were talking about.
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Not that they don't have beautiful voices and that men don't love hearing them sing.
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But it's not a concert.
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It's supposed to be a worship service where everyone feels that they can worship and they can sing to God.
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And some people are a little more self-conscious, you know.
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Maybe they can't sing super high, so they're just not going to sing because they don't want their voice to crack or be embarrassed if someone hears their low tone while it's singing high.
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And it's no offense to women, because most of us don't have deep voices.
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I have more on the alto style voice, so mine is lower.
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I can handle a little more of the lower stuff.
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I can't do so much of the high either.
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So I kind of get what you're saying, but there are some men who can do it and some that can't.
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So I mean, it's a fine balance, but maybe some churches just need to figure that out.
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Maybe some churches just need to figure that out.
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You know, what is their crowd actually consisting of?
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You know?
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I don't know, throw the tomatoes at me if you want everybody.
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These are just things that I'm thinking of, but it is something that I've thought about for a while that the men in the church are maybe being silenced, but not because anyone's actually silencing them, although there are some churches who are doing that.
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But I think it's a what's the term?
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Inadvertently silencing the men or making the men distance themselves, and then we wonder why they're not at church.
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But if you take a look at what's going on with the church, perhaps that's the reason why on with the church.
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Perhaps that's the reason why I don't think most churches aren't actually purposefully pushing men away.
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I don't think that's the end game or the end goal by any means.
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I just think that it's like some of the things that we've talked about, a lot of the times it's more geared towards females or the feminine, and I think part of that.
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There's a gentleman that you look up to and he puts out a lot of content and things like that, but he put it in a way he was talking about I believe it was World War II.
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You know, when the came back to the church and the church had become more frilly, had become more tailored to women and children, and they were just like I don't belong here, this isn't the place for me.
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You know, I just fought on the battlefield and watched my buddies die and had lots of stuff going on and I don't think we've ever I don't think we've ever come back from that.
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I think there's a bit of a tide turning now.
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There's a lot more talk about masculinity in culture in general, which is good in a positive way.
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Some of it's positive, some it's not.
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Yeah, tailor some things more in the direction of masculinity.
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Let's have some songs that are a little bit of a deeper tone.
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Let's have some songs that don't quite sound like you're singing to your girlfriend or your boyfriend, and it doesn't have to be all of it.
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We don't have to completely flip the script and go into the ditch on the other side of the road by any means, but we definitely need to mix in some of that.
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Yeah, and that's an interesting piece of history that I never knew about.
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That that's probably why they tailored the services they did and that makes a lot of sense.
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I mean, unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the women are the ones who are attending church.
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They're taking the children because either the man doesn't feel he belongs for the reasons you were mentioning, or just because they don't feel like going.
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And one day the children are going to look at that and they're going to say, well, if dad doesn't have to go, why do I have to go?
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My son said that a few times because his father and I are no longer together, but his stepdad and I take everyone to church.
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And there was a period of time several years ago where my son would say things like, oh, can I stay longer at my dad's house on Sunday?
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And it's like no, we go to church, you'll be coming home before church.
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And he's like, well, I could go to church with my dad.
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And I'm thinking, your dad doesn't always go to church, so no, you go to church with us.
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It's consistent.
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That's the agreement we came up with and he's 13 now he sees his dad in the way that he lives out, whatever Christianity he says he has and then he sees how we live things.
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And that's an aspect that's difficult as well when you have blended families or just you know separate families, because your children are going to be pulled in one way or another, and unfortunately they don't usually get pulled in the God-centered way.
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It's easier to get pulled in one way or another and unfortunately they don't usually get pulled in the God-centered way.
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It's easier to get pulled in the other way, especially if it's the father who's not living that lifestyle.
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There's just something powerful about a man who's following after God that everyone wants to be around, that they want to know what's going on, and I think it's because of all the surrendering of pride and of everything that you have to do in order to do that.
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You have to be submissive to someone who is higher than you, and men in general don't like to do that.
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That's why they won't go to a church where there's quote unquote a woman pastor, which is another subject I won't get into.
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But we probably agree on the same thing with that.
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But you know, they're not going to go to a church where a woman's telling them what to do, because men just don't like to be told what to do, especially by women.
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So for them to have that submissive attitude to someone they can't see, who is higher than them, that is attractive to women to figure out why.
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Why is he so willing to do that?
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What is it about that?
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And then the kids want to know why is dad making us get up every morning and go to this place?
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What is so special about it?
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But you're going to see it, especially if you have not always had that experience.
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And one day your father is this way, the next day he's like that.
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There's just something powerful about that whole thing and that's what draws the whole family in.
00:19:08.288 --> 00:19:13.346
And there's less crime, there's less all this stuff when the man is following after God.
00:19:13.346 --> 00:19:26.134
So churches definitely need to make men more of a priority and I understand the difficulties they have with that because, again, unfortunately it tends to be a lot more women and children who are at church.
00:19:26.134 --> 00:19:28.153
So they're going against that.
00:19:28.153 --> 00:19:30.152
They're having to make a choice.
00:19:30.152 --> 00:19:34.997
Are we going to go with what we know is going to happen and cater towards the people who are showing up?
00:19:34.997 --> 00:19:52.679
Or are we going to bank on the fact that, if we switch it up a little bit, that men are going to show up too, and I could see how it would be a bit of a scary thing for those who are more worried about the seats being warmed or the tithes still coming in and all that stuff.
00:19:52.679 --> 00:19:57.093
But if you are focused on what really matters, you're going to do.
00:19:57.093 --> 00:20:06.878
What really matters, and this is what really matters is catching the fathers, the men, because without them, families can't survive.
00:20:13.384 --> 00:20:17.606
Hey friends, have you joined the Honest Christian Conversations online group yet?
00:20:17.606 --> 00:20:19.147
Have you joined the Honest Christian Conversations online group yet?
00:20:19.147 --> 00:20:25.391
If you haven't, you're missing out on a perfect opportunity to grow your relationship with Jesus Christ.
00:20:25.391 --> 00:20:30.213
This is a community for those who want to go deeper in their relationship.
00:20:30.213 --> 00:20:42.099
You can do Bible studies together, ask the questions you have biblically and get the answers that you might need or maybe you're somebody who has answers to somebody else's questions.
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You can leave your prayer requests.
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You can leave your praise reports.
00:20:46.701 --> 00:20:48.762
This is a community.
00:20:48.762 --> 00:20:54.115
This is what church is supposed to be, and I am so glad that I finally took that step.
00:20:54.115 --> 00:20:58.632
To make this group so that people's lives can flourish in Jesus' name.
00:20:58.632 --> 00:21:02.569
To make this group so that people's lives can flourish in Jesus' name.
00:21:02.569 --> 00:21:05.558
Also, if you haven't signed up for the mailing list, you're missing out on an opportunity there as well.
00:21:05.558 --> 00:21:13.728
I send out a weekly email chocked full of so much awesome content that I don't have time right now to share it all with you.
00:21:13.728 --> 00:21:23.151
But when you do sign up for that mailing list, you get my seven-day free devotional that I created just for those who sign up for the mailing list.
00:21:23.151 --> 00:21:34.771
If you haven't joined either of these, you can go to my website honestchristianconversationscom and sign up there, or you can use the links for it in the show notes.
00:21:35.512 --> 00:21:37.897
Yeah, yeah, I'm with you there, a hundred percent.
00:21:37.897 --> 00:21:43.476
And there's a, there's a stat floating around and y'all don't quote me on these numbers, I'll get it close, but I believe it's.
00:21:43.476 --> 00:21:53.472
You know, if, if, if the woman or the mom in the household goes to church, I think there's a 30% chance that the rest of the family goes to church and follows Christ.
00:21:53.472 --> 00:22:00.837
If the man is the one that goes and follows Christ and takes his family to church, there's a 90-something percent chance that the family follows him.
00:22:00.837 --> 00:22:03.714
So, guys, dads, men, your influence matters.
00:22:03.984 --> 00:22:06.570
And you touched on something else, anna, that I kind of wanted to.
00:22:06.570 --> 00:22:17.971
You know, we've been talking about catering more to men in church and I think a big way that most churches miss the mark is their men's ministry, if they even have one.
00:22:17.971 --> 00:22:28.490
Some churches don't even have one, but a lot of them do have one, or what they call one, and maybe it's a once a month pancake breakfast, maybe it's a Bible study or something like that.
00:22:28.490 --> 00:22:39.674
What I'm trying to get at is, oftentimes churches make quote, unquote men's ministries, but they make them look like women's ministries, and men and women are very different in how they connect.
00:22:39.674 --> 00:22:50.196
Women do really well connecting with each other, sitting in a circle talking, and I can assure you that I do not in any way shape or form want to do that.
00:22:51.266 --> 00:22:52.411
My husband's the same.
00:22:52.411 --> 00:22:54.724
He would die if he was in one of those.
00:22:54.724 --> 00:22:57.148
No thanks yeah there's just not.
