When he wants to talk to God, Ted Bratcher goes to church. Or he goes hunting.

“Some of my best times with the Lord is sitting out in his woods, in his creation,” Bratcher said.

Bratcher helped organize Franklin Road Baptist Church’s Father and Son Sportsman Day, held Saturday at the church’s campus in Murfreesboro. The event featured bow hunting and turkey calling contests, a wild game dinner, a climbing wall and a preaching elk hunter.

The idea, Bratcher said, is to tell men who don’t like church about Jesus and to show them that churchgoers can be fun people.

“We want to let the community know that we aren’t just about preaching against sin and all,” he said. “The Christian life is a great time.”

Many churches are using similar man-friendly events to address the gender gap in the pews. While most church leaders and preachers are men, women outnumber them in congregations. Among evangelicals, 53 percent are women, 47 percent men, according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion.

Mainline Protestants and Catholics are split at 54 percent women and 46 percent men. Among historically black churches, the ratio is 60 percent women, 40 percent men.

David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church, said the gender gap is no accident. Churches let men do practical work — such as setting the budget and taking care of the building — but don’t address their spiritual needs, he said.

“Most church ministry is like the Titanic,” he said. “It’s women and children first.”

Because of that, Murrow said, men are less likely to show up at church. To change that means starting church on time, removing flowers and pretty banners and, more challenging, setting up programs that appeal to men.

Bratcher got the idea for the sportsmen’s day after hearing that Southern Baptist and Presbyterian churches held cookouts that served deer and other wild game years ago.

Read More: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110306/NEWS06/103060378/Churches-target-outdoorsmen-close-gender-gap-pews?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

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