Many well-meaning pastors and teachers highlight messages such as “waiting on the Lord” and “being content in all circumstances.” However, these exhortations often overlook the broader biblical narrative that encourages men to embrace courage, risk, and decisive action. Verses like Isaiah 40:31 and Philippians 4:12 have been misinterpreted, leading many to view waiting or contentedness as synonymous with inactivity, while Scripture actually conveys a message of active trust, expressed through initiative and endurance.

Men in the church don’t often get accused of being ambitious, but maybe they should be. After all, the drive that comes from ambition is part of how God created men—to seek, to act, and to shape the world around them. This ambition is part of man’s God-given nature that fuels action, perseverance, and purpose. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ambition as follows: “a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.” When men align their ambition with God’s purpose, it motivates them to support their families, engage with their communities, and seek goals that honor Him. In the absence of ambition, life can feel stagnant, and untapped potential can leave men feeling lost and unfulfilled, drifting without direction or purpose, or worse, deriving purpose from lesser goods.

Unfortunately, many in the church view ambition as a vice instead of a virtue. Men are frequently encouraged to “be content,” “just be faithful,” or “don’t rush ahead of God.” While true in their proper context, these statements often hinder action and stifle the drive to subdue. At the same time, our culture normalizes the portrayal of passive and lazy fathers on screen, and the church sometimes reflects these poor patterns in more subtle ways. For example, the popular phrase“faithful presence” often becomes an excuse for not actually sharing the Gospel with our neighbors or engaging in cultural battles. This leads men to receive mixed messages about ambition; either it’s seen as prideful, or it remains unacknowledged, leaving many uncertain about how to follow God’s calling in their lives.

The Bible illustrates that ambition, when grounded in things like obedience, dominion, and service, is a powerful tool for productive men. Figures like Joseph, Daniel, and Nehemiah exemplify how God-driven initiative can bring glory to God while benefiting those around them. Recognizing and embracing God-ordained ambition enables men to live purposefully, lead with courage, and make meaningful contributions to their communities.

Common Reasons Why Christian Men Lack Ambition

There are a few reasons why we see fewer ambitious Christian men:

1. The Rise of Therapeutic Christianity

Over time, the church has shifted from forming men into strong disciples to soothing them with therapeutic language. Much of modern preaching sounds less like a call to take up the cross and more like a group counseling session. Sermons often emphasize “how you feel” over “what you must do.” Instead of proclaiming Christ as King who commissions His people for work and mission, churches reduce Him to a life coach who simply helps us process our emotions.

Worship music has taken a similar path. The Psalms capture the full spectrum of human emotions—expressing lament, hope, triumph, and battle cries of faith. In contrast, contemporary worship songs frequently revolve around recurring themes of struggle and brokenness, offering emotional ballads to swaying hips. While recognizing our dependence on God is certainly necessary, an overemphasis on emotional appeal fosters a culture of perpetual spiritual adolescence rather than encouraging maturity and a sense of mission.

The overemphasis on feelings subtly trains men to believe that the Christian life is primarily about inward reflection instead of outward action. Faith becomes something to “feel deeply” rather than live boldly or build generationally. The result is men who equate holiness with passivity, mistaking the absence of ambition for the presence of humility.

2. Fear of Worldly Power

Men in the church today have largely been taught that power is inherently bad and is something that shouldn’t be desired. Power is no longer seen as something that should be pursued responsibly, but something that should be avoided altogether. No doubt the rise in social Marxism in the last few years has influenced this mindset, in which power is always seen as a tool of oppression.

And yet, this fear of power has likewise stifled ambition in men. No longer do men train, work, or even seek out positions of power. This fear of power has not only resulted in less ambitious men, but it has had considerable costs in the church, culture, and society at large. If good men aren’t seeking positions of power, then evil men will fill this void. Men’s ambitions collapse into private, trivial pursuits while public life is ceded to the very elites who taught them to fear power in the first place. In a society that desperately needs virtuous leaders, Christian men are often trained to be spectators.

3. A Shrunken Vision of the Kingdom

If you were a Christian in the late 2000s to early 2010s, you probably remember the wave of popular books that criticized the pursuit of the “American Dream.” Books like Crazy Love by Francis Chan or Radical by David Platt often gave the impression that the apex of the Christian life was selling everything, moving to a third-world country, and dying as a martyr. Instead of developing skills, building businesses, or preparing financially to pass something on to their children, many young men sacrificed these things to “reach the nations.” And while foreign mission work is certainly a needed and ambitious calling, the wake of these influencers left a trail of young men who were suspicious of normal vocations, resentful of those who chose different paths, and hesitant to take calculated risks lest they appear too comfortable, too worldly, or not “radical” enough.

4. Passive Theology Produces Passive Men

The Gospel Centered movement, in particular, has created a theological allergy to action and obedience that has also contributed to the lack of ambition among Christians. To be sure, Christ is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets—every shadow points to Him, every promise finds its “Yes” in Him. But a misapplication of the Christocentric hermeneutical approach reduces biblical narratives exclusively to Christ-types, leaving men without concrete models of godly action.

Matt Chandler’s famous sermon on David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 is a good illustration of this. Chandler strongly emphasized that “we are not David,” meaning that Christians should not emulate King David or derive practical wisdom from his story beyond seeing him as someone who points to Christ. But didn’t the Israelites join David’s victory by rising with a shout and pursuing the Philistines (1 Sam. 17:52)? And if David is a type of Christ, aren’t his followers called to follow him? Preaching this account merely as a foreshadow of Christ with no ethical imperative strips away David’s courage, leadership, and other virtuous traits as practical examples for men to imitate.

The movement also labels strong desires for legitimate goods as potential idolatry, with frequent warnings about “the idol of the family,” suggesting that Christians who strongly desire marriage or a generational legacy must regularly evaluate themselves lest they be in spiritual danger. This hyper-vigilance creates men who are afraid to pursue God-given longings with intensity. When every good desire must be examined for idolatry and every Old Testament example is reduced to Christology, men lose both the permission and the pattern for godly ambition.

Read More