Do men read less?

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hoss2576

hoss2576

Senior Member
May 10, 2014
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My pastor said something Wednesday that has hung with me all week. We were in a Bible study, and he we were talking about some books that would be great for men in the church to read to help them grow. Our pastor pointed out that men don't read and thought it might be a wasted investment to buy books to give men. He shared with us a quarterly devotional that might be a better option, because it was short and required less daily reading.

Admittedly, I don't do a lot of "free reading" at the moment outside of reading my Bible, but I am also in graduate school and my reading is spent on textbooks. Even with my reduced "free reading," I still read when I can.

Do you believe men in general read less than women? Why or why not? Would not a desire for growth and change be a motivating factor?
 
I don't think men read less than women. Here is why -
Men take their phones to the washroom and spend a lot of time reading.
 
Are we counting romance novels? If we take those out of the equation I bet men read more than women.
 
From what he said, your pastor either must not read, or he considers himself a woman.
 
hoss2576 said:
My pastor said something Wednesday that has hung with me all week. We were in a Bible study, and he we were talking about some books that would be great for men in the church to read to help them grow. Our pastor pointed out that men don't read and thought it might be a wasted investment to buy books to give men. He shared with us a quarterly devotional that might be a better option, because it was short and required less daily reading.

Admittedly, I don't do a lot of "free reading" at the moment outside of reading my Bible, but I am also in graduate school and my reading is spent on textbooks. Even with my reduced "free reading," I still read when I can.

Do you believe men in general read less than women? Why or why not? Would not a desire for growth and change be a motivating factor?
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No, I'd think men read more, but I have no idea actually. Maybe it's the same. I almost never read, well books, I do read posts lol.
 
Willie-T said:
From what he said, your pastor either must not read, or he considers himself a woman.
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His comment is no more a reflection of him not being a reader or a woman than yours is a reflection of your reading acuity. It was an observation he made.
 
hoss2576 said:
His comment is no more a reflection of him not being a reader or a woman than yours is a reflection of your reading acuity. It was an observation he made.
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Maybe with the people he knows. Maybe those men have a full time job and their wives have plenty of time to read devotionals. I know one couple. He almost got a heart attack because he works 60 hours a week, also at night and she gives Bible studies and just stays at home without kids. I bet she reads more.
 
I think it is a very individual thing that has nothing to do with gender.
 
Lynx said:
Are we counting romance novels? If we take those out of the equation I bet men read more than women.
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Romance novel are a boring waste of time. Especially the Christian ones, which a friend of mine tried to get me into. Even more unrealistic than the worldly ones, in my opinion, because it was always "God's intervention" that some perfect man dropped out of the sky and into the produce section of the grocery store... Conveniently colliding with the "heroine" of the book.

Puh-leese.

There are about a hundred thousand other things I'd rather be spending my time on (even a nutrition information chart would peak my interest more than some "romance" story. Yeah. And that's probably why I'm single.)

Just one woman's opinion.
 
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hoss2576 said:
My pastor said something Wednesday that has hung with me all week. We were in a Bible study, and he we were talking about some books that would be great for men in the church to read to help them grow. Our pastor pointed out that men don't read and thought it might be a wasted investment to buy books to give men. He shared with us a quarterly devotional that might be a better option, because it was short and required less daily reading.

Admittedly, I don't do a lot of "free reading" at the moment outside of reading my Bible, but I am also in graduate school and my reading is spent on textbooks. Even with my reduced "free reading," I still read when I can.

Do you believe men in general read less than women? Why or why not? Would not a desire for growth and change be a motivating factor?
Click to expand...

When it comes to literature and decent scholarship, I would guess that men and women come out dead even. If we're going to include junk reading, I think women are more prone to junk read whereas men are more likely to not read at all rather than junk read.

So when it comes to use of time, women and men come out dead even.
 
hoss2576 said:
My pastor said something Wednesday that has hung with me all week. We were in a Bible study, and he we were talking about some books that would be great for men in the church to read to help them grow. Our pastor pointed out that men don't read and thought it might be a wasted investment to buy books to give men. He shared with us a quarterly devotional that might be a better option, because it was short and required less daily reading.

Admittedly, I don't do a lot of "free reading" at the moment outside of reading my Bible, but I am also in graduate school and my reading is spent on textbooks. Even with my reduced "free reading," I still read when I can.

Do you believe men in general read less than women? Why or why not? Would not a desire for growth and change be a motivating factor?
Click to expand...

The majority of people don't read a lot, either for fun or to improve themselves. I had to search for the statistics but here is a good overview of reading trends. It's not a men or women issue; it's an everyone issue.

A 2004 study reported that “literary reading in America is not only declining rapidly among allgroups, but the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young. This reflects amassive shift toward electronic media for entertainment and information.” Consider thefollowing statistics:

  • 58% of the U.S. adult population never read another book after high school.
  • 42% of U.S. university graduates never read another book.
  • Adults in the U.S. spend four hours per day watching TV, three hours listening to the
    radio and 14 minutes reading magazines.
  • British teenagers’ pleasure reading declined by about a third from 1991-1998.
  • In Denmark on-third of adults do not do any significant amount of reading.
  • More than half the adults in the Netherlands hardly ever read a book.




But if I can totally hijack your thread, and if not everyone feel free just to ignore me, the questions I think are relevant to discipline (oops that was supposed to be discipling but sometimes you just have to leave the spell check "corrections" in) non-readers in the church would be: How can we get people who can't / won't read to engage with the truth of scripture on a deep life changing level? How can we make sure that we're not setting up a lack of reading ability as a hurdle to someone knowing and growing in the Lord?

As for this particular situation, I'm hugely in favor of the church library system where the church may have one or two copies of books they'd recommend to people (or maybe choose several books to put together as small group kits) and then those who wish to can check them out and read them. And while I personally love to read and have a bookshelf full of books and a kindle full of other books, my eyes have been opened to the fact that one of the unacknowledged prejudices of Christian ministry is that if you love God enough, you'll love reading the Bible and other Christian books too and it usually leads us to discount the sincerity or faith of those who prefer to take in information about God and everything else in other means.

Sorry if I soapboxed a bit, but the whole idea of orality and reaching those who prefer other means of learning and being informed than reading was what I spent the last 3 years of my life on. And if anyone wants to know more, there's a great PDF (I think it's ) online called making disciples of oral learners, as well as all sorts of stuff you can find by googling orality or chronological Bible storying.
 
seoulsearch said:
Romance novel are a boring waste of time. Especially the Christian ones, which a friend of mine tried to get me into. Even more unrealistic than the worldly ones, in my opinion, because it was always "God's intervention" that some perfect man dropped out of the sky and into the produce section of the grocery store... Conveniently colliding with the "heroine" of the book.

Puh-leese.

There are about a hundred thousand other things I'd rather be spending my time on (even a nutrition information chart would peak my interest more than some "romance" story. Yeah. And that's probably why I'm single.)

Just one woman's opinion.
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Hahahahahahaha
Really? Do they have christian ones too? Oh that's hilarious. Plop. There he is. Mr. Right. I once saw such a movie. The guy was evil and mean and a drunk, but then he met her and turned into a sweet wonderful christian Mr. Right. I hope noone tries that at home.
I read a few when I was 14, but those were also funny. And one from a girl with a horse. I always read the same book over and over. I had to read books for high school. Absolutely hated it, cheated with most books, only read a summary from someone else and it made me hate books and almost never read again. Corrie ten Boom though, I read these books over and over, she had a real nice way of writing and Harold Hill, live like a King's kid. Now I just never read.
 
Actually xkcd has something on this.

the_pace_of_modern_life.png
 
In my family it's true. I'm the only big reader that is a guy. Don't think it is true across the board though.
 
What's the point of that long list of old articles? Only that there is really nothing new under the sun.
 
Of course if you DO like to read you always get this...

pet_peeve_114.png


I'm reading a book, thank you very much. What, you think I should party EVERY weekend? :p
 
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