One of the most “un-churched" groups in the United States is the 18 -34 year old male. This guy is typically not attracted to the traditional view of the church and by most accounts, he does not see much relevance in the Jesus we are preaching about.

Books such as “Why Men Hate Church” have been written and studies have been documented, but the bottom line is that this group of men is largely missing from the church today. An interesting point is that this demographic has been missing from more than just the church, traditional marketing techniques and methods have failed to capture the attention of the young male and this has caused marketing firms to rethink their effectiveness in this category.

What the marketing groups discovered during the first season of Ultimate Fighter reality show was that the 18-34 year old male would watch fighting. The resulting revenue from paid advertising is in large part responsible for the rapid growth of the sport. On October 10th, 2006 more 18-34 year old males watched Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock (1.6 million) than watched the baseball playoff game between the A’s and the Tigers (1.1 million) and the sport had officially hit the radar of the corporate marketing budgets.

God has already been working in the fight culture.

As the church, we need to embrace what these numbers bear out. The sport of fighting, along with its culture and icons have captured the attention of a large demographic in a way that nothing else has been able to accomplish in recent years. However, unlike other "un-churched" groups and cultures we do not need to spend years training people to send as missionaries so that they know the language, history, etc… God has raised up for His purposes some of the very men who have created this fight culture and are now the people defining it! God has went ahead of us and paved the way for His church to reach these young men. Therefore, each of us need to become familiar with the sport of fighting so that we can more effectively present the gospel to this culture and be faithful with this opportunity we have been given. And in the same way I will be using this blog to train you in fighting, I will help you to understand this culture by bringing you videos and interviews with many of the Christian fighters.

Your first assignment

So here is your first assignment—if you choose to follow God into this fight, start to familiarize yourself with this sport, it's culture, and the believing fighters that participate in it. To that end, you have an exciting option coming up in the next month. On October 4th, Ken Shamrock is fighting live on CBS television at 9 EST in an event that could potentially be the most watched fight in MMA history. So grab some buddies and watch a brother in Christ mix it up in the ring on national television!

And then come back here as I bring you specific training from real fighters, and the Apostle Paul, on how to fight "good"!

"In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful." 2 Samuel 11:1-2

Neglected Responsibility

In this passage we see that David has neglected his responsibility to go out to battle, has sent others to fight, stays home, sleeps until evening, finally gets up, and starts looking at a naked woman that is not his wife! Most of us know where the story goes from here, the plot and the resulting pain to himself and others is all too familiar to us as we look around at our families, churches and the broader culture in which we live.

The only real difference between David and too many of us in our modern age is that we do not have to stand at a distance on a rooftop, squinting to try and get a better view of the naked woman’s body. It gets streamed directly into our offices, bedrooms, and laptops in high definition. Thanks to advances in recent technology, it is even available on our cell phones to be seen on demand at any moment or location. So thousands of years later, we men are still suffering from the same progression of events as David did in 2nd Samuel.

The problem starts earlier in the story

While it would be easy to blame our situation on the ubiquity of pornography in this age of technology, I believe the problem starts earlier in the story. Long before David stares at Bathsheeba, long before he has Uriah killed, long before all the terrible consequences have played out in David’s life and that of his family, something much more sinister had taken place. Somewhere along the way he lost sight of the mission that he had been given by God himself. He was the king of Israel and he was supposed to be at war fighting the forces of evil and expanding the kingdom! Yet he chose to stay home.

The lie: you're not here to fight

Unfortunately, most men in the church today have made the same decision. Even worse, many churches today actually tell men that they are not here to fight. And so we stay home and our stories become eerily similar to that of David. But the truth is that just like David, we have a mission from God to fight! We have a mission from God to continue the work of rescuing his people from captivity, we have an enemy who opposes us that is described as “a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour’, and at stake are the very souls of people for eternity! There is no greater struggle that we could be involved in.

We are here to fight!

When Paul tells Timothy to “fight the good fight”, he does not say “live like you are in a fight”. It is not a metaphor that Paul is using; he is telling Timothy something very real and very specific. We are here to fight, and we are to fight “good”!

God will win.

Our lives share another very important element with the story of David's failure, God was winning even though David chose to stay home! It says that Israel “destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah”. With or without David, God was winning. It is the same today; with or without us, God is winning. So where is God active and winning battles today?

One area that stands out is Mixed Martial Arts (Ultimate Fighting). I do not believe it is coincidental that while the church is struggling to attract young men, God is raising up men who are committed to him in the one area that everyone agrees young men (actually men of all ages) are drawn to. Fighting. Fighters such as Matt Lindland, Trevor Prangley, Ken Shamrock, Matt Horwich, Matt and Mark Hughes, Pat Miletich, and many more of the most popular people in the sport are all committed Christian men who have chosen to speak openly about their faith in Jesus Christ.

What I will be doing with this blog.

This means that most men in the church today need to get off their blessed assurance and follow God into battle! To that end, I will be using this blog in the future to help train men in the biblical fight principles that Paul outlines in his epistles and we will be using real fighters and real fighting to help illustrate these. But first, I want to talk about the young men in this country who are conspicuously absent from our churches and how we can follow God into the battle for these men's souls.