Beautiful but Incomplete: Worship, Men, and the Abolition of Strength

There is a quiet moment most men recognize… not when they stop attending church, but when they stop entering worship. They stand. They sing some. They listen politely. But something inside them stays seated. It is not that they do not “love” God. It is that the language, posture, and emotional tone of modern evangelical worship often asks them to “feel”… but rarely puts them in a position to praise God with the kind of honor, respect, and admiration men instinctively give to greatness. And over time, that imbalance forms a Church that is intimate, expressive, and sincere… yet strangely unprepared to hold the line… to love with accountability, stand against compromise, and wage the spiritual battles Scripture warns us to expect.

This is not a rant. It is not anger. And it is certainly not an attack on women, emotion, or intimacy in worship.

It is a plea.

C.S. Lewis warned in The Abolition of Man that when we strip away certain essential qualities from human formation, we do not create better people… we create incomplete ones; “men without chests.” What if something similar has happened in worship?

Many men want to worship… deeply, sincerely, and fully. We want to sing. We want to lift our voices. We want to lift our hands. We want to stand before God with reverence and awe. We want to praise Him for the great God He is! But for many of us, the worship songs chosen week after week create a quiet but real hurdle.

The tone is often soft, romantic, and emotionally expressive… and even when songs are upbeat, energetic, and joyful, they can still feel more feminine than masculine in posture. Fast tempos and clapping rhythms do not automatically translate into strength or gravitas. For many men, the emotional tone still feels foreign… not sinful, not wrong… just difficult to inhabit.

Strong men frequently have to push past the emotional posture of the song before they can even engage with its theology. That extra step may seem small, but over time it becomes exhausting. And eventually, many men stop trying to climb it.

What is interesting is that the old hymns rarely had this problem. They were human… sometimes tender, sometimes sorrowful, sometimes joyful… but they were not distinctly masculine or feminine in tone. They were declarative. Vertical. Grounded. They spoke of God’s attributes, His acts, His sovereignty, His mercy, His kingship. They invited all people to stand before God… not merely to feel toward Him.

Somewhere along the way, that direction shifted.

As men stepped back from leadership… sometimes willingly, sometimes passively… women faithfully stepped forward. That is not wrong. In many cases it was necessary. But leadership shapes tone, and tone shapes formation. Over time, worship language became more relational, more emotive, more inward facing. The Church began singing more about how God makes us feel than about who God is.

Culture notices these things.

I laugh when I recall the “Church Lady” from Saturday Night Live. (Too young? Trust me, it is worth a quick search.) It was satire… but satire exaggerates something recognizable. Sadly, the caricature stuck, especially as highly visible male leaders failed publicly, crashed hard, and left a bitter taste behind. Strength, authority, and conviction became suspect. Gentleness became safer. And worship followed suit. And of course there has been the growing perception of male toxicity… (but that is another subject.)

However, the answer is not less emotion.

The answer is stronger songs.

Songs that are vertical… focused on praise, adoration, holiness, sovereignty, and mission. Songs that call us to stand, not merely sway. Songs that allow men to praise God with clarity, honor, and conviction… while still inviting women to sing with equal joy and depth.

This is not about masculinity versus femininity. It is about balance.

Men do not need worship stripped of tenderness. They need worship anchored in truth, courage, and purpose. Songs that form the soul for obedience, endurance, sacrifice, and joy. Songs that prepare the Church not just to feel God’s presence… but to proclaim His greatness with strength and confidence.

David’s Songs and the Shape of Biblical Worship

When we look to David… the man Scripture calls a man after God’s own heart… we find something instructive. David was deeply emotional, poetically expressive, and unafraid of vulnerability. Yet his worship was rarely sentimental, and almost never self-focused.

David’s psalms are not written to God as romantic musings… they are proclamations about God, spoken in His presence.

Even when David writes from anguish, fear, repentance, or longing, the movement of the psalm is almost always vertical. He names who God is… recalls what God has done… declares trust… and then calls others to join him. The emotional honesty is real, but it is tethered to truth, authority, kingship, justice, and covenant faithfulness.

Temple worship reflected this same posture. It was corporate, physical, audible, and weighty. Singers were appointed. Instruments were intentional. Words were chosen carefully because they were shaping the theology of the nation. Worship was offered before God… but also to the people.

This kind of worship invited participation from men not because it asked them to express emotion… but because it called them to stand under something larger than themselves.

David’s worship held strength and submission together. He bows… but he also declares. He weeps… but he commands his soul. He longs… but he also trusts.

Biblical worship does not avoid tenderness… but it never detaches tenderness from strength. It does not dissolve authority into affection. It does not replace reverence with romance.

Salvation, Mercy, and the Way We Relate to a Loving Father

Part of the misalignment in modern worship may stem from something deeper than music style or lyrical tone. It may come from how salvation, mercy, and grace are most often framed… and whose instincts that framing primarily speaks to.

Both men and women long for a loving Father. That desire is universal. But the way that love is experienced, interpreted, and celebrated often differs in meaningful ways.

For many women, the language of salvation resonates deeply through touchpoints of comfort, security, safety, value, and belonging. Grace feels like being seen. Mercy feels like being held. Salvation feels like being welcomed home and protected.

Those are not lesser realities. They are profoundly biblical.

For many men, however, salvation often resonates through different instincts. Grace feels like forgiveness without disqualification. Mercy feels like restoration after failure. Salvation feels like being put back on your feet… entrusted again… sent forward with purpose. Men often long to know not only that God loves them, but that He is pleased with them… that their strength is not a liability… that their effort, loyalty, and resolve still matter.

Both sets of instincts exist in every human heart. But they are often emphasized differently.

When worship consistently frames salvation almost exclusively through comfort, safety, and emotional reassurance, many men struggle to locate themselves within it. They do not hear less grace… they hear grace spoken in a dialect that does not fully translate.

Men are not asking for a harsher God. They are asking for a bigger one.

A Father who forgives… and then sends. A Father who restores… and then entrusts. A Father whose mercy does not merely soothe… but strengthens.

David’s Songs of Mercy That Restore Strength

David’s psalms give us a clear picture of how mercy and grace were meant to function in worship… not as an ending point, but as a turning point.

In Psalm 51, David comes undone before God. He confesses without excuse. He asks for mercy without bargaining. He pleads for cleansing, restoration, and a renewed heart.

But the psalm does not end with comfort alone.

After receiving mercy, David asks for something more… restore to me the joy of Your salvation… and then immediately adds purpose… then I will teach transgressors Your ways. Mercy leads to mission. Forgiveness leads to re-engagement. Grace restores David not only emotionally, but vocationally and spiritually.

David does not remain collapsed before God. He rises.

This pattern appears again in Psalm 18, where David praises God not for soothing his fears, but for training his hands for battle and strengthening his feet. God is celebrated as deliverer, fortress, shield, and strength. Joy and power are not opposites in David’s worship… they are intertwined.

David’s worship allows him to grieve… and then stand. To repent… and then lead. To receive mercy… and then move forward with confidence and resolve.

This is worship that many men recognize instinctively. Not because it is aggressive, but because it restores them to strength.

David praises God not only as the One who forgives him, but as the One who still entrusts him. Grace lifts the head. Mercy restores footing. Worship becomes the place where a man is made ready again.

Has Worship Unintentionally Emasculated the Church?

Some men quietly wonder why worship feels difficult. They assume something is wrong with them… that they are too closed off, too stoic, too something. It rarely occurs to them that the songs may simply not have been written with them in mind. Not through intent, but through omission. When strength, courage, authority, and holy fear slowly disappear from our songs, something essential is lost.

As Lewis might put it… has worship that was meant to form whole people quietly narrowed one of the ways men were designed to engage God?

This is not a call to go backward.

It is a call to recover depth… so the Church once again sings songs that can carry both the hearts of women and the strength of men.

This is a plea to worship leaders and pastors: Consider the men in the room who want to worship but feel unseen. Consider the formative power of language and tone. Consider whether our songs are commissioning the Church… or only comforting it.

Recovering balance in worship does not diminish love, tenderness, or intimacy. It restores depth. When worship holds together mercy and mission, comfort and calling, reverence and strength, it forms the whole Church. Not just expressive hearts, but grounded souls. Not just feeling, but formation. A Church shaped this way sings with honesty, stands with confidence, and is formed as daughters and sons to stand confidently before an awesome God.