Have DFW Churches Turned Off Successful Black Men?

While doing my usual Sunday resting, watching football, and getting ready for the week, I just happened to have a live stream of the Kevin Samuels YouTube channel. The topic was “Want Black Men Back in the Black Church?” Long story short, he had several people call in, men and women, giving their opinion on why hardly any smart, successful brothas, including single ones, are going to church like they used to.

By the way, for those who may not know, Mr. Samuels has become well known for facilitating sometimes controversial topics about the state of modern dating between brothas and sistas and why the Black family has broken down. He also used to live here in the Dallas area for many years, actively heading up the singles ministries of some well known Dallas churches.

The themes that repeated among the callers and those in the chat comments seemed to revolve around:

1. The modern church has shifted to focusing only on prosperity “feel good” gospel instead of the whole Bible
2. Too many pastors are pandering to women, often engaging in intimate affairs with many female churchgoers, including married women.
3. Pastors favor the feminine view over the masculine view, often judging men for not “stepping up” for women regardless of what the men want
4. Today’s church tolerates sin instead of actively encouraging people to repent
5. Pastors don’t want to empower men to be true leaders and partners in building the church like they used to throughout Black history
6. Too many women in the pulpit preaching to men too often
7. Too eager to pass the collection plate yet judgmental against men

There were other concerns expressed, but this was the gist of it. What are your thoughts? It was actually a very good conversation. At one point, Kevin and a pastor (or former pastor, I can’t remember) discussed ways for Black churches to turn things around. Mr. Samuels mentioned that the church that reaches out to successful brothas will pack the church with them. And when single sistas find out that successful single brothas are plentiful at that church, they will flock to it in big numbers. In my opinion, this would be a great strategy and was something that actually worked during the Black Wall Street city era in our history over 100 years ago.

Let us know your thoughts.