The African Connection asked the leader of AIM’s Southern Region office, if more men joined the mission what difference, if any, would they make?

Imbalanced genders

Have you heard the new take on the so-called 10/40 window? 10 women doing the work of 40 men! The history of missions over the past 200 years would be much less glorious were it not for the predominance of single ladies who have made up the mission workforce. We have two single men (long-term workers) in AIM’s Southern Region and 45 single women. That’s out of a total of 135 long-termers. Almost exclusively, the only men who come to work in Southern Region come attached to women. This is true of our present workforce and of those who are preparing to join us in the near future. There are no single men in the pipeline. The figures are also skewed in favour of women when we look at the short-termers coming to us.

More single men are needed to form radical discipleship teams that will go to the hardest places and reach the hardest-to-reach people.

Male dominated cultures

When I look at the strategic placements filled by women in our region, could those jobs be done by men? Most of them; although whether they would do as good a job is open to debate. So what difference would it make if more men came? A great deal. We have dozens of vacancies for people who want to ‘reach, mentor and unleash’ African people for Christ. Committed male workers would have a crucial part to play in the male dominated cultures of much of Africa. In most Islamic contexts, men are needed to reach men. If there are so few men, and many more women workers, the distortion might play itself out in our church planting and, in fact, might already have done so in large swathes of Africa where the church is a majority female phenomenon. We need more men to teach God’s Word to the men who lead, or will lead, this majority female church. We need more men to teach and model Biblical manhood to the young men and boys of Africa, to ‘reach, mentor and unleash’ the next generation of Christian African men who will be the husbands, fathers, church leaders, community leaders, national leaders of the New Africa. More men are needed to model to the African Church that missions should not be a predominantly female endeavour. More single men are needed to form radical discipleship teams that will go to the hardest places and reach the hardest-to-reach people.

General Booth

If we are to see Christ-centred churches among all African peoples then do we need more men? Yes...and no. God has done amazingly well without enough men so far and he may choose to continue to do so. As General Booth once said: “Some of my best men are women.” In AIM Southern Region’s case many of our best men are women!