Could half of Christian men have a problem with porn, as so many of the statistics say? Porn is reported to be a 12 billion dollar industry in the U.S… 50 percent of men viewed pornography within one week of attending a Promise Keepers stadium event… 54 percent of pastors said they viewed porn within the past year in a Pastors.com survey… in a 2003 Focus on the Family poll 47 percent of respondents said porn is a problem in their home.

12 billion… 50 percent… half. My eyes glaze over at numbers like this. Are we supposed to buy into the idea that half of the men in the church are porn addicts? Maybe it’s just more sensational rhetoric meant to rouse us for battle against the culture. 

But In My Church?

Certainly half the men in my church couldn’t have a problem with porn. Most the men in our body of 600 are in their late 30s to early 40s, married, and the father of little ones. They have successful careers making good money and are involved in ministry. I couldn’t picture so many of these men I sit next to every Sunday leering at porn.   

Wanting to prove the numbers wrong, in the spring of 2004 I approached the leadership of our church and asked if we could survey the men on the topic of pornography. Our numbers will be different; “half” can’t be true here, I thought. Of those who responded, 25 percent had looked at porn within the past 30 days, 44 percent within six months, and 61 percent within the year. The real statistic is probably higher; I heard later that a number of men didn’t fill out the survey “because they were afraid of how it would be used.”

Pure Desire