In these last six years in my retirement I have joined the ‘Shedders’.  So… you don’t know what Shedders are?  Well, they are a rather novel breed of (usually) older men who get together in Men’s Sheds – also known as Man Caves.  What they do there is everything from working at their hobbies to community projects… and from playing cards to just dropping in for coffee.

I was talking to a Shedder last week who figures he would probably be on the wrong side of the grass if it wasn’t for his local Men’s Shed.  And he’s not the first to make that claim either.  Many men don’t cope well with retirement.  There are a variety of reasons for that – everything from losing the sense of one’s own worth to a lack of other interests apart from work and career.  When we add to that the situation where a man loses his life’s partner then the risk of clinical depression is very real and we can understand that some men really look forward to their mornings with other Shedders.

I should point out though that Men’s Sheds are not without their problems.  I’ve had occasion to cringe at the way some men speak to other men and I recall one instance where others had to separate two guys who had come to blows.  One would think that men in their seventies and eighties would have learnt by now how to navigate those relational difficulties.  However there’s the point that I made on this program last week – that while community brings many blessings it also brings many challenges and difficulties.  Shedders are blessed with the sense of community that a Men’s Shed provides but each man also takes his faults and foibles with him into a community where others too have their faults and foibles.

I pointed out to my friend who claimed the local Men’s Shed had kept him in the land of the living that strictly speaking we don’t really need a Men’s Shed to keep us sane and interested in life.  I said to him, “Many of us find that kind of support network in our local church.”  In fact, it doesn’t seem accidental to me that the popularity of Men’s Sheds has risen at the same time as the popularity of the Christian Church in the community has declined.  I would even go so far as to say that for some fellows, Men’s Shed is the church you go to when you don’t go to church.  Let me just give you one example of evidence to support that.  There’s a Men’s Shed where the kitchen-dining area has Ten Golden Rules posted on the wall.  That kind of reminded me of a church I once visited where they had a summary of the Ten Commandments written on the front wall.

Of course there’s one way in which being a Christian trumps being a Shedder.  The local Men’s Shed may help a man to stay on the right side of the grass for a little longer – but it cannot prevent the inevitable.  Sooner or later a Shedder will have his name added to the memorial list of the deceased.  Well, of course the Christian Church can’t stop the inevitable either.  What it does do is lead people to faith in Jesus, so that even when the day comes when we find ourselves on the wrong side of the grass we will still know that it is well with our soul.  The Christian Church has as its goal, not just to help people handle their depression but to prepare them for that time in God’s new creation when we will for ever and ever be on the right side of the grass.

John Westendorp