[Note: This post is taken from an article by Herb Reese entitled, “A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Fatherless Boys.”]
“Brian Leifson” was the first bully I ever knew. I was eight and he was eleven and he lived on my street. I did my best to avoid Brian and his home, but sometimes I couldn’t resist the temptation to check out the massive trainset his mother had helped him assemble in their backyard garage.
The platform that held the train was so big, Mrs. Leifson had to park her car on the driveway. On the platform was every possible permutation of traindom. Intricate train tracks braided their way in and out of miniature towns. Precisely detailed locomotives pulled tanker cars, flatbed cars, and boxcars that snaked along the tracks.
I say Brian’s mother, rather than his father, helped him with the trainset because Mrs. Leifson was divorced and Brian’s father was out of his life. It was the end of the 1950’s and divorce was still a rarity. I’m thinking the over-the-top trainset was Mrs. Leifson’s attempt to compensate for his father’s absence.
One day, as I walked by Brian’s home, I saw Brian down the driveway in his garage playing with his trains. Giving into temptation one more time, I nervously walked to the garage to see it. Sure enough, he immediately shouted at me not to touch anything or he would beat me up.
I stood there feeling a mixture of terror and awe as I watched Brian playing with his amazing trains. As he did he bragged about how much fun it was to have his trainset, while repeating dire warnings of what he would do to me if I dare touch it.
After several minutes of dangling both his trainset and the possibility of a beating in front of me, Brian said, “Follow me. I want to show you something.”
Then he led me outside the garage into the backyard. There on the ground was a dead bird. It was crispy black and lay in a circle of black grass. It had been burned.
“Look! I set this stupid bird on fire!” he laughed. “Now watch.”
Then Brian stepped hard on the bird with the ball of his foot and it chirped. Brian howled with laughter. Then he did it again, and again it chirped. Brian laughed and laughed.
I, on the other hand, was mortified. I turned and got out of that backyard as fast as I could.
I haven’t seen Brian in the sixty years since. But I did learn recently that Brian never married and he still lives on that same street in his mother’s home.
What I witnessed that day was the troubled soul of a boy growing up without his father. Brian had been deeply wounded by his father’s betrayal and abandonment and he was acting it out.
Unfortunately, Brian was just a forerunner of millions American boys — boys born during and after the sexual revolution of the 1960’s — who would also suffer the destructive consequences of the father wounds that come from being betrayed and abandoned by the one person they should admire and model their lives after.
With that dreadful cultural situation in mind, I am starting this series on fatherless boys to answer the obvious, but often unasked, question, “What can the church do to help fatherless boys like Brian?”
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North America and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt widows, single moms and fatherless children in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church at newcommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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