Herb: David, how long have you been with Man in the Mirror now?
David: I’ve been with Man in the Mirror for nineteen years. I came out of college and worked in software consulting and then went to seminary. When I was getting ready to graduate, I met Pat Morley and heard about his ministry and saw some of what they were doing with men and leaders around the country. So I thought that it would be a good option to do this for a few years. And here I am nineteen years later!
Herb: What excites you most about men’s ministry?
David: For us at Man in the Mirror, our real passion is helping churches create an atmosphere where men are willing to get involved life-on-life with other men in discipleship. Because at the end of the day, that’s often what makes a difference: knowing that a man cares, knowing a man who is a little further along in his journey with Christ and has your back and is helping you take those steps. We’ve been blessed to learn from literally thousands of churches what that looks like. So we’ve taken those lessons and packaged them up in ways that help other churches apply them as well.
Herb: So you’ve been exposed to all kinds of men’s ministries all over the world.
David: Yes, we’ve worked with every denomination and have formal partnerships with many. We’ve had ministry interactions with probably 35,000 churches.
Herb: You have a new initiative now where you’re recruiting local reps to work with churches. How is that going?
David: We have a position that we call Area Director. We came to the conclusion, after helping church leaders build sustainable discipleship ministries, that so many churches are designating that ministry to be run by lay people. Men’s discipleship is often a lay-led movement in the church. And a lot of those laymen have maybe two hours a week. Some of them may have two or three hours a month. And, even if they understand a lot of principles and have read some good books and have some good tools of ministry and curricula, it’s pretty hard to have a comprehensive, sustainable ministry when you’re just doing this on the side, two hours a week.
We became convinced that one of the things that had to happen is we need to have boots on the ground. We need to have guys who are trained and equipped, who understand the lessons we’ve learned over twenty-five years and can help a local church apply those–not telling the church what curriculum they have to study, or what books they have to buy, or what ministries they have to get involved with or be using. Rather, once a church decides on those kinds of questions, then how are they going to apply them to be used as effectively as possible? So our Area Directors are trained to connect with church leaders, to come alongside them wherever they are–if they’re just starting the journey of thinking what it would look like to have a discipleship ministry with men, or if they’re a long way down–then how they can refine it and make it more effective.
Herb: Suppose someone is reading this and he is interested in being an Area Director. What type of qualifications are you looking for?
David: Great question. There’s a website, AreaDirectors.org, that explains the position and talks about the process and has a big button that says, “Take the Next Step”. So what we’re looking for in an Area Director is someone who can communicate with pastors and leaders in small group settings and help them in a consultative, coaching kind of way. So the folks that God seems to be using in this role are former pastors and some sales people, entrepreneurs and people who have had leadership positions in the church in the past. Because the primary role is to try to connect with pastors and leaders and help them do what they’re already trying to do, but to do it more effectively.
Herb: What would you say are the key issues pastors face in dealing with men’s ministry?
David: I think that there are three issues. I’ll start from the bottom and go up. The third issue is capturing momentum, giving men a believable next step. Too often we throw out these silos of ministries where we have the softball team, or the fall barbeque, or the quarterly breakfast, or whatever it is. And they’re in isolation from each other.
Herb: Not related to each other or achieving a common goal.
David: Yes, they’re in isolation from one another and everything else the church is doing. And so we really try to help churches think, whenever you are creating value, always offer men a believable next step. And that needs to be life on life. It’s not just announcing it from the front. But it’s Tom going up to Fred and saying, “I really enjoyed being on the softball team with you. My wife and I attend this class on Sunday and we’re starting a new series. Would you all like to come try it out?” So it’s life-on-life, giving a believable next step.
A second thing that I think many churches struggle with is casting a vision for their men. Something the guys can sink their teeth into and it connects with them in a visceral level. A lot of churches talk about men’s ministry, Tuesday night, 7:30 in room 214. Well, nobody is going to get excited about that. When Jesus was about to leave, He didn’t say, “Hey, guys, hang out in Jerusalem. Maybe you can start these small groups. Maybe you’ll have a breakfast. That would be neat. Or even an outreach event. Or maybe have a little concert.” No, He said, “I want you to go into all the world and make disciples.” What a big vision! These guys had never been thirty or forty miles from their homes and He’s telling them to go into all the world. So we need to give our guys a big vision and show them with stories and testimonies the reality of how God is actually accomplishing that.
And then the third piece, and this is probably the biggest insight that proves to be the biggest help for churches, is getting away from the concept of men’s ministry altogether. We would love to just kill the phrase, “men’s ministry” and even the concept of men’s ministry. The reason for that is it’s unhelpful in most circumstances. And here’s why. When you think about men’s ministry, you think of men’s breakfasts, men’s retreats, men’s small groups, men’s service projects, all of which are good. And we’re thankful that those things are happening. And we need more of that to happen. But what you’re excluding are the guys who are playing guitar in the band, the men who are singing in the choir, the guys teaching the eighth grade boys, the men coaching the youth soccer team, the guy teaching the couple’s Sunday school class for the last ten years, the man who comes in and closes out the books every month as a volunteer accountant at the church, and on and on. And so every time you use the phrase, “men’s ministry,” what those guys hear is, “O, I’m not in that.” Well, how crazy is that? These are the kind of men we’re trying to produce. Why in the world would we want to keep using a phrase that makes them feel like they’re not part of it?
So we turn that on its head and talk about an all-inclusive ministry to men. And we come up with ways to talk about how our church is having interactions with any man as part of the ministry of what God is doing.
Herb: Both men in the church and men outside the church?
David: Yes. We advocate getting away from the phrase, “men’s ministry.” Often churches will substitute a very generic name, like “Men of Hillcrest,” if the name of the church is Hillcrest Church, or something like that. And then you can talk about the man that leads the Boy Scouts troop and thank him as a Man of Hillcrest, or you can thank the guys who work in the nursery, or the men who cooked the food for the family cookout, or whatever. These are Men of Hillcrest, just as much as the quarterly men’s breakfast or the men’s service teams or whatever. So you get this sense that we’re all in this together.
And the last part is that now the leadership team can think about more than just men’s ministry activities. In other words, everything’s open to them. So we can come alongside the new member orientation weekend and we can realize that we’re getting access to men who are on the very fringes of our church. We ought to come alongside them and help them. Send some of our guys to meet those new men and invite those new men to take a next step, which could be a men’s group or a couple’s group. It might be something with their kids, or whatever. Because the whole church’s ministries are part of our men’s discipleship process. And we don’t have to think that we have to create this parallel universe. So pastors love it because the men’s leadership team is now supporting the major initiatives of the church instead of trying to distract the men and create a whole set of parallel initiatives away from other ministries of the church.
Herb: This is an interesting “mistake” that churches make: isolating the men’s ministry from other ministries. What are some other “mistakes” you feel the church is making in regard to its men?
David: One of them is leadership teams that do all the work. Typically, if they’re doing all the work, you’ll have four or five guys, usually your charismatic leaders that get a lot of stuff done–guys like to be around them. And so you have these thriving events and activities for a couple of years, but then one of them maybe gets a promotion and he’s traveling more, and another one’s mother-in-law gets ill and has to move into their home. And so now, instead of five leaders, you have three and they’re overworked and the whole thing just falls apart. So we talk to the leadership team about recruiting guys to the vision so that the other men are actually doing the work and the leadership team is praying, casting the vision, recruiting and building allies who are willing to do that life on life discipleship, and then managing this process of connecting the dots between these ministries in the church. So getting leadership teams away from doing the work is one of the key principles that we’ve seen.
Herb: You’ve mentioned that you’ve been with Man in the Mirror for nineteen years and I’m sure our readers would like to hear a little about Patrick Morley, the founder of Man in the Mirror. How is he doing?
David: Pat’s doing great. He’s as busy as ever and engaged as ever. He teaches a Bible study every Friday morning. There are over six hundred free videos and audio at our website, ManintheMirror.org. You can see Pat age right before your eyes because they go for the past twelve years now! He’s been teaching the Bible study for twenty-seven years. So if you’re ever in Orlando on a business trip or family trip, we meet just north of downtown every Friday morning. He’s also writing. He has a new book coming out. It’s called How God Makes Men. That’s this fall. Then in the fall of 2014, the twenty-fifth edition of Man in the Mirror will be coming out. We’re very excited about that book coming out and having a similar impact on a new generation of men that it’s had over the last twenty-five years.
Herb: David, thank you for getting together with me. We look forward to hearing exciting things about what God is doing through Man in the Mirror.
Learn more about Man in the Mirror here.
September 17, 2013
Washington, D. C.