A Men’s Ministry Men Want to Know – (Part 3) Our Protocol: What Local Church Men’s Ministries are Supposed to Do

Previous posts in this series have been incorporated into Part 2 of my online article, “A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Men.”

The importance of knowing and obeying a protocol

As I discussed in my last post, when it comes to the topic of police responding to a mass shooting, it is all about them following this simple and clear protocol: do not wait for permission or backup, go in immediately and take down the shooter. Police officers are trained in this protocol in spite of the fact that, on average, “one third of the police officers who made that solo entry got shot.”¹

Unfortunately, the 360 first responders to the shooter in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas became the victims of groupthink and did not follow their protocol. Instead, they put their own safety ahead of the safety of the children and adults they were supposed to protect, resulting in the deaths of 19 children and two adults, and the wounding of 17 other children.

By comparison, on Monday of this week (October 24, 2022), a shooter in St. Louis entered Central Visual and Performing Arts High School with an AR-15-style rifle and 600 rounds of ammunition. He obviously intended to kill as many people as he could, just like the shooter at Robb Elementary School, and many other shooters before him. But in contrast to the first responders in Uvalde, the first responders in St. Louis followed their protocol, immediately entering the school and taking out the shooter within just a few minutes, risking their own lives in the process. The result: only one adult and one student died, with several others wounded.

Christian men have a protocol

Christian men in local church men’s ministries stand by passive and helpless while they witness a similar tragedy: American men experiencing a decades-long spiritual, moral, and social conflagration that negatively impacts all aspects of our culture. Local church men’s ministries can be God’s primary means by which this disaster that afflicts men can not only be slowed down and stopped, but reversed, if only we would obey our God-given “protocol.”

But like the first responders in Uvalde, Texas, we are not obeying our protocol. We shrug off our responsibility to properly respond to the male moral and social dysfunction we see around us and instead we isolate ourselves from it by creating our own little social bubbles – our men’s ministries – behind the four walls of our church buildings. Our focus is primarily on our own spiritual lives and our marriages and families, but we ignore our protocol and the outside world it is intended to reach.

So what is our protocol? To answer that question, I will first begin with the protocol God gave Judah as a way to respond to the moral and social declension the nation found itself in.

The nation of Judah’s protocol: Isaiah 1:17

The Bible states Judah’s protocol simply and clearly, and many times, in the Old Testament. Here is one example:

Learn to do right [lit. “good”]; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. Isaiah 1:17, 18 (Note: For other Old Testament references to God’s concern for widows and the fatherless, see Deuteronomy 1:18; 14:29; 16:11, 14; 24:17, 20, 21; 26:12, 13; Job 6:27; 24:3, 9, 21; 31:16-22; Psalm 10:14, 18; 68:5; 82:3; 94:4-7; 146:9; Proverbs 15:25; 23:10; Isaiah 1:23; 10:1, 2; Jeremiah 5:28; 7:6; 22:23; Ezekiel 22:7; Hosea 14:3; Zechariah 7:1-14; Malachi 3:5.)

In Isaiah 1:17, God gives Judah specific instructions about what he wants the nation to do (i.e., a protocol) as a response to their current perilous situation. Then, in verse 18, God explains what he will do if the nation follows their protocol. I want to develop these ideas by first starting with verse 18 and then working backwards to verse 17.

Isaiah 1:18 is not talking about personal salvation, but national transformation

“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18

I memorized this wonderful and amazing verse as a child. At the time, I was taught that it referred to my personal salvation; that when I placed my faith in Jesus Christ, God wiped all of my sin away and sees me as righteous in Christ Jesus. I am now “white as snow” in God’s sight.

Unfortunately, Isaiah 1:18 is not talking about my personal salvation – or anyone’s for that matter.

Of course, the Bible teaches in other places that at the moment of our salvation, God forgives us of all our sin. “To the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness,” Paul writes in Romans 4:5. But personal salvation and forgiveness are not what Isaiah 1:18 is talking about.

What Isaiah 1:18 is talking about is national transformation. The reason we know this is from the context. “Woe to the sinful nation!” God says to Judah in verse 4. In verse 7, God again addresses his litany to the entire nation: “Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire.” Then He turns his anger on Judah’s political leadership: “Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom,” (verse 10). God’s disgust with Judah even includes its religious leaders: “The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me?” says the Lord. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals” (verse 11).

In the first sixteen verses of Isaiah 1 God is making a case for judging the nation of Judah as a whole. The reason is because Judah has violated its covenant with God, the Mosaic covenant, which stipulated that if they kept his commandments, then God would allow them to dwell in the land that he promised them. But if they did not keep his commandments, then God would expel them from the land.

Unfortunately, because the nation did not keep their part of the covenant, God, as “prosecutor,” is about to haul the nation into “court” for judgement. But in verse 18, He is saying it is not too late, they can settle “out of court” and not go to trial: “Come now, let us settle the matter.”

What, then, does God want Israel to do in order to settle out of court and not be brought to judgment? We find the answer in the previous verse, Isaiah 1:17.

The concept of good works in the New Testament is based on Isaiah 1:17

In an important statement that all believers need to pay close attention to, God gives Judah His condition. “Learn to do good; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”

The reason why this verse is so important is because it is the foundational verse for every reference to good works in the New Testament. Every time we read about good works in the New Testament, those statements are referencing Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do good.” For example, Paul’s exhortation in Titus 3:14, “Let our people learn to do good, to meet pressing needs, that they may not be unfruitful,” is a direct application of Isaiah 1:17.

Therefore, to fully comprehend what the New Testament writers are talking about, we must first have a clear understanding of Isaiah 1:17. To do that, we need to look at the three main parts of the verse.

“Learn to do good.” – That is, doing good doesn’t come naturally. It is learned behavior, not innate behavior. We must learn from God himself what the good is that he wants us to do and then do it. The following is what God means by “doing good.”
“Seek justice. Defend the oppressed.” – These are two general statements in the abstract that describe what doing good is and what it is to accomplish: make sure people are being treated fairly and equally (justice), and focus especially on people who are not being treated fairly and equally (the oppressed).
“Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” – Here we have specific examples that concretely illustrate the previous two general statements. Some examples of the intended beneficiaries of “doing good” who are often oppressed are the fatherless (or orphans, the Hebrew word can be translated both ways) and widows.

To summarize: The nation of Judah is in deep trouble. Their nation is completely debased, their political leaders are corrupt, and their religious practice is vacuous (Isaiah 1:1-16). Consequently, God is about to judge them for breaking their covenant with him by removing them from the land he promised them and brought them to. But He offers Judah a way out (1:17). He promises them that if they “learn to do good,” – i.e., take up the cause of the oppressed, such as the fatherless and the widow – then he will completely transform their putrid culture into one that is “white as snow” and pure as “wool” (1:18).

Wow! That is quite a promise! God says all Judah had to do to escape judgment was make it a general practice of finding widows and fatherless children and then taking responsibility for their wellbeing. If they did that, he would completely transform their culture.

We can summarize Judah’s protocol this way: respond to the corruption in your nation by pleading the cause of your widows and fatherless children. That was it. All they had to do for God to transform their culture was to find fatherless children and widows, then defend them and plead their cause. That was their protocol. It may sound simplistic in the extreme, but that is what the passage is saying.

Has Isaiah 1:18 ever actually happened?

So here’s my question: Has Isaiah 1:18 ever actually happen? Do we have specific historic examples of anyone following the protocol and pleading the cause of someone in distress, like a fatherless child or widow, and then God in turn totally and completely transforming their culture?

The answer is both no and yes. No, it did not happen for Judah after Isaiah recorded this protocol. Judah did not follow its protocol – they did not “settle out of court” – and consequently God evicted the nation from the land.

But we do have examples of individuals obeying this protocol prior to this time and then seeing God transform their culture after they obeyed their protocol. In reality, in Isaiah 1:18 God is simply summarizing what had previously already happened.

Here are three examples of how God had already transformed Jewish culture prior to Isaiah 1:18 because someone had pleaded the cause of someone else in distress, like a widow or fatherless child.

Example #1 of God transforming Jewish culture because of obedience to the protocol – Judah pleading the cause of Benjamin (Genesis 44:14-34)

^“So now, if the boy [Benjamin] is not with us when I [Judah] go back to your servant my father [Jacob], and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life, sees that the boy isn’t there, he will die. Your servants will bring the gray head of our father down to the grave in sorrow. Your servant guaranteed the boy’s safety to my father. I said, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life!’ Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come on my father.” Genesis 44:30-34

This story of Judah offering himself in place of his brother Benjamin,(who is about to be taken captive as a virtual “orphan” in Egypt the way his brother Joseph was), and thereby fulfilling his vow to his father Jacob to protect Benjamin, is the moral climax to the Book of Genesis.

It is also God’s answer to Cain’s question after Cain murdered his brother Abel in chapter four: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God’s answer is, “Yes you are. Judah is your example of how to do that.” Judah offering to sacrifice himself for his brother Benjamin marks a moral turning point for the sons of Jacob and becomes a starting point for the rapid propagation of the nation of Israel in Egypt over the next four hundred years.

Judah obeyed the protocol and God, in turn, transformed Jacob’s sons from jealous, fratricidal liars to men who confessed their sin to their brother Joseph and to their father Jacob. As a result, the family became “white as snow.”

Example #2 of God transforming Jewish culture because of obedience to the protocol – Ruth pleading the cause of Naomi (Ruth 1:1-22)

“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her. But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

The Book of Ruth records events that happened during the time of the Judges – a period of spiraling spiritual, moral, social and political decline for the nation of Israel. The Book of Ruth references this period in its first verse, “In the days when the judges ruled…”. But then, in the last verse of the book of Ruth, we see a hint at the coming reign of King David – “Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David.” The life of David, and especially his ascension to the throne, represents a period where the nation excelled, for the most part, spiritually, morally, socially and politically.

Therefore, the Book of Ruth is answering an important question: How did this happen? How did the nation make this amazing transition from the moral and social chaos of the judges to the reign of David and the Davidic Covenant?

The answer the book of Ruth gives to this question is Ruth’s pledge in chapter 1 to care for her mother-in-law, Naomi, a widow. That one pledge, and how Ruth fulfilled it and obeyed the protocol, began what would become a complete transformation of the entire nation.

Example #3 of God transforming Jewish culture because of obedience to the protocol – Jonathan pleading the cause of David

Saul’s anger flared up at Jonathan and he said to him, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Don’t I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you? As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now send someone to bring him to me, for he must die!” “Why should he be put to death? What has he done?” Jonathan asked his father. But Saul hurled his spear at him to kill him. Then Jonathan knew that his father intended to kill David. Jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger; on that second day of the feast he did not eat, because he was grieved at his father’s shameful treatment of David. 1 Samuel 20:30-34

It was clear to everyone in Israel except Saul that God was blessing David and not Saul. The implication being that David would eventually ascend to the throne of Israel. But that meant Jonathan, Saul’s son, would not be the next king. Nevertheless, Jonathan set aside his own personal ambitions, made a covenant with David to protect him, and then “plead the cause of David” before his father, risking his life in the process. Jonathan’s support of David eventually cost him his life.

Jonathan obeyed the protocol and God, in turn, established the Davidic dynasty that would eventually usher in the messiah, Jesus Christ.

All three of these examples of OT believers obeying their protocol have important elements in common

They all involve making and keeping a covenant: Judah made and kept his covenant with his father, Jacob. Ruth made and kept her covenant with Naomi. Jonathan made and kept his covenant with David.
They all involve someone intervening on behalf of someone in deep distress. Benjamin was about to be taken captive in Egypt. Naomi faced an uncertain future of poverty and starvation in Israel as a widow. David faced assassination by Saul.
They are all examples of the Old Testament concept of hesed love as the motivating factor for their actions. Hesed love, or “covenant-keeping love,” is when someone voluntarily obligates themself with a sworn covenant to protect and bless someone else. (For a more thorough treatment of the concept of hesed, see my post Hesed: The Misunderstood Love.)
They all involve the one who made their covenant to benefit another risking their life and property to keep it. In Jonathan’s case, it resulted in him dying.
All three examples include a foil. Benjamin’s foil is Joseph, who exemplifies how we should not treat someone in distress. Ruth’s foil is Orpah, who exemplifies a kind of love that falls short of Ruth’s love for Naomi. And Jonathan’s foil is Saul, who exemplifies the spirit of Cain when he attempts to kill David.
And finally, as has already been noted, all three played critical roles in the restoration of righteousness in the life and history of the Jews as a race and as a nation, thus illustrating the power of the protocol in Isaiah 1:18. Just one person obeying the protocol is the equivalent of a spiritual atomic bomb being detonated in the world.

So Isaiah 1:18 is both a promise of what God would do in the future if Judah obeyed the protocol, as well as a summary of what God had done in the past because certain individuals had already obeyed the protocol.

But is Judah’s protocol also our protocol? After all, Judah was under a different covenant (the Mosaic Covenant) than believers are today (the New Covenant). The answer is, yes, it is also our protocol. The reason is because Israel’s protocol perfectly fulfills, not only the Mosaic Covenant, but also our New Commandment that accompanies our New Covenant. The New Commandment simply, but radically, tells believers to love each other the same way our savior has loved us (John 13:34-35). And since believing widows, single mothers, and fatherless children are often the neediest in our congregations, our New Commandment has special application to them.

Examples #4, #5, and #6: How God will transform any culture when believers obey their protocol – John taking Jesus’ mother Mary, a widow and single mother, into his care, the early church pleading the cause of its widows, and Paul applying the protocol to Gentile believers

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. John 19:25-27

To be clear, the atoning death of Christ, and people coming to faith in Him, is what transforms cultures. But the reason this is so is because that faith has a practical outcome, or at least should have a practical outcome (Ephesians 2:8-10). Even at the cross, we see an emphasis on this practicality. The last act that Jesus did before he died was to plead the cause of a widow and single mother – His mother, Mary (John 19:25-27). By entrusting His mother to John, Jesus guaranteed her well being and provided an example for how his disciples were to follow the protocol.

And follow they did. From its very beginning, the church took up the cause of the widowed (and others) in their midst. We see this obedience to their protocol among Jewish believers in Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-35, 6:1-4, and among Gentile believers in Acts 20:32-35 Galatians 2:10; 1 Timothy 5; Titus 3:14; et al. The result? God, through the church, completely transformed its culture. More on this in a minute.

Example #7 – Jacqueline and Raleigh Roush followed their protocol and took up the cause of their dying neighbor

My fourth example is a modern one, and it is still ongoing. In my first church in Hitchcock, Texas, a dear couple by the name of Jacqueline and Raleigh Roush took on the care of an elderly neighbor on their block. His children, who lived nearby, were ignoring him in his time of greatest need. So every day, Jacqueline cooked their neighbor a meal and she and Raleigh took it to him and checked in on him. They did this consistently until the day he died.

Jacqueline and Raleigh’s example made a profound impact on me as a young pastor. Their love and care for their neighbor was one reason why I began this ministry to the widowed and single parents, a ministry that now reaches around the world.

So there you have it. Scripture gives us a clear protocol, and we have specific, concrete examples of how it works. If we want to see God transform our culture from the cesspool that it is, follow the protocol: find a widow, a fatherless child, an orphan, or anyone else who has a pressing need, and plead their cause the way Judah pleaded the cause of Benjamin, Ruth the cause of Naomi, Jonathan the cause of David, Jesus the cause of Mary, the early church the cause of its Jewish and Gentile widows, and Jacqueline and Raleigh Roush the cause of their neighbor.

Now I want to go back to the topic of how the early church obeyed its protocol and look at it more thoroughly. By doing so we will learn some important lessons about the process by which God will use our obedience to our protocol to transform our culture.

Our protocol: why the early church obsessed about its widows

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

When reading about the history of the early church in the book of Acts, or when perusing the letters the Apostles wrote to their churches scattered around the Northeastern Mediterranean, it doesn’t take long to notice the importance the church placed on meeting the needs of widows and others in their midst.

As early as Acts 2, where we have a glowing account of the first days of the early church, we see a strong hint at the presence of a significant widows ministry when we read, “They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need” (2:45).

Later, in Acts 4, that hint is repeated. “There were no needy persons among them,” we are told (4:34). This lack of need had to include widows, for in those days they were most often the neediest persons of all.

But what is hinted at in Acts 2 and 4 becomes explicit in Acts 6, when the Hellenistic Jews complained that “their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.” The result? The institution of the office of Deacon.

This emphasis on meeting the needs of widows continues throughout the New Testament (i.e., Acts 20:32-35; Galatians 2:10; James 1:27; 1 Timothy 5; Titus 3:14; 1 John 3:16-18).

But the question is why? Why did the early church have such a huge emphasis on meeting the needs of its widows and other destitute people? There are at least two reasons:

First, as we have seen above, the early church saw their ministry to their widows and others with pressing needs as proof of their obedience to God’s protocol as reflected in Isaiah 1:17 and in the other massive number of commands to serve and protect widows in the Old Testament.

Second, they saw their ministry to their widows as critical to having a positive testimony in their communities, which in turn provided a foundation for effective evangelism. In other words, their widow’s ministry was their WOW! Factor. We see this process unfold in the summary statements that follow the accounts of the widows ministry in Acts 2, 5, and 6: “…enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47); “…they were highly regarded by the people. …More and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number” (5:13, 14); “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith” (6:7). Paul summarized the relationship between meeting the needs of widows and evangelism in Titus 3:14: “Let our people learn to engage in good deeds, to meet pressing needs; that they may not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:14).

We can summarize the progress the early church made in obeying its protocol and the results that it experienced this way: The early church obeyed God’s clear and explicit commands in the Old Testament to meet the needs of its widows. This obedience resulted in the church having favor among the larger external community. This favor in turn resulted in people coming to the Lord. As more and more people came to the Lord, they reduced poverty in their midst even more, thereby proving the efficacy of the love of Christ, resulting in the transformation of their entire culture.

Pretty simple stuff: Obediently serving widows (the protocol) = Favor in the general population (The WOW! Factor) = Lots of people getting saved (Evangelism) = Transformation of the culture (Saltiness).

So for the church, our protocol is also, like God’s protocol for Judah, a summary of what God has done in and through the church in the past as well as a promise of what God will do in and through the church now.

The problem is, obedience to our protocol and its resulting progression is generally absent in America’s churches today. The reason why is because we have substituted something else for our protocol: the good family man agenda.

Why the current emphasis in men’s ministry on marriage and family is not sufficient obedience to our divinely ordained protocol

When one reads current men’s ministry books and other publications, it doesn’t take long to notice that there is very little emphasis on good works and no emphasis at all on ministry to widows and other believers with long term pressing needs. This in spite of the fact that these two topics occupy much space in the New Testament. Modern men’s ministry is ignoring its protocol, the protocol given to both Judah and the church.

In its place, the modern men’s ministry movement has an entirely different agenda, one that stresses the importance of building strong Christian marriages and families. By keeping our “focus on the family,” the thinking goes, men’s ministry will strengthen churches and rejuvenate our culture. This family centric agenda has formed the core of men’s ministry for the last fifty years.

Now I want to make it clear that I support marriage and family and ministries in the church that are devoted to them. As a pastor, I placed a strong emphasis on marriage and family. The books I had on marriage and family occupied four feet of shelf space in my library. And I spent many hours over a period of twenty years counseling couples whose marriages were in trouble. I am also married to the woman of my dreams and we have a wonderful family. All of our children have made professions of faith and when they and their families get together with us for birthdays and holidays – all four generations of us – we have a blast.

I am just saying that upholding marriage and family as the ultimate expressions of our faith is putting them on too high of a pedestal. Having marriage and family as our main agenda does not fulfill Christ’s command for us to love one another. As a result, this agenda has not changed our culture. Instead, things have gotten worse. Much worse.

One reason why the current men’s ministry focus on the family agenda has failed is because being a good family man is not unique to Christian men. I have known, and I am sure everyone else reading this has also known, many non-Christian men who are wonderful husbands and wonderful fathers. Their numbers may be decreasing, but there are still many of these men out there. Millions of them in fact. These men love their wives. They love their children. They work hard, obey the law, and pay their taxes. But they are not Christians.

Because being a good family man is not unique to Christianity, the men’s ministry movement has no WOW! Factor. There may be a Hmm-That’s-Nice Factor, but no WOW! Factor. (For additional thoughts on the good family man agenda in men’s ministry, see my post: “Jesus’ View of Marriage and Family“)

But the ultimate reason having a focus on the family agenda has not changed our culture is because it represents only partial obedience to the New Commandment: “A new commandment I give you, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). Clearly, this command has something more in mind that just loving our wives and children. The term “one another” repeats three times in this command. Therefore it is referring to men loving more people than simply their wives and children. Rather, they are to love each other, that is, fellow believers.

Prior to John 13:34-35, the term “one another” (allelos) occurs only once in the New Testament. But after John 13:34-35, it occurs dozens of times. In fact, many pastors often do a sermon series on the biblical “one anothers.” Here they are:

POSITIVE COMMANDS

Love one another (John 13:34 – This command occurs at least 16 times)
Be devoted to one another (Romans 12:10)
Honor one another above yourselves (Romans 12:10)
Live in harmony with one another (Romans 12:16)
Build up one another (Romans 14:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:11)
Be likeminded towards one another (Romans 15:5)
Accept one another (Romans 15:7)
Admonish one another (Romans 15:14; Colossians 3:16)
Greet one another (Romans 16:16)
Care for one another (1 Corinthians 12:25)
Serve one another (Galatians 5:13)
Bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2)
Forgive one another (Ephesians 4:2, 32; Colossians 3:13)
Be patient with one another (Ephesians 4:2; Colossians 3:13)
Speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15, 25)
Be kind and compassionate to one another (Ephesians 4:32)
Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19)
Submit to one another (Ephesians 5:21, 1 Peter 5:5)
Consider others better than yourselves (Philippians 2:3)
Look to the interests of one another (Philippians 2:4)
Bear with one another (Colossians 3:13)
Teach one another (Colossians 3:16)
Comfort one another (1 Thessalonians 4:18)
Encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
Exhort one another (Hebrews 3:13)
Stir up [provoke, stimulate] one another to love and good works (Hebrews 10:24)
Show hospitality to one another (1 Peter 4:9)
Employ the gifts that God has given us for the benefit of one another (1 Peter 4:10)
Clothe yourselves with humility towards one another (1 Peter 5:5)
Pray for one another (James 5:16)
Confess your faults to one another (James 5:16)

NEGATIVE COMMANDS (how not to treat one another)

Do not lie to one another (Colossians 3:9)
Stop passing judgment on one another (Romans 14:13)
If you keep on biting and devouring each other…you’ll be destroyed by each other (Galatians 5:15)
Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other (Galatians 5:26)
Do not slander one another (James 4:11)
Don’t grumble against each other (James 5:9)²

You will notice that there is nothing in this very long list about marriage and family. This is because the focus of the New Testament is on us loving one another, not on marriage and family. Of course, all of these commands include our wives and children. But the New Commandment is extra-familial in the sense that it is about much more than our wives and children. This is because the church, and our relationships in it, are eternal, but our marriages and families are temporal.

We can see this transition from an emphasis on marriage and family to an emphasis on relationships in the church as a family in Jesus’ ministry:

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you. He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. (Matthew 12:46-50)

Then this transition progresses to actual implementation on the cross:

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. (John 19:25-27)

And finally it reaches its ultimate expression in the widow’s list in 1 Timothy 5:1-16:

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need...

Our protocol to plead the cause of the widow is the logical conclusion of the transition from an emphasis on earthly families to an emphasis on the church as our eternal family. Pleading the cause of widows in the church is the highest expression of the church as our eternal family. When we instead have a focus on the family agenda it is no wonder that we ignore our widows and others with long term needs in the process.

These widows and others in the church whom we are to love as Christ loves us are people we are not related to by birth, but by faith. And that non-familial love is what marks us out as followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus says that this kind of love we are to have for each other is so unique that unbelievers automatically recognize us as his followers.

It is true that being a good family man is not unique to Christian men. But caring for a widow one is not related to except by faith is unique to Christian men. I do not know of any non-Christian man who has taken care of a widow he is not related to, unless he does so as a professional and gets paid to do it. But caring for a believing widow, or anyone else with a long term pressing need, and expecting nothing in return, now that is unique to Christians. That is our WOW! Factor.

What happens when we don’t follow our protocol and ignore our widows

I have a mind experiment for you. Imagine you are a member of the First Church of Jerusalem. It has been a few years now since the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus and some of the excitement has died down. It’s Sunday morning and you are in the weekly worship service. As you listen to the message on pure religion that Pastor James is preaching, you notice that the Apostle John and his family are not sitting with Jesus’ mother, Mary. Mary is sitting alone on the other side of the church.

After the service, you corner John and ask him why Mary isn’t sitting with him and his family.

“Oh, she comes on her own now,” John says nonchalantly. “I’ve decided to focus more time with just my family.”

“But didn’t Jesus want you to care for Mary as if she were your own mother, your own family?” you ask with a bit of irritation in your voice.

“Well…yes.” John replies, shifting his weight to another leg. “I did let her know that if she needs anything, to just ask. By the way, have you met our new minister of Christian Education?”

Full stop.

Is that what Jesus meant when he said to John, “Behold your mother”? Making yourself available to help once in a while, but otherwise ignoring her until you see her in church? Had John treated Mary that way, he would have compromised the entire mission of the church. History would be completely different.

Now let’s make it more personal. Isn’t it true that we Christian men are ignoring the widows in our church and instead focusing solely on our families? The Bible says, “Treat older women as mothers…. Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need.” In reality, Jesus is telling all of us regarding the widows sitting near us at our churches, “Behold, your mother.”

When we ignore this, our protocol, we compromise our mission as a church and lose our distinctiveness. Then we wonder why the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Shame, alienation, marginalization and fruitlessness, that is what happens when local church men’s ministries ignore our protocol. If obedience to our protocol results in this progression: serving widows = favor in the general population = people getting saved, then disobedience to our protocol results in this progression: ignoring/dishonoring widows = disfavor in the general population = fruitlessness.

So there it is in black and white, our protocol: plead the cause of the widow.

First responders to mass shootings have a protocol too: do not wait for permission or backup, go in immediately and take down the shooter.

When they follow their protocol, they save lives. When they don’t follow their protocol, they lose lives.

In the same way, when we men follow our protocol, we save lives and we transform our culture. When we don’t follow our protocol, we lose lives and our culture tanks.

Local church men’s ministries don’t need better husbands and better fathers, as important as they are, sitting around tables eating pancakes on Saturday morning behind the four walls of a church building. What local church men’s ministries need is one million Judahs, one million Ruths, one million Jonathans who are willing to risk their lives to save one Benjamin, one Naomi, one David,…one widow,…one nation.

So which is it going to be?

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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