?Marty Granger and I have been friends for many years. Marty was a source of great encouragement and guidance for me at the beginning of New Commandment Men?s Ministries. I know you?ll enjoy this interview as he shares his heart for men.
Herb: Tell us about your ministry, Marty.
Marty: Our ministry is called Ministry Alliance and what that ministry does is it looks for men and women who have a call of God on their life to do a specific ministry. I call it a niche ministry. But they don?t want to start a 501 (c)3. Currently we have thirty-five ministry programs across America that operate under our umbrella. As part of that, my passion is ministry to men. So I am the director of a program I started under our own umbrella called The Carolina Region of Men?s Ministries.
Herb: So you?re kind of a ministry incubator then.
Marty: Yes. In the business world, it?s called a fiscal sponsorship. If it?s a family, it?s called an adoption agency. If it?s a group of farmers, it?s called a co-op. We are a legal umbrella so that men and women who want to do ministry and don?t want to do administration and would get lost in doing that or be defeated in doing that because they don?t have the time or the interest or the expertise. They come to us and we give them a home. And we operate in that way so that the yoke and the burden are easy and light.
Herb: How did you get interested in men?s ministry and what was your calling?
Marty: It was almost through the back door. I was in Washington, D.C. for twenty-eight years, twenty years in youth ministry. And when I left the ministry of Youth for Christ, I was off teaching and speaking and doing retreats and was going to be more or less a resource ministry to families.?
But an interesting thing happened. Because I was in Washington, my phone started ringing and there were representatives from different large Christian organizations that wanted to know if I could help them because they were coming to Washington. So The Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the teen abstinence program called True Love Waits, The Louis Palau Organization. I did things with them and for them in Washington.
Then in 1994, Promise Keepers called me and said, ?We?ve just had lunch with Louis Palau and we?d like to come to Washington next year for a stadium conference but we don?t have anyone on the ground in Washington and we were told you might help.? Long story short, I became the event manager at RFK Stadium for 52,000 men who gathered on Memorial Day weekend. And my job was to put together a diverse team of men who represented the body of Christ. So I had men from every walk of life and every geography and every denomination. They all loved Jesus, but it was like a joint mission that we pulled off.
And what happened is I started meeting men from all over the country who knew they were going to be associated with Promise Keepers for a short period of time and they had something else they wanted to do. Thus was born this incubation program. And about four years after the Promise Keeper event in 1999, I called together men in the region of Washington, DC who loved ministering to men and we created a coalition. That was eighteen years ago and even though I left six years ago to move to Charlotte, that coalition is still operating.
If men are together long enough in a group and it turns into a band of brothers, eventually they will ask, ?What do you think God wants us to do with this relationship?? So our band of brothers there in Washington, since we started that in 1999, have been in front of about 35,000 men. These are men from all walks of life with one man in vocational ministry at the core of it the whole time. Everyone else just comes to the table. So that set a pattern that turned out to become WACMM, Washington Area Coalition of Men?s Ministries. And now there are these kinds of regional coalitions all over the United States.
So when God brought me here to Charlotte a few years ago, I already knew a few men here and we got together in May of 2012 and we informally launched this Carolina Coalition of Men?s Ministry. We?re now calling it Carolina Men. It?s a lot easier to say. And so, we?re looking for leaders here to train, equip, but primarily to encourage. Because ministry to men is a challenging proposition. Our slogan is, ?Doing together what we can?t do alone?. And it works.
Herb: You also have a men?s ministry hall of fame online.
Marty: It?s called The Christian Men?s Wall of Honor. I?ll confess, it?s a little bit dormant because of my move here. But the idea is to honor men who honor God, not to exalt them, but simply to honor them. You know Scripture says in Romans 12:10, ?Honor one another above yourselves.? So the idea is for anybody, a man, a woman, a child, whoever, is to pay honor to someone who impacted their spiritual life. It?s a wonderful idea because it points anyone who?s connected with it or anyone who?s written a tribute, it points them to Christ. And that?s the idea.
Herb: How do you think men?s ministry has changed over the last couple of decades?
Marty: The one thing that has been increasingly growing is the amount of available resources there are for individual men and for local churches discipling men. Several large resource organizations now have specific curriculum and specific programs. That wasn?t around twenty years ago. And so we were sort of fumbling around in the dark. So now it?s not an issue of resources. And maybe it never was.
It?s still an issue of relationships. One of the observations I?ve made is that the number of men who are involved in a weekly basis in a local church is either stagnant or its declining. And yet the number of Christian, biblically based, men who are involved in a small group during the week in public is growing. Here in Charlotte, if I picked any morning of the week and I went around to any of the fast food restaurants, there?s always a group of men with their Bibles open and they?re in the Word and they?re in each other?s lives. So I think there?s more of that.
Herb: I?ve seen that in Denver. I?m a McDonalds guy. So I go into different McDonalds restaurants and there?s almost always a Bible study going on.
Marty: Men are taking to heart this idea of small groups and ministering to one another and we both know that there are things that men will not say in small groups that have couples in it. There are places they will not go. But they feel a tremendous freedom over time when men come to trust each other and they want someone to confide in.
A friend of mine once asked me if I was in an accountability group since I moved to Charlotte. I played with him a little and told him I wasn?t because I don?t believe in them. He said, ?What, the men?s ministry guru and you don?t believe in accountability groups?? I said, ?No. I believe in friendship.? In John 15, Jesus said, ?I no longer call you servants. I call you friends.? And I think we need to recapture the whole strength and power and the productivity of male friendships, what comes out of true male friendships.
Herb: Do you think churches are beginning to take men?s ministry seriously?
Marty: I know some that are. A lot of smaller churches want to take it seriously, but they don?t know where to start, they don?t know what it looks like, they don?t know what they?re supposed to do. So sometimes it?s just a program.
Herb: What would you say to a young man who has been called by the Lord to be in men?s ministry full time? What kind of advice would you give him?
Marty: The first piece of advice I would give him is to be sure of that call, that that call comes not because he?s walking away from something else and considering this, but he?s walking to this, that it?s a definite call.
What follows right on with that is to have the support and the encouragement and the confirmation of mature believers who see in him the giftedness and the desire and they?re willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. The advice that I would not give is go out there and do this all by yourself. It?s not a go it alone kind of thing. Men should never go anywhere alone, especially in the arena of ministry to men.
We know a couple of young men that have started in men?s ministry and it is a great risk. It?s easier sometimes to take that risk when you?re young. Maybe you feel like you have less to lose. Scripture is full of examples of God using young men to accomplish his purpose when they didn?t know any better. God called them and in obedience they went. But go in a team.
Herb: Like Timothy and Paul and Barnabas and Paul?
Marty: Exactly. I remember when I was a young man and wasn?t sure what God was doing with my life. But a group of three men sat me down one morning at a breakfast and their words still ring in my ears. They said, ?Marty, the handwriting?s on the wall.? I didn?t know that they meant. And they said, ?You?d better learn to read because we see in you a giftedness and passion. God is working in your life and God has uniquely equipped you. When you?re ready, He is going to use you in a specific way. And that has led me into forty-two years of vocational Christian ministry. But it?s a walk with God.
Herb: It?s a matter of observing God?s hand in your life and then seeing it confirmed by others around you.
Marty: Exactly. I think the strength of having the others by you is very important.
Herb: Marty, thank you so much. I appreciate our friendship. It?s been such an encouragement to know you from the very beginning of New Commandment Men?s Ministries.
Marty: And it?s great to see how God has blessed what you?re doing and your faithfulness. I think faithfulness is sometimes an overlooked quality. We always talk about success. But isn?t it amazing how success is often bred by years and years of faithful service.
Learn more about Marty Granger?s ministry at?ministry-alliance.org