Roy Smith runs a network of counseling centers throughout the State of Pennyslvania and is the founder of Knights of the 21st Century, a men’s ministry that helps men understand their complex selves.
Herb: Roy, share with us about Knights of the 21st Century and what your ministry is all about.
Roy: I have been interested in counseling men for about thirty-five years now. And when my church ran out of men’s material they asked me to write something. And it was an answer to prayer because for years as I counseled men, I thought, “If they could just understand God’s design and not treat themselves so simplistically, they could have avoided a lot of the problems that they were coming to see me for.”
And so Knights of the 21st Century spends its twenty-four weeks a year teaching men God’s design of them. When the Psalmist says, “We are fearfully and wonderfully made,” the Psalmist meant it. And our culture is constantly bombarding us on a daily basis with messages that teach that men are simple, men are aggressive, men are sexual. What Knights does is teach men that they are so much more than that.
Herb: What would you say are the key elements in helping men become the men God wants them to be?
Roy: The key issue is men in our culture are isolated and we’ve bought into this. I believe that every man needs a group of men to do life with, that the predators of life knock us off because of our male – not man – tendency to be alone. So one of the issues of Knights is to get men talking about what really matters. So one of the most important parts of the Knights program isn’t the material that’s written, although we try to make that interesting and challenging, it is the men talking about the material and relating it to their everyday lives. This occurs at the end of each session.
Herb: Sometimes men have a hard time opening up. What do you feel are the keys to helping them do that?
Roy: In the seminar that I travel the country talking about, I say that men need other men to open up. When women are around, they tend to act slightly more defensively, partially because a woman will always ask a man one more question than he was planning on answering. So as a result, he kind of acts in a defensive fashion.
And with all men, we all know that when a guy looks at us a certain way we realize it’s time to stop. We’re willing to risk a little more with other men because we know the other guy will stop when he says time is up. It’s hard for men to get started talking because of some of our defensiveness and our style of isolation. But truth is, once we get to a certain point, men are very loyal to the Knights process. They come very regularly and they look forward to sharing.
It?s not like we don’t like being a part of a men’s group. We don’t like the process of getting there. It’s similar to how I’d like a certain kind of physical body. But I don’t like the process getting there. Once we as men get through the initial process of getting our band of brothers, so to speak, and our Knights chapter going, they’ll keep coming as a result of the benefits they receive from it. And the women are saying that their men are changing. And part of that is because the men, instead of being isolated from other men, now have men to talk to about fathering, about what it’s like to be a husband, about pressures at work, those kinds of things.
Herb: What do you think are some of the key reasons men are so isolated? Do you think it’s our own culture, or do you think this transcends culture?
Roy: That’s a very good question. I think that there’s a certain competitive aspect to men that can make them feel challenged. We’re territorial and that causes us to push people away.
But I think right from the start the culture has prejudiced against women in certain ways by emphasizing how they can be objects. The culture is also prejudicial against men in certain ways because men are not allowed to be affectionate with other men and be close to one another. Men are, from early on in their education, caused to be divided off from themselves.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to sit around all day long with a hard seat looking at a board. I want to learn through movement. So right from the start there has been a great divide between men and learning because men want to learn while moving while a lot of learning today involves no movement.
So there are various ways men have become divorced from themselves. A lack of fathers to tell them what to do and teach them what manhood is about. The lack of an educational system where they have male role models teaching them in a manly kind of way life’s lessons, the way the culture has simplified men in commercials. There are commercials that will define men in ways that, if they used that exact same commercial with a female in it, there would be immediate outrage and they would never try to sell their product that way.
Herb: What kind of role models did you have that helped you become a Christian and develop in your Christian walk?
Roy: I accepted Christ on May 7, 1967. My father led me to Christ when I was fifteen years old in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. But I kind of see it as Ironic that I’m writing books on manhood but I had to go on my own search. There really weren’t that many positive male role models in my life. I had a youth director that was a presence in my life from a spiritual and an emotional perspective. My dad was out saving the world as a minister and spent very little time at home actually with us. Although hearing him preach he did teach the Bible, which I am grateful for and I learned a lot. But I essentially grew up mostly alone as a child.
Herb: So, how did you overcome that?
Roy: I recognized early on that I needed to have healthy relationships and it wasn’t going to be found in my family. My parents eventually got divorced when I was twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. So it’s kind of like I had to work at it, because it wasn’t going to be given to me. And so I both studied it, what manhood and healthy relationships were like by being involved in the church in various ways, as well as being a psychologist and an ordained minister.
And then I think God kind of taught me. A lot of Knights was written in the middle of the night in prayer and I would ask God, why it is when a man’s asked a tough question he says “I don’t know.” And the next thing you know I’m out of bed writing a lesson because I had come to the conclusion that a male, when he is asked a tough question, says, “I don’t know.” When a man says, “I don’t know,” he begins to search to find the truth and discover it so he can no longer fall back on the “I don’t know.”
Herb: So, the difference between a man and a male is that a man takes responsibility?
Roy: A man takes responsibility for his actions. A man takes the time to understand all the different aspects that are going on within him. Most males make a decision based on the first thing that comes to their mind. When a person is done taking Knights, they will know about eighteen to twenty-five different aspects of who they are that are giving them input. So that, when they ask God what God wants them to do, they’ll be able to sort out from all the noise within them and make a choice that they know will honor God and will be one that they can be spiritually responsible for.
Herb: You’ve been all over the country involved in men’s ministry, what is your impression of the current state of men’s ministry in the United States.
Roy: There are amazing pockets of men being together who are following Christ, good dads, good husbands, working together as a team. But there is simply not enough of them. Our culture, from my perspective, is in trouble. And in many ways the church has bought into the isolation that men have tried to sell it.
And if you look at church budgets, the budgets are often for children’s services, which are great, women’s groups, which are great, worship teams, which are great, and then if you look at the investment surrounding the question of what are you doing for your men on a regular basis….? And men’s material, for it to be a vital part of the church, it has to look and be different from the other kinds of offerings the church presently has.
Herb: What would you say to a pastor who is interested in starting a men’s ministry?
Roy: This is the most important thing you can do for your church. We know the statistics, that if a man comes to church his family is way more likely to follow than if a woman starts or if a child starts. And as you want to build a strong foundation, you need rebar in that concrete. And the men are the rebar.
If you can make them be men of God and build your church upon what they have to offer in their leadership, what you’re building will last beyond you. Studying leadership as I have for the last several years, I will never know what kind of leader I am, frankly, because I’ll be called home. But I’ll be measured by what I leave when I’m gone. And if what I leave goes on beyond me and it gets even stronger or better, I’ve built it well. If a man builds a church on the rebar of a strong group of godly men serving God in very earthy, down to earth pragmatic ways, that church will go on way beyond that pastor.
Herb: Okay, Roy. Thank you so much for your time. God’s blessing on you and your ministry and praise the Lord for your commitment to men and the Word.
Learn more about Knights of the 21st Century.