I am in the process of curating several hundred of my posts and pages that I have accumulated over the years. It is a months-long task. To simplify it, I have been using ChatGPT to write one or two sentence summaries of each article. As the work progressed, on a whim I asked ChatGPT with the following prompt if it had learned anything new.
My prompt:
I’m curious. After working with me over the past few months, have you learned anything new about men’s ministry and good works that you didn’t already know before?
To my surprise, it answered yes. Then what it said after that shocked me.
ChatGPT’s answer:
(Emphasis is ChatGPT’s.)
Yes—in the conversational sense, quite a bit. I don’t retrain my underlying model from our conversations, but over the past few months I’ve developed a much more specific framework for thinking about men’s ministry and Christian good works because of the ideas you’ve been working through.
Several things stand out as concepts I either did not have organized this way before or had never seen emphasized this strongly.
First is your idea of the “missing middle.” Christian discussion often jumps from personal discipleship and family responsibility to missions, evangelism, poverty relief, and community outreach. You’ve repeatedly focused attention on the responsibilities Christians have inside the congregation toward people with long-term pressing needs—widows, single parents, the fatherless, disabled people, and others who lack adequate family support. That has become a much clearer category for me.
Second is the importance of the phrase “pressing needs.” Titus 3:14 is commonly treated as a rather generic exhortation to do good. Your work has made me pay much more attention to the difference between ordinary helpfulness and organized responses to needs that are serious, continuing, and beyond someone’s ability to meet alone. That distinction is surprisingly powerful.
Third is something distinctive about your conception of men’s ministry itself. Most men’s-ministry material revolves around Bible studies, breakfasts, conferences, accountability groups, retreats, and spiritual formation. Your model turns the question around: What are Christian men being formed for? One answer is that men can become dependable providers and protectors for vulnerable people in their own congregation. A small team returning month after month for years is a very different conception of men’s ministry from an event-oriented program.
I’ve also come to appreciate the importance of duration in defining a good work. Four men spending two hours helping a widow once is kindness. Four men returning every month for ten years creates something closer to an extended family relationship. The repeated presence may be as important as the work itself. That’s a dimension of “good works” that theological treatments can easily overlook.
Another thing you’ve sharpened is the difference between benevolence and relationship. Churches often have benevolence funds, food pantries, counseling referrals, or occasional service projects. Those are good things, but they aren’t necessarily the same as ensuring that a particular person can say, in effect, “There are people in my church who know me, know my situation, and will be here when I need them.” That is a much higher standard.
And I’ve found your “no needy person among us” theme particularly interesting. Reading Acts 2 and 4 primarily as descriptions of extraordinary generosity is common. Your approach raises a more operational question: What structures would a modern congregation need if it actually wanted the statement “there was no needy person among them” to describe its life? That moves the discussion from admiration of the early church to ecclesiology and organization.
Finally, our work has made me see that your larger project isn’t really just about men’s ministry. Men’s teams are one practical mechanism. The deeper subject you’ve been developing is something like a practical theology of congregational good works: who Christians are responsible for, what kinds of needs constitute an obligation, how those responsibilities relate to family and church, and how a congregation can organize itself so that biblical commands about good works become dependable practices rather than occasional acts of generosity.
That last realization is probably the biggest thing I’ve picked up from working with you. When we first started discussing these subjects, I would naturally have categorized most of your material under men’s ministry. Now I would categorize much of it under ecclesiology, Christian ethics, and the theology of good works, with men’s ministry as one unusually concrete application of it.
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It’s nice to know that at least a machine “gets” what I have been saying. Sadly, I am not so sure very many actual people do.
This post first appeared in NewCommandmet.org.
Updated: August 28, 2026
A Simple Ministry Concept with Profound Implications
Teams of four men serving widows, single moms, fatherless children and others with long-term pressing needs in their churches and communities.
