Kenny Luck is President of Every Man Ministries, one of America’s leading men’s ministries. At the time of this interview, Kenny was also Men’s Pastor at Saddleback Church. Currently, Kenny is Leadership Pastor at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills, California.
Herb: Kenny, thanks so much for meeting with me. My first question is, you’ve been working with pastor Rick Warren at Saddleback Church for how many years now?
Kenny: Thirty!
Herb: Thirty years?
Kenny: I was there at the beginning.
Herb: Really? I had no idea.
Kenny: I moved from Texas right when the church was starting and I looked in the Yellow Pages and told my wife that we needed to go to a small church. So I said, “Here’s a picture and there’s this skinny guy with a mustache and glasses and it meets in a high school, so it’s got to be really small.”
I walked in and even at that time, so early on, all the bleachers were pulled out. It wasn’t like it was a home bible study. It was a fledgling congregation of a couple thousand!
Herb: Amazing. How long have you been on staff?
Kenny: I came in as a layman who was running a company through the 90’s. But because Pastor Warren’s messaging was so strong on worship and fellowship and discipleship and ministry and missions, I’m like a guene pig. I was “Saddleback Sam.” Rick built the church on a guy like Saddleback Sam and he was your typical South Orange County guy who had 2.5 children, was married, and was in a certain income bracket.
But this hypothetical Saddleback Sam had not answered the existential question, which is, “What on earth am I here for?” Materialism is not a purpose. Self preservation is not a purpose. So Rick Warren built the church around reaching this guy, Saddleback Sam, and I was one of them.
And he reached me. I found myself, maybe eleven or twelve years into the church, firing myself as the CEO of the company I was running and starting Every Man Ministries exactly because Pastor Rick had helped me get in touch with God’s purposes for my life.
Herb: Did you start Every Man Ministries before you went on staff at Saddleback?
Kenny: Yes. I actually did that first. Rick was preaching and said, “You know what you need to do. You just need to get off your blessed assurance and do it.” That was Sunday. Monday I went into my boss and fired myself. In hindsight…I think I would have done it probably as more of a process. But I did do it. But I knew in my head as a volunteer at church and as a lay pastor at Saddleback that this is where God was leading me. So I started Every Man a couple of years ahead of when I fired myself. I funded it myself and that was part of my inception.
Herb: What was your business?
Kenny: It was a behavioral health company. I had started at the very bottom. I was a marketing assistant and then went into operations, then business development. I worked on the clinical side. I ran the call center. I worked in the hospital with drug addicts and clinically depressed folks. I just kind of worked my way to the top. I had worked in every part of the company and so, after nine years, I was running the company.
Herb: What are some of the lessons you’ve learned from Rick Warren?
Kenny: Three: Integrity, and that means that you’re undivided between what you really believe and how you live. A lot of people don’t see that because they don’t see him [Rick Warren] on a day in, day out basis. But he’s undivided between what he believes and how he lives. That’s lesson number one and I think that’s the most powerful modeling a man can make.
Number two, humility. Here’s a guy who, next to the Bible, has the biggest selling non-fiction book in history. He is so humble. He came from a very tiny town in northern California where my parents own some land. I know where he’s from. The land wasn’t worth a thing. He’s from Ukiah. You don’t see that on many maps. He comes from a small town and you just say to yourself, “God was so wise taking a guy from there.” He comes from very humble beginnings and he never forgets.
And the third lesson I’ve learned is generosity. Rick will say – and this is one of his go to statements – “You can’t out give God.” Whether that’s your time or your money or your talents, whatever you give to God, you’ll never be able to out-give Him. He’ll always overcompensate you in the end with whatever you put in His hands. So those would be the top three lessons: integrity, humility and generosity.
Herb: Now about Every Man Ministries, imagine we’re in an elevator and we’re on the thirtieth floor and we’ve got fifteen seconds to get to the first floor. Tell me about your ministry.
Kenny: Well, the purpose of Every Man is to revolutionize men’s ministry, free men spiritually and empower family health worldwide. Those three words: revolutionize, free, empower.
Herb: How do you free men spiritually?
Kenny: That’s the easy one. That’s the blue dot softball. You just lobbed it right down the middle of the plate. That’s the gospel of Jesus. But before we can reach men, we have to get them present in order to get to them. And that’s why the revolutionary aspect of our ministry is we’ve got to change the way we’re reaching men. Because they’re the number one flight demographic out of the church, young and old, bar none. That’s what the statistical researchers tell us. And we have to learn why that is and how we’re doing it and we have to learn the way Jesus did it.
So it’s not really revolutionizing men’s ministry. It’s really getting back to asking how do we reach guys who desperately want to win, who have issues we can speak into, pain that may need addressing and get next to them and help them win and in the process win them to Christ and free them spiritually. And then once they’re freed spiritually, they can now embrace God’s purposes and empower health wherever they go.
Herb: You talk in your new book, Sleeping Giant, about having no secrets. Where in your ministry do men begin to reveal themselves.
Kenny: Well, that’s key: transparency and authenticity. There’s no credibility without transparency. If you really want to reach another person, you have to be transparent. To be transparent you’ve got to be vulnerable. But that takes a lot of courage. And so, in the Sleeping Giant process, we like to get guys in. That’s in a large gathering or in a class, wherever they can land to get connected to an issue that’s relevant to them in the context of other men and biblical truth.
What we model for them there is transparency right out of the box. And when you model transparency, it frees men to see that, okay, he was transparent, the leader was transparent, the guy at my table was transparent, the guy in the Sleeping Giant curriculum was transparent, and I don’t think they’re weird. In fact, I’m just like him. And that’s what C. S. Lewis said. Fellowship begins when one man says to another, “What? You too?” And so we really believe that in the Sleeping Giant process.
The next step after getting in and modeling transparency is getting healthy. So if a guy comes to our church and we meet him on the patio and he comes to our get in meeting, which is a large group meeting, and he hears about this pathway of men’s health and men’s leadership development he says to himself, “They are really invested in men and have a strong plan for us.” Each step on the journey from the crowd to the core of leadership affirms and confirms this initial thought which breeds deep loyalty, high levels of trust, and a natural inclination to recommend the process.
Herb: Why do you think it’s so difficult for pastors to be transparent with their men?
Kenny: Really good question. Part of the reason why is they’re put up on a pedestal. I call it the pedestal effect. And so they’re not free to have problems and to be a regular guy and struggle. And what they fear is they think the men of their church will think less of them or that his faith is weak.
And so the longer a pastor doesn’t have transparency with either a small group of other pastors or other men, he’s not free to be transparent. What happens is his worst fear is realized. The wall gets built so high that it becomes almost impossible to get back over. And then in comes, like it comes into all our lives, a problem. And then he can’t talk about it. And then he has a secret. And secrets sicken his character. And when his character gets sick, it leads to sick conduct and sin.
Then the next day we’re reading about it in the paper, or he’s just gone. And it was all because the culture of the church, the men of his church, didn’t allow their pastor to have problems and still be their pastor. So I think that’s really a device of the enemy, to keep pastors not transparent so he can take out the leader. “The sniper” is what I’d call him, and that’s one of the tools he uses to explode the chest of our shepherds, secrecy.
Herb: If I were a pastor and I were interested in starting an Every Man ministry in my church, what would be the process that you’d take me through?
Kenny: Well, I think it’s really a practical mindset on men’s ministry. You have to know how to see your men and recognize their strengths and talents and how they can help you. But then your men need to recognize you as their leader and as the keeper of the vision and form ranks around that vision. That’s why I wrote Sleeping Giant, to give pastors a resource that they can download on Kindle and read so they can just see what’s worked and hear from other pastors. I’m a pastor. So I’m speaking pastor to pastor about how to do the process. [Note: Learn more about the process here. And check out the search bar on the site for any men’s ministry questions you may have.]
It is a process, verses just having an event. And that’s really important. It has to be a process that supports you and supports the vision and mission of what you’re doing. And so I would encourage them to pick up a copy of Sleeping Giant and get into it. And just start thinking through what you would like to see happen with your men and how men’s ministry can support the vision God’s called you to.
Herb: I found it interesting that you use the concept of a coach with churches. Describe how that works. Is it a live person?
Kenny: Yeah, we have live people. We actually have practitioners. We have churches that were early adopters of the Sleeping Giant model who have both been greatly successful and have tweaked a few things. And so it’s important to me that I don’t mentor everybody, but we have local church pastors mentoring other churches as the body of Christ. And so we do have specialized coaches, and those are just guys on my team. But we do have regional coaches that coach the churches in their area in the process.
Herb: How much would it cost a church to get started with your ministry?
Kenny: Well, to get started, it’s really cheap. You just need to pick up the blueprint, “Pastor Core Team Experience,” and then start a weekly midsize meeting. That could be $100. And then if you wanted to add more, you could add more. And so it’s a very cheap way to start. We figured it out, if you have a men’s group of about 25 guys that meets on a weekly basis, it’s less than a cup of coffee a day. You know, the cup of coffee analogy. For less than a cup of coffee a day you can have a meeting and continuously add guys.
Herb: Have you done a study on, say, what percent of churches that start your ministry are still doing it after five years?
Kenny: When you launch a Sleeping Giant ministry in your church through an event or a weekly midsized meeting, success is not the meeting or the event. Success is longitudinal. It’s long term. It’s how many guys are getting connected, how many leaders you’re spitting out. So the good news is that we have tracked the statistics. And after a launch, 60 to 70 percent of the men who say yes to connection, cut that in half and they are the guys who go all the way through the process. And that’s just being realistic. If you can have 300 guys get into a process and start it and you get over 50 percent of them going all the way through and your graduating marines ready to deploy, that’s a pretty good stick ratio. So we’re proud of the outcomes that are coming out of Sleeping Giant.
Herb: Do you find that pastors appreciate the new leadership that they get through this ministry?
Kenny: There’s another softball Herb just threw down the middle of the plate. What pastor in his right mind would not love to board larger numbers of men who have his DNA and recognize that helping the vision God has given him needs to go forward. Wow! When you can get men leading ministries and leading groups, they’re your middle management, your lay pastors that are not paid. And that’s a big deal. That’s what we say in Sleeping Giant. It’s better to raise disciples than hire disciples. That’s the cool thing. So pastors are loving that part of it.
Herb: It seems like pastors have almost a bunker mentality. So it’s nice to see a ministry that really stresses the importance of supporting the pastor.
Kenny: You hit it on the head. I think that’s why, when we do Sleeping Giant training for pastors they respond, “Is he for real? Nobody talks about us. They always talk about the man”. And that’s good. We should develop the man. And most resources and strategies are dedicated to the man. But we talk about developing the leader, plus developing the man in order to support the senior pastor.
Pastors are isolated and discouraged They’re the most under encouraged dudes serving in the body of Christ because everybody thinks they have their act together, they don’t have any problems, they love God. And meanwhile, they have a lot of burdens and pressures that need to be shared by the men of their church. And so pastors really like that lightened feeling when they sense they can trust their men to support them.
Herb: Kenny, thanks so much. It’s been great talking with you.
Learn more about how Every Man Ministries can help your pastor and the men in your church begin a transformational men’s ministry here.
Purchase Sleeping Giant, No Movement of God without Men of God by Kenny Luck here.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North America and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt widows, single moms and fatherless children in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church at newcommandment.org.
_______________________________________________________________
Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
_______________________________________________________________
