Is your church’s men’s ministry sputtering, or maybe even stalled? Is it time for a jumpstart?
We all know the feeling: your men’s ministry is more like a zombie convention than a recruitment center for top gun aviators. You are just going through the motions and no one really knows why you are meeting. Even worse, your men have a room temperature median age.
If you are a men’s ministry leader and I’ve just described your men’s ministry, here is what I suggest you do to jumpstart it:
Jumpstart your men’s ministry with your “battery.” Your spiritual life is your battery.
Are you walking in the Spirit? Are you radiating the joy and peace of Christ in your life? Is God’s word living in your heart? Are you meditating on it constantly? Are you praying fervently and daily?
And how are your relationships? Does your wife think she’s won the lottery because she’s married to you? Do your kids jump for joy when you get home from work? Do you pray with your family regularly?
And your neighbors, are they glad they live next door to you? Do they see the reality of Christ in your life? Maybe, for them at least, it’s just the fact that you keep your lawn mowed. Do they know you are a Christian? Are you loving them as yourself?
Fill yourself up with the power of the Holy Spirit, the knowledge of God our Father, and the love of Jesus Christ. Then you will have plenty to share when it is time to minister to the men in your church.
Jumpstart your men’s ministry with a “jumper cable.” Your relationships with other men in your church are your jumper cable.
By jumper cable, I mean relationships with other men. You can’t jumpstart a men’s ministry unless you have solid and continuous connections with other men in your church.
Stop right now and text, email, or call a man in your church whom you respect and invite him to get together with you for lunch or coffee.
There, I did it myself. I just texted someone from church for a coffee appointment. Easy peasy.
When you get together with your friend, discuss the state of your church’s men’s ministry, if you have one. Or get his feedback on starting one. But mainly, use this time to get to know him better and to build your relationship with him.
Do this once a week with a different man each week for ten weeks. Then evaluate both the feedback you have received about your church’s men’s ministry as well as the relationships you have developed.
Jumpstart your men’s ministry by “starting your car.” Start your car by taking the initiative.
Turn on your ignition. Not their ignition, your ignition. Take the initiative yourself and review your initial ideas for your church’s men’s ministry with your pastor or appropriate staff person. Lead the charge. Sound the bugle.
After you have acquired permission from your church leadership to begin, ask the Lord to show you which of the men you have been talking to about men’s ministry would make good leadership team members. Maybe all of them will. Or perhaps just a few of them will. And yes, you need a team.
Now comes the hard work. Ask these men to join with you in praying and studying the Word and researching men’s ministry. Don’t assume that just because you are men and Christians, that therefore you are experts on men’s ministry. Take this process slow, invest some time and effort, and devote several months to it (but not an eternity!).
Meet regularly and discuss what you are learning with each other. Don’t approach this task with your own preconceived ideas. Listen to your men with a goal of finding unity and direction.
Men’s ministry is basically discipleship, and that means we need to know what Jesus expects of us. Check out this post: What are Your Ten Year Goals for Your Church’s Men’s Ministry?
We also don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There are a multitude of great men’s ministry resources available. Here are five men’s ministries I recommend, and here are another five.
Jumpstart your men’s ministry by “starting your leaders’ cars.” Start their cars by coming to a unified, compelling, exciting, and God-ordained vision for your men’s ministry.
Get out of your car, walk over to your men’s cars, get in, turn on their ignitions and step on their gas pedals.
Rev up their engines and get their own batteries fully charged by first summarizing and clarifying the vision of what your small leadership group believes God wants to do with your men’s ministry, and then by listing the concrete actions steps you need to take to accomplish it.
Jumpstarting cars is an invisible process. There they are, two cars just sitting there connected to each other with a jumper cable. But inside that jumper cable are unseen electrons coursing through it from one charged battery to the other, uncharged battery, until both batteries share the same level of charge.
Something similar is happening during this step in your men’s ministry. Your men are sitting around discussing what they have learned over the past few months about men’s ministry.
You are distilling the wisdom you have gleaned from praying, studying, reading and talking with other men’s ministry leaders. It looks like nothing is happening during this process. But slowly, invisibly, the Spirit of God molds your minds into one unified vision and passion for reaching men.
This slow and purposeful time of prayer and discussion is critical for disseminating a unified and committed spirit among your leaders. Without it your men’s ministry will be crippled from the start.
Now plan your “caravan” and recruit your followers. Share your awesome vision of where you believe God is taking your men’s ministry with all the men in your church.
All effective men’s ministry is a caravan: a group of Christian men heading in the same direction toward the same destination.
I have chosen the term “caravan” carefully because it expresses the concept of men moving together, of men going somewhere with each other for a purpose.
Note that the first history of the Christian church isn’t called “The Meetings of the Apostles,” but “The Acts of the Apostles.” The Book of Acts is a history of what the Apostles did; how they, by the power of the Spirit, traveled throughout the known world, proclaimed the gospel, made disciples of Christ, and in the process, overturned their world order.
In other words, you don’t jumpstart other men’s cars so they can just sit in their cars with their engine idling and read the owner’s manual that they have pulled out of the glove compartment. Their owner’s manual is a very important document, of course, and must be kept in mind while driving. But their cars do not exist simply so your men can read and enjoy their owner’s manual. Their cars exists so they can go somewhere. The owner’s manual just shows them how to do it.
In the same way, your men’s ministry does not exist simply so your men can study the Bible and socialize with each other. Your men’s ministry exists so your men can experience the Bible – how it affects them in their own personal lives and how it affect others through their lives.
Of course, they have to learn the Bible well – and the God who inspired it, along with his Son, Jesus Christ, as the Holy Spirit opens their understanding – in order to experience it. And both individual and group Bible study is essential to do this. But the goal of your men’s ministry – your caravan – is to practice, to do, the Bible, not just know it.
- Your men have “cars to fix.” Help your men fix their lives by becoming conformed to the person of Jesus Christ.
The interesting thing about jumpstarting a car is that sometimes, once you finally get it started, you discover the real problems the car has. Is it billowing blue smoke? The engine probably needs a ring job. Do you hear a rapid clicking sound? The rocker arms may need adjusting. Does the car make an ear-piercing squealing noise when you rev up the engine? Could be the serpentine belt or the fan belt.
The same thing is true when you jumpstart men — that is when they get saved or when they begin to take their walk with the Lord seriously. Before they can go anywhere on a “caravan trip” with you – i.e., before they can minister to others – they need to deal with besetting sin in their lives and become consistent in their walk with the Lord.
An effective men’s ministry is first of all a ministry that deals with the real issues your men are struggling with. Often, that is pornography addiction or other addictions, marital issues, financial issues, and self image issues. I give a picture of how a ministry can accomplish this in the lives of its men in my post, The First Men’s Breakfast.
- Your men have places to go in their “cars.” Teach your men how to boldly stand out as a Christ-follower wherever they go.
Notice that the first verb in Christ’s Great Commission to us is “Go.”
“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19-20
Think for a moment of all the places your men will be going to after they have “fixed their cars” and go out from your men’s ministry: their home, the gas station, their work, their neighborhood, their local grocery store. They may travel somewhere on business or vacation. They may even move away. Wherever they go, the purpose of your men’s ministry is to make sure that they are radiating the reality and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
If you look at your men this way, you will realize that there is no such thing as a “small” men’s ministry. Even just three men meeting together will leave that meeting and go to dozens of destinations throughout the week. Ten men would impact hundreds of destinations in the same time frame. Fifty men would impact thousands of destinations.
You are a Christian today because the first disciples went somewhere and preached the gospel and obeyed all Jesus Christ commanded them to do, and then their disciples went somewhere else and did the same.
- Your men have people to meet with their “cars.” Show your men how to love everyone around them with the love of Christ.
Think for a moment of the dozens, if not hundreds, of people each man in your men’s ministry meets during the week: their wife, their children, their extended family members, their neighbors, their fellow workers, people on the street, people in stores. Each one of those people will have the opportunity to observe firsthand the presence and power of the love of Christ in the lives of your men.
“The goal of our instruction is the love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a sincere faith,” Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:5.
If there is one thing your men’s ministry should be doing, it is teaching your men how to deeply love people with the love of Christ. The love of Christ is unique to Christians, Jesus tells us. It is so unique that when we practice it, people automatically recognize us as Christ-followers (John 13:34-35).
This deep, profound, and unconditional love of Christ is a critical need that all people have, both unbelievers and believers. This is why we are commanded to love our fellow believers as Christ loves us, and unbelievers as we love ourselves.
A successful men’s ministry teaches men how to love the people around them, and how to surround themselves with people who love them.
- Your men have things to do with their “cars.” Help your men do the life-changing, culture-transforming, Christ-honoring, and gospel adorning good works God saved them to do.
Now comes the good part. And I mean quite literally the “good” part.
The Bible tells us over and over again that the reason God saves men (and women) is to do good. (Matthew 5:16; Ephesians 2:10; James 2:14-17; Titus 2:14; 3:14, etc.)
If unsaved men have a habit of leaving behind them a trail of death and destruction – toxic maleness that results in alcohol and drug abuse, pornography addiction, abuse of women, broken marriages, abandoned children, crime, gangs, incarceration, suicide, and on and on – then it stands to reason that saved men should be known for leaving behind them a trail of lives overwhelmingly blessed by their good works.
Show your men from the Bible what these good works look like in their families, in your church, and in your community.
Your men’s ministry should be one of the most meaningful and fulfilling spiritual experiences your men have ever had. By nurturing your own spiritual life, by making the connections with other men in your church that you need to make, by together investing time and effort into studying the Word, seeking the leading of the Spirit, and availing yourself of other men’s ministry resources, and by executing your ministry to men well, you have every reason to expect that it will be.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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.
_______________________________________________________________
