Herb: Bryan, the two of us have been at many Iron Sharpens Iron conferences together. I’ve enjoyed hearing your message and how God has used you. The first question I have for you is how did you come to know the Lord as your savior?

Bryan: I accepted Christ as a child. I remember the date. I told my parents, “I want to accept Christ.” I was five and I just had a love for the Lord. I just had a passion for him as a little kid. So I accepted Christ and then continued to grow in the Lord. And then I really sealed my relationship when I was in my college years.

Herb: So you grew up in a Christian home?

Bryan: I did.

Herb: What kind of relationship did you have with your father?

Bryan: My dad didn’t go to church that much when I was a kid. But then something happened. I don’t know, but the Lord took his relation to a whole new level. He accepted a call to the ministry at about age 45. He started a church when I was around ten. So I watched him plant a church in the inner city, take an old building and remodel it. My middle school years were spent watching him build this church. There was just something about watching him serve the Lord and then watching what he would do in our neighborhood with the kids. He was a man who really loved the Lord passionately. And so he modeled for me what manhood looked like and it impacted a lot of lives.

Herb: You mentioned that you have had many role models, many mentors in your life. Can you describe some of those?

Bryan: My dad was my main mentor. I went to college, then moved to Dallas around 23 or 24. I was newly married, I was in a new place. I joined a church and then my pastor, Pastor Bailey, he began to mentor me. His process was to spend time with me every Saturday for two hours for a year, together around a table working through a couple of books about manhood, ministry, marriage. I had just gotten married, so it fit just what I needed. And then, at the same time, Dennis Rainey began mentoring me, and that continued. I was in Dallas Seminary at the same time. So in my mid twenties, God sent me so much help that I needed to sort through manhood and ministry and marriage and I just learned so much. They helped me through so many struggles during those years.

Herb: Now you’re the lead pastor at your church, but you also do men’s ministry at your church. Is that correct?

Bryan: Right.

Herb: And you have a group of four hundred men that meet on a regular basis. What would you say is key to doing men’s ministry in the inner city?

Bryan: I believe the key is authenticity. I just believe that for men in the inner city, they’ve been fooled by so many people, they’ve been taken advantage of by so many people, that they come in with a degree of skepticism about the church and even about the pastor. Every pastor has not always ministered for the right reasons. That’s why that pastor has to be willing to prove himself and he has to be willing to come with a sincerity and authenticity. He has to be open about his own struggles. He has to be honest. He has to create a culture within that church and within his own ministry that we’re all a work in progress. We’re going to hold you accountable. We’re going to help you get there. So those are some of the keys that we’ve seen work in doing inner city ministry.

Herb: What does a pastor do who has a high ratio of single moms and elderly women in the church to men? What would you counsel him to do?

Bryan: I counsel a lot of guys in smaller churches who are overwhelmed when they hear about some of the things that you’re doing. So I always tell him to start where you are, whether there’s a couple of men in the church. Or, don’t limit your men’s ministry to the church. Maybe there’s a school nearby or a little league team that needs a team captain. So if they’re not in your church, go to where they are and start reaching them there with the hope that you can pull them into the church. But don’t limit yourself and think you have to work with whatever guys are in my church who may or may not be open to what you’re trying to do.

Herb: Are you working with other pastors around the country?

Bryan: Most definitely. We host a conference each year on preaching that has been going for twenty years. About 800 to 1,000 pastors come. So every year we offer training for guys in terms of how you do effective men’s ministry to achieve authentic manhood. Because our whole goal is to do this nationally. Our vision is to have a champion in every major city, a pastor or group of pastors, to help spread the work.

Herb: If you’re a pastor of a suburban church and you want to help inner city churches, is there a recommendation you’d give of a way of going about doing that?

Bryan: I think urban and suburban churches working together in ministry is a great model. I think it starts off with a relationship between the pastors. So if the pastor of the suburban church can reach out to that pastor by taking him to lunch. But often times the suburban church thinks it’s coming in to fix things for them. If they come in with an attitude of grace and humility in a partnership, wanting to learn as well as help, asking how each can serve the other, when that happens, good things are possible as we build those bridges together. Sometimes a suburban church has the resources and the urban church has many of the needs.

Herb: But the urban church may also have coping skills that the suburban church doesn’t. It’s learned how to cope where the suburban church hasn’t.

Bryan: That’s right. So how do we bring the best of both worlds together? That’s the attitude we should have.

November 11, 2014

Little Rock, Arkansas