Every now and then I get this question: If most of your care receivers are women, then why do you emphasize using men to serve them?
There are several reasons why New Commandment Men’s Ministries focuses on using men. One reason is because it’s biblical. Jesus and the apostles all emphasized using men to serve women (John 19:25-27; Acts 6:1-6).
A second reason is because men are a mostly underutilized resource in the local church. The vast majority of volunteers in churches are women.
A third reason is because men love fulfilling their God-given role as providers and protectors. In the male-bashing culture that now characterizes America, men respond overwhelmingly to the opportunity to be someone’s knight in shinning armor.
A fourth reason is because men often lack good friendships with other men. Using teams of men to serve their widowed and single parents provides men the opportunity to develop long lasting male friendships.
A fifth reason is because men need to learn how to show appropriate Christian love to women. When Christ commands us to “love one another as I have loved you,” He’s not just asking men to love men and women to love women, but all of us believers to love all other believers regardless of their gender. In our sex-saturated culture that objectifies and abuses women (as we see in the Harvey Weinstein, Fox News, Anthony Weiner – and on and on and on – sex scandals), men’s team ministry gives men the opportunity to learn how to treat women with dignity and respect.
And that brings me to a sixth, and related, reason. Because women have often suffered at the hands of men, having faithful, godly men serve them on teams provides an opportunity for genuine healing. Many women and children have been abandoned by their fathers and lovers and/or physically and emotionally abused by them. Often, they have never known what a healthy, loving relationship with men is like. They may even hate men.
Take, for example, the prostitute who showed up one Sunday morning at church. She had a hardened and depressed countenance. After the service she confessed to me what kind of person she was. I shared the gospel with her, but she just couldn’t bring herself to see how God could possibly forgive her.
She came back the next Sunday and started attending regularly. I eventually asked her if she would like a team of men to serve her around her home and she gladly accepted the offer. The men I assigned to her had no idea who she was. But over the course of several months, because of their faithful service to her, her countenance gradually changed and she eventually came to Christ. Why? Because for the first time in her life men were coming to her home to serve her instead of to exploit her.
That is the power of Christ’s radical love as expressed through godly men. And women desperately need to see that kind of love from men.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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