The Men’s Ministry I Know (Part 3)

Sharing is caring!

This and previous posts in this series have been incorporated into the Introduction of my online article, “A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Men.”

Hidden away and ignored – the sacrifice Christian men ought to do

The headquarters for the Navigators is located a few miles northwest of Colorado Springs, Colorado. It lies tucked away in an idyllic and secluded valley called Glen Eyrie that marks the beginning of the Rocky Mountains.

One can find Dawson Trotman’s grave on top of a hill next to the glen on its north side. The gravesite looks down on the narrow valley and Glen Eyrie Castle.

Hiking up to the grave takes some effort, but visiting Dawson Trotman’s final resting place is a great way to honor the man who founded The Navigators and then sacrificed his life to save a young girl.

In a way, The Navigators’ physical isolation in that picturesque glen serves as a metaphor for The Navigators ministry itself: it’s a great men’s ministry, but they keep to themselves.

In my many years working alongside dozens of national men’s ministries, I never saw The Navigators make any attempt to participate in the broader men’s ministry movement, even at the height of Promise Keepers’ stadium events.

Wanting to build some bridges with The Navigators, National Coalition of Ministries to Men (NCMM) held its annual convention at Glen Eyrie some years back and I attended. NCMM even invited the President of the Navigators to be a keynote speaker. But as far as The Navigators joining with us in advancing a common men’s ministry agenda, nothing came of it.

The result is that while Roland and Dawson Trotman’s sacrifices should be held up to all Christian men and to all men’s ministries as shining examples of the kind of sacrifices Christian men should be willing to make, it still requires some effort just to learn about them.

These two beautiful examples of sacrifice that The Navigators had to give to the early men’s ministry movement are the answer to an important question haunting all of men’s ministry: Once we grow in Christ and become the kind of men that we are supposed to be, what are we supposed to do? The answer that the Trotman brothers exemplify: because we have been saved by Christ’s sacrifice, in love we are to be willing to sacrifice our lives for each other.

Again, for the third time, 1 John 3:16 is worth another read.

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” 1 John 3:16

How the failure to focus on sacrifice changed the direction of modern men’s ministry

The Navigators are a renowned men’s ministry, highly regarded in conservative Christianity. It could easily have promoted this ethic of sacrifice as exemplified by their founder and his brother to other men’s ministries. But it failed to do so at a critical time in the nascent men’s ministry movement. That failure would eventually hobble a movement that otherwise had a promising future.

Having no clear answer to the question of what Christian men are supposed to do, the early men’s ministry movement focused instead on what Christian men are supposed to be. Two trailblazing men’s ministry authors exemplify this important but limited focus.

Gene Getz – The way Christian men ought to be

Cultures do not descend into moral depravity overnight. Mercifully, it takes time for sin to become acceptable; or, as Dr. Francis Schaeffer once put it, for “the unthinkable to become the thinkable.” But without the counterbalance of a substantial Christian response, cultures do eventually begin spiraling faster and faster downward.

“Evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” 2 Timothy 3:13

Imagine if you could travel back in time to the 1960’s, at the beginning of America’s cultural shift away from a Christian worldview to a materialistic worldview, and tell people that in just a few decades young men would, on a regular basis, begin randomly shooting people to death in schools, shopping malls, and even churches. That one of the leading causes of death among men would be drug overdoses. That a quarter of all married men would abandon their children. That marriage itself would begin to disappear. That something called the Internet would play a key role in enslaving men to pornography. And that a third of all working-age men would refuse to work.

The people listening to you would have thought you were a crazy lunatic, on the level of a homeless person holding up a cardboard sign with “The End is Near!” scribbled on it.

What has now become a massive avalanche of male moral chaos was by 1974 — the year Gene Getz published his groundbreaking book, The Measure of a Man — a relatively harmless ball of snow slowly rolling down the hill. America had yet to see the culmination of sin and vileness that men are capable of.

The Measure of a Man is based on a simple idea: use the lists of qualifications for elders found in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9 as the standard, or “measure,” for what a mature Christian man looks like; what a Christian man is supposed to be.

That clear biblical concept took off. Since Gene Getz wrote The Measure of a Man almost fifty years ago, over 1 million copies have been sold worldwide, it has been translated into dozens of languages, and it has never gone out of print. (Here is my review of The Measure of a Man and here is my interview with Gene Getz.)

The simplicity of The Measure of a Man reflects the simpler times it was written in. For example, there is no hall of shame section in Getz’s book, the kind of section that often appears in more recent men’s ministry books. (A hall of shame section is what I call a list of worsening male dysfunctional traits that result from a culture marginalizing God.)

Neither is there any reference in The Measure of a Man to men’s ministry specifically. Dedicated men’s ministries in local churches were still almost completely nonexistent. Rather, the book addresses Christian men as part of their larger local church.

And finally, there is no rousing call in The Measure of a Man for Christian men to rise up against the increasingly secularized culture around them and do something. It just hadn’t dawned on anyone yet how bad things would get.

Edwin Louis Cole – The way Christian men ought to be is good family men

By 1982, the year Ed Cole published Maximized Manhood, that snowball of male dysfunction had gotten much larger and was rolling ever faster downhill.

Just eight years after Gene Getz published The Measure of a Man, it was becoming increasing clear that our materialistic and secular culture, and the sexual revolution it had spawned, were taking a wrecking ball to the American family.

The natural response on the part of Christians was to prioritize the importance of family (hence the rise of Focus on the Family) and the role Christian men needed to play in restoring the family institution to a healthy state.

Enter Edwin Louis Cole, often referred to as the founder of modern men’s ministry, and his book, Maximized Manhood: A Guide to Family Survival. The thesis of Cole’s book is that the ultimate purpose of a Christian man in an increasingly godless culture is to establish a healthy marriage and produce Christian children by being a “maximized man,” i.e. the kind of husband and father God wants a man to be. (Here is my review of Maximized Manhood.)

Biblically speaking, it is undeniably true that Christian men ought to be good family men. Gene Getz was right when he applied the qualifications for elders (and, I might add, deacons as well) to all Christian men. And Ed Cole was right to emphasize the same family values in his book. Being a good family man plays a central role in all three lists of elder and deacon qualifications.

[An elder must be] faithful to his wife….He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) 1 Timothy 3:2, 3-5

A deacon must be faithful to his wife and must manage his children and his household well. 1 Timothy 3:12

An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Titus 1:6

But there is one problem.

There is a massive difference between being qualified to do something and actually doing what you are qualified to do

But the problem with both Gene Getz’s and Ed Cole’s approach is that there is a difference between being qualified to do something as opposed to doing it. If one focuses only on attaining the qualifications to do something, then the thing that one is qualified to do will never get done.

For example, we can think of the qualifications necessary to be a fighter jet pilot: patriotic, fearless, quick learner, fast decision maker, able to fly a fighter jet, and a willingness to sacrifice one’s life are some of the possible qualifications that come to mind. Now these are all great qualities. It would be fantastic to personally have all of these qualities in and of themselves.

But qualifying to fly a fighter jet as opposed to actually getting in and flying the fighter jet in a war are two very different things. Qualifying to fly a fighter jet is what the pilot is. But flying the fighter jet and helping to win the war against a terrible enemy is what the pilot does. If qualifying men to be fighter jet pilots is the only function of an air force, it will lose the war.

In the same way, the qualifications for church leaders in 1 Timothy 2 and Titus 1 are not goals, but means for achieving the goal: that of mature Christian men joining with other believers in fighting the battle against Satan himself and accomplishing the amazing good God saved them to do. If qualifying men for church leadership is the only function of men’s ministry, it will lose the spiritual war.

The modern men’s ministry movement has failed to make the distinction between being and doing

Unfortunately, the modern men’s ministry movement has been losing the spiritual war in America for the last fifty years because it has failed to make this distinction: we keep focusing on what men are supposed to be as opposed to what we are supposed to do.

Just a few days ago I came across the following men’s ministry page on a church’s website and it perfectly exemplifies the current men’s ministry focus on what Christian men are supposed to be as opposed to what Christian men are supposed to do:

---

33 The Series Authentic Manhood – Coming in August

You’re invited to join North Valley Men in a journey exploring biblical masculinity. Men will get the chance to meet and get to know other men and receive some excellent practical teaching.

This is a great opportunity to help fathers and husbands lead their families. It will also help single men to mature in their manhood, and young boys will learn what it means to be a man!  Don’t miss the journey. 

Volume 1 – A MAN AND HIS DESIGN (Completed Sept 2020 – Oct 2020)

Volume 2 – A MAN AND HIS STORY (Completed – Feb 2021 – March 2021) 

Volume 3 – A MAN AND HIS TRAPS (Completed – Aug 2021 – Sept 2021) 

Volume 4 – A MAN AND HIS WORK (Completed Feb 2022 – April 2022)

Volume 5 – A MAN AND HIS MARRIAGE (Coming soon – Aug 2022 – Sept 2022) 

Volume 6 – A MAN AND HIS FATHERHOOD

---

Just by looking at the volume titles on the above website page, it is obvious that 33 The Series considers marriage and fatherhood to be the culmination of a Christian man’s purpose, the ultimate reason he has been saved, or, as Ed Cole put it, his “maximized manhood.”

But being a good husband and father, as wonderful and critical as these things may be, are mere qualifications for doing something far greater: leading the church into battle by being willing to sacrifice one’s life in the fight against Satan, in propagating the gospel, and in accomplishing massive good.

In my next post, I will discuss how this failure to distinguish between what Christian men are supposed to be as opposed to what Christian men are supposed to do impacted the Promise Keepers movement.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

_______________________________________________________________

Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom

and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.

_______________________________________________________________