The Men’s Ministry I Know (Part 5)

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

“Treat younger men as brothers,older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.” 1 Timothy 5:1-2

Discovering men’s team ministry to widows, single moms, and fatherless children

I wish I could say that after years of studying and preaching the Bible, I eventually gained enough insight into the importance of ministering to widows and others with long term needs that I came up with the idea of using teams of men to serve them.

But that is not how it happened. Men’s team ministry to widows (and single moms and fatherless children) was not my original idea. Rather, I got the idea from Promise Keepers, where men’s team ministry was described in the back of one of their booklets; the one entitled “Focusing Your Men’s Ministry” that I purchased at their Indianapolis stadium event and then stuffed into my tote bag and forgot about.

It wasn’t until weeks later, when I recalled my promise to my men that I would help them start a men’s ministry at our church, that I remembered that booklet. I got my conference tote bag, poured out the contents on my desk, and found what I was looking for.

It was lunchtime and I decided I would take the booklet with me to Sprouts Inn, a restaurant down the street from my church. As I sat there eating lunch, I read through “Sharpening Your Men’s Ministry” and came to the appendix entitled “Examples of Successful Men’s Ministries.”

The solution for Teresa was hiding in plain sight

As I read the descriptions of the men’s ministries the booklet listed, the following example jumped off the page at me. I quote parts of it here so you can read it yourself.

Grace Community Church, Lincoln, NE

Size: 220 (70 men), Average Age: 30

PHILOSOPHY OF MINISTRY

Grace Community Church has the atmosphere of a small-town country church in the heart of the city. Their men’s ministry is eight years old.

Their men’s ministry is developed, organized and orchestrated to fit within their philosophy of ministry: to reach out and win others to Jesus Christ, to disciple them to Christian maturity and service, to come together to worship the living God and glorify Him, and to build strong families and homes, and therefore a strong church. Because one-fourth of the women in the church are widowed, divorced, single, or abandoned, a major thrust of the men’s ministry is to support these male-less environments. (Emphasis mine.)

STRUCTURE

The structure of the men’s ministry uses small groups (2 to 5 men) within a large group setting…

Each team is responsible for three to five of the women (widowed, divorced, abandoned, or single) mentioned before. They provide home and car repair services, do yard work, and offer the kind of moral support that is missing in the women’s homes. Twice a year the women are invited into the homes of the group’s members where they are treated to expressions of love and concern in a family atmosphere around the dinner table. The women know they can count on these men in times of need.

EFFECTIVENESS

GCC has seven small groups that range from 2-5 men in a group, a total of 55 men. They are nearing 100% involvement for the men in their church!

The church has seen five or six men come to Christ through their men’s ministry. One of the biggest blessings is seeing men who had been lukewarm for years now on fire.

This is exactly what Teresa needs!

As I read the above men’s ministry description, I almost jumped out of my seat. “This is exactly what Teresa needs!” I thought.¹ (Teresa is the young widow I wrote about in my last post.)

There were several things that impressed me about this particular men’s ministry.

Grace Community’s men’s ministry had a clear understanding of who the neediest people in their church were and made meeting their pressing needs it’s primary focus. By doing so, they were obeying biblical commands like this one in Titus 3:14, “Let our people learn to engage in good deeds, to meet pressing needs, that they may not be unfruitful.” (See also Acts 20:34-35; Ephesians 4:28; Hebrews 10:24; etc.)
Their men’s ministry training involved not just discipleship, but also biblically mandated service to widows and others. It solved Promise Keepers’ “being without doing problem” that I discussed in my last two posts. (James 1:22-27)
Their men’s ministry focused on relational widows ministry, not just project widows ministry. Project widows ministry is doing one-off projects for widows. Relational widows ministry is when a team uses projects to build an ongoing relationship with a widow and treats them as actual family members. 1 Timothy 5:1 tells us to “treat older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity,” and that is precisely what this ministry did. (See also Matthew 12:46-50; John 19:25-27)
Their men’s ministry had a long term and easy to implement strategy for meeting the needs of their care receivers. By using teams of men to serve its widows and other “male-less” women in their church, Grace Community spread out the responsibility for each care receiver to multiple men, thereby making long term and consistent ministry to widows in our individualistic and highly mobile culture achievable.
Almost all the men in their church were involved in the men’s ministry. By focusing on meeting the long term pressing needs in their church, Grace Community’s men’s ministry became indispensable. And since men like to be needed and to do useful work, the men’s ministry naturally drew men into its fold.
People were coming to faith in Christ because of the ministry. As a result of their simple obedience to the biblical commands to meet the needs of widows and others in their church, the men of Grace Community Church had the same results as the early church had when it obeyed those same commands: “They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:46-47)
The men involved became passionate about their men’s ministry. What Christian man in his right mind wouldn’t want to be a part of this ministry?

As I read through this description of Grace Community Church’s men’s ministry, I could see that all of these men’s ministry elements had immediate positive implications for Teresa and others in our church with long term needs. I was so excited about the possibilities for our men and for Teresa and others in need that I began contacting men in my church immediately to see if they were interested in starting a men’s team ministry like this. In all, sixteen men volunteered.

Our men’s team ministry experienced the same kind of success that Grace Community’s did

I divided us into four teams of four men each and identified four potential care receivers in our church: the newly widowed Teresa, a single dad who was disabled with epilepsy, a single mom who was disabled with Crones, and another single mother of three children who was on welfare.

We committed to serving in the homes of our care receivers for two hours every other Saturday morning and began the ministry with high expectations.²

After just a few months I observed several things. First of all, for the first time I noticed Teresa coming to church with a genuine smile on her face. She had her own team of men who were faithfully taking care of her. I could almost physically feel my guilt-brick that I had for failing Teresa fall out of my emotional backpack. The other three care receivers were also extremely blessed by their teams.

Then there were the men. Just like the men of Grace Community Church in the Promise Keepers booklet, our men became very passionate about the ministry. In fact, the team assigned to the single mother of three children who was on welfare got her qualified for a Habitat for Humanity home, recruited and organized additional volunteers, and then built her a home!

Our men became renowned all over Quincy

Another thing that impressed me was the public testimony our men came to have in our community. Word spreads rapidly in small town USA and soon our men became so renowned all over the city of Quincy, Illinois that another church in town began their own men’s team ministry.

One of their teams faithfully served their care receiver until she passed away. At the funeral her team members volunteered to be her pall bearers. As they carried her coffin out of the church, someone took their picture and it appeared on the front page of Quincy’s newspaper, along with a story about their service to her. What a beautiful witness to the love of Christ!

The next two years were a spiritual renaissance for me

And finally, there was the impact our men’s team ministry had on me personally.

The next two years were a spiritual renaissance for me. As I studied the Word, I kept seeing things relating to our men’s team ministry that I hadn’t noticed before. It was as if Jesus was walking and conversing with me on my own “road to Emmaus.”

It was during this time that I realized how important and pervasive the topic of ministry to widows is in scripture. It wasn’t just by accident that the early church focused so many of its resources on widows, but by design and in fulfillment of both Old Testament teaching and Jesus’ teaching.

I also learned to see the church as the ultimate family, the eternal family of God, and that we really are to treat fellow believers as actual family members.

I discovered how loving like Jesus Christ involves a set of practices that includes identifying with someone, committing to them, and sacrificing for them.

Also during this time, the concept of hesed love in the Old Testament took on new meaning for me as I learned about how important our new covenant relationship as a church is.

Moving next to the ashes of Promise Keepers

The whole men’s team ministry experience was a wonderful culmination to my ten years of ministry in Quincy. In 1999 I received a call to pastor a church in Broomfield, Colorado, a suburb of both Denver and Boulder. Our family wound up living just a few miles from CU Boulder.

Little did I know how significant it was that the Lord had moved me and my family almost next door to the birthplace of Promise Keepers…and next to the ashes of its demise.

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.