Welcome to the sixth and final video in our series on Starting a Men’s Team Ministry to the Widowed and Single Parents. By now I hope you have been able to start your men’s team ministry and have had it running for a few months. Now we want to ask how it’s going. We want to evaluate your men’s team ministry. Then we want to look additional men’s ministry resources for you to expand your men’s ministry into other areas.

Evaluating Your Men’s Team Ministry

Let’s start by remembering the goal for your men’s ministry to widows and single parents: to practice the love of Christ towards people with long term needs so that your church can say, “There is no needy person among us.”

You’ve been having teams of men going out and serving your widows and single parents in your church now for a few months. They’ve been serving in the homes of your care receivers one Saturday morning a month for two hours. We define the practice of the love of Christ as identifying with someone, committing to them, and sacrificing for them. Then we gave you the model that we use in men’s team ministry to accomplish that actual practice of the love of Christ.

The question, then, becomes: are we accomplishing those three specific objectives – identifying with, committing to, and sacrificing for, our care receivers?

One of the ways you can answer that question is simply by asking your care receivers. Send out a survey to your care receivers, or just talk to them individually, and ask them the following three questions:

1. Has your team come to know you and understand you? Do you feel like you have a group of men in our church who really know you, not only what your problems are, but why you have those issues? Do you feel like your team knows and understands your situation?

2. Has your team been faithfully showing up at your home? Has your team demonstrated commitment to you by faithfully serving you?

3. Has your team helped you meet any ongoing pressing needs in your life? Do you still have pressing needs that your team is not addressing?

If your care receivers answer yes to all three of these questions, then you can say, “Yes, we are practicing the love of Christ toward our care receivers.”

But if any of them say, “No, I don’t think my team really understands me.” Or, “I’ve got some real needs that my team has just been completely ignoring,” then you need to go back and immediately address those issues with your care receiver and with your teams. Because this means that you are not addressing pressing needs in your church.

If your care receivers are answering yes to all three of those questions, then you can say, “We are successfully addressing the long term pressing needs in our church.” But, if you remember from the introductory seminar I gave called, “Mobilize Your Men to Meet Pressing Needs,” there are more than just long term pressing needs in any church.

There are two other types of needs. The first type is emergency special project requests. Analyze how your church has been addressing those special project requests; if it hasn’t been successful in either addressing those issues, or maybe it’s trying to address too many. Maybe it’s addressing every request that comes into the church office. If that is so, you need to sit down with your pastor and talk about this and ask your pastor if you can do some training with the person who is taking these emergency calls at your church.

You may also do what I recommended in that first introductory training. Ask your teams to be on call, one team per month to respond to those emergency special project requests that come into the church office.

Then the third type of pressing need in the local church is catastrophic need. This is when someone in your church suffers a catastrophe the results in total dependence. By now your church has learned to walk toward liability instead of away from it. Your church has learned to seek out pressing needs in your congregation so that it has experienced the provision that God gives us as we walk by faith toward meeting those pressing needs. When someone has a catastrophe happen that seems overwhelming, your church has learned the spiritual lesson that “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that at all times, in every way, you will have all that you need for every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:8)

Review these goals that you have set for your men’s team ministry and make sure that it is addressing those goals.

Another thing you need to do is survey your men in your men’s team ministry and ask them if there are any practical issues that they are struggling with that they’re having a problem with. Then go back to your model and make any adjustments. I’ve said before, the model is not set in concrete. It’s not inspired. It’s just a way in our culture to express the love of Christ to widows and single parents, to meet pressing needs in their lives.

Ask if it’s working, if it’s working smoothly, what adjustments need to be made to the model.

Do this analysis maybe once a year. Ask how your men’s team ministry is working, whether your care receivers’ needs are being met, whether you are actually expressing the love of Christ in practice in the lives of your care receivers and meeting every pressing need in your church.

If you’re a pastor, when you see that the pressing needs in your church are being met, just say from the pulpit, “To the best of my knowledge, I don’t know of a single ongoing pressing that has not been met in our church.” That is a wonderful thing to say. You can give credit to the Lord and you can give credit to your men’s ministry.

Reviewing Other Men’s Ministry Resources

We now want to think about expanding your men’s team ministry into other areas of men’s ministry. Men’s team ministry is not the be-all and end-all of men’s ministry. There are many other types of men’s ministries that you want to introduce your men to. Begin thinking about how to expand your men’s ministry so that you can have maximum impact for the Lord in the lives of your men.

I want to encourage you to do this exercise: go through the New Testament and make a list of any passage that tells you what God wants to accomplish in your men. Just list those passages and then go through and summarize them with one sentence. “This is what God wants to do in the lives of my men.” “God wants to make my men like Jesus Christ.” “God wants to ….” and just summarize everything into one sentence.

Then do the same thing again. Go through the New Testament and ask this question: “What does God want to do through my men?” What does God want to accomplish as a result of salvation?

This concludes our series of six videos on Starting a Men’s Team Ministry to the Widowed and Single Parents in your church. I am so thrilled and excited that you have taken the initiative to begin this ministry in your church. I know already you are beginning to see results in the lives of your widows and widowers and single moms and single dads and fatherless children. I know you are beginning to see results in your men. I know that you are beginning to see the love of Christ poured out in your church. I am so excited and thrilled. I trust that God is going to use you for years to come in your church to address these types of pressing needs.

I would love to hear how it’s going. If you can send me an email to herbreese@yahoo.com, or even text me at 303-880-8839, just let me know how things are going. It’s always an encouragement for me to hear back from people who have started a men’s team ministry in their church. I hope you continue on the membership site. We’re going to be adding all kinds of material on the site. We’ve started a private Facebook group page so that you can personally share stories and pictures and videos with other members on the site.

God bless you!