Gary

Reaching Every Man

Training to build a men’s ministry that
reaches every man in your church

What is the key to building an effective men’s ministry?
An inspired, equipped men’s ministry leadership team!

Host or attenda four-hour workshop to inspire and equip that team

Twenty years of ministry experience and research by three PCA men, Pat Morley, David Delk, and Brett Clemmer inspired the creation of “Reaching Every Man-Introducing A Strategy for Men’s Ministry to Leave No Man Behind.” Based on the book, No Man Left Behind, this dynamic, encouraging training will inspire your men to:

Helping Men Become A Band of Brothers

All Christian men fight inner battles with their sinful nature. Lust, anger, selfishness, resentment, impatience, discontent, idolatry are just some of the forces that seek to overpower us as men. Many times we lose these battles for a simple reason-we are trying to fight them by ourselves.

Whether fighting in the street or fighting in Iraq, men know they are likely to become a casualty if they fight alone. The same principle holds true with the battles of our inner lives. God has not designed Christian men to be able to walk closely with him without connection to the body of Christ. Jesus did not call his disciples into only a vertical relationship with him, meeting Peter for breakfast Monday and James for breakfast Tuesday, etc. Jesus’ call to follow him was also a call to horizontal connection with the band of brothers who became known as Jesus’ disciples.

Can you imagine what our churches would look like, if each man in our church met weekly for breakfast or lunch with another brother or two to discuss the spiritual battles they were fighting? Can you imagine the strengthening that would take place as iron sharpens iron, trust is built, men are encouraged, brothers begin to really intercede for each other’s spiritual battles, and men ask a trusted brother to hold them accountable on their issues?

The stakes are too high, the battle too fierce, the enemy too wily, the attacks too frequent, the cost of defeat too severe for any Christian man to fight his spiritual battles alone.

Reaching Every Man

Does your church have an effective discipleship process for all the men in your church and community? Here is a way to find out. Rate your ministry on a scale of 1-10 in the following areas:

1. ____ Most men in our church understand what it means to be a disciple,
and its importance.

2. ____ Most of the men in our church have a best friend or band of brothers
who stand with him in his spiritual battles.

3. ____ Our ministry to men provides opportunities for men at all spiritual
levels to become engaged.

4. ____ The participation level of men in our men’s events indicates that we
are scratching where they itch.

5. ____ Our men’s hearts are captured by the desire to show Christ and his
kingdom to the world.

Over the last ten years, several graduates of RTS Orlando, along with a third PCA member, began to conduct extensive research into churches that were effectively discipling men, to determine why they were so successful. They saw time and again that the churches with effective long term processes that produced Godly disciples followed the same principles. For example, they targeted the hearts of men, not their behavior. They thought of discipleship as a relational process that moves men down the discipleship path, so they were intentional about capturing the momentum from their events and building upon it. Instead of expecting the pastoral staff and elders to “disciple” all the men, they built strong lay men’s ministry leadership teams, making Eph. 4:16 the foundation of their discipleship approach. “From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

These three men, Pat Morley, David Delk, and Brett Clemmer found these key principles to be so consistent in successful men’s ministries that they put them into a book and designed training to make these valuable insights available to men’s ministry leaders across America. The book is called, No Man Left Behind. The insights are also taught in 20-hour regional seminars by the same name, and in a 4-hour Reader’s Digest version for local churches and presbyteries called, Reaching Every Man.

This 4-hour Reaching Every Man training is now available to PCA churches and Presbyteries “to equip the saints for the work of ministry” at a very reasonable price-just $38 per man and $28 per man in groups of 4 or more. This allows our PCA churches to bring 4 men for a little over $100. Thirty-five men already attended an REM seminar at Covenant PCA in Harrisonburg, VA, and PCA churches in Baltimore, MD, Gainesville, FL, Ft Worth TX, and Tucson, AZ are in the process of trying to get an REM set up for their men’s ministry leadership teams. For more information on how to bring this training to your church or presbytery go to www.pcacep.org/Men, or contact Gary Yagel gyagel@forgingbonds.org 301.570.5097.

A. Because we are failing to disciple men effectively.

Studies show that for every ten men in the average church:

• 9 will have kids who leave the church
• 8 will not find their jobs satisfying
• 6 will pay monthly minimum on credit cards
• 5 have a major problem with pornography
• 4 will get divorced affecting 1,000,000 children each year
• Only 1 will have a biblical worldview
• All 10 will struggle to balance family & work

(Statistics cited by Man In the Mirror)

In the PCA we may be doing a little better than the average church, but not much! Most of our men don’t even have a daily quiet time, much less delight their hearts in the Lord. Few have thought through what it means to love their wife as Christ loves the church, much less are they regularly focused on meeting the needs of her heart or on applying I Cor.13:4-8 to loving her. Most men have no plan for discipling their kids or much of a clue what it means to be the spiritual leaders in their homes. Fewer than 10% are actively seeking to share their faith with non-believing friends, relatives, and work associates, etc. The bar is very low.

B. Because if you help men get it right, everybody wins.

When we think covenantally, we realize that God has assigned men a strategic position of influence in the family, church, and society. He has designed our wives to be responders, and our children to have many needs that we must meet as their fathers. PCA author Pat Morley helps us see the strategic role assigned to men when he writes:

“Can you think of any way the WORLD can be made right unless the CHURCH is made right. Can you think of any way the CHURCH can be made right unless FAMILIES are made right. Can you think of any way FAMILIES can be made right unless MARRIAGES are made right. Can you think of any way MARRIAGES can be made right unless MEN are made right. Can you think of anything that has more potential to change the world than reaching MEN?”

C. Because Jesus built his church by discipling men.

Jesus was radical in his day because he treated women and children with great dignity. But he built the foundation of his church by investing heavily in 11 men. Today’s church is completely upside down in its approach. Resources are allocated and staff is added for children’s ministry, youth ministry, college ministry, singles ministry, women’s ministry, even nursery ministry before resources are invested in men’s ministry. These priorities would appear to be the exact opposite of our Lord’s. So, why should we be surprised that the church is in such bad condition?

Research cited by Focus on the Family shows that when a mother comes to faith in Christ, the rest of the family follows her example 17% of the time.

When a father comes to faith in Christ, the rest of the family follows his example 93% of the time.

A. Men’s ministry helps the church accomplish its mission, to make disciples.

“Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, 1) baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and 2) teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Matt. 28:19-20

• Sometimes in the PCA we are tempted to abandon the discipleship model for the academic model, but men learn best by example.
• Biblical Christianity is not intended to be one smart person imparting knowledge to the masses; it is one follower helping another follower.

• We tend to ask men to follow our teaching, our methods, and our theology. God has hardwired them to prefer following men. Men’s ministry brings men together for life-on-life discipleship.

In the above text, the structure of the sentence implies that there are two parts to the way disciples are made.

1. Baptizing them:

• Baptism is the sign and seal of membership in the covenant community.
• The inward spiritual reality to which the sacrament of baptism points is our connection to Christ and to one another in the covenant of grace. (We differ from our Baptist friends at this very point; they see baptism as a sign of conversion, but we see it as a sign of membership in the covenant community just as circumcision was, and thus include our children in the covenant sign. But even our Baptist friends still see baptism as marking the recipient as belonging to the covenant community.)
• Becoming a Christ-follower requires not just a vertical commitment to Christ, but a horizontal commitment to connection with the rest of his body.
• 95% of Christian men have no best friend-they are not connected at any significant level to the body of Christ.
• The first goal of men’s ministry, therefore, is helping them get connected as brothers at the level of their spiritual lives.

2. Teaching them everyday obedience

• Jesus qualified the kind of teaching that makes disciples–teaching that focuses on obedience: “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you..”
• Men’s disciple-making ministry therefore focuses on the areas that are specific to men’s unique struggle to be obedient
• The second goal of men’s ministry, therefore, is to get Biblical teaching to them that is specific to their 1) responsibilities and 2) temptations as men. These are the areas where they struggle with obedience.

B. Men’s ministry helps the church follow the Biblical method for discipling men, i.e. mobilizing the members of the body to use their gifts.

“From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Eph. 4:16

“Men’s ministry” refers to the process of mobilizing members of the body to use their gifts to help men move down the discipleship path towards greater maturity in Christ. This process involves planning events and ministries for men. But is more than that. It also involves linking men to the disciple-making events and ministries in the church that are already in place. In summary, “men’s ministry” is the mobilization of some in the body to use their gifts to help the session disciple the men of the church.

C. The word, “disciple” should not be confused with the one-on-one multiplication method of discipleship.

Many people associate the verb, “to disciple” with the multiplication method explained in the booklet, Born to Reproduce, by Dawson Trotman of the Navigators and the book, Master Plan of Evangelism, by Robert Coleman. This is the idea that the pastor disciples two elders for two years. Then, at the end of the 2 years, those elders each disciple two men for two years, etc.

• I believe this is the absolute best method to disciple men-for those who are called and equipped to do so. If you have such men in your church, free them from other responsibilities and encourage them to build themselves into a few men who will build themselves into a few other men, etc.
• However, it is a mistake to call the multiplication method-the primary method of New Testament discipleship. That is simply not true.
• The method for the body to be built up is given in Eph. 4:7-16 as we have seen above. Paul makes no mention of the gift of “discipleship,” or “mentoring” or whatever we might call the multiplication method. He says the body is built up not by the disciplers, but by every member of the body contributing.
• 2 Timothy 2:2 is often quoted to substantiate the multiplication method as the primary NT method to make disciples. However, this verse is not talking about Paul’s one-on-one time discipling Timothy-but about insuring that sound teaching continue in the church at a time when the New Testament had not yet been completed. Paul says to Timothy, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.” The focus here is Paul’s PUBLIC teaching-not his PRIVATE discipleship meetings with Timothy. Paul wants the content of his teaching, i.e. the gospel, passed on to reliable men who are able to teach (not disciple) others.
• If a pastor disciples two elders for two years who then disciple two men for two years, at the end of 4 years, there are 7 mature believers. Praise God! But someone has to focus on the 95% of the men left out during this 4 year period to help them grow in Christ. That is the task of the men’s ministry. The Biblical method for growth is given in Eph 4.16. The body “grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.”
  
• Nine out of ten pastors I know say they do not have the gift of mentoring or “discipling.” So, how can this multiplication method be the preferred NT method for making disciples? The marching orders for the whole church are to make disciples-not just for those gifted in mentoring!