A while back I was asked to speak at a church I had never been to before. I think they had been told about CVM Cymru and that I was a good person to fill a ‘pulpit’ slot that would have otherwise been difficult to fill. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the opportunity to preach, and when I can use these opportunities to inspire and challenge churches to become much more intentional about reaching men with the Gospel it becomes a real winner. But I can get a bit frustrated when the opportunity proves to be no more than keeping the Sunday morning service going.
So, despite this invite being firmly about the latter, I decided to try to challenge them to rethink why they were doing what they were doing. I started the talk with a challenge that I believe cut straight to the core:
“What is the Gospel supposed to do?”
We talked about compassion, justice, love, and a sense of community. We talked about the world that God had originally designed, and we talked about our own personal lives. Is Christianity supposed to just make us feel better about ourselves? Or are we called into the greatest rescue mission of all time?
And this is where I was able to share some thoughts on why every church needs to bother with men’s groups. All around us men are suffering. They are suffering with their marriages. They are suffering with their work. They have a loss of hope. Mental health is at absolute crisis levels. We live in an un-fathered generation, and we are inflicting that same pain and misery of those around us, the ones we hold dear.
The church should be the hope of the nations, but many are too weighed down by the relentless task of keeping the system going week in, week out.
Now, please hear me right, this is not a cheap pop at the church, but it is a watertight case for why we do what we do. In the past month I have had countless long conversations with exhausted church leaders, they are frustrated and hurting themselves—in this moment they have no chance of reaching their mates with the Gospel. All I have got for them is this, why don’t you come to our men’s group? Come just for yourself! I think it could be lifechanging for you.
My hope is that they will recapture the vision of what the Gospel really is supposed to do? My prayer is that they will see the rescue mission happening before their own eyes—in its most simplistic and raw beauty.
I don’t intentionally look in the gutter, that said one of my greatest achievements as a child was finding a tenner in the gutter. If memories serve me right that tenner magically turned itself into the vinyl version of Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and with some change in my pocket (that’s one for you Pincher). But I have spent the rest of my life trying to look away from the gutter, and live a life modelled on Jesus Christ. But if the Gospel has done anything in me it really has driven me into the task of rescuing as many others as I can from the gutter.
Men, we all have a choice – we can relentlessly keep the system going, and it will get us exhausted, or we can let the Gospel do what it was always supposed to do, we can let it drive us to reach out to men all around us and model a much better way. After all, we can teach what we know, but we can only reproduce what we are!
Here’s my #TopTip for this week, start chatting to all the men in your local church and ask them what they think the Gospel is supposed to do. Challenge them to get serious about the rescue mission God has called all of us to. Caution them not to turn that into getting religious about it. Then, as a band of brothers on the same mission get a Level One men’s event happening in 4-6 weeks from today—that will give you plenty of time to invite all your mates along.
