Church of God LifeBuilders

Fortunately for me (and for my wife, children, parents, and brothers), our church had a vision to disciple me to become a godly man, husband, and father. The pastor was determined to make this happen. And the church had adopted a strategy that not only got me started, but had additional steps to sustain my growth and service. And best of all—at least for me—our church acted quickly once they learned I had received Christ.

A Couples Bible Study

I’ve had many awesome opportunities to grow, but the most systematic one came when Patsy and I were invited to join a home Bible Study led by Jim Gillean. Jim was an engineer who really made us all think about what the Scriptures meant and, importantly, how they applied to everyday life. During those Bible studies I learned how to read the Bible for myself, how to pray, and how to have a daily devotional.

Scripture Memorization

Scripture memorization was popular at the time, and I memorized hundreds of verses—one of the best "equip" things I ever did. I still recall verses every day that I learned back then.

Proverbs

At a weekend seminar, the speaker noted that the book of Proverbs has 31 chapters. He suggested we read one chapter a day each month. I took the challenge and for 15 years or so, I read a chapter in Proverbs every day. With that kind of exposure, I was soon quoting "Proverbs" in my everyday language.

Teaching a Class

We were invited into Jim’s Bible Study as part of a package to both "equip" and "send" us. We were "sent" when they asked Patsy and me to lead a six week Sunday school class for new Christians that repeated several times a year. Leading the class for new Christians was definitely "learning by doing." Even though the new believer’s questions were simple and basic, I still had to scramble because I was a rookie at serving Christ. Leading helped me grow like a weed.

Evangelism Training

Our church hosted a Campus Crusade for Christ weekend training to teach people how to do personal evangelism. Patsy and I attended, and I just ate it up. They "equipped" us on Saturday and "sent" us on Sunday! I led my first person to Jesus on a Sunday afternoon home visit. I started taking businessmen to lunch, sharing my testimony, and asking, "Where are you on your spiritual pilgrimage?" If they didn’t understand the gospel, I would read them Bill Bright’s Four Spiritual Laws and most of them became Christians too.

Marketplace Small Group

Six of us in the business community started meeting in a weekly small group to share, learn, and pray for each other. The main thing about this group was that we were "for" each other, and that "equipped" me to have adult male friendships for the first time.

Marketplace Ministry

One day I proposed to our small group that we fan out in the community and take positions in politics, education, and civic life. I volunteered to take the "civic life" category and joined the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce. They immediately put me on the Program Committee, and six months later I was the Chair. I prayed, "God, why am I here?" I sensed God had "sent" me there to start a prayer breakfast, so I acted. For the last 30 years we have conducted an annual Leadership Prayer Breakfast, and hundreds of business leaders have become Christians as a result.

A Men’s Retreat

About this time, someone invited me to attend a weekend men’s only retreat hosted by The Fellowship at Windy Gap, North Carolina. The main speaker was Tom Skinner, former gang leader and evangelist. Tom’s messages focused on the kingdom of God, loving God, and loving other people—especially people who are different from us.

Tom liked to play tennis, and they had courts at Windy Gap. The next night I skipped out on the main session and walked up to the courts. Tom was there hitting balls. We struck up a conversation. He talked to me as though I was the only person on Earth still living. I felt the love of God coming through him into me. It was a supreme "equipping" time for me.

Leadership Conferences

The whole experience with Tom was so overwhelming to me that, being the task-oriented man I was, I immediately asked him if he would come to Orlando and share his message with all my tired, worn-out Christian friends. He said yes, and soon we hosted the first of several Christian Leadership Conferences in Orlando. I remember my Christian workaholic friends coming up to Tom after his sessions with tears streaming down their faces.

A One-on-One Friendship

One thing Tom said that weekend at Windy Gap gripped me: "If you want to change your city or church, don’t try to organize a big revival. Instead, find some like-minded men and become to each other what you want your city or church to become. Meet together and share your lives with each other. That will create a model so attractive that others will want to be part of it." That really grabbed hold of my insides. As soon as I returned home, I started praying for God to send me a man. On the following Sunday, I saw Ken Moar, a friendly man 30 years my senior, standing in the hall. I shared Tom’s idea, and we have been meeting weekly since 1977.

Serving the Community

In 1980, here in Orlando, we had a racially charged civil disturbance that was big enough to make the evening network news. I called an African American college professor that I knew fairly well. Motivated by my relationship with Tom Skinner, I told him I would like to pull together a meeting of black and white men; not to change Orlando, but to become to each other what we think Orlando should become.

I made a list of 20 white men and he made a list of 20 black men. We invited them to come to a Saturday morning meeting. Half came—10 black and 10 white. We met one Saturday morning each month for the next five years. We called ourselves "The Black/White Fellowship." More tasks and "sending" came out of that group than you can ever imagine: Men going to seminary, starting ministries, meeting financial needs, helping the poor, fixing houses, medical needs.

Books

The ministry of Christian literature began affecting me early. Frankly, though, some of the early books I read were too advanced for me. But I soldiered on, and several authors left deep imprints on my faith and worldview—men like Francis Schaeffer, J. I. Packer, Oswald Chambers, and C. S. Lewis.

Parenting Skills

As we started our own family, a very attractive couple in our church who raised four successful boys invited us to attend a parenting class. We already knew about the class, but the clincher for us to attend was a personal invitation to me from the man. I felt honored to be asked personally by a leader in the church. I had never been methodically "equipped" in the area of parenting. My wife, Patsy, had handed me many pages and even chapters of great parenting books to read —Dobson mostly. However, listening to our teachers and comparing notes with our peers brought everything down to street level.

A Disciple Making Church

When Dr. Chuck Green preached, he preached to men. Of course, he preached to women too, but he was a man’s man. He used a lot of humor and stories that I could relate to as a man. I didn’t feel like Christianity was for wimps. He had a vision to make disciples—calling, equipping, and sending.

The Gift of Giving

The Lord gave me some gifts in business, and by the early 1980s we were flush with money. My church presented good teaching on stewardship. Patsy and I decided to put a cap on our standard of living. We had been "equipped" to understand that God gives some people a spiritual gift of giving to the needs of others.

Conclusion

Each of your men is unique and God deals with them as individuals. Nevertheless, all men need to be called to live in Christ, equipped to live like Christ, and sent to live for Christ. I hope this two-part case study creates a sense of freedom and variety about the many ways your men can become disciples of Jesus.

——————————————————————

Patrick Morley is the Founder and CEO of Man in the Mirror.

Since "the heart" sounds like a "girly word" to many guys, you will need to help them understand that tending the heart is also manly. Luke 6:45 says, "The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks."

The single greatest contribution you can make to your men is to help them change the core affections of their hearts. How? Here are a few suggestions:

• Teach them how to each day come humbly to foot of cross and surrender to the Lordship of Jesus.
• Teach your men that Christianity is not behavior modification; it’s heart transformation.
• Do not merely teach men to be better. Call them to be different—to join the cause of the gospel of Jesus Christ and to live in the shadow of that call.
• Men can already see your strengths, so reveal your weaknesses. God uses the weak things of this world for His glory. Make a seminal decision to be transparent.
• It is a spiritual operation first and foremost. Tell your men that they can cooperate with God’s sanctification by consecrating themselves to holiness.
• Teach your men that people do exactly what they want to do in their hearts. Their behavior reflects what’s in their hearts.
• Since belief determines behavior, teach them this progression:
  • Right reading—>Right thinking—>Right believing—>Right behaving.
• Therefore, one of the greatest tasks a man can undertake is to align his heart into a one-to-one correlation of his Bible, his belief, and his behavior.

For you? Attend to the core affections of your own heart. Minister out of the overflow of your own expanding relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus. If you can’t, you must go into a quiet wood and stay there until you hear his voice, see his face, feel the warmth of his embrace, and feel the salty taste of repentant tears running down your face.

The best use of my time is to bring myself into the real presence of Jesus. I try not leave my private altar in the morning until I have experienced a moment of humility, a moment when I have sensed the real presence.

Yours for changed lives,

Patrick Morley, Ph.D.

Man in the Mirror

Growing up in the church, I assumed I was "in." Jesus was my example. However, I have no recollection of any teaching that I needed a Savior, or that Jesus wanted to have a relationship with me to help guide my life. I’m not saying the gospel was not preached, only that I have no such recollection. My parents and three brothers had the same experience.

Religion for me was veneration of a majestic historical figure but with no present relevance or personal application. I believed in a God I did not understand, and lived in a world which I had no reason to think He inhabited.

The Search for Meaning and Purpose

Like all young men, I wanted my life to count. As a high schooler, a voice inside my head kept screaming, "You were created for a purpose." But everything in my life bored me—school, my part-time job, my family. I even bored myself. I was angry that life seemed so "little," so insignificant, and so pointless.

I had no idea who I was, why I existed, where I was going, or how to get there. My world didn’t work, so I quit high school in the middle of my senior year.

The next thing I remember it was 5:00 a.m. at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and a ferocious drill sergeant was screaming for me to get out of bed for a three mile run before breakfast. I was eventually assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, N.C.

The structure and boundaries of the Army actually created a sense of safety for me. After passing the GED test, I enrolled in night classes at N.C. State University’s Ft. Bragg branch. I was still searching.

For an English Literature class, I read in Hamlet, "This above all: to thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." I thought, That’s the most noble thought I have ever heard uttered! I adopted it as my life credo and said, "I will always try to do the right thing by everyone I meet." Essentially, on that day I became a moralist.

However, feelings of loneliness soon overwhelmed me. A fellow soldier invited me to a church in Fayetteville, N.C. They allowed me to be an assistant to the couple leading the high school youth group. The relationships filled a void, but only part of it.

I set an appointment with the pastor and, with tears streaming down my face, told him how lonely and sad I was. He smiled and said, "You will get over this. It’s just something we all have to go through from time to time." I left his office knowing that we both were lost.

Having failed to find meaning and purpose in religion, after the Army and college I decided to try my hand at business. I became a materialist in addition to a moralist. Soon I was meeting all my goals, but the more I achieved the more miserable I became. Life was futile.

The Pain Leading Up to New Birth

In the meantime, I had met Patsy. She wanted to marry a Christian, so I convinced her I was one. Within weeks of our marriage, however, it was obvious that we had an ambiguity of terms about what it meant to be a Christian.

I thought being a Christian meant "living by a set of Christian values." I was surprised to learn that for Patsy being a Christian meant "a personal relationship with Jesus grounded in faith." I thought it was a task—something I did to make God happy (or at least avoid His wrath). But for Patsy it was a relationship—a love relationship in which God actively guided her daily life.

I wanted what she had. But I didn’t want to give up anything to get it. So I tried to "imitate" her while living like I had always done. The harder I tried, the worse things became. One dreary day I came home from work in my new luxury car, closed the garage door, then tried to knock down the garage wall with the sole of my foot for ten minutes or so. The angst was eating a hole through me.

Sunday morning I said to Patsy, "Let’s go to church." At this point, I was blaming my wife for my miseries and thought, If we go to church maybe it will help Patsy and I might meet some investors for my real estate deals.

After the service, several young couples surrounded us in the most pleasant way—like they really cared. Two of the husbands took a personal interest in me. We went to lunch. We talked. We went to their homes for dinners. They invited us to a Friday night Bible study that met in the home of an optometrist and his wife.

I tried—I really did. I wanted to perform. I wanted to make them happy. I wanted to be like them. I did my best. But I couldn’t. I was selfish and, worse, pretended that I was not.

Waves of frustration swept over me. One morning I was ranting and raving, trying to expiate my pain, taking these frustrations out on my wife. I said things to her a man should never say to a woman. With tears rolling down her face, she just sat there and "took it like a man."

When my rage was winding down, our eyes met and I was transfixed. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. After she held my gaze for what seemed like a brief eternity, she asked, "Pat, is there anything about me that you like?"

I wandered off to my office and spent the morning staring out my window. I wondered, "What happened to you, Morley? You wanted your life to count, to make a difference. But you’re just a nobody headed nowhere." And it was true.

Young Couples Sunday School Class

It was time for another try at "religion." We started to attend a Sunday school class for young couples led by a wonderful middle aged couple. It was a case of "equipping" before the "calling" had taken place! The man read from Ephesians 5:25-33. I only remember the first few words:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy….

At the particular moment he read, I was staring at the floor. My face flushed and I started sweating profusely. Within a minute or so my undershirt was soaked. I have never felt more embarrassed in my life. I was certain that everyone knew that I was not loving my wife as I should. I was sure they were all now staring at me. I couldn’t look up—I didn’t want to. A powerful force of true moral guilt swept over me. It was the first time I recall feeling what I later came to understand was conviction of sin. But I didn’t know what to do with it. I soldiered on.

Preaching

In his sermons, the pastor was telling me about Jesus in a way I had never considered—-a personal God interested in me personally.

As we drove away from church one Sunday in August, 1973, I was picking on Patsy for something I cannot now remember. Something inside of me snapped. I finally came to the end of myself. I pulled out my white handkerchief and surrendered. I prayed, "God I just can’t do this anymore. I’m a sinful man, and I need you to save me. Jesus, I surrender my life to you, and ask you to come into my life and change me." I have never been the same.

Of course, every man’s story is different in the details. But in another sense every man’s story is the same: the feelings…the futility…the pain…the lashing out…the drawing toward Jesus…the witnesses…the "hearing" of God’s word…the conviction of sin…the preaching of God’s Word…the coming to end of self.

——————————————————————

Patrick Morley is the Founder and CEO of Man in the Mirror.

Help your men think more deeply about their lives. Second Corinthians 13:5 says, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?" Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

It helps to have tools. Below are some completion statements. Print them for your men. Give them 15—20 minutes to write their answers (you too). Then ask each man to share with the group, "What surprised you most about this exercise and why?" Close by asking each man to write down any action steps he wants to take. You could go even deeper by asking the men to hold each other accountable for the changes they want to make.

Here are the completion statements. Hopefully, Jesus will figure prominently into your men’s answers. You may wish to add to the list:

• I am happiest when…
• My core values are…
• My highest priorities are…
• I do my best work…
• A good day is…
• My goal is…
• My ongoing struggle is…

Yours for changed lives,

Patrick Morley, Ph.D.

Man in the Mirror

Teach your men what it means to lead a balanced life. Personally, I like it best when I am "busy and balanced." It’s a fine line. What can we tell men about the look of a balanced life, and how to achieve one?

At the 50^th wedding anniversary party of a friend, the 40 to 50 guests were a) his happy wife, b) his children (some of whom flew in), c) his pastor who thought enough of him to comment on his life, and d) about 40 friends. In his case, no one from the office. And he was very happy.

Tell your men these few things. You no doubt can think of more.

1. No amount of success at work will ever be adequate to compensate for failure at home.
2. After God, but before all others, make your mate your top priority. Spend time together alone, touch her, listen to her, be faithful to her, encourage her with words, take care of her financially, laugh together, and be her best friend.
3.  Invest in your children with time, prayer, and encouraging words like, "I love you," and "I’m proud of you." Older men swear there’s no pain like child pain. If your children end up doing well, all of your other problems will fit into a thimble.
4. Most men compartmentalize their family, but not their work. In other words, they think about their work when they’re with their families, but not their families while they’re at work. Tell men to put a time and mental boundary up around their work. For example, they could declare, "I will not work after 6:00 p.m." One man promised to take his wife out to dinner every time he broke the rule.
5. Let Jesus be your highest and best thought in every situation. Pray about everything. For example, every time you make a phone call, say a silent prayer for 5 seconds as you pick up the receiver. There are many other ways you can pray. Jesus will help you lead a balanced life if you’re in constant communication.

Help your men discover that a happy wife, children who still want to be around them, a pastor who would be willing to say something nice about them, and about 40 friends would be a great achievement. What more can a man really want?

Yours for balanced lives,

Patrick Morley, Ph.D.

Man in the Mirror