An excerpt from the new book With Him

Praying for Men

When I have spoken about the matter of training with church leaders, I have often run into the question, Where do you get such men? The thought behind the question is that such men just are not available. And indeed that is a real challenge. Remember God’s comment in Ezekiel 22:30: “I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none.”

Without sounding simplistic, let me address this challenge. I noted when I was first exposed to this concept of training men for ministry and outreach that Jesus spent the night in prayer before He chose the Twelve. It is therefore no wonder when He looked on the crowds as scattered sheep wandering and without food, direction, or leadership that He told His men, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matt. 9:37–38).

Don’t miss this: Jesus taught His men to look to God for such workers. Doesn’t that mean that God will raise up such men as we ask Him for them?

This approach to the problem is confirmed in John 17:6, Jesus’ intercessory prayer to the Father for His men, where He identified those men as “the people whom you gave me out of the world.” I gather from this that the men we seek are men who already have some sense of hunger or call from God to grow and reach others. Those men are just waiting for someone to encourage them to rise to this challenge.

Therefore, when I’ve been asked, “Where do you get these men?” I have simply said, “On my knees. Then I watch for them.” Wherever I have been, I have found certain men ready to alter their schedules to learn how to walk with Christ and reach out to other men. But I have “discovered” them through private conversation. They had been waiting until then for a challenge that had never come. They were ready now for a manly challenge that demanded their life.

Coming Alongside Men

There is another problem, though. In our churches there seem to be many a “Joe Christian,” a guy seeming to be something less than a spiritually minded, aggressive witness for the Lord Jesus—and a congregation that appears happy to have it so. As I have pondered this, I have been reminded of something Dwight Eisenhower (whose military career included being commander-in-chief of the Allied Forces) wrote about the early days of the Second World War and the condition of American troops.

General McNair had taken his men out on maneuvers. When he returned, he reported to Eisenhower that the troops were terribly undisciplined; however, he contended they were capable of the best discipline. To this Eisenhower issued the following announcement: “Where troops are undisciplined, leadership will be replaced.” It was in that mode that the United States military became equipped for armed battles to follow. Likewise church leaders need to be proactive in instilling spiritual action in the lives of their church members.

This need is something that Richard Halverson, then pastor of Hollywood Presbyterian Church and later the chaplain of the United States Senate, learned from an experience with one of the men in his church. In the course of conversation over lunch the man began to weep. Halverson was startled and asked if he had said something wrong. “Oh no,” the man said, “I just didn’t think you pastors had time for men like us.” Halverson was jolted. As a result he changed his whole approach to his ministry. From then on, he gave his best attention to men. He later sent out a regular letter—afterward compiled into a book (Man to Man: Thought-Provoking Meditations for Men [Zondervan, 1968])—to encourage them in their Christian walk. My experience in my denomination supported this view of the general condition in our churches. Men as men were just not the focus of pastors. (Of course women too need to be discipled. Those who perform this role—whether as women’s workers or as older women in the church—are to be greatly valued.)

When on occasion I have preached just to the men in the congregation, the response of the women has been interesting. For example, one time in the suburbs of Ottawa, Ont., I told the congregation in the morning service that I wanted all the men to be present that evening and I would be preaching only to men. To this the women all smiled approvingly, and some spoke to me appreciatively. I’m sure they understood, as I am persuaded, that there is a deep emptiness in many men in our churches. They personally have never experienced man-to-man discipleship. They may even be unsure of their salvation. The writer to the Hebrews, in 5:12, encountered the same problem: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food.”

As was Halverson’s experience, however, many men feel that their pastor has no time for them personally. Their pastor’s vision does not seem to include this perspective of training the men in their churches to mature and become skilled in reaching others for Christ. So while the men of many churches may appear disinterested and unavailable, leaders must first spend time with them alone and inquire of their Christian faith and service.

Dawson Trotman, when in the early days of his Christian experience, taught a class of young boys. On a particular occasion, one of them had really disrupted the class and Trotman asked him to stay after the others had left. He told the boy he had been acting like a devil! Then he challenged him next week to act like an angel. As he told this story to us, he chuckled and commented: “Boys lose their stinger when you get them alone.” I later picked up on that and concluded that men are just big boys. You need to get them alone and then really get to know them.

Combatting Our Culture

Our prevailing culture makes the problem of finding available men even worse. My wife and I served some time in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. While there I wanted to better understand Australian men. So I ventured into a shop and engaged the proprietor in friendly chat. He could tell by my speech I was American.

“Tell me about Australian men,” I probed. He spoke openly and freely, explaining they were genuine, helpful, friendly, and so forth. I then asked, “What about religion?” His hands went up, objecting. “It’s not discussed,” he said. “That’s a closed topic.”

I found out he was right. Sunday in Melbourne is all about football. There were two boys in our Sunday school in Melbourne—there without their father. Once they became 16, we never saw them again. Their dad had influence over their priorities, and it was football that had become their focus. As a result he had cut off our contact with his boys. The culture had won. We were stymied by it and realized again that culture wars against us, seducing men with all kinds of idols and distracting them from what is crucial. We’re in a life-and-death conflict—make no mistake about it.

Yet the man is the key to the family in that God’s plan is for the father to take the initiative in rearing the children. Some men realize this and take their responsibility seriously. For example, some men in Cincinnati, Ohio, had a group called “For Fathers Who Aren’t in Heaven.” They met each week to encourage one another in the Lord. They gathered at an early hour, like 6 a.m., so that it worked without conflicting with their other schedules. They considered this time a priority and didn’t miss it. As a result, their lives began to change. As one woman commented to a visitor at their church, who inquired about the group, “That’s the most important gathering of the week in this church.” Christ-centered fellowship plays a big role in leading men—just as Jesus Himself had 12 male disciples.

Our challenge to reach men is not simple. Man is a fallen creature who is full of pride. He’s locked up inside and—he thinks—holds the key to his future. But he’s wrong! God holds the key, and unless He shows mercy to this stubborn heart, man will plunge to his eternal death and perish in hell. So men need to hear the gospel. If a man repents and comes to Christ, he will be saved; but then he will need plenty of personal help to learn how to follow His new Savior and Lord. This is where pastors and mature men of the church should be there to help him.

The Need to Train Pastors Themselves in Discipleship

A problem arises, however, if such mature Christian men—who would be in a position to disciple others—are missing. And if the men of our church are undiscipled (rather than undisciplined), should we employ Eisenhower’s principle that the leadership needs to be replaced?

It’s not quite that simple. What if pastors have never themselves been personally discipled? What if no one ever shepherded them to learn to walk with Christ? What if that side of ministry was omitted from their seminary experience? In most cases I would maintain that the church leadership has not itself been trained to nurture and equip men as men. Indeed, there has been a “feminization of Western culture,” about which sociologists, including women, have written.

As a result of their lack of experience and training, there is a tendency for many ministers in practice simply to say, “Listen to me, and you will catch on.” I was that way. Having been taught something about how to preach, I preached. How to respond to my teaching I considered the congregation’s challenge. But conceiving they might need personal help if they would ever become able to reach others with the gospel was not in my mind. I did not have this vision, let alone any inclination of how to do so.

I remember sitting in the study of a pastor in the Midwest, during the time I was serving as Christian education director. We had been discussing the role of men in the church and its importance. He began to weep. I hesitated. Had I said something amiss? He quickly assured me the reason was not me, but his own awareness of his lack. He asked, “Ken, what do you do with those men you have in training? What do you say to them?” I felt his frustration. He had no concept whatever of developing other men to “minister” so the gospel could multiply.

Historically, teaching about the pastor’s role has reinforced this way of thinking. In Ephesians 4:11–12, the King James Bible reads, “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” Matthew Henry, a respected pastor in the 17th and 18th Century, explained this passage in his popular commentary (Complete Commentary, now available online) by stating that these three instructions outline a pastor’s job description:

1. perfecting the saints (that is, believers);

2. the work of ministry; and

3. the building up of the saints (believers) in their faith.

This meant the term “ministry,” as it had become commonly used, was seen to apply to the pastor alone. He was the minister. Certainly my training in seminary fit this historic model.

But modern translations have caught the more accurate rendition. Instead of seeing these as three dimensions of the pastor’s agenda, they are rather linked together as progressive aspects of one task, namely, as the ESV renders it, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12). In other words, the pastor’s task is to “equip” or train the members to serve or minister themselves so the church is built up. Verse 16 adds that it is “when each part is working properly” that the whole body of Christ grows “so that it builds itself up in love.” Every member is to be built up to fulfill his or her function in the body, the church. And the focus of the pastor’s work is to help each person find his or her place of service within the community of believers.

I sympathize with pastors who have no understanding of ministry to men. If they had been trained to fulfill the three roles Matthew Henry outlines, omitting the aspect of equipping believers to minister, then there is little reason for them to be blamed. They were not trained to teach others to minister. I understand that deficiency from firsthand experience. I was not trained in seminary with such a vision for my future work in mind; I acquired it from another source. Yet the result is a dilemma: men who seem unavailable for training in discipleship on the one hand, and pastors who lack either the vision or the know-how in training other men on the other hand.

Often this seeming roadblock is overcome through developing men’s fellowship groups. Men like comradery. It’s in groups like these that conversations often open up in which men feel free to discuss their desires and hopes. It’s catalytic. Though often men are slower than women to open up to one another, they will in genuine fellowship. And it’s there they often sense another’s need and step in to help.

Happily there are many men who have been called by God—not only pastors but other men of God—who are in the context of their ordinary life “disciple makers.” These men have learned how to walk with Jesus and obey His will, and they reach out to other men and equip them to train still others. The result is a multiplication of new disciples. When I understood the importance and significance of this discipling process, I became an excited pastor!

Ken Smith is a retired RP minister living in Pittsburgh, Pa. He is the author of several books. This excerpt from chapter 4 of With Him is used by permission. With Him is available at CrownandCovenant.com and at 10ofThose.us*