Whole Reason

One of my favorite sub­jects is restor­ing the true mas­cu­line to spir­i­tu­al­ity in the Church.  The fact that we have female lead pas­tors in vio­la­tion of scrip­ture (see item 13 in Pet Peeves — in church), a fem­i­nized spir­i­tu­al­ity that fails to appeal to men (who by design need to be War­riors, Wild­men, and Kings), and a lack of a seri­ous call to lead­er­ship and dis­ci­ple­ship in the Church all lead us to weak spir­i­tu­al­ity, and a fail­ure to be salt and light in society. 

Even worse, the lib­eral churches, esp. the Anglicans/Episcopalians, hav­ing aban­doned the bib­li­cal lead­er­ship man­dates and dis­tinc­tions for men in the fam­ily and church, have gone the next step beyond fem­i­niza­tion to the heresy of ordain­ing unre­pen­tant homo­sex­u­als.

Over the years, men’s min­istries such as Promise Keep­ers, as well as good books such as No More Chris­t­ian Nice Guy: When Being Nice–Instead of Good–Hurts Men, Women and Chil­dren, Heal­ing the Mas­cu­line Soul: God’s Restora­tion of Men to Real Man­hood, and Wild at Heart: Dis­cov­er­ing the Secret of a Man’s Soul have stepped into the gap to address weak mas­cu­line spirituality.

Now, Amer­i­can Vision offers us a four part DVD series enti­tled Mas­cu­line Spir­i­tual Lead­er­ship, on sale for $10 instead of $30! I’ve ordered it today, and look for­ward to view­ing and using it with our men.  Here’s the out­line of what’s in it.  BTW, nice cover art — kind of steam-punkish.

• PART 2: Lead­ing Our­selves, Our Wives, & Our Chil­dren (37 minutes)
• PART 3: In Search of Virtue (26 minutes)
• PART 4: Deci­sion Mak­ing in the Home: Dic­ta­tor­ships, Dis­agree­ments and the Gar­den of Eden (37 minutes)

So, I just had my biweekly lunch w/ my pas­tor, who is men­tor­ing me as I work towards being a full time pas­tor.  He’s a really atyp­i­cal pas­tor in that he is leav­ing the pas­toral line of work for pro­fes­sional coach­ing.  He planted the church I am in about 14 years ago, and is going through the tough process of let­ting it go to oth­ers.  He also just sub­mit­ted a man­u­script of a book he’s writ­ten for peo­ple want­ing to opti­mize their life — not a Chris­t­ian book, but more like one of those Peter Drucker books. 

But what I like about him is his wis­dom in the frus­tra­tions of min­istry, his dis­re­gard for reli­gious expec­ta­tions, and his desire to do things with effec­tive­ness, integrity, and real­ity.  His own life is not squeaky clean and per­fect, and he is trans­par­ent about his own bro­ken­ness, which is why he is beloved at our church.

So I wanted to start record­ing the things I learn in our long lunch meetings.

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