Foreign.

Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

This is a weekly show featuring in depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world.

New episodes release every Friday.

My guest this week is Vince Miller, an author and speaker who's dedicated three decades to men's ministry.

He's written 21 books for men and reaches 100,000 people daily through his daily devotional.

And his new book, Essential Elements Forging Godly Men, is genuinely one of the best works on masculinity I've encountered.

And if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know I don't make recommendations like that lightly.

At first it was personal.

I wanted to understand what being a man meant for me as someone who never quite fit the football and frat boy model my culture presented as the only valid expression of masculinity.

Then, as I grew more comfortable with my own strengths as a man, my focus shifted from personal to social, cultural and political implications because I discovered I wasn't alone in asking the questions I was.

This led me through two worlds of masculine thought, which I'll compare using the familiar but perhaps surprising metaphor of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

The first world I encountered was men's inner work, exemplified by various organizations like the Mankind Project, which were focused on exploring men's emotional landscapes.

These groups excel at guiding men through their inner lives, guilt, grief, shame, and what our culture calls trauma.

However, they struggle with conflict resolution.

When someone wrongs you, they don't ask what moral principle was violated.

Instead, it's always, how does that make you feel?

They frame conflict not as a matter of right and wrong, but as an opportunity for self reflection.

While there were valuable lessons to be learned there, this approach creates passive men unable to assert healthy boundaries.

In other words, the porridge was too cold.

Then came the manosphere, including the red pill and pickup culture.

These men emphasized assertiveness, whether in financial pursuits, physical fitness, or relationships, often to unhealthy extremes.

But they completely rejected the inner world emotions.

Those are weaknesses.

If someone wrongs you, the solution is to become stronger and wrong them back harder.

No higher law, just jungle law.

Their porridge was too hot.

Now I've been watching these same extremes play out in Christian circles, creating a devastating divide.

On one side, passive men hide behind servant leadership, while on the other, a rising tide of manosphere style thinking promotes dominion.

With hardened hearts, men are ruining their careers and reputations by running into one ditch or the other.

Now, this division makes no sense because unlike either secular extreme, we have an objective standard in Christ, a transcendent moral law, and a just God who convicts us of sin while guiding us toward righteousness and through the narrow gate.

And lately I've been wondering, why doesn't anyone seem to get that?

That's why Vince Miller's work stands out so powerfully to me and has been an answer to a quiet prayer.

After reading Essential Elements Forging Godly Men, I realized here was someone getting it just right.

Vince acknowledges the objective reality of righteousness and sin in the world, both what we commit and what happens to us.

He recognizes our need to address unrighteous social circumstances, but that we have to start with the condition of our own hearts first.

With 30 years of experience, nearly 100,000 YouTube subscribers, and 21 books covering everything from personal finance to physical fitness, Vince brings tested, refined wisdom to this critical conversation.

Meanwhile, other men appear to be burning their houses down in the quest to post the next hot take to get ahead of a political issue or appear a certain way to a certain audience to build their clout, influence, and more.

To that, I say no, none of that.

The challenges of being a man today are too wide, too far reaching, and too consequential.

We cannot take our eyes off our sanctification as men if we hope to make a bit of difference in this world.

It seems to me that Vince gets that sharing and embodying the answers that I think men need to hear now.

Friends, we're not just recording conversations on the Will Spencer podcast.

We're part of a restoration project for Christian civilization in the west.

And I need you in this fight with me.

So when you visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, take a moment to write how these conversations impacted you.

Your words might be exactly what someone needs to hear to give this show their first listen.

Those conversations that shifted your thinking.

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For those ready to go deeper, please visit willspencerpod.substack.com and become a paid subscriber for ad free interviews and exclusive content.

And remember, our sponsors aren't just businesses, they're allies, building Christian economic strength for generations.

Supporting them isn't just spending money, it's it's investing in an American reformation.

Also, a quick note before we begin.

I loved that work it brought me real joy.

But I also discovered that I needed to work harder to put Christian foundations under it, shaking off some of that men's inner work and manosphere thinking that I had absorbed.

So I folded up my one on one men's ministry about a year ago.

Well, I'm thrilled to announce that those mentorships will be resuming shortly.

Featuring a blend of biblical counseling to help men resolve the destructive sin issues that many struggle with, alongside wisdom tools that I've developed to help men make thoughtful, informed decisions in their lives, households and careers.

I also now have a board of directors featuring two experienced and faithful pastors who will be my accountability, providing you the security that that I'm not just some guy doing this work on his own.

And even better, my programs will now be much more affordable.

I cannot tell you how excited I am to be doing this work again.

It's what I've wanted for a decade.

More information will be coming very soon with the launch of my new website.

But if you're interested in one of these programs now, please email me@infoenofman.com and we can start the conversation.

Please email me@infonofmen.com and we can start the conversation today.

And please welcome this week's guest on the podcast, the host of Vince's Daily Devo and the author of Essential Elements Forging Godly Men, Vince Miller.

Vince Miller, thanks so much for joining me on the Will Spencer podcast.

I'm excited to be here, brother.

Good to meet you and great to have a conversation.

Right.

I have been so looking forward to this.

I have your book here, Essential Elements Forging Godly Men.

And as I said just a minute ago, when we first connected.

I've read many books about masculinity and I've read many books about Christian masculinity.

This is by far one of the best I've ever read and it's definitely the best book about Christian masculinity that I've ever read.

I definitely encourage my audience to, to go out and pick this up and that's why I've been looking forward to this conversation.

Well, I am humbled that you will say that because a lot of it is just my stories and God's story, right, and how they intersect.

But I think that was what lent the book such gravitas.

Like you didn't have, you didn't seem to have any hesitation with saying the moments that were difficult for you where you had messed up.

Very, very, very open about that.

The moments that were meaningful to you.

But most importantly was the lessons that you took from it that I'd never really heard anyone frame in quite the same same way before.

So I felt it was just a very well rounded, very accessible book that didn't, as you say, didn't talk down to men, but it didn't butter them up either, which I really appreciated.

Yeah, I know.

It's.

God is always writing a story on our hearts will.

And sometimes we think that that's our story, but it's really just his story written on our hearts that he wants us then to share.

And I know some men have a lot of shame about that story, but if we can move through that repentance, reconciliation, shame phase quickly and get to the, the next stage, which is discipleship, disciple making, leaving a legacy, all that kind of stuff, using our gifts, et cetera, it becomes a powerful moment.

And if we could mature past some of the wounds, we will see that just like Paul's story, if you read the New Testament, his story was all reshaped maybe about 10 years later when all of a sudden Barnabas came and got him and he just begins sharing his story.

That's all he did throughout Asia.

He just shared his story over and over and over and over again.

And it stuck, man.

And it was powerful and planted churches and revolutionized major metropolitan areas and established churches and actually wrecked some people's lives of course too, along the way.

Yeah, in good ways.

But I want to focus for a second on you said repentance, reconciliation and shame.

Now, of course, repentance and reconciliation are really important parts.

I've never heard the shame part addressed, but this is something that I've encountered in my work with men who go through that repentance and reconciliation process, but they just can't let it go and perhaps forgive.

Forgive themselves.

Maybe that seems tied to what you're talking about.

So let's, let's focus on that for just a second because this is just one of the many frameworks you put forth.

A couple others in the book as well that I thought were really fresh takes on some very common problems.

Yeah, I mean, I think we all understand men to some degree, but I think one of the big issues that men have is working through this silent voice of shame that imprisons them to their past.

Now don't get me wrong, I know some of us men have lived harder past with more consequences.

But even so, the renewed man, the man with a new identity, the man who is called son, he.

He needs to work through that.

That is where the discipleship of the mind, the renewal of the mind begin to take hold.

And if I read the New Testament text correctly and understand what Jesus did on the cross, he bore our shame for us, taking and removing that shame so that we might stand shameless before God.

But I just don't think many men navigate through that very well.

They, they love the idea as Jesus as savior, like saving them from their circumstance.

But to really embrace Jesus as Lord, you know, controller and leader, dictator of all of our life, whom we serve, then we have to adopt a mindset of a servant and a slave, which means that we rid ourselves of really all shame.

But a lot of men, it takes a lot of time sometimes to work through some of those things.

I mean, you do counseling, you understand this.

Just, it's a lot of work on those demons, right?

Drawing them out, addressing them, and then learning to forgive ourselves.

But I think the next part of the equation is also understanding that some people are going to weaponize our past shame against us and they're going to resurrect those demons, right?

And then we have to speak back to them, truth, to make sure that we're not just picking up that old shame again and, and all that old bondage and those shackles that have been tied to us.

We have to break free from them in hopes that we can live really in that identity of Christ and live a shame free life.

So it's a little bit, it's somewhere between our feelings about our past and the actual consequences of our past, because the consequences could echo on for many years or perhaps much longer.

That is a very different thing than how we feel about the past.

If we're redeemed men, is that kind of about right?

Yeah, you know, it's exactly.

I think you as a counselor, you found that little fine line right there, which is good, but let me just add one little nuance to it.

It's embracing the biblical truth, what it says about us.

That is true.

Not ignoring the shame, but working through it.

So we come out on the other side with a renewed identity.

And this is the hard work.

I think a lot of men never do.

I wish they did this more.

We should be more.

And I can tell you, you're this kind of guy.

We should be a little bit more reflective.

We should work to disciple our mind a little bit more and our soul and address those feelings, understand them, work through them, ask the why questions.

And I'm afraid that a lot of guys don't really get to that point in their Christian walk.

I'm not shaming them right now.

They just don't push through that part or no one's ever taught them how.

I guess, will, that could be another reason.

And that would be.

So we've already just dived right into a great topic, but maybe we can back up and talk a little bit about the ministry.

Now.

You've been doing men's Ministry for 30 years.

Did I understand that correctly?

And so that's.

Praise God for that.

Thank you.

And maybe you can talk a little bit about how you got started and how this ministry has grown.

Because understanding the global rebirth of masculinity, which we talked about, I first identified the.

The movement beginning in the 80s in the secular world.

And it seems to me there hasn't been as much of a push in the Christian world.

So I'd love to hear more about the origins of that and sort of as the.

As the ministry has grown.

Yeah.

So the origin of it began because of my grandfather's influence in my life.

So between the ages of about 15 to 20, I moved in with my grandfather.

My bio dad was gone.

My mom had been, through her, my second dad.

So her second husband decided that she wasn't going to marry anymore.

And then my grandfather stepped into my life.

When I was about 15, he came over to the house one day.

He sat down with my mom and could tell that my mom was very dejected about raising me.

She was giving up.

She knew I needed a man in my life, and she knew she didn't want to remarry because she could see its effect on me.

So over a few years, she had a lot of boyfriends in and out of the house, which isn't that helpful either.

But my grandfather just came over one day and sat down at the kitchen table and said, let Vince come live with me.

And I overheard that conversation and heard him plead with her as a Christian man and believer.

My mom was pretty agnostic.

My bio dad was an atheist for sure.

And, you know, for my grandfather was a Christian man to really, really almost beg her to allow me to come live with him.

It was moving for me as a young man.

I kept.

I was listening for my bedroom going, thinking, please say yes, Mom.

Just please say yes.

So I did.

I moved in.

I lived with him for five years till he died.

And that's really that a lot of the stories of my life and a lot of the, the ministry that happened to me, that changed my life and led me into ministry was because of those five years with my grandfather.

I got to see his discipleship, his love.

He taught me simple things about masculinity and biblical manhood that were powerful.

He taught me basic things like, you know, how to drive, how to shave, how to, how personal hygiene, how to pick up girls, you know, those kinds of things.

And, and of course, he taught me about Jesus Christ.

And we were learning to parallel park on that truck, which it didn't have one of those push button park features on it.

And so we would drive around the San Francisco Bay area, and that's where I grew up.

And, and he would just say, park here, park here, park here, park here, park here.

Every Saturday for three hours.

We did this together for six months, I think it was.

And I remember one time we parked and he would make me turn the engine off every time so I had to start from a fresh position.

And one of those times he turned over to me and like every other time had a conversation with me, it was these short little snippet moments.

I don't even know how to describe them.

It was like multiple little discipleship moments.

And one of those moments went exactly like this.

It took 30 seconds.

He said, vince, I know your mom and dad say God is not real because Christians are hypocrites and the church is full of broken people.

Then he paused, and then he goes, I want you to know that they're right.

Christians are hypocrites and the church is full of broken people.

I'm a hypocrite.

I am a broken person.

But I don't put my faith in hypocritical people.

And I don't put my faith.

I put my faith in a man whose life was broken for me.

And his name is Jesus.

And oh, my goodness, that 30 second conversation literally turned right side up what my parents had turned upside down.

I mean, just like.

I mean, like that it was, it was over.

My grandfather had me, and if you want to know why I turned to men, that's why I turned to men.

I saw my grandfather model for me manhood and masculinity in a way I'd never seen it before.

And he pointed me to the man, Jesus Christ, and it turned my life right side up.

So, you know, approximately five years after that, he got cancer in his spine.

It was not good.

I flew back to San Francisco to be with him.

I got there about an hour before he died.

We had an hour conversation, and then for the next six to eight hours or so, I listened to the.

The ambient noise of him gasping for air as I watched him die.

I mean, there was nothing more horrific that I've ever seen in my life than to watch someone die that way from cancer.

And during that time, I was listening to the white noise of his gasp for air.

I remember praying a prayer.

I just said to God, God, for the rest of my life, I want to do for other men what my grandfather did for me, which is disciple and mentor me.

And that is the heart of everything that's been born ever since.

It was my grandfather, through the father, who got a hold of my life, and that's where it all started.

And then obviously from there, the ministry grew.

I mean, I've done a number of things over the last 30 years, but nothing has been more impactful than just the daily devotionals that I produce.

And then that turned into weekly studies and then books like you have here.

And then now I found myself right in the middle of that men's niche where I just continue.

I continue to be a voice of reason for men who need to hear the gospel.

And.

And I've learned a lot about men in the last 30 years, including myself, along the way, which has been so joyful.

I mean, honestly, you know, some of the stuff you don't learn until you.

You learn it as you go.

And I think part of my journey of ministering to men has been a journey of even understanding myself and what God wants for me from His Word.

But then passing that legacy on, like.

My grandfather did for me, well, praise God for that.

That definitely lends a lot of context, because some of those.

That story about your grandfather's death doesn't appear in the book, but there are so many other stories where he features very prominently.

And that was probably.

I don't.

The.

Particularly the learning to drive stick shift and coming to the stop sign.

I don't want to spoil that story as much as I want to talk about that story with you.

I want people to go and read the book, because that was the thing.

Maybe you've heard this from other men, but that was the thing that I really walked away with, like, wow, there's something special happening in this book.

But that relationship between you and your grandfather, I think, speaks into what so many men are looking for in their relationship with their father, perhaps the father they never had or the father they wish to be.

And so that little bit of context about how about the end of his life definitely lends even more gravity to, to the significance of that relationship for you.

Yeah, yeah, it was a huge deal for me, Will.

Like, I just, God allowed a relationship to come in at just the right time and it turned everything in the right direction.

And I think we all hope and pray that for those of us who are searching that we'll find a guy like that.

I think for those of us who have family members who are lost, we hope that for them too.

Right.

And I just pray that along the way, God will bring people along like an Ethiopian eunuch to speak reason into our lives and to find our way to the good news of the gospel.

Now, are you trained as a pastor?

Are you ordained?

Or this is just a ministry that you decided to move into and you just developed as you, as you go?

Yeah, so I went to, I did an undergrad BA in Bible and then I did my MDIV in Bible and Missions at Bethel Seminary in St.

Paul.

So that's kind of my, my training at this point.

Oh, that's, that's fantastic.

I was wondering if, if there was specific training because you, you do such wonderful devotionals every day.

And I like how I went through, listened to a bunch of videos on your YouTube channel after reading the book.

You make them, you make them bite sized.

Right?

It's, I, I tend to do long podcasts.

People know that.

But the little, but the little 20 minute, you know, 30 minute snippets, I think is particularly, is particularly powerful for reaching men or less reaching men where they're at.

Yeah, I, you know, I have found, I mean this is, this is a nuance for me, but I, I, I'm a disciplined guy and I understand that some men just don't have the time.

I also understand sometimes, and this is no, no dig on a long form podcast, by the way, because I listen to long form podcasts all the time.

But I, I think sometimes rather than just consuming long, lots of information over a long stretch of time, like once a week, my belief is if you can put a, put, put information in front of people on a daily basis where they're processing that information, they're allowed to take in scripture, think about something that they could change in their life or do with that, that that can be much more effective for growing and understanding God's word than a whole bunch of information that causes you to feel Very convicted, but not live with conviction one day a week.

Right.

So that's why I encourage people to follow me daily, is because I just work through the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter, each and every day in a little, you know, usually five to ten minute little devo.

And it allows them to kind of get their mind around a single text.

I.

I show people how to inductively study the Bible, which I believe in, and help them to extract that information and then give them something to do, just something little to do.

Now, I know guys, guys like to be told what to do, like do this, do that.

Not because we want to turn them into a human doing rather than a human being, but because sometimes they need a little direction to take that first step.

Right, I know I did.

I mean, it's just like you get in, you get in my grandfather's truck, you want them to step you through it, not give you all the information.

Just tell me what to do.

One thing at a time.

Turn the car on, you know, then step on the clutch, put it into gear, lift up and down into gear.

Now let the clutch out slowly while stepping on the gas.

I can't take in all that information all at once.

You know, I got to do it just a little bit at a time.

And, and my grandfather used that same technique when he was showing me how to drive.

And it really has blessed me, which, by the way, I have taught all my children how to parallel park and drive a stick shift too.

So it's a blessing to understand how to do those things just a little bit at a time.

And that's my commitment.

I'm going to show up every day, share devotionals with people, hoping that they'll pick up on how I'm studying the Bible so that they will learn and understand how to pass that on as well.

Yeah, and I think there's, I think there's real value in that.

I'm listening to the audiobook version of R.C.

sproul's the Truths We Confess, which is his analysis of the Westminster Confession of Faith and the.

And I don't do audiobooks, but this audiobook is 35 hours long, right.

So.

So I go for walks and I listen and I listen to it and I'm getting a ton out of it.

But it's a very different feeling than putting on a 15 or 20 minute daily devotional while driving from point A to point B with something actionable where it's designed to be a standalone piece of content as opposed to something, a piece of something much, much Larger.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great work that you're listening to right now, is it not, man?

It's unbelievably.

It's so good.

Yeah.

And you also, you also help churches set up men's ministries as well, correct?

Or, or you provide resources for men's ministries.

I do that.

That's been some of the, kind of, some of the fun behind the scenes work is working with men's leaders or churches or groups of churches.

I really like working with groups of churches because it creates a, it helps them to create relationships with each other and then see a path forward together.

So occasionally I'll do these training seminars around the country with groups of churches in an area.

They're very interactive, by the way, so they're, they're highly interactive.

It's not just me communicating to them, it's me showing them what I've done and some of the principles I've learned over the last 30 years.

Even some of the trends that you're well aware of will the, the trends that I've seen that work and don't work.

And, and I tend to focus highly on, on.

Not the flash in the pan big growth men's ministry, which I think had its time and its day, but more that discipleship focus.

You know, I mean, if you were to strip it away, you would call it any ministry really.

It's just focusing back in on discipleship, taking men under your wing, you know, showing them how to set up groups, showing them how to disciple other men, show them how, how to think about men's ministry and leading men while they're in the mix, show them how to study the Bible.

I've done all those things in a short seminar over a weekend with groups of churches all over the country.

And it has been a blast.

Especially because you usually are catching a few men's leader right in that moment when they're thinking, hm, I really should do something.

And I feel called to working with men.

So I've, I've worked over the last 30 years with really just equipping men to do the ministry that God has called them to do, not do my ministry.

That's not what we're doing here.

I, I just really believe that we should free people up to live out their call, live out their purpose through their unique gifts to the people that God calls them to.

And I'm just trying to show people what I've done in the years that I've done men's ministry and where I've seen it be successful and where it's been challenging.

So that's pretty much it.

Can you talk about some of the things that make men's ministry unique?

I've listened to some of your episodes about this, but what sort of things need to be in men's ministry?

I have my own answers.

I love your answer.

So.

But I think men, especially men and women both need to hear it today.

Yeah.

So I mean, women listening today definitely need to hear it.

I speak sometimes at women's conferences about men because I think it's important that they understand kind of the DNA behind them.

But I, you know, men's ministry is a little different it.

In modern times.

Meaning I, I'd really say in the last 10 to 15 years especially, I really feel like men's ministry has taken on this, this smaller group feel where guys are really looking for meaningful relationships, where they're looking for connection.

They want some adventure with that.

Don't get me wrong, guys want some adventure.

They, they need things to be kind of almost tactical and tangible for them.

So they need a leader that have some, you use this word earlier, gravitas to them where they, they have some leadership ability and they understand where they're going.

I think men like to be a part of training experiences where they kind of go, there's, there's a beginning and an end.

And I can see where we're going in the valley between.

We're not just meandering all over the place.

So I'll give you an example of something that, that I do each year will.

So a couple of times a year I'm down in Florida right now, by the way, at my home in Florida.

I have a home in Minneapolis, Minnesota too.

But at my home in Florida, what I do a couple of times a year is I invite selected guys to come down here with me.

So I will literally pray over it and I'll hand select, you know, somewhere around eight guys usually to come down with me.

And then what I do down here in my home is I invite them in.

We, we have some structure to it.

It's very light structure.

I do not put time frames around anything.

But one day, like for example here, in about a month we're going to go to spring training with the Pirates and Tampa Bay.

So we're going to go to a spring training game.

I bought all the tickets to it.

So the guys can go, all right, that's number one.

Then on the next day, we're going to go deep sea fishing for half a day.

Third day we're going to Golf.

All right, so.

And most of the time down here is going to be spent, you know, cooking a little breakfast and me sharing a devotional, and then us having a short conversation, and then we'll go do one of those activities and then come back to the house, and then that evening, prepare a meal here in the house, barbecue, whatever.

And then sit around and have a much larger, longer conversation about things in life that really matter.

You know, things we're struggling with.

Family, marriage, finances.

And then we usually end with thinking about where do we want to go in the next year?

Like, what kind of goals do we want to set?

And I think that that kind of format really works for guys.

Last year, I invited about eight guys to come, and this blew me away.

But as soon as all these guys got home, I got emails, text, and phone calls from their wives.

Not from them, from their wives.

And every one of them said, that was the best time my husband has had in years.

And it was spiritual.

It was meaningful.

They built relationships with one another and continued to text each other.

I mean, it's.

It's just remarkable to me that we sometimes overthink this whole thing.

Right?

It's not.

And.

And here's the major problem.

Men don't take initiative and do the things that I just did.

They don't sit down and plan something.

They don't call up their buds.

They don't invite them along.

And that's why I think men's ministry is struggling, is because we don't realize that we are called to be a minister to other people and invite them into that.

That's exactly what my grandfather did for me.

He sat down at my mom's house, took initiative and begged her to allow me to come live with them on a very long retreat for five years.

I mean, that was it, right?

And I.

I think that that is.

You could see in that a bunch of little elements.

And I could get into the details of it, the minutia.

But you see the point.

The point, number one, is men have to take initiative.

Number two, I think men really like that small group community.

Three, they really like a little bit of adventure mixed in, you know?

Four, they want to come out on the other end with.

With something tactical that makes them feel spiritually better, and they want to have spiritual conversations.

Like, I really believe that men do want to have spiritual conversations, but no.

No one ever initiates it.

We talk about superficial, stupid things, man.

I mean, it's just stupid thing.

Who cares?

Who cares about the cowboys?

I'm tired of turning on ESPN and hearing about Du Bois, they're never going to be a Super bowl team under, you know, coach again.

I mean, come on, man, he's done.

They're all done.

They're just tired, you know, and you could see it, you could hear it.

And you can pay whatever amount of money you want.

You could talk about that all day long, but it doesn't matter because you, you can't even remember who won the last year's Super Bowl.

Time.

Let's talk about things that are actually, actually meaningful.

So those are some components that I think men and women need to hear today about ministry to men.

I think that's, that's so great.

I hosted a men's retreat here in Phoenix back in October, had a few guys there and it went along similar lines.

It was a weekend long thing.

Got an Airbnb and we started out on, you know, just everyone's kind of getting to know each other on Friday night.

We had a good meal together.

Friday night, Friday night.

Got up early on Saturday, went for a, went for a big run.

Had a bit of a, had a bit of a workout.

And then we did a firearms training.

You know, learning to move through a house from someone who knows what he's talking about.

And after we had gone through, which went way long, by the way, after we had gone through that entire process.

Bless you.

After we had gone through that entire process, the men were much more willing and interested to open up and have real conversations about issues that matter.

But we needed to do something physical first to get that out of the way, to have some sort of shared experience, to all learn something practical together.

And then for the next, like 24, 36 hours before the guys had to leave, it was just one long, free flowing conversation that I think we all found very rewarding.

But we had to do the physical stuff first because if we had just gotten right into a, let's sit in a circle and have a conversation.

It's like, I don't know you, I need to see who you are first before I know whether I can trust you with some of these things that are going on with me.

Yeah, that's a, I, I call it that side by side experience.

Right?

Like, I used to do this all the time with my youngest son, so, and he's 21 today, so he's not young anymore, but he, I picked my youngest son up from school every single day of his life, every single day.

Because I believed that two men sitting side by side for a period of time in a car, looking forward, can have conversations that we won't have when we're turned face to face.

Right?

That's right.

Sometimes looking at a man intimately in the face makes the conversation harder.

And I just want you to know that over those years, he just didn't engage me very much in a conversation until we got close to his senior year.

Then he started opening up, and then I started speaking into it.

And I mean, it was awesome.

But it.

Sometimes we need side by side activities.

You know, golf, guns, games, things, I guess, that begin with G, you know, that allow us to do side by side things rather than, you know, face to face or circle.

It just.

It takes the inhibition out of it so that we can address the awkward moments without being tested by another man, you know, with.

With our eyes and their Persona.

So I, I have, I have been very blessed by what you're saying today, Will, that side by side conversation is fantastic if we take advantage of it and we use it.

And that's where activities come in.

Right.

A lot of side by side things.

You know, we get to see a man exposed by how he plays golf or how he handles a gun or, you know, how he fishes or, you know, how he doesn't fish.

You know, all those things just kind of expose us and.

And it takes those inhibitions off the table.

Yeah, I think Ben work better.

You talked about this in one of your podcast episodes, also about the benefits of Ben going to build something.

I think it was at.

Was it trout, trout lake, something like that?

A retreat center.

Why don't you talk about that for just a moment?

Because I heard that.

I was like, how much do I have to pay to go do something like that with a group of Christian men?

Yeah, you know, I think sometimes, you know, it's interesting to me, but.

But men working together where they can, they can use their skill and they can feel competent is something that they don't feel when it comes to spiritual things.

Men do not feel competent when it comes to spiritual things at all.

Let me give a different example with it, and then we'll jump back to the.

The building things together.

But when I started this ministry, I started with kind of a group mindset.

We had people leading groups and, you know, it took about nine months, but somehow we got to about 450 men in small groups.

So 40 small groups with about 10 to 12 men in each.

450 men in nine months blew my mind.

So we started really studying them because, you know, we have a control set now we can study.

And one of the things that I learned from these guys was many of them came from many different churches, many different walks of life.

So here was the general makeup of a group.

About a third.

About a third were what I would call blue collar CEOs.

So they owned a small business of some kind with four or five employees and they were looking to grow in their faith.

The second third, I would call them guys that were very young in their faith but just didn't know how to take a next step.

Third part of the group was just maybe your average Christian guy.

All right, so someone who was working a job, had a good family, went to church on a regular basis, but liked the idea of it.

So I started paying attention to that group and I realized that there were men from all kinds of different churches.

But One of the one, one piece of feedback that I got most from these 450 men was this.

They liked the idea of groups meeting outside of the church, in a local business, in a place that was less threatening, where they can have a little bit of anonymity, where they didn't.

They, they truly believed that not everybody in the group was going to tell someone else at church what was going on, or somebody else's wife, but they could have a little bit of anonymity to safely explore the Bible and truth and ask intimidating questions that they were afraid to ask of their pastor or their church.

Now what was insightful for me about that was that these were incredibly skilled men.

I mean, some of these blue collar CEOs were running very successful middle sized businesses and they were like coming to me for wisdom and they were asking questions in the group that kind of blew my mind.

And then over time I came to realize that those blue collar CEOs, they didn't want their pastor asking them for money, number one, because they got tired of that.

Number two, they really didn't want to play their cards at church because they were so competent in their skill that they didn't want to look incompetent spiritually.

Does that make sense?

Yes, it does.

That was also true for kind of those young Christians.

Obviously they're looking for a safe place.

And for mature Christians that honestly barely picked up the Bible but thought of themselves as a mature Christian, they were looking for a safe place too.

So what I found from that was this, is that every man has and is looking for some level of anonymity.

And in that anonymity, they're not saying, I just want to be passive.

They're saying, I want to figure out how to take the right action, but I want to do it in a safe environment where no one's going to make fun of me because I asked a stupid question, right?

And then on top of it, I came to find out that while I was leading a lot of these groups, a lot of those men with all that skill fed me, too.

I learned all kinds of things about God's word, about ministry, about money, about business, about life, about leadership.

And here's the strange thing.

Every man.

Every man sitting in a church today has some skill.

I mean, some skill.

I mean, take my grandfather.

He used the skill of teaching me how to drive, to teach me about Jesus.

And every man out there has a skill.

I mean, there are skilled plumbers listening to this right now that have a unique skill that I don't have.

They know how to sweat on a pipe perfectly every single time.

And guess what?

That skill can be used to communicate the gospel in a meaningful way.

But a lot of those guys, they dismiss themselves from it because they think they need some level of scriptural.

I don't know, what do you want to call it?

Mastery.

They need to reach some kind of educational level before it is then okay for them to utilize the gospel for an advantage using their skill.

But that.

That's just not true, man.

We learn.

We learn to communicate the gospel by living in it every day using our skill and then seeing our skill through the gospel.

And that's what I wish more men did.

So there's something fascinating going back to Trout Lake now.

There's something fascinating about when.

When men use a skill like when they're framers, carpenters, concrete layers, tile setters, finish carpenters, you know, all those different kinds of guys, when they suddenly discover that they can come together and then they can use their skill to build a camp, for example, that's going to share the gospel with others.

They then begin to see the fusing together of their skills, talents and abilities to the gospel.

And then they feel a little bit more competent to understand.

Well, there's not that much more to learn.

I need to dig into God's word for sure.

But man, I mean, without.

We need those guys to move from the bench to the game, right?

That's really what we need them to do.

We need them to take their skill and stop using it for their purposes and use it for God's purposes and figure out the transition from it.

I mean, that's what Paul the apostle did.

I'm bloviating.

You cut me off anytime.

No, please.

But that's what the apostle Paul did.

He, He.

He was the Pharisee of Pharisees, right?

The Roman of Romans.

The.

The man of zeal with zeal on top of zeal, right?

And then all of a sudden he has this encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road and everything's thrown off kilter.

It's like.

And then we.

We know he spent some.

Paul spent some time in Arabia in the desert.

And then he goes back to Tarsus for a number of years.

And we don't know exactly how many years these are.

The text is unclear about it.

It could be anywhere from seven, maybe to 12, 14, I don't know, somewhere in that range.

But what is happening to Paul during that time?

Well, the same thing that happens to every man who has a conversion experience.

He has to take enough time to see everything through the lens of Jesus Christ again.

And that's what Paul, I believe, was doing.

He was re reading the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ because he so protested him that now he has to relearn everything he has learned and then take that oratory skill, that debate skill.

Do you see it?

That writing skill, and then use it for kingdom purposes.

Those are very natural gifts that, by the way, some men out there have as plumbers, electricians, CEOs, CFOs, finance guys, you name it, salespeople.

We can transition those very natural gifts that we're using for our purposes and transition them into God's gifts that he has given to us to use for his purposes.

And I think that's where man guys get excited when they start to see that they can't unsee it.

They're exposed to a new worldview.

And then, man, they just take flight.

But it takes a little bit of time.

That's why I believe a little bit of anonymity for a period of time where a man can really explore those questions, ask them, push through them, boom.

He'll eventually take off, but you just can't have him wait too long.

So if you guys are out there listening today, if you've been sitting on the bench too long, get off the bench, get into the game, you might mess up a play or two.

Don't worry, Jerry Jones will probably fire you.

But you know, hey, hey, you give it a shot and you learned another way not to do something.

Man, you said so much great stuff in there.

So I, I come from the secular world, the secular masculinity world.

Robert Bly, Iron John, the Manosphere and the Mankind Project.

Have you heard of that organization?

And one of the things.

Oh, okay, so you know about.

Okay, fantastic.

So so one of the things that that group did very well was facilitate anonymity.

So when you went on a new warrior training adventure, you walk in and then you.

You get your name taken away from you, and you become a number for a little while, and then you get your name back.

You get a whole different name.

But then you have 70 guys or more coming from all walks of life.

They get all of their external identifiers stripped away from them, and you get to.

It doesn't.

Who knows who this guy is?

Are you a doctor?

Are you a golfer?

Are you a plumber?

I don't know.

Right.

And so the men get the ability to just strip off their outside identity and just approach the moment with a.

With an innocence, I guess, or an openness.

Right.

And then everyone goes their separate ways.

And maybe you meet that guy again or maybe you don't, but he's had the opportunity to acquire some mastery.

Not at the cost of his status.

And then I was also in men's groups where it was the same.

We weren't friends in our outer lives.

If I say something to Tom across the circle, he doesn't know anyone in my life.

So it's not going to get backed to get back to anyone around.

So it allows me to have this openness.

And that's going to be a very powerful thing for men to have that experience of.

Of anonymity where it's like, I don't have to worry about damaging anything else I'm doing by demonstrating, I don't know, something in this moment because there's.

There's all this hesitation, like, I don't want to ask a dumb question because I don't want to look stupid against next to somebody that I have to see in church tomorrow.

And so the opportunity for men to be able to speak into these rooms with other guys who don't know them, it's an incredible growth opportunity.

Yeah.

Just.

It.

It allows us to blossom as men, which is what we want, isn't it?

I mean, we want to.

We want to grow.

And, you know, sometimes I think that's why.

Just the anogalous group that doesn't have a direction, you know, that doesn't know where it's going, what it's studying next.

I mean, opt me out of that, man.

Like, I.

I've got a.

I don't have time to waste anymore, you know, Like, I have limits on my life.

There's.

I have.

I have less life in front of me than I do behind me at this point, you know, And.

And I know that.

And I want to be a part of things that are going to affect me deeply affect me.

And I think there's a lot of men out there that think that way.

That's why they're not participating in a lot of church groups today, is because they don't see a plan.

They don't understand how it's going to form them.

The leader's unclear.

They just say, hey, let's get together, form a group.

And that's not enough, man.

I, I, I hate to say it, but it's got to be more than that.

There's got to be a why behind it that says, this is going to make me better.

I mean, that's exactly why men participate in, in some of these crazy things that they participate like, like you're talking about manosphere and all that kind of stuff.

Why do we participate in, in challenges?

Why are men signing up in droves to be, be a part of CrossFit to do.

Why are they, why are they signing up to, to do a backpacking trip across Australia or mountain biking for 100 miles across a desert?

You know, whatever, you know, whatever it is, why are they doing that?

Because they can see a beginning and an end.

They see the challenge in between.

They see how it's going to make them better.

And I believe Christian men and Christian ministries need to make that more clear, especially for men, especially for the audience of men, because they do feel like they have very little time to waste.

And there's a, there's a degree of which the men wonder, okay, who's driving the bus?

If I'm going to show up and sit in this circle and participate in this moment or this group or whatever the group is doing, I have to know that, like, someone's driving, because if I don't think anyone's driving, then I'm going to reach for the wheel, and then we're all going to reach for the wheel.

It's not going to go anywhere.

Who's, who's got this?

So I can just be a passenger.

And that's a real thing that men need.

Oh, man, I've the vacuum of leadership.

If I even sniff it out, I will step in and, oh, do I hate to do it.

Like I said, I have to almost, like, pull back on my, I have to bite my tongue, grit my teeth, pull back on myself.

Because I just, I'm so compelled today that if I see a vacuum of leadership, I will step in.

And you're right about, well, that is, I'll remember that for a long Time.

That is so true.

Like, leaderless groups are eventually led by somebody, you know, so.

Or the men feel like they don't.

Like, there's no one driving, so it's like, where is this going?

And then it turns into a waste of time.

Very quickly, either someone will take the reins or guys will be like, I got too much else going on in my life to lead this also.

So if someone wants to lead me, great.

If they're going to take us in a direction that was worth going.

But otherwise, man, I got.

I got enough I can do.

Oh, yeah, me too, man.

I've got a lot on my plate, so I'm always trying to decide what's in and what's.

What's out for me each and every moment of the day.

So can I.

I wanted to point to a section that came to mind as we were talking about this.

We were talking about the.

The voices of pride.

I think it was the voice of the pride of the past, where the different sins related to pride relating to control.

I think I must have bookmarked that one.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

There's like, the.

I think so, yeah.

Can you speak about that really quick?

Because I read that about myself.

It's sort of relevant to what we're talking about that it's like, I'm the guy who knows how to do this right?

You know, no one else has got this.

That's my particular.

I read that.

I'm like, oh, the book nailed me.

I wonder if you can talk about those as well.

Are you speaking about the five voices that men hear?

Is that what you're speaking about?

I think so, yeah.

Yeah.

So I.

That's been one of my adages.

I.

I believe men hear voices.

They're afraid to admit they hear these voices.

And one of them is the voice of pride, the voice of the man that we think we are.

Is that what you're referencing?

That's.

That's the one.

So I think that's the first.

One of the first voices that men hear, the voice of pride, the voice of the man that I think I am.

And of course, I think most men think they're legends in their own mind.

I just.

I think by nature the.

The voice of pride is a voice that's.

That's true to all of us.

I mean, if you were to ask a man what is one of the great sins of the Bible.

Of course one of the great sins is pride.

It's our own arrogance.

But we can't forget that pride has it has an overarching meaning, but when we were vague like that and not specific, we fail to address our version of pride.

So let me give you an example of it.

You struggle with the voice of pride.

I will struggle with the voice of pride.

Every man will.

But we each have our version of that.

It's an ever changing version for some of us.

And some of us, it's the same voice.

And, and, and all of it can, it can really awaken in us with just a little.

That a boy or good job or loved how you said that, you know, and it just, it can awaken that, that evil within.

And I think men have to do business with it.

Not just general pride, dealing with our general, but our version of power pride, and then go after it, because we're going to battle with that probably for the rest of our lives.

So we have to understand what that voice sounds like when it, when it begins to rear its ugly head, why it happens, like why we hear that voice, why we act on it, or what we did afterward.

And we even have to figure out an attack plan with that voice.

Like, we have to know that there's certain things that are going to trigger pride for us.

So we even prepare ourselves beforehand so that when it happens, we can beat it back.

Right?

And I, I really think that this, this attack plan with pride is, is something that men should do more frequently.

Rather than talk in general terms about the voice of pride and our issues with it, we need to come head on to our specific version.

And, and honestly, the person that knows that version of pride the best is usually our spouse or wife.

They know that.

I mean, my wife knows it.

My kids know it too.

And they know how to push those little buttons to trigger that thing to irritate me.

And so, and sarcasm is used as a voice to, to beat those things down out of us in our house sometimes, which I'm not encouraging, by the way, to our listeners, but, you know, it's, it's one.

Those are.

Pride is just one of many voices that we have to learn to speak back, to, preach back to in our lives in hopes of us not becoming the men that we think that we are.

We're trying to become the men that God has designed us to be, not the men that we think we are.

And if we spend too much time ruminating on that voice, you eventually become narcissistic.

Of course.

I mean, that would be an extreme form of pride, is always focused on yourself to the nth degree.

Maybe, maybe, maybe sociopath would even be a Better term, I don't know what would be.

You're the psychologist.

You tell me so or tell me later outside of this, and I'll pay you for it.

But you see the point.

The point is we have to address that specific version.

What it looks like, what happens when it happens, what happens when it manifests itself and I act on it.

How am I going to preemptively attack that rather than just passively allow it to ruin my life and my relationships and then do something about it as I see that God has designed me to be his man, not my own man, independent from him.

Now, you'd mentioned that you've seen many of the secular trends through masculinity over the past 30 years.

Manosphere, New warrior train, adventure, et cetera.

So it seems that today, with this rising conversation about masculinity, that that aspect of pride is not.

I would say it's not being handled well at all.

In fact, what's being encouraged in men is prideful.

This.

Maybe you can speak a little bit about that as well.

Oh, absolutely.

I, I think where this specific part of our conversation goes well, is the misunderstanding of virtue.

So let me, Let me give you, Let me try to make this as clear as I can without being too heady.

So you probably read Neo Mancaan Ethics, right?

Oh, you ever read that book Aristotle?

Yeah, Aristotle.

I have not.

So Aristotle in Neomanchean Ethics lays out various virtues that men should accomplish to be men.

The problem is there's like 12 of them.

They're exhausting virtues, by the way.

And I don't know if I can focus on 12 things for the rest of my life.

Like, I just, my mind cannot retain that much information and then achieve that kind of virtue.

And here's the thing that goes, I think, awry when we build our version of masculinity on human virtue.

Human virtue is going to let you down every single time.

You know, you can try, you.

You can try your hand at every virtue that exists that out there.

Exists out there.

But we all know that we don't know when we've really accomplished it and how we size ourselves up or compare ourselves with other people.

And, and that is because there is one scripture in the Bible that destroys all virtue.

Romans 3:23.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

There is no virtue that we can achieve that's going to make us men.

The only man who makes men is Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

And what he did on the cross through his death and resurrection are what Redeem and restore us as men of God so that we can now become the men that God designed us to be way back in Genesis 1, 2 and 3.

If we could understand that, that it's not a rite of passage, it's not an accomplishment, it's not a moral virtue.

It's not rejection of the ways of this life or the way of our fathers.

It's actually embracing the understanding that virtue is not we're after.

Moral virtue is not what we are after.

What we are after is salvation from our brokenness, redeemed by Jesus Christ on the cross, raised to live a new life, restored in relationship with God, and therein we are saved and we are made men.

Now, does this devoid us of pursuing virtue?

Absolutely not.

James, throughout his letter in the New Testament is clear that faith and works, faith exemplified through our works, gives evidence to the work, the saving work that Jesus Christ did on the cross for us.

And we go back to claiming that over and over again.

So it's not a life built on our virtue, it's a life built on the virtue of Jesus Christ.

And if we get that right, it separates us from all these other, I call them, rites of passage that you were talking about earlier, all these other rites of passage that we try to use to manufacture and to trick men into becoming men, which is only going to lead them to the next failure.

It's only going to last to the next failure until they realize that this new identity that they've tried to earn can't be earned.

Until they realize they have to surrender to become men.

They have to give up to Jesus to become men.

They have to be redeemed and restored by someone who was the man.

Man.

That little nuance right there, I think is the one thing that separates Christian manhood from the world's version of masculinity.

That right there, Jesus Christ, his redemption, his restoration as the only man that couldn't do what we tried to accomplish.

I don't know.

Does that answer your question?

Yes, it does.

This is.

This is so encouraging for me because, you know, so much of the dialogue about masculinity today misses this, this essential.

Misses this essential point entirely.

So.

Okay, so.

So I want to push back, not because I disagree, but because I, I can hear some people wanting to point at something.

I, I agree with you wholly, but the.

Here's an objection that I would hear.

Okay, so what you're saying is we need to rely on Jesus Christ.

Yes, and amen.

But our previous generations of fathers did the same thing.

And now look where we are.

Maybe we need something more than just Christ.

So what would you say in response to that?

Yeah, I, I'm glad you posed that objection and rebuttal.

So let me, let me just kind of try to answer it the best I can.

I.

To me, and some listeners are not going to agree with this, but to me, masculinity is only a social construct.

Okay, so masculinity is men going to other men to try to understand what makes a man.

And some of the things that we've seen happen in our world and in our country, maybe in our neighborhood, in our family and government and politics, education, business, whatever you, whatever you want, however you want to call it.

I do believe that there's this interest in a lot of men to reach back into ancient times and even into Roman times, which has been a common trend.

Right.

And they want to reach back into Roman culture because they see the drive and maybe the moral virtue and the, the physical exertion back there.

But don't forget the Roman Empire was an empire driven by dictators or monarchs and that it probably wasn't as enjoyable as we think it is and imagine it in our own minds with that as well.

I think that masculinity as a social construct has so many versions right now and so many people screaming so loudly and people that are, that we have given a stage to, that are speaking all over platforms today.

Social platforms, media platforms, government platforms, education platforms.

We have essentially given them the platform.

Now, what I'm saying is really, we need to get back to some Deuteronomy 6 kind of behavior where my grandfather took me, which is love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and then, then share it as you walk by the road, as you lie down, as you get up, you know, to, to share it with your immediate family and ingrain those principles into those closest to you.

Share them like my grandfather did for me, and we will have an effect on the culture.

You see, I do believe that Jesus believed cultural revolution was possible because he's going to lead a new cultural revolution.

But it has to begin with us individually, and then it has to be passed on to the culture of our family for us to be.

For us to feel having an effect on the culture around us.

So that's my very best answer.

I think I could probably give to that question.

I don't know if there's any cross rebuttal here, but I would love to hear if I'm answering the question adequately.

No, I think that's right, because as A man myself who's been through the rites of passage, who's been through the therapy, who's done all the trainings, all I can tell you quite confidently that all these things did was make me a more efficient sinner.

That's all they did.

Right.

It just removed the impediments, you know, from whatever my own hang ups and anxieties were about the thing that my heart, quote unquote wanted.

And it wasn't until I was regenerated in the Holy Spirit, that process began, that I found that I became a whole new man, whole new life.

I said on the podcast that I released, when this comes out, it will have been a week ago that if you had told me five years ago where I am today, I would not have believed you.

If you had told me who I would be and the things that I would, the ways that I would have changed, I'd be like, no way.

Because it was so ingrained in me.

So the idea that, you know, men will look towards rites of passage or other historical eras or whatever, therapists or trainings or whatever, to teach them what it means to be a man.

I mean, you can, you can glean some valuable things, I'm sure, by looking at men throughout history.

I have a book right back over here called what Is a man?

You know, 500 pages of various quotes and stuff like that from men reflecting on that.

But I don't know that you can.

You can't answer the question completely without turning to Jesus Christ.

You simply cannot.

And you don't get to do that in your own strength.

You can't do that either.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's kind of.

I mean, let me, let me make it even simpler, like an answer.

Super simple.

So if you want to understand something that's made, you just go back to the creator of that thing to understand it.

Based upon my reading of the Bible and my beliefs, I believe God created the first man.

He created him very good.

And he created him for not only a relationship with him, he created man to receive his image, to rule his creation and reflect his character to the world.

We tend to just get focused on the character piece of the virtue piece without God.

That's where we want to go with it.

Because we want to accomplish something in our strength.

Rather than go back to the creator of man who made men look at his intent and purpose, live that out specifically, receive the image, rule creation, and reflect that character.

And then when we live in that flow, man, that's where the beauty of it happens.

The problem is everything broke in chapter three.

And we needed Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to redeem and restore us so that we could become the men that we're designed to be, so that we could go back to the original instruction, receive the image through Jesus rule.

Created order according to Christ's rule reflect Jesus's character of the world.

That's how we live out manhood.

And if we.

We try to do it any other way, we're just going to be exhausted by it.

I mean, it's going to be an exhausting feat.

You're going to have to go to counseling indefinitely, right?

Indefinitely.

Or go to these manhood challenges indefinitely, or try another rite of passage indefinitely.

Because it's not activity, it's not our activity that make us men.

It's Jesus's activity on the cross and his resurrection from the dead that makes us a restored man.

And if we receive our identity through that as sons, we will begin to see everything differently.

And I could spend a whole, whole hour talking about that whole identity in Christ thing.

But you see the general point.

We have to go back to the creator of man to understand man, not go back to more men like us who are just failed, broken men who, by the way, don't know how a man is made.

Let's just be honest.

We don't.

Go make your own man.

Go get your own elements, you know, Go get all of your own elements, because you can't make a man.

It's not possible.

Neither can we remake the soul of a man.

It's just not possible.

Yeah, I was thinking a couple weeks ago that this is how glorious God is, is that he can take a handful of dirt and fashion it into something in his image.

Like, we can't exactly do that.

So.

So when you leave dirt.

Exactly.

Get your own dirt.

That's right.

So when you, when you lead men's groups, when you lead discipleship groups, do you.

Do you find that there are moments, I would imagine that there are, where like making these concepts land for men is just something stuck and you have to push through it.

I imagine it's quite hard sometimes.

Yeah.

You know, people, most men like to work in the temporal, and they don't think about the spiritual as much.

They think they think about the spiritual.

But I think some of these concepts are hard for them to grasp.

So you have to make them as tangible as possible.

Here's the number one way I've seen a transformation in a man's life.

It's through pain.

I hate to say it, it's pain.

Now Pain is a remarkable device for getting a man to change.

I think that's kind of why we have so many pain based men's ministries in the United States.

Church Celebrate Recovery, Divorce Recovery, Financial Peace, University.

I mean, recovery, recovery, recovery.

It's all recovery.

Why is it?

Because when a man breaks his arm, he wants to relieve the pain and get it healed quickly.

That's how men think.

But when men get inside of those groups, they usually have an awakening.

Here's, here's one that's very common.

So let's take Celebrate Recovery, which is an addiction recovery group experience.

Right?

So a man will join Celebrate Recovery because he's addicted to something, whatever it might be, you know, pornography, narcotics, you know, drinking alcohol, whatever it is.

And then he'll get in there and usually somewhere between five to seven weeks, will, you'll have this moment where he'll go, you know, had I had the Bible and brotherhood in my life before all this happened, I might have avoided all of it.

And I usually say, yeah, yeah, pretty much.

Because, you know, most men are very reactionary when it comes to their faith and relationship in Jesus Christ with dealing with these problems in their life.

What I've always hoped, and I think what you're getting at a little bit here is wouldn't it be great if men were just a little bit more proactive and we didn't need so much pain to bring about change in our life.

And I wish that was the case, Will, but man pain is our greatest teacher.

Pain is man's greatest teacher because it drives them to find a solution.

Sometimes too quickly.

Granted that, sometimes too quickly.

And you're a counselor, you understand this.

Men sit down with you at marriage counseling, you know, and they just, they want the problems fixed and moved on.

And the wife's like, I'm like two years behind you because of all these issues.

I need time to catch up.

You know, men want things solved quickly, but, but still, it's the pain that got them to that first counseling meeting, right?

Pain, Pain that got them there to sit in that chair.

And I, I think pain is still and probably will always be one of our greatest teachers if we will listen to it and look for real solutions to that pain.

Real solutions.

And as you know, as a counselor, the solution always comes back to Jesus.

I mean, it does, but just a, an understanding of a dimension of the spiritual life that they need unique to them that's going to help them address and deal with not just, you know, the, the, the surface pain, but all the underlying issues that led to that pain in the first place.

I mean, the human race chose pain in Genesis 3, right?

We could have just simply listened, obeyed God's law, and be like, yeah, that's not for us.

But instead, we chose the path of pain, perhaps not knowing it was the path of pain.

But how many men choose that?

They really choose the path of pain.

They kind of stumble into it, don't they?

Yeah, they really do.

Like, they, they.

Most men think they're pretty okay.

You know, maybe they need to learn a couple of things or two.

And, and, you know, I've said in enough men's, men's groups for 30 years that I can kind of.

I can.

I can sniff it out now.

I mean, you can kind of tell right away.

Like, you.

You've seen it too.

You're a counselor.

You get all this when you.

You see patterns now that you can't ignore.

And some men are very, very good at hiding it.

I mean, extremely good at masters of hypocrisy.

But, you know, if we just submit ourselves to the process, we'll discover it and learn.

I mean, every day is a painful learning experience for me in some way.

I mean, I'm reading God's word this morning, and God's word strikes to the heart in a way, and I have to pause, man, I just gotta pause.

And I think, how am I doing that today?

And then I gotta take time to reflect on it and think about what needs to change in my life.

And Will, to be honest with, you know, how long it has taken me to really embrace.

Really embrace the word as truth and allow me to quit rejecting the truth and really just embrace the truth as it is and allow the truth to change me.

Allow the unchanging word of God to change me.

And I think it takes a long time, Will, for our hearts to get there.

Now, for some people, it just, boom, happens overnight.

I've seen that happen too.

Of course, Paul the apostle might be an example of that.

But.

But for some men, you know, we, we.

It takes us a while to learn and perhaps a lifetime, which is why we're.

Why I'm still paying attention to the pain too, Will.

I'm still paying attention to it.

Amen.

Well, perhaps.

Perhaps it wasn't so easy for Paul.

I mean, he did.

Perhaps it was God's kindness to him to not recount any of those stories of seven years and Arabia as you know, I'm sure he had a lot of stuff to work through in himself and a lot of, you know, his own sanctification to Go on.

Before he could show up.

And the apostles were like, we don't know about this guy.

Wait, what.

What do you.

And then he had to be vouched for and the whole thing.

So he had his own process, surely very likely to work through.

But.

But this gets to something else that you brought up in your book around the issue of spiritual complacency.

I wonder if you can speak to that, because I think we do have so much going on in our lives as men.

And, you know, we are all also, you know, called to love the Lord thy God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And we fall short in that.

Yeah, so here's another story for you.

So I don't think this is in the book, because I don't know if it necessarily fits perfectly, but years ago, when each one of my kids graduated high school, I took each one of them on a trip, and I agreed to say to them, I will take you wherever you want to go.

Friends can come with you, but we're going on a trip together.

And my middle son chose.

He wanted to go outside of the country is what he wanted.

So we chose to go to Dominican Republic, and we went to a resort, and he wanted to bring a couple buddies.

They paid their own way.

I didn't pay their way.

But anyway, you wanted to bring a couple buddies.

So, you know, it was spring break, and we went down there and we arrived at this resort.

It was nice and all that.

And I'm standing at the counter and literally, I want you to know there was nothing but women there.

I mean, women, like an unruly amount of women everywhere, moms and teens, etc.

Etc.

Just all women's groups, et cetera.

And I immediately called my wife and I said, I don't know what I just got myself into, honey.

There are nothing but women there.

And of course she's trusting of me.

We have a great relationship.

I let her know when things like that happen.

That's why I called her right away.

I was like, I just brought four young men to a resort with nothing but women where the drinking age is 14.

I'm like, I'm just like, what in the world?

Like, what have I just done?

And I said, why?

Why is there nothing but women here?

To my wife?

And she said, well, that's easy.

Women plan things.

I will never forget that conversation for the rest of my life.

It was at that moment.

At that moment, I felt deeply convicted about speaking about men taking initiative.

I mean, that's.

You know, I already told you about the little retreats I have down here at my house, Right?

I mean, why do I have them?

I have them today because I know if I'm a man who takes initiative, people will come.

I don't have a problem filling up retreats things at my house.

I don't.

Why?

Because people want to come.

Because I invited them to come.

Because I took the initiative to plan it.

That's why they come.

And I think there's too many spiritually complacent men on the face of the planet right now that will spend.

I mean, they'll spend 500 on a bag of irons for their golf bag.

They'll spend $200 on a pair of running shoes.

They'll.

They'll spend $2,000 to go, you know, to the super bowl or playoff game or something.

That's more like $7,000 now.

But they'll spend all that money to go to those things.

But they won't do anything when it comes.

They won't spend a dime when it comes to their spiritual life.

That's not true of all men.

I don't want to be, you know, throwing the baby out with the bath water here, but I.

I just wish that men were more proactive and less reactive in their faith.

If we were just more proactive, I mean, just think how different our lives would be.

Think about how different your marriage would be, relationships with your kids would be.

So I am a guy who has to constantly remind myself to take initiative, because you can get consumed by the things of this life.

You can get consumed by routines, by work, by daily grind, by changing diapers at home, you know, dealing with issues in your life, fixing a broken car.

I mean, these things are consuming.

But on top of all those things, there's nothing more important than taking spiritual initiative and fighting against that complacency and pushing against it a little bit.

When a man pushes against that, things happen.

And I think there's a reason why the enemy wants us to be complacent.

I think there's a reason why man in the garden said nothing and did nothing in the face of injustice and sin.

When he was created first, he was given a single moral rule before woman was created, when he was given a voice to name all the creatures of the earth.

And then there in the garden, in the garden, when woman is having a conversation with the serpent about the fruit, he does nothing and says nothing.

That spiritual complacency right there is what got us into to our first problem, sin.

And it is prototypical of all men.

I Mean that story, and you've said this already, that story in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 is a story we can come back to a thousand times.

And the reason why we can come back to it a thousand times, not only just because it's history, but because it's a metaphor for the issues that we face in our life.

Now, we can be both actively and passively disobedient.

Don't get me wrong.

We can be both actively and passively disobedient.

But that silence in that moment was deafening.

And the fact that man was given authority, power, dominion, voice, rule, all those things before a woman was ever created and didn't say anything tells me that sometimes in spiritual complacency and apathy and passivity, there's something that we want, that we go after in our passivity and spiritual complacency.

And what we're really saying is, I want to do something else.

I don't want to care for my spiritual life.

That's a hard truth.

I mean, that's just.

That's the hard truth.

I'm trying to say it as nice as I can to men out there today, but I think we're spiritually complacent because we want something else.

And we don't want the Lord.

We don't want to be obedient to Him.

I'm so grateful you said that, because I believe very much and I agree with you.

There's no need to hold back here.

So my audience knows that I'm not a man who holds back as well.

So I appreciate that in our disobedience, in our passivity, passivity is actually choosing in a particular direction.

It's not simply avoiding A, it's actually going towards B.

Because we know deep down that that's the direction that things are going to go.

And that's what we're choosing instead, through passivity.

Yeah.

And I don't know why we're afraid to deal with that.

I think.

I know you speak about this, Will, but more men, Christian men, spiritual leaders, pastors from a platform, need to say that not in a shaming way, but in a truthful way.

You know, kind of like at the end of.

I think it's James.

Yeah.

At the end of the Book of James, when James finishes off the book in chapter five, he just says with utter optimism, it is good when a brother is restored.

It is good to go after a brother and restore him.

But that means pointing out that he has been spiritually complacent in his complacency.

He's been chasing.

He's been doing something.

Not just doing nothing, but doing something that isn't obedience.

So we got to restore those brothers to the faith.

And even men listening today that knows someone that's doing that, go read the end of James chapter five.

It's our responsibility to restore that brother and to welcome him back in, for it covers over a multitude of sins.

One of the things that I got in trouble for saying I don't mind recently was that what a lot of men will do is that they have allowed themselves to be complacent or passive for so long.

And then with the current discussion of masculinity, there's so much anger that's injected in, and men will use this momentary burst of anger to vault them up out of the, out of the ditch, and then they drive straight into the other ditch not too long after.

So good.

You've seen this phenomenon, I'm sure.

So maybe you can talk a little bit about how we can get out of the ditch of complacency without driving into the ditch of, I don't know, arrogance, aggressiveness, pride.

Yeah, there's.

I, I know I can, I can sense from how you're saying it there, there's a version of biblical manhood today that, that we're starting to see on podcasts that is just totally aggressiveness.

It's, it's, it's masked in drinking scotch, smoking cigars, you know, being aggressive.

And you know, while all those things are good in modesty, I guess I just, I.

Cloaking our manhood in things of this world doesn't allow the beauty of true manhood to be seen.

And I'm one to go full bore against sin.

I mean, I'm a John Owen lover.

So, you know, let's go full bore and give a full effort towards sin at the same time.

That doesn't mean that I'm aggressive toward people in a way that would turn them off to the wonder and the, the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

I got to figure out how to kind of toe that line.

And you know, this, this whole idea of, of righteous anger, I just, I just wonder if it's.

If it's possible for humanity.

I just, I mean, I really, I just really wonder if it's possible for us we justified in a cloak of righteous anger that I'm going to be righteously anger.

Anger toward this sin.

And I, I think that emotionally works people up, but it doesn't help them to think through how they're handling it, how they're treating people, how they're dealing with the issues processing in a reflective way.

And I'm not just a reflective guy, but I think we should reflect on how we're handling the issue and moving through maybe the layers of the emotional hurt and wounds, the baggage, the.

The past judgments, the pain, you know, all those kinds of things.

And just being aggressive and trying to get beyond it doesn't really help us to necessarily get beyond it.

There's a.

There's a moment I had once in counseling, and it isn't just once.

I've seen it multiple times where, you know, a husband and a wife will come in to sit down with me, and let's just say one of them has had an affair.

So let's assume the man has had an adulterous affair, sexual affair.

And they sit down together.

And you can kind of see this image of this female and male, this husband, wife and husband who are sitting side by side.

And the husband's devastated.

And he's devastated because, well, he's been caught.

Just be honest.

He's been caught.

He's been caught in an offense against his wife and against God.

And, you know, the wife is angry, too, though.

She's angry because, well, she's been sinned against, and this thing has been going on a long time, and she didn't realize it.

And so her mind is spinning about everything, every single detail of this, her husband's life.

And, you know, they'll sit there, they'll talk through it, and you'll come to the end of a session and you'll ask the question, you know, where do we go from here?

What needs to happen?

And usually I turn to the wife at this time, and I just say, you know, what do you want him to do?

Because right now you can ask him to do whatever you want, and he'll probably do it at least if he wants to reconcile.

So there's been multiple times where I've seen women rattle off five or ten things that they want him to do.

And I've seen those men do those things.

But it's the second session that always blows my mind.

So take it a week later.

You know, after the first week, all the pain, then they come back the next week.

Maybe this week they're holding hands.

Maybe this week they're a little bit more reconciled.

This week they sat on the couch next to each other, and, you know, they're both a little bit more put together.

They're more articulate, their emotions are settled.

And you ask them the questions, right?

You ask them, how was the week.

What happened?

Da da da da da.

Did your husband do all the things that he agreed that he was going to do?

And, and you know, the wife might answer, yeah, or the husband might say, yeah, I did all the things.

And the next question that, that should come out at some point is, well, did you not only do what you agreed to do, did you guys have a discussion about why you did the other thing?

Like, why did you do that thing?

Did you talk with your wife about it?

And you know, usually the wife will go, no, he never talked with me about it.

And usually the guy will look at me like a deer in headlights, like, no.

And I'm afraid of that topic.

I'm afraid to tell her the truth.

I'm afraid to deal with the demons inside.

I'm afraid to tell her that I wanted something more exciting.

I wanted to fulfill my sexual desires.

I found this woman beautiful.

I've been thinking about her for a long time, and then I acted upon it.

You know, most men are afraid of that.

And I think I'm telling you this story, Will, because I.

I think sometimes it's that.

It's that re.

It's that men want to.

They don't want to sit there and process that painful part.

They want to push through it with passivity or with anger too, like you're talking about, and ignore the why, because they are scared to deal with that why, and they are scared of the consequences of that why.

And those two things right there are a big deal.

So sometimes I think we use anger.

Sorry, long answer again.

I don't know why I keep doing this.

Great.

But I think we, we do it.

We.

We think that if I just get angry against this compulsion and sin, that that's going to deal with it.

I'm finally going to put this thing down.

And we, we fail to remember that.

That Jesus Christ deals with the eternal consequences of that.

That it's going to take time for the motivations and the desires of our heart to change.

But we have to take a hard look at our.

Our actions.

And we have to understand the fusion between what we did and why we did it.

And if we understand the fusion between what we did and why we did it, then we might be able to allow the Holy Spirit to address those wayward desires rather than just come at them angrily.

Let the Holy Spirit deal with those desires that change our motivations, that lead to change action, lead to restored relationships, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But we just.

I think sometimes we don't want to do the hard work, you know, like, we don't want to do that hard work.

And I know it's scary, but, man, we should deal with the fusion between those two.

Ask the why and the what question and deal with it in our heart.

Get some courage.

That's what it really requires.

Not anger, but just courage to take a deep, hard look at our soul and look at its darkness and say, yeah, we're done with it, but then let's take the right initiative out of it.

And usually it's not anger, it's reconciliation with Jesus and people around us.

Thank you so much for saying all that.

I.

I could not agree.

I could not agree more.

It's so easy for men to rocket past why they did something and go straight to the solution and even, you know, execute on the solution for weeks or even years, kind of like running, you know, in the hopes that I can just outrun this aspect, this core sinful aspect of myself.

Like, no, bro, you can't outrun it.

Maybe it'll show up.

It maybe won't show up in the way that it did, but it'll show up again, you know, unless you actually go in and witness yourself through the light of God's perfect word and see who you really are, who we all really are, all of us, and allow that to be healed and transformed by the Holy Spirit.

Confession, repentance, prayer, and restitution as well.

The reason why you confess sin to somebody, to other people, is because the process of confession is so deeply humbling.

I don't ever want to feel that again.

And then restitution, if you have to make it.

But that drives the lesson in.

So if you're just trying to rock it out past the thing that you did, onto the solution to some better, brighter day, just kick it into fifth gear.

It's like, that is going to catch up with you.

Well, yeah, it's going to come back around.

I mean, you know, you think about these marriages that I use that illustration because I think it works, you know, and it's a good example.

But sure, you know, if.

If that guy and that gal, that husband and that wife don't reconcile the why, oh, guess what's going to happen?

It's going to happen again.

That's right.

And we want to put that thing down.

We want to deal with it permanently.

And then here's the good news is if we really deal with it on the other side, on the other side, then we can proudly share our witness without the shame and the wounds.

I mean, I was sitting down this happened to me last week.

I was speaking at a marriage conference and there was a Hall of Famer baseball player there, a world championship pitcher there, won two.

Two rings.

I won't say his name.

Wow.

But he and his wife have this incredible ministry today.

Just a fantastic ministry.

I sat down at their table and I was talking with him and he just very robustly will said, yeah, his wife is sitting right next to her beautiful one sitting right next to her.

He goes, yeah, Vince, in my former life, I used to fornicate with prostitutes.

I had girls in and out of my bedroom all the time.

I can't recount how many women I slept with.

I was like, looking at this woman and she's like, she's just nodding her head because.

Why?

Because they had reconciled all that.

They had reconciled it.

And so now he lives in the joy of being.

Being able to share his testimony and story without all this ridiculous shame.

Now, would I have said all those things?

I don't know.

But it's all in his book.

I read his book.

It's all in a book anyway.

But.

But still at the same time, like, it was so encouraging actually, just to see her go, yeah, you did all those things, Vince.

And I'm like, wow.

Now they have turned all their pain and discouragement.

Here's the hope people, if you're listening, into ministry on the other side, because they have dealt with it all.

All the why questions are done.

All that discovery between the what and the why, it's done.

They have new renewed hearts.

They feel free from that.

And now it turned it into ministry.

And they talk about it so robustly.

I'm sure that it has redeemed other marriages as well.

Just because it says it's possible to get through just about anything with that kind of a person.

Right?

Yeah.

And.

And she can surely see that in him, and he can see that in himself.

Like, I imagine he probably went on a whole big journey with that of going through his own was.

It was a repentance, reconciliation and shame.

He probably had his shame period that we talked about, but then he's passed.

It's like, I'm.

I'm a new man.

But she sees that in him.

She knows that in him, and she can see that he's a new man.

And as a result, they are truly past it and it doesn't haunt them anymore.

As opposed to, I suppose if he had just done some sort of band aid solution, said, like now every time I'm.

I was on the road, I would, you know, be on the phone with my wife all night or whatever.

It's like she would always have that doubt, as any of us would.

Is he really a regenerated person versus what he has become?

Yeah.

I think some of that is evidence of our regeneration.

Right.

It's not.

It's not.

Not our anger, but it's.

It's the way that we live that exemplifies that we have worked through it.

And it's not aggression.

Like, I just.

I don't think, you know, the.

The right kind of aggression is helpful.

But obviously the kind that we're inferring here today in this conversation is probably the wrong kind.

And we just need to do business with the issues in our heart and start to ask the why question more frequently.

And I'm glad that you picked up on that, you know, new style, I don't know what to call it, of sort of biblical masculinity that asserts itself in a particular way and carries itself in a particular way.

You know, I've.

I saw it in my time in the manosphere.

I saw the same attitude in my time in the manosphere, and I watched that whole world absolutely implode.

And now I'm seeing it in the Christian world, and it makes sense why it's shown up here as well.

And it's like, guys, this.

This ain't it.

Like, this is why Christ died, to free us from this.

Yes.

Well said.

That is so good.

Because I think some of this comes too, from our concerns about a feminine church.

Yes.

I just.

I've heard that too.

Like, so many conversations about the church is too feminine.

I'm like, yeah, I don't know if I necessarily agree with that.

I mean, there's whole books written on those topics.

I've read them.

Intriguing ideas.

But dressing up our church differently, changing our language, I just don't know if that, you know, you know, making things look more of a masculine hex, color and color code, like.

Right.

I just don't know.

I don't know if any of those things help.

But it's how we speak about Jesus as the ultimate man and really just understand it.

We need to just go.

We need to go back to not all.

All the design and, you know, all the surface level stuff.

I mean, Jesus said this too.

We're so worried about the outside of the bowl.

Why are we worried about the outside of the bowl?

Let's worry about what's in the cup, you know, inside the bowl that concerns him.

So that's where a man and a woman is formed on the Things that are on the inside.

That's a great observation because I've heard those same conversations.

The church is feminine or effeminate.

So now we're going to do, we're going to make the mistake in the opposite direction.

Like you just whip right past by the right past the answer.

So, okay, so question about.

So just a reminder that to everyone listening, you've been doing this for 30 years.

You know, many men have started talking about masculinity over the past five, 10 years.

You've outpaced them all by a good decade.

So as you've grown in your ministry, as you've worked on this, how have you.

A couple different questions.

One, what sort of phases have you grown through of the things that you've discovered and learned to talk about?

But then also, how have you reinspired yourself to stay with it?

Because I started talking about men and masculinity and I was like, oh, wow, this is incredibly disappointing and having to find my way back to enthusiasm for the topic.

So maybe you could talk a little bit about those.

Okay, you get it?

Okay, good.

It's honest, man.

That's honest.

I love it.

Because, I mean, you know, back when, you know, 30 years ago, promise Keepers, I mean, that's where that grabbed a hold of my soul.

And there's all kinds of reasons why it did.

Number one, it was so cool to see that many men gathered together.

But you have to remember that that happened in a day when the, the church in America didn't have songs sung in a key that men could belt out songs in.

That's one of the things that Promise Keepers did well.

They didn't have male focused messages.

They didn't have, you know, teachers and preachers that could address hard topics like they, they did in those days.

They didn't have a lot of these massive churches that now are the size of a Promise Keepers movement.

Right, right.

So.

And I think Promise Keepers did a lot more than just those years.

I mean, I think it was something like six to eight years.

They, they lasted, it wasn't very long.

But the movement was so impressionable.

I mean, people still talk about it today, especially older guys, but I was pretty young when I went to a few of those conferences.

But I, I think we've seen an evolution of it.

The church has, has gotten better at some things.

I think at least the American church has gotten better at some things regarding men, worship groups, etc.

But one of the things that the Promise Keepers really failed at that Every leader in Promise Keepers that I have talked to from that day admits was a failure.

They did a poor job of connecting men into groups.

They did a poor job of creating a discipleship movement from those big events.

And those events were epic.

I mean, I still listen to albums, CDs, CD Rom from back in the day, from those events that, that touch my soul still today.

But I really do think that the movement has changed and it started to take on what we've already talked about today.

This, this aggressive, edgy kind of feel, thinking that we need to add all that, that fluff is wrong word, all that edge to men to get them to come.

You know, I just don't.

I don't think it's really necessary anymore.

And the evolution that I think we are in today is just reclaiming biblical manhood is helping men to understand that it's okay to be a patriarch, that there's a beautiful, A beautiful depiction of the patriarchy in the Bible and that we can live that out and to boldly live it out, to boldly live it out in, in our.

In our workplace, in our church, with our friends, in our family.

And I think that's where the movement has to go today is we have to empower men to understand that they can be a biblical man in the context of every environment that they're in.

That we don't necessarily have to go to a conference to hear about biblical masculinity or biblical manhood, that we can.

We can hear about it in the context of God's word, that we can drive our family back to it.

I think one of the biggest turns I have seen in this during my time happened during COVID where everything is shut down, families are driven back together.

And I know for so many men, that was the reclaiming and the readjustment spiritually of their family.

Their family was now back at home, and they could make some readjustments in how they.

How they led, how they loved, how they served, how they spiritually passed on things to their family.

And I even think the culture today will.

Is driving, is becoming so if I could say this woke and broke that is driving men in their families to consider, how am I teaching my kids?

How am I passing on a legacy to them biblically?

It's forcing them to rethink everything.

I also think this, the younger generation that's coming up, and I'm speaking of anywhere from about 25 and younger, they are craving an understanding of God's word.

I, I am hearing more and more from younger men because you now you start to see a little bit of the generational gap.

I'm talking about big movement, splash in the pan, flash in the pan.

You know, 25 years ago or so with Promise Keepers that de evolves then we have kind of a lot of the.

The ed Re education, the re educating of young people in America.

We have kind of what's happened to.

To liberalism in the church even.

And now because there's been this broken legacy between fathers and their children, we now have a younger generation starving for it like I was starving for it as a Gen Xer years ago, looking for answers.

So I think this next turn, this next turn is going to be a lot about personal responsibility with our faith.

I think you're going to hear more about apologetics, even more than we hear now.

People are going to start turning to the Bible for real and specific answers, which should give you hope as a podcast where people can come and explore, you know, through a question format, answers to some of those things, even push back on some of those things.

I think you're going to see a rising dialogue in small groups of men where they start, and women too, obviously, where they start exploring the truth of the Bible and realizing that what we're doing in the church doesn't match that.

You're going to see a small Reformation movement, I think.

I think that's what's about to happen is a small Reformation movement.

So anyway, I think just hold on, hold on.

We will see a wake of renewal.

It's going to be a different manifestation of it, but I think it's going to be a groundswell and it's not going to be like the, the Jesus movement back in the, you know, 60s, 70s.

It's not going to be like that.

It's going to be more of a groundswell of curiosity about the faith and exploration around the faith through apologetics and, and seeking real answers to things where pastors are forced not to just give shallow, superficial message anymore messages anymore.

They're going to be forced to like, crack open the Bible and give some answers.

And that's what I'm starting to hear from younger generations is I want to find a church that addresses these issues, like really addresses them.

And I visit a lot of churches and I can tell you which ones are addressing it.

And all the young people are going to these ones that aren't afraid of the topics.

They're willing to dig in, they're willing to answer questions.

And I think it's reviving some older generations to like, say, yeah, we, we know Some of the answers to these things.

We want to dive into it, too.

And they're starting.

We're starting to see.

You'll start to see, I think these.

These older and younger generations probably come back together again.

See the op.

The older generation seeing the opportunity for evangelism with younger people and the craving of a younger generation for answers.

So that.

That's where I think we're.

We're going in the next 10 years or so.

That is very encouraging because I see I.

At the moment, and I agree with you that we need to just hold on, because at the moment it seems like the generations are going high speed in opposite directions with a lot of resentment, a lot of bitterness, hatred, avoidance, all that stuff.

But I like the idea that there.

There is a genuine spiritual hunger that, that a lot of men have for the.

For the word of God itself.

Not cute spiritual answers, not catchphrases, but what does the word actually say that I can root my life on?

And I think that there is a generation of older men that have those answers.

It's just making sure that they find their way together and they find.

And each finds the answers that they need.

I think that that's the part.

That's the part that I'm hopeful that the Internet and podcasts and conversation can facilitate.

Well, and.

And you're nailing it here.

I'm beginning to.

I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do for the next 20 years.

All right, let's go.

I.

Here's what I'm doing.

So my YouTube channel, I do daily devotionals and weekly studies.

I go through the Bible, a chapter a week.

That's it.

So each day a little snippet of a chapter, and at the end of the week, a full chapter.

But I'm turning to a YouTube audience, and I'm treating them like my church.

I am turning to them and I'm speaking directly to them.

Kind of like you're doing here, actually, but speaking directly to that audience.

And here's why.

I don't want to be another pastor on a platform, another alpha on a stage, just posting a sermon on YouTube.

There's nothing wrong with that, but I want to evangelize YouTube.

There's 2.5 what billion users on that platform?

2.5 billion.

There's my audience right there.

It's worldwide.

That's where I believe we need to go.

And why?

Because everything we've already said, I've told You all the sauce.

It's.

People want anonymity.

People want a safe place to learn.

People are looking for community.

They're looking for adequate teachers.

They're looking for someone who will speak to them.

They're looking for someone who will open the Bible, fuse together the generations.

I'm in my mid-50s.

I'm a grandfather now.

Right.

I have something to share with the younger generation, and I want to share it with them like my grandfather did with me.

And I just want to pour it back in hopes that the next generations that are rising up will get to enjoy God's word and maybe experience the same turn that I did in my faith and an old 58 Chevy with my grandfather.

I love that story.

Do you have time for me.

Yes.

Do you have time for me to ask you a couple more questions?

Yeah, let's take a couple more minutes.

Great.

So you mentioned, and I think this is a really important one that I love asking my guests.

So one of the questions I get most, most from women is they're married and their husbands are, are in that complacent kind of way.

And the women are wondering, how can I inspire my husband without, without nagging or without pestering, like, how can I inspire my husband to take a more, more active role, either with his faith in the community or in the home?

And women, genuinely, they, they, they ask from a very good place, how can I inspire my husband to take this spot?

So maybe with your experience speaking into men, you can help answer that for the women.

Yeah, that's, that's one of my favorite questions, by the way, because I, I love it when women are trying to figure out an angle.

I, I would keep it real simple for a guy.

I, I would, I would just say, to say to him as a husband, like, look, let's try to take some initiative this year.

Where, where could you take initiative?

Like in our marriage with our kids, something of that nature spiritually, and, and then release them to do that.

But if you want to step back even a little further from that, it's catching your husband doing the things that you like him to do.

I'm going to go back to Ephesians 5.

Just respect, respect your husbands.

There's something about respect of a wife to a husband that fuels a man.

And it doesn't take much when, when my wife says something to me like this, you are a great father.

I love the way you spent time with your son.

I think you're really having a spiritual impact in her life.

Our daughter.

Those things are fuel for A very small, small lit fire in a man's heart.

When women do that, they have no idea, no idea how that just fans into flame.

You see, I'm out.

I listen to women, I listen to wives.

And most of the times, the wives are very disparaging of their husbands.

Most of the time, men are very disparaging of their wives.

We've got to eliminate.

We've got to eliminate all of that side talk.

I mean, we should not be talking in a disparaging way about each other's spouse.

I shouldn't do it for my wife, and my wife shouldn't do it for me.

But I know there's too many small groups and too many conversations out there where this is happening a lot.

But let's just take that off the table and turn it positive.

Remember, not reactive, proactive.

So now let's encourage our wives today.

I would just say to her, to the wives out there today, like, encourage your husband in the direction you want them to go.

It's powerful.

If you include it with a pat on the butt, it's even better, right?

You just have to give them a little.

A little push, you know?

And it's remarkable with men spiritually that are spiritually complacent.

It just takes a little bit to kind of get that going where they.

They suddenly.

A man will suddenly fuse together the reality that, hey, wait, I can have a spiritual influence.

Most men don't understand how to have a spiritual influence because it's.

They haven't been spiritually influenced by a father.

The breakdown in one generation to a next is all we need to forget anything.

I mean, just turn back to the Israelites being freed from Egypt.

They didn't forget.

But one generation, when they're wondering in the wilderness what God had done, the miraculous thing God has done.

We forget everything.

We have to remember that because of the break, the break between generations and spiritual heritage that sometimes we have to encourage movement in that direction.

And sometimes men are afraid to admit this, specifically husbands.

So women, if you're listening, sometimes your husband doesn't know how to do that, and he's very embarrassed and ashamed that he doesn't know.

And he doesn't want to play his cards that he doesn't know.

So what does it look like to take spiritual initiative?

What does it look like to be a spiritual leader?

Most men don't know.

They literally can't give you an answer.

Even though the most popular story, one of the most popular stories in the Bible is Jesus washing feet, we miss the simplicity in the Fact that the greatest leader of all time just washed feet.

It's just serve your wife, just serve your kids.

And don't just serve them tangibly.

Serve them spiritually.

Like, understand how to serve them spiritually.

You could encourage your husband to say, hey, could you send out a text with a little devotional thought in it, like, once a week to our family?

It could be as simple as that.

So here's a story for you.

You'll love this one.

So years ago, years ago, I was trying to figure out how to have a spiritual influence on my family.

And I knew every one of my kids had one of these.

And I paid for it.

It's expensive, too, man.

It's expensive.

I'm paying for it.

They have.

Every one of my kids had one of these in their hand or in their pocket.

So I told my wife, here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to send out a daily devotional to every one of our kids.

So that included my daughter, my two sons, my daughter's boyfriend, who was just a boyfriend at the time, he's now her husband, and we have a granddaughter.

Yeah, grandson.

Sorry, grandson.

And my wife.

So there were five people on this text, right?

So I said I was going to do it for 30 days.

So I picked up my phone and I started.

I just took a little piece of text will and a little thought.

I mean, it was like this big.

Yay big.

And I was going to do it for 30 days to see if I could have a spiritual influence on their life.

Okay?

So I get about 20 days in or so, and I look down at my phone and I realize that everything on my phone was, you know, that gray text, but no blue text, meaning no one had replied to me.

No one.

After 20 days, well, now I can't unsee that thing.

So what begins to happen to me as a father as I begin to go through this cycle of shame and regret and disappointment in myself?

So day 21, I'm sending the text, and I'm like, why am I sending this thing?

You know?

Day 22, still no reply.

This is a waste of time.

Day 23, you thought this was going to work.

What a fool you are.

Day 24, even your wife doesn't respond to you.

I mean, she didn't even send me a text.

No.

Like, little emoji.

No.

One of these.

Nothing, man.

I got nothing from any of them.

No blue text.

Day 30 comes by.

This time, I'm angry.

You know, I'm just, like, angry and disappointed.

I've worked through all the emotions and all the voices, and we're day 30, I'm sending the text.

I send it, and I go, I remember saying this out loud.

Thank God that's over.

Day 31, first reply.

In dad's daily divo, it's called Triple D.

First reply.

My daughter sends a text message and says, dad, where's our diva?

I reply back in a sarcastic tone.

Didn't know you read it.

Question mark, question mark, question mark.

A bunch of question marks, you know, across the.

Across the text.

And then she immediately calls me.

Immediately.

She picks up the phone, I answer.

She goes, dad, stop worrying about yourself.

Send us our devo.

We all read your stinking devo.

Not only that, we send it out to all of our friends.

I go, I said, whatever.

She goes, no, we all send it out to our friends.

I said, even Grant?

Yeah, even Grant.

Even Riley.

Yeah, Riley.

Send us our divo.

So I sent day 31.

Day 35.

Day 35 comes.

This literally happens.

I get a phone call, anonymous call.

I picked it up.

I didn't know why.

Guys on the phone, guy goes, he says, this random guy goes, is this Vince?

I go, yeah.

He goes, I just need to let you know, Vince, I ain't got much time, but your daughter sent my daughter a devotional that you sent on text.

And she sent it to me.

And he pauses, and I thought he was going to be angry.

And he goes, I just wanted to call you and tell you thank you for sending that out.

I needed to hear that today.

And then he hung up.

He didn't tell me his name, who he was, none of that stuff.

I never knew who that was.

Okay, I'm paying attention.

God.

Well, today.

Today, this is not about me.

But today, over a hundred thousand people read my devotionals every day because I decided to send them out to the world.

And guess what?

Yes, a hundred thousand.

I send out a hundred thousand emails every single day.

And you can see how many people are listening on YouTube.

It turned in to this incredible event in a very short period of time.

Not only that, it turned into three devotional books put out by David C.

Cook and turned into other books that you're holding in your hand that David C.

Cook wanted to write with me.

I know that one right there.

Yeah.

So, I mean, let me come back to my point now, women, if you're listening today, sometimes all it takes is a little nudge.

Just a little nudge, a little encouragement.

And by the way, if your husband sends out a text, send a reply, encourage him along the way, it'll help to keep the spirits high because men disqualify themselves.

They disqualify themselves.

And women, you can help in silencing that voice of self disqualification.

You're right.

I do love that story.

What an incredible story.

Thank you for that.

Praise God.

I would never have thought that it would end up with a hundred thousand people reading the emails.

I wouldn't have thought that that was the seed that got planted that would have blossomed into this glorious tree.

I wouldn't have either, dude.

I had no plans for that.

All I know is when I started writing them, I thought to myself, this is daily, so you have to do this every day.

But I'm a committed guy.

And here we are, daily devotionals through the entire Bible.

Oh, and that's the, that's the daily devotional that you do now.

Just a little like a sentence or a verse or two, and then you just provide a little bit of commentary.

Right, right beneath.

Yeah, yep.

On video, audio and written.

Written formats.

You can find it on YouTube.

So go right there.

Fantastic.

Well, then I just have one more question for you because I want to make sure that we get a moment to talk about this essential series, the Forging Godly Men series.

Again, this book is, this is what, eight, nine bucks on Amazon?

Not expensive, 140 pages.

You can rip through it in a couple days.

And like I said, and I wouldn't just say this, believe me, I would not just say this.

I've read so many books about masculinity and Christian masculinity.

This one was really great.

And I think the listeners now who have been listening can understand why I felt that way.

So maybe just talk about the series of books that you're putting out and then we'll close on that and, and, and let people know where they can find more about you.

Yeah, so this is a three book series.

We're calling it the Forged Men series.

The first book that you're holding in your hand there, the orange one, that is one that takes men through the gospel.

It's.

The point is to help men to understand the gospel through a biblical worldview by using my stories so they understand how to communicate their story.

The second book is all on spiritual disciplines.

It's about to be released, I think in just a couple of weeks.

And then the third book is sometime next year.

It's already written, but it's on leadership for men, basic roles for men to help them to understand how to lead in those roles.

So all three of these books make A compilation, a study for men to go through with a group of people or on their own.

They can do it with a.

With a friend, with a son, with a neighbor, an uncle, nephew, whoever, or in a group, together with a group of men.

We have some videos online that complement that as well.

And my hope is that men would just take it, read it, and be encouraged as men in a very positive way around the gospel.

Thank you.

Well, that's definitely what it did for me.

And I'm looking forward to that second book as well.

Yeah, great.

I'll send you one.

How about that?

Deal.

Throw a hat in.

I'll pay for the hat.

Okay, perfect.

You got it.

So this has been fantastic.

Thank you so much.

This has been so encouraging to me as a man who works with men and has seen many different phases of it.

Not as many as you have, obviously.

And I appreciate your devotion to men and your wisdom and clarity that you speak into their lives and your commitment.

So thank you.

This has been an inspiration to me.

Likewise, Will.

Thanks for asking good questions.

I don't normally get questions this good, by the way, but thank you and blessings on your ministry and to everybody listening today.

If anybody wants to reach out, you just go to VinceMiller.com, you go to my website.

I'd love to hear from you.

But thank you again for being a part of this, part of a part of my journey right here.

It's a fun part and it's getting pretty exciting.

Sa.