Women in Selma Baptist Association are getting new husbands, thanks to Men’s Fraternity.
“I’ve seen men change 100 percent,” said Harold Lippert, pastor of West End Baptist Church, Selma, and a graduate of the intensive program.
Created in 1990 by Robert Lewis, pastor at large of Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, Ark., and author of “Raising a Modern-day Knight,” Men’s Fraternity is designed to teach men how to live biblical, authentic manhood.
“Men’s Fraternity helps you … find out what a man really is and what God expects in a man,” Lippert said.
A number of churches in Selma Association are conducting the program, and Director of Missions Tom Stacey said people — wives, in particular — are noticing radical changes.
“Numerous times, we’ve heard comments from wives, saying, ‘I don’t know what you’re teaching at that Men’s Fraternity class but keep it up,’” Stacey said.
The program, which combines biblical teaching with small group discussion, centers around three one-year studies written by Lewis that focus on different aspects of manhood.
The first study, The Quest for Authentic Manhood, deals with issues men commonly face and introduces Jesus Christ as the One who can help them with those issues. The study requires each man to write a plan detailing where he was in the past as a man, where he is now and where he hopes to be in the future.
“You just can’t read [those plans] without tears when you see what their lives were and what they have become because of what they’ve learned,” Lippert said.
In the second study, Authentic Manhood: Winning at Work and Home, a major focus is placed on a man’s relationship with his family, teaching him to better communicate with his wife and parent his children.
The third study, The Great Adventure, prepares men to utilize what they have learned in the program.
“[It teaches you to] go out into the world, put it into practice and put your life at the feet of Jesus so you can be the man God intended you to be,” Lippert said.
Once men complete one of the studies, they take part in a ceremony celebrating their “graduation” from that part of the program. In Selma Association, 85 men are due to graduate this month, bringing the association’s total number of graduates to 150.
“I’m very much of a proponent for Men’s Fraternity, because I have seen what it has done in men’s lives in churches that have gone through it,” said Tommy Puckett, former director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions’ (SBOM) office of men’s ministries and disaster relief.
Puckett singled out Selma Association as an example of fully embracing Men’s Fraternity; the program has spread beyond church walls into the community.
Jim Creech, a member of First Baptist Church, Selma, leads a group that meets weekly at the Selma Performing Arts Center and includes men of all ages and denominations. After viewing the week’s lesson on DVD, the men sit down in small groups to discuss it.
“The Holy Spirit is just really active among these groups of men, opening our hearts up to share with each other what we got from [the lesson] and how the Lord is speaking to us,” Creech said. “Somebody who shares ministers to somebody else in the midst of it.”
He said Men’s Fraternity is more than just going through a program; it is developing relationships with brothers in Christ, as he found out when his wife was diagnosed with cancer.
“The Lord used all those relationships just to minister to us in an awesome way I’ve never experienced before” said Creech, who added his wife went through treatment and has “a new lease on life.”
“A lot of guys met my wife, asked quite often how she was doing and said they were praying for her,” he said.
Creech also said the program has helped racial reconciliation in Selma. He related the story of an elderly black man in the group who said he used to think white men “had it easy” but discovered that men face common struggles.
“As far as the challenge of living as the men God calls us to be, he recognized that the color of your skin doesn’t free you from struggling,” Creech said.
Puckett said one of Men’s Fraternity’s advantages is that it not only helps men examine their lives but also make a plan for moving forward; he wishes the program would become a “tidal wave” spreading across the land.
“I think this is a much-needed discipleship [tool],” he said. “[It is] the equipping of a godly man to live in our world today.”
For more information, visit www.mensfraternity.com.
To schedule a consultation about starting the program, contact Puckett at 334-224-2082 or Steve Stephens at the SBOM at 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 268.
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