Avoid ‘feelings’ with men’s ministry

Think you can start a men’s ministry group by persuading a bunch of guys to get together and talk about their feelings?
   
Forget it, said Geoff Gorsuch, executive director of men’s ministry for The Navigators, a ministry organization based in Colorado Springs, Colo.
   
“The word ‘feelings’ is a bad word for men,” Gorsuch told men’s ministry leaders attending Discipleship and Family Week at LifeWay Glorieta Conference Center, July 21–27.
   
“You avoid that word,” Gorsuch said. “You just don’t go there if you are trying to start a men’s ministry group.”
   
Men are motivated by challenges, Gorsuch said.
   
“Give him a challenge. Tell them we are going to meet together because we want to take the Christian life more seriously; we want to build better families or we want to change this community. You can’t get them there by saying you want to develop a deep, intimate group.”
   
Gorsuch said to reach men, leaders are going to have to find out where they are mentally, emotionally and spiritually and then connect with them.
   
Unlike women’s groups, he said, you can’t just stick men in a room together, give them coffee and doughnuts.
   
Men are linear and women are integrated, he said.
   
“This is biologically provable. Scientists wired up a bunch of fellows and a bunch of gals with EEGs and gave them a problem to solve,” Gorsuch said.
   
He likened starting a men’s ministry group to running the bases of a baseball diamond. 
   
“The process starts as we step up to the plate with the desire and the determination to become more like Christ,” Gorsuch wrote in his book about men’s ministry, “Brothers! Calling Men into Vital Relationships” (NavPress).
   
At first base, men become acquainted with each other and accept one another. At second base, the relationships progress to the level of friendship where they encourage one another. At third base, they begin to feel like brothers and consider it OK to exhort or admonish one another.
   
“At this point, we’re brothers, vitally interested in helping each other reach home plate — growth in Christlikeness,” he wrote. (BP)