The video mentioned in the sermon transcript is called "It Works" by the country group Alabama. It portrays a modern married couple visiting the husband's parents. Throughout the video, the couple observes the strong and loving relationship between the husband's parents. The video is divided into three sections: the first section focuses on the wounds and baggage that men carry, particularly in relation to their fathers. The second section explores the design and gifts of men, while the final section emphasizes the importance of men evangelizing and sharing the gospel with others.

This message was given at the Building Strong Families Conference held in Dallas, Texas, March 20th through the 22nd of 2000. This conference was sponsored by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Family Life Ministries. Following the message, there will be information on how to order additional materials on building a strong family. It's a pleasure here to introduce Robert Lewis. For the past several years now, I've counted my friendship with Robert Lewis as a gift from God. He's an encourager. Though I live in the Chicago area and he's in Little Rock, he's a man I can go to and talk to as a pastor. And he's spoken into my life. And there are times when I'll just run things by him and say, Robert, this is what I'm thinking of doing. What do you think? I respect his wisdom. He's a godly man. And he's strategic. I believe that God has given him an anointing and a calling to be in the forefront of teaching manhood to men. He has preparation. The background was an M.Div. from Western Conservative Seminary in Portland. And in addition to his M.Div., which I know many of you have as well, you'll understand what it means that he did an additional degree, an M.A. degree in New Testament Greek, and then did a D.Min. at Talbot. He has a book called Rocking the Roll, Building a Win-Win Marriage, published by Nav Press. And that's had a great influence wherever it's sold and continues to be very influential. Robert is the pastor of Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. I think he has about 5,000 people in it now and keeps growing and planting churches. He's a man who loves God's word and he loves God and he's a true man. Robert, come. That's right. I am. I am on the executive committee of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood as well, as well as I've traveled for 12 years speaking with Family Life. So I kind of own both sides of the fence of these two great organizations. Before Wayne, are you leaving or are you staying? I'm staying. Why do you think I planned that? Well, one of the things I do want to say, years ago I met Wayne in Little Rock and just felt an immediate kinship to him and to the things that God had put on his heart in regards to this issue. And we have developed a great friendship. I think the thing I enjoy most, I told him this not long ago by phone. I told him I was going to be one of his. Remember the other day we talked about male cheerleaders? I told him, I said, Wayne, I want to be one of your male cheerleaders. I just feel like God's called me to do that and I'm not looking for anything in that other than I believe in you. I believe not just in the fact that you are an outstanding and wonderful scholar, a great man of the word of God and those kind of things, but I think God's got a call on you and I just want you to know you've got a guy out there who's going to cheer for you. And he's going to encourage you every bit of the way and it has been an absolute delight to do that. Now one of the reasons I say that, guys, is because before I begin to present some stuff on men's fraternity, I want you to know I have seen men come alive in their life when they get excited about getting involved in other men's lives. It adds an energy. I think what God does is add an energy back to you to become that kind of man. We had an older man in our church and he had some real severe health problems. And I went to see him at the hospital one day and one of the things he told me, he was laying in the hospital bed, he'd been retired just a few years and his health had declined and he told me, he said, you know, I just don't have anything to live for. And I thought, wow. And here he was in our church, he said he didn't have anything to live for, he said he was an outstanding businessman, I knew about his marriage and I said, Harry, that's just not true. He said, what can I do? You know, he's one of those guys who finally steps off the center stage of life, you know, as far as his command of a company or whatever. And then all of a sudden he steps into this vacuum and he wondered what he could do. And I said, you've got a lot to do. He said, I can't teach. He said, I don't know what I can do. I said, oh sure you can teach. I said, you're a walking reservoir of unbelievable experiences that men would just die to have. Pick your brain. He said, I've failed a lot. I said, that's the point. You've failed in some things and you can tell them what not to do as well as what to do. Well, you know, he took me up on that shortly after they got out of the hospital. And he was involved, he was a participant in men's fraternity. And we got to a section in men's fraternity where we talked about mentoring. And I talked to the older men about how important they were playing the second half of their life investing down in younger men. And that many of those men wouldn't believe that unless they opened themselves up. And I said, you know, if you'd like to, if you're an older guy and you want to be a mentor, I bet there are a lot of men who would like that. In fact, I'm going to ask all the young men who would like to have a personal mentor to stand up. About 300 guys stood up. They didn't care who it was. They just wanted an older man to talk to. Well, Harry, this was four years ago, made himself available. And the other day I was at the athletic club. And I was working out at six o'clock in the morning. I was on the treadmill and Harry came and got on the treadmill next to me. Healthy as a horse. And he's going along on the treadmill and I said, well, how's the mentoring going? And he said, well, you know, I said, I have seven guys I'm mentoring right now and I have five on a waiting list. He said, Robert, he said, it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. He said, I'm reclaiming a whole season of my life as I pour my life in these guys. He said, I still don't know anything. But he said, these guys just want to talk. And I'm retired and I have plenty of time to talk. But it's given me a whole new ministry. And those young men are just loving it. I tell you, it's a great thing to be a cheerleader to another man. Why don't you know what you're doing? That's what I'm going to be for you to life. I'm going to keep cheering you on. Well, let me, this session is on men's fraternity. Let me tell you what I'd like to do in this session that we have together, because in my plenary address, I went through a number of the needs men have. I'm going to review those real briefly. But what I want to do is make this real practical, because so many have come up to me and asked me about how to start a men's fraternity and what to do in a men's fraternity. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you through just an outline, just a brief outline of how, if you were in church and you were going, you know, I'd like to do something like that. How could I start? I'm going to take you through an outline of how to set up a men's fraternity. And that won't take me very long, but when I'm finished, then we're going to open it up for questions. All right. And we'll take questions on any and everything that I've addressed concerning men's issues or knighting young men or whatever. And then when we've exhausted that, because I know most of you are getting to a place of exhaustion, when we get to that place, then we'll be dismissed. Is that OK with everybody? That's kind of our agenda. Let me just review real briefly, again, these key needs that men have that I think are so important for us to understand because I'm just going to tell you again as a pastor, I've been in the pastorate now 27 years, I have never had a more fruitful, productive, life-changing ministry as I've had with men that has revolutionized the whole church from top to bottom and even moved us out into the community. Because in our community today, we have men who believe me that they could have a ministry and who got equipped in that regard and are out on their own creating ministries in our community, especially in the inner city and things like that, that have gone so far that some of those men have actually created their own companies with their own staff working for them in that regard. So there's some exciting things ahead and I just want to review just briefly some of these needs that men have. Now let me just go through them real quickly. First of all, remember I said men need a safe place where they can know someone who understands them and that they are not alone. I talked about how important that what we create is a safe place for men to come where whoever is going to lead it, it's going to be so important that whoever leads it allows these men the privilege of knowing that the experience that they are having is not a unique one. It's one common to all men. They feel understood there. They feel like they can let their hair down and interact with other men over issues that for many of them they have stuffed in their soul for years and have never had the key to unlock that and let that out. Secondly, men need a compelling vision of biblical masculinity that they can take hold of. It's got to be user friendly. It's something they've got to be able to take with them and that inspires them. And at a moment of challenge in the community or discouragement in their heart, they can look to that vision and it calls them up. They've got to have that. Thirdly, men need time to effectively process their manhood. That's why a men's ministry has to be not a rally that happens month to month or you bring in a seminar, although as you know I said yesterday that those seminars and rallies are excellent for motivating men, but not for processing masculinity. It's got to be an ongoing ministry to men that involve other men interacting and rubbing shoulders with one another. I love that word as I mentioned to you the other day where it says, and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. That word stimulate in Greek is the Greek word paroxysmos. It's only used one other time in the New Testament and it's when Paul and Bartimaeus rubbed up against each other so much that they got mad at each other and split because they disagreed with what to do with John Mark. Well, when it says let us consider how to stimulate one another, that's that iron sharpening iron with sparks where guys get up in each other's face and talk to them about your marriage or how much time you're spending at work or with your kids and those kind of things. But it's so healthy. Guys like that kind of environment. Fourthly, men need practical how-tos they can taste success with. And we talked about in that processing when you're talking about your son or your daughter or your wife or your work or your own personal design. That's got to be put in ways that men can implement. They can go out and implement it at some rudimentary levels and then taste success with that. Men, as I've already mentioned, need male cheerleaders. And men need a sacred moment where they can know that they've become a man, a biblical man. Not just a man, but a biblical man. They've crossed over into that promised land and they intend to stay there and fortify. And then I want to add the big idea that I started with. Finally, men need the church. Men desperately need the church and its pastors to lead them. Because until the church starts helping men reclaim a biblical manhood, most men will not go there, at least not consistently. Not with a sense of camaraderie and celebration and excitement and courage. Now, having mentioned that, let me talk to you about how we design men's fraternity. Now, I want you to know what I'm going to tell you is not how we started. We fumbled around with it in the beginning. And so we've done a lot of trial and error. And I'm going to tell you the best of what we've come up with that then you can take and even add to in the future. But the first thing is that we announce men's fraternity every August, right before the school year starts. And our men's fraternity is a year-long, school-year-long event. So it begins in September and meets weekly through the following May. And we meet because this is the best time for men to meet on a regular basis. We meet early in the morning. And when I say early, we open our doors at 545. And I want you to picture yourself at 545 and you're driving up to our church. And how's it going to feel? Well, you're going to drive up and the lights are going to be on. And when you walk in our auditorium, you're going to hear music playing. And you're going to have a group of men who are called the men's fraternity staff greeting you right there at the door with big smiles on their face. And what they're going to do, right when you walk in the door, they're going to hand you an outline. And on that outline is going to be the outline of the lesson for the day. And on the very bottom of that outline are going to be the questions for your small group. So that's going to be your kind of first encounter. It's going to feel warm in there. It's going to be light. It's going to be bright. There's going to be music playing. There's going to be coffee available at every station where you can go get some coffee. And stand around between 545, if you want to get there that early, all the way to 615 and just visit with other guys. And so the buzz just kind of grows through that early part of the morning. But I need guys. And I have an administrative team. It's just real important that when a man opens that door, he sees a smile. Okay? So early in August, we have a men's fraternity team that gets together. We pray together regularly for the upcoming fall. In fact, we go into the auditorium and pray over every seat to get ready for men's fraternity. But when those guys walk in, those hosts see that guy walking in the door, he's assuming that guy's scared to death. And so his job is to make him as warm and as comfortable as possible, greeting him over and over, and hopefully throughout the year getting to know the guys that come through his station, their names, laughing with them, patting them on the back, those kind of things. At 6 o'clock in the auditorium itself where we meet, because a lot of guys just hang out in the foyer. We have a pretty large foyer where they can gather. But when they go into the auditorium, music begins to play in there. And I want to tell you, the first 10 to 12 sessions of men's fraternity, we make it as, and I'll explain this a little later, but we make it as non-religious as possible. So what they're going to hear in the auditorium is going to be popular, secular music. That's what they're going to hear. And I've had a group of guys go through and select songs from the 60s all the way to the day that they pull out songs that, as best they can, fit the theme of the message for that day. So, for instance, between 6 and 6.45, we create these men's fraternity CDs that play that music. They start, just go 15 minutes. But, for instance, I can tell you, because I can remember, on our very first session, guys are sitting down, and music's been playing, and it's just getting up to 6.15 where our host will step up and start men's fraternity. And I remember on our first session, the last song is the Chicago song, I'm a Man. See? So that plays. Of course, that's a blaring, kind of rocking music. You kind of need that at 6.15 in the morning, quite frankly. And you say, well, why do you do that? Why do you play secular music, and the religious part is played down? It's because if men's fraternities and outreach, and I'm trying to identify with these guys, and I'm trying to invite them in, because we're going to get into the Scripture in the weeks ahead. And there's going to be some powerful moments in the weeks ahead. The thing I don't want to do is scare them to death on the front end. I know where I'm going, and they're going to go deep into the Scriptures. In fact, middle of the year, the things that Wayne presented at his plenary address on our first night, you know, going through Genesis and things like that, that's right, we go verse by verse right out of the Scriptures mid-year. But at the beginning, we don't. At the beginning, we want, remember, we want these guys to come in, and we want them to know they're in a safe place. And that the people that are going to be in front of them and talk to them at the very beginning are guys that can identify with where they're coming from, so they can relax and begin to open up. And then that presents, if I can use the Psalms, a highway to our God. All right? So that's where we start with that kind of music. At 615, a host will step up in front of the men and begin men's fraternity. He is a guy who is critical, absolutely critical, in my mind, to the success of men's fraternity. He's not just a welcomer. He's a host. And let me just give you a couple of characteristics I think are essential for this guy. He has to be well known in the community. He has to be well respected as a businessman in the community. He has to be a good, warm communicator. And he has to be creative and well organized. Now, God gave me that kind of man. In Little Rock, his name is Bill Smith. He runs, do you know Bill Smith? He runs Smith Capital Management, which is a large money managing firm. It started with one of the largest firms in our city called Stevens Incorporated. It has a blue ribbon reputation in our community as a businessman who deals, I think he manages something like $250 million. So he's well known in the community. He is an incredibly mature Christian, but he's real creative and warm. So he's the guy that starts off men's fraternity. So he stands in front of the men and welcomes them, interacts with them, helps them kind of get settled and those kind of things. And then he'll take, he knows the subjects I'm going to speak on. And then what he'll do is he'll do different formats up front to get men ready for my particular presentation. So, for instance, he might invite, we may be in a session on a man and his wife. And he may invite a man to come up, not to give a testimony necessarily, but to do an interview with him, like Paul did the other day with me. But he'll invite him up just to interact. But he wants to talk about real hard hitting issues. So, for instance, the other day we had on a man and his wife, a guy come up where Bill's interviewing him. And this man had been, he was from our church. He wasn't identified that way. He was just identified by the job that he did and those kind of things. And so he said, well, tell us a little bit about your life. And so the guy began to talk about his life and how he got so invested in his work that one day he came home and his wife was gone. And how that just crushed him. And his wife proceeded to divorce him. And then that led on this pilgrimage of trying to put his life back together. And we had some steps, just some fake steps sitting there while he was talking. And one started off with adolescence. And then it talked about coming to a place of becoming a man and then becoming a mentor to other men. And it was just levels of progression of growth in your masculinity that we've talked about on other occasions. And what that guy did in the midst of his talk, he went over there and stood on the step called adolescence. And he told the guy that he was sharing with the help from Bill who had kind of coached him beforehand. He said, you know, what I realized at 30 years old, I was still a boy. And what the rubble around me was because I was still acting like a boy. And then he went to tell on his journey how he had come to terms with some of these things and the different ingredients that led to the turnabout in his life. And then he came to a place where suddenly he stepped up on that place called manhood. And he talked about becoming a man and taking responsibility for his life. And the things that he had done and the accountability he had brought into his life. And then he told everybody, he said, and I want everybody to know that tonight I'd like to invite everybody to my remarriage. Because my wife has taken me back and so we're going to be remarried tonight. Now let me tell you, that's powerful stuff. That's real life stuff there. And to bring that kind of coordination about, you need a guy like Bill Smith who can coordinate and manage. Because I can't do that kind of thing. Or like on a particular day when we first started, Mr. Turner, he was up there talking to guys, kind of getting them excited about the material they're going to get. And then as he was speaking, the house lights went dark. We have screens like we have in the auditorium we're in. The lights went dark and what we saw was about a three-minute clip from the Apollo 13 liftoff, you know, in the Apollo movie. Speaking, just again, just giving some identification of, hey, we're lifting off today. Or when we came to the place where we're about to finish men's paternity. And Bill was up and we were about to launch out. You know, we'd done our plans, we were about to launch out. We ran it. He ran a clip from Henry V. The Shakespearean play was made into a movie when Henry was leading his troops into France and they were totally outnumbered. And they were going to fight this incredible battle. I don't know if you've seen that movie. But then Henry, seeing his troops tired, exhausted, about to worn out. But they were there for battle. He rallies them together and gives one of the most stirring of speeches. And reminds these guys that it's worth dying for a cause bigger than ourselves. And then he looks at them and he says, we few. We very few. We band of brothers. And you can just feel the energy in that. Because that's really what the church is. We're the few. Sometimes it feels like the very few. Right? But what Henry was like, we're a band of brothers who can go to war and we can win. Well, that was a great set up for my particular address that particular morning. But the point is that you need, if you're going to have a men's fraternity, one of the keys to me, to a successful men's fraternity, is that you've got to have a host that commands the respect of men. And he's got to be good and creative, a good communicator, hopefully a good businessman. He does that for about ten minutes between 6.15 and 6.25. At 6.25 he introduces me. Then I come forward and I deliver whatever the address is of the day. And I go from 6.25 or 6.30 to 7 o'clock. My goal is to be finished at 7 o'clock. Now, I want to mention to you guys, because some of you have this and some of you don't. But if you have the ability to use some technology in your addresses, I would really encourage you to do that. If you have PowerPoint, for instance, one of the things that we do, remember, it's at the beginning. The first ten or twelve sessions, I don't even open a Bible. What I do is when I get to a place where I'm relating the Scriptures to a particular point, that Scripture will come up on PowerPoint behind me. Because remember, a lot of the guys are stumbling in there, they don't know the Bible. And they didn't know to bring a Bible. But what I'm trying to do is help them see how relevant the Bible is to manhood. So, I'll say, you know, just like the Scripture says, and it'll throw it up there and I'll quote it. Or when I need an image of something, I love to use some of that technology. I remember when we were first introducing the concept of marriage and talking about roles in marriage. And when you do that with a group of guys who are from the secular community, they start getting tight. And so I kind of helped them in that opening session just think about what marriage is really like. Because marriage is an organization. I talked to them about marriage being a partnership between people. But yet, if it's a true partnership, that's going to bring problems because most business partnerships don't make it. You have to have some way to lead. And they relate to that. And then we talk about that. But that's just my introduction to it. But then when I finish, when I finish that particular morning of address and I'm starting to step off the stage, we put up on the screen, without me saying a word, lights come down and we put up on the screen the Alabama video. You know Alabama, the country group? They have a video called It Works. I don't know if you've ever heard that song, It Works. But it's about, I mean, it just takes the theology of what we're talking about that morning and in a very emotional way. Just puts it right in front of those guys. Because it's a song about a modern married couple going to visit his mom and dad. And as they visit his mom and dad, all through the thing, they're glancing at mom and dad who have this wonderful relationship. And shows her getting up and serving him some food. And he's out working, you know, doing things like that. They're retired. And the verse that just keeps going over is that their ways are not our ways. But she serves him, he loves her and protects her. And in the last line of the Alabama video, over and over again, and it works. And it works. And so as the young man's driving off in his car, he's looking in the rear view mirror. And there they are, hugging and loving on one another. And he's a frazzled guy. And the last line is, it works, as they look in the rear view mirror. Gets guys really thinking. If there's a way to use those kind of things early on. Some guys don't have access to those kind of things. But if you do have access to that, I would really, really encourage you to use those. Because it helps when you bring outside resources to make the Bible shine even brighter as the diamond that it is. Then it's 7 o'clock. We break up and what guys do is guys break into small groups. And their small group meeting lasts from 7 to 7.30. Around the questions that are on that outline they were given that morning around the subject that I had the privilege to address them on. We encourage men to join men's fraternity as a group. OK? As a group. Because the more guys can get together with their friends, the quicker they will bond together and open up and share their lives with one another. One of the jobs that Bill Smith has in men's fraternity is any man that doesn't have a group. At the end of my address, when he comes up to dismiss them into their group, every week he says, If there are new men here, I want to meet with you as a group. OK? So if you're a guy that just wandered in in session 8, you'll hear Bill Smith say, Guys are going to break into groups, you come join me, the host. And he'll lead them in that group that morning, but by next week he will have placed them in a group. So guys are constantly being processed into groups. And by the way, the group sessions between 7 and 7.30 are just a huge win. Because if you do a good job on the front end, and I'll talk about this in a moment, of identifying with them and letting them know that that's a safe place, and you're being transparent and naked and unashamed before them in your process of manhood, by the third or fourth session, as I've had several counselors tell me who've come to men's fraternity, the level of transparency in the group that you will reach in two or three weeks will be beyond what most counselors reach in two or three months. Because guys want to talk to guys. They just need somebody to get the spark going in that regard. Then at 7.30, we try to keep the groups no larger than five or six. Some guys will come clustered up more than that because we advertise the paper, for instance. I looked out there one morning, I didn't know who the guys were, I went and talked to them because it was a bunch of them, about nine of them, and they had read about men's fraternity in the paper. And what it was, it was a car dealership. And all the salesmen and the president of the car dealership all came together. So we just put them in one group. So they met all year together. At 7.30, the music begins to play, and when it does, the guys know that it's over. They can get up right then and leave and go to work. Some guys hang around, they go out to breakfast together. What I'll do between 7.30 and 8 is Bill Smith and I, between 7.30 and 8, we will have, Bill has already arranged this, but we will ask two groups to join us for a debriefing between 7.30 and 8 and meet with us. They only have to do it one time the whole year. And that way we get to cover, hopefully, almost all the groups. Sometimes we have to put three groups in there. Now you say, well, what do you do between 7.30 and 8? We tell them in advance to meet with us, they can work that out in their work, and if they can't be there, they just can't. But most guys are excited about meeting with us, and we provide for them a little breakfast. It's usually 15, 20 guys in there. We've got a nice table. We go and we sit down, and here's what I do. I sit down and I ask the guys, Bill's over there serving them breakfast, and I say, I want to have 30 minutes with you, and I want you to tell me what's working and what's not. Help me hear from you. I want you to tell me what's making a difference in your life. What are the things that you're hearing that you say, that's really helping me, and what would you change about men's fraternity if you can? So what I basically get all year is an ongoing focus group that tells me where I'm succeeding and where I'm not, or it lets me know that I've overlooked some question that 10 or 12 guys had in the room, that they say, you know, you talk so much about your son, and how would you do that with your daughter? Well, when I hear that from enough guys the next week, I'll incorporate that in some way in my talk. I might even start out by saying in the following session, you know, between sessions some guys ask me about this, and I want to take just a moment and answer that. So that keeps me from having any blind spots week to week in doing it that way. Okay, a bit about just the whole year. We go 26 to 28 weeks during the year. We begin, like I said, in September. We go to the 1st of December. We take a break at the 1st of December for the holidays. So between December the 10th and January the 10th, we're off. And we try to break Vince Paterni down where the semester ends with something powerful. And so we can then pick up like a new semester the following year. We start again in January, and we go until the 1st of May. And on the 1st of May, first week in May, is when we have that graduation ceremony that I told you about. A lot of the guys between June and the following September continue to meet in their small groups. They'll just continue to meet for breakfast, because by that time a number of them have formed some pretty intense friendships, and I've noticed a number of those go on for life. They become your cheerleaders. A little bit about the curriculum. We have three years of curriculum. That's all. And then we repeat it. The first year is entitled The Quest for Authentic Manhood. It's what we call the primer. It's called The Quest for Authentic Manhood. It has three sections to it. The first section deals with a man and his baggage. And you've already heard me talk about that, in which we talk about the different wounds in his life, misperceptions, misplaced expectations, hurts, those kind of things. I start out with a man and his dad, because that's the one that grips men the quickest. Because what you want, so many men don't feel. But when you bring dad into their life, when you stand in front of a group of men and you say, I want to start this morning, I want you to do this for me. I want you to think of three words that come to mind when you think of your father. Just let him think about it. What words come to mind? For a lot of men, there's these wonderful feelings. For other men, they try to pull something up, and they get in touch with what you want them to get in touch with. Pain. And then you begin to unwrap your pain. In fact, I did a radio interview just, well, an internet interview just a few moments ago with a young lady from California, and we were talking about this very issue, and she started weeping. And she said, you know, I've never ever had my dad affirm me. And I said, you know, I said, you need to go ask him. And she just started to weep. Well, there's a lot of guys like that too. A lot of them. Probably even more so. But we talk about those wounds of the heart and the fact that a lot of them don't have friends, not real close friends who they can share, who we would call soulmates. The kind of guy you could get and talk about the rough edges, the margins in your life, and those basements that you don't like to go down and explore with a flashlight. But guys desperately need that. They need to be real with somebody. But who? That's what this whole men's fraternity is about. Then in midstream of that year, we turn it really into theology and vision. That's where we begin to get into Scripture and build a theology of what a man is. It's at that time that I stand up in that session beginning that particular part of it, and I tell guys to go out and buy a Bible. If they don't have one. I say, we're going to use the Bible from this point on. But by that time, I've got them excited about using the Bible because they've been seeing how relevant it is. So they go out. Of course, a lot of guys already have one, of course, and are members of churches. But they come and we begin to process through Genesis and those classical Scriptures in the New Testament to help them begin to build a theology of manhood and what that means. And then we end with coming up with this definition of what a man is. And that's real critical. We say this is the definition we're going to operate off of. I told you in my plenary address the way I've done that is by taking the Adam of Genesis and the Adam of the Gospels and compressing them together and doing that in a way to develop a succinct definition. Now, I'm going to give you the summary of that, but I want you to know there are six or eight weeks of teaching on that that the guys, when they hear these words, they connect that teaching with. But one of the things we did in comparing the first Adam and the second Adam, we talked about the issue of passivity, which is rampant among men, not in things like sports or work, but in things like spiritual pursuits and social interaction, especially domestic social interaction, which men ever since Adam have been passive with. It's like a disease or a handicap which comes with being a male. And I think it's traced all the way back to the first Adam, who in spiritual life and especially in regards to social responsibility in regards with his wife, went flat, went passive. Just as I think Larry Crabb says, just stood there. And you know what? That's exactly what I'm doing right now. It's exactly how a lot of men look in their homes. They run corporations. They've got hundreds of employees. And when they come home, they become the invisible man. And they just do this. And their wife is running around trying to get him to do something. And the guy is just absolutely passive. And a lot of guys are out there as we begin to unwrap that, and all of a sudden they get in touch with the fact that it's me. You know, the second Adam was anything but passive. And I don't know how it looked in eternity when the father decided on the plan of redemption. But you know, I always take the incarnation as the greatest and most aggressive step of initiation of maleness. Because in a moment, bam, Jesus Christ was in the womb. And He was there for one reason, to do the Father's will. You know? And He was after it. And His whole life, He was aggressive in spiritual things. And in social engagement, He was the picture of real masculinity. So He, and the way we bring that down to a point that men can understand is, we say, the first point, a real man rejects passivity. And the guys, when they see that, they see those two Adams there. Because every man walks in the shadow of one Adam or the other. Then the second thing we tell them is, a real man accepts responsibility. And we look in Genesis and we say, you know, Adam had a responsibility in three major areas. He had a work to do, a will to obey, and a woman to love. And he failed on all three of those. And when you see the second Adam, he had a work to do. And he had a will to obey. And he had a woman to love. The church. And he accepted. And we explore how this one accepted responsibility, and this one rejected that responsibility. And so when men walk around Little Rock and they say, I'm accepting responsibility, they hear, will, work, and woman. That's part of manhood. So a real man rejects passivity, accepts responsibility. The third thing is, he leads courageously. Because leadership is at the heart of manhood. That's what he was called to in Genesis. That's what he failed in in Genesis. That's what Jesus Christ was called to in the Gospels. That's what he succeeded so supremely in. And in order to do that, Jesus Christ had to master what the first Adam couldn't master. And you know what that was? His feelings. His feelings. And we talk about a man being sensitive, and a man needs to be sensitive. But that the heart of manhood is principle over emotion. And the first Adam, when he saw the fruit, and saw his wife, and the feelings he had for her, and the fruit which was a delight to his eyes, and those kind of things. His emotions got the best of him. He capitulated and compromised principle, right? But when you go to the second Adam, what did the second Adam do? When it came time for his public ministry, the Spirit took him out in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights without food. And he had to deal with the most intense emotions that a man can go through. And not only that, he was subject to incredible temptations that appealed directly to his emotions. And yet, at every point, he mastered his emotions with principle. Has now not heard the word of God, he said to Satan? And he would quote it. Man shall not live by bread alone. See, I don't live by hunger, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And I say, hey, that's how you lead courageously. You know, when there's hand grenades going off in life around you, and you're running through the minefield of life, you know, it's not a time to turn back because of fear. It's a time to go forward with the Scripture and be a man of principle. And a man leads out of principle, not out of his emotions. So, the definition. A man rejects passivity, accepts responsibility, leads courageously. And then the fourth thing is, in all of that, he expects God's greater reward. See, the first Adam let go of the ultimate reward in life for a temporary reward. The second Adam, for the joy set before him, let go of the temporary rewards for the eternal. And I tell guys, you know, manhood with its responsibilities can seem kind of burdensome. But I want you to know, on the front end, maybe for a short time, they are burdensome, but they lead to life. Not just eternal life, but they lead to life in this life. With a well-satisfied wife, with a stable home, with good kids, with a great name, a great reputation. And I tell them how important a good name is to a man, especially as he gets older in life. See, I experienced the pain of that when I was a young man. I went on a Key Club retreat. Remember Key Club? It used to be in the high schools. I was in the Key Club. And I went off on a Key Club retreat with the sponsor of our retreat, who was a well-known man in town, and two other officers of the club. We went to Biloxi, Mississippi to the Key Club convention. And we were introduced at the convention. And I remember sitting there with my two friends, and this gentleman who was our sponsor introduced Wayne Smith and had Wayne stand in him, talked about how Wayne's dad was a very prominent physician in town and what he had done for the community and all that. Had Wayne sit down. Then he had Steve Barham stand up. See, I can remember the guy's name and everything. It's so clear. Steve stood up, talked about how Steve's dad helped build the new sports complex out in our hometown and what a great guy he was and how good he was, how great it was to have Steve a part of this Key Club and what he had meant to the Key Club. And then he said, and I'd also like to introduce Robert Lewis. And I swallowed a ton of pain that day. And you know why? Because we didn't have a good name. And I see guys who've got all kinds of money, but they don't have a name. But I tell you, when you're 40, 45, 50, and the guys in the community start sizing each other up, they start sizing each other up based on your name, not your dollar bill. So it's real important, and I say that's part of the reward that a young man has to accept by faith on the front end. But if he rejects passivity, accepts responsibility, leads courageously, he'll have that reward. That'd just be one of many that he'll have. Well, that's the definition that we come up with. We do that, and then the last half of the men's fraternity for the rest of the year is just giving guys practical how-tos of how to implement that with their wives, with their sons, with their daughters in their workplace, with their friends, with their design. And then we end at the end of the year, as I've already told you, with these guys assessing all of that and putting it into a plan that they share with their group and they turn in to me, and then we have the sacred ceremony where they graduate. Now, let me bring it down to where you are, because somebody said, well, I'd like to have some information like that. Well, I brought this. I had no idea it would be as popular as it was because we sold out of it. But this is all of that first year on tape. OK, and then this is the workbook with all the answers. That's the companion guide for the whole year. Here it is. And pastors call me and they say, well, now, how can I use that? And I'm going to tell you how I tell them to use it. They shouldn't get a group of guys and play the tapes. I mean, I guess if you were a small church or you just wanted to work with a couple of guys, businessmen do that. They'll get some guys together in the morning and they'll just listen to the tapes and he'll Xerox these sheets off for them and they'll listen. And then he serves as kind of the discussion leader. But here's what I have seen other pastors do and do it real successfully. I'm not talking about a few. I think we've got about 30 or 35 who are doing it this way. Here's the instruction I give them. I'll say this. If you'll take the time and listen to the whole series from start to finish, and there'll be things you'll really like, maybe there'll be some things you'll say, I could do much better than that. That's great. But they listen to the whole year and they put that down. And that's kind of them personally going through it. And then what I tell them to do is then when they finish, they have plenty of time, then go back and go lesson by lesson and create your own lessons. Take my illustrations out and things that maybe you don't like, but at least you can build on what I've done and put your personality into it. Put your illustrations into it. Make it better. Add to it. But what you end up is you've got a whole year of a men's fraternity. And then when you've done that, then announce to the men of your church that you're going to do a men's ministry. Get your host and those kind of things. Hand those things out and make it yours. Call it something different. We'd love for you to do that. I'm not trying to become a men's ministry leader in any way. I'm trying to give this away to guys. So you can take that and you can use that. Take that workbook. Next year we'll have all of men's fraternity the second year on tape and in a workbook. So you'll have that. And then this year we're field testing a prototype for men's fraternity three, which will be the third year. And then what we'll do with those is we rotate them. And you'll go, well, you mean you teach them over and over? That's exactly what we do. And I was shocked at what happened. Because when I taught men's fraternity one, we came back to teach men's fraternity one again, the basic. And I expected, you know, just to be a new crop there. You know who was there? All the men who had gone through men's fraternity one the first time. But what they had done is gone out and recruited groups. And they served automatically as group leaders. And at the end of the year I brought all those guys together and I said, well, why did you go through it a second time? And they said, here's what they told me. They said the first time we went through it, we were kind of reacting emotionally to it. And we got excited about it. But the second time we went through it, it was like it was sinking in at a much deeper level. And also I got to share that experience with my friends. And the guys told me they felt like it was far more valuable to do it twice than the first time. Now, of course, we've done men's fraternity one now four times. And I've still got several hundred men who faithfully bring their friends back to hear it again. But they're not there to hear me anymore. They're there to process this experience with a group of their friends that they love. And they want to cheer for it. And they believe that they're going to have a great experience. So they love bringing them to the church to have that experience. And so their joy is what it does with other men. So what we'll do, our curriculum will be from this point on, it'll be basic, which is men's fraternity one, which I just told you about. The second year is broken down into two semesters. The first semester of men's fraternity two is a man and his work. I don't know if any of you know Doug Sherman, who's produced the book Your Work Matters to God. He's in our church. He teaches men's fraternity two first semester, a man and his work. And then the second semester, which is going on right now with about 600 guys, is a man and his wife, or a man and his woman. And two guys teach that, Dennis Rainey and Dan Gerald teach that at our church. I'll be doing this year men's fraternity three, which will be a man and his world. And the first semester will be a man and his walk with God in the world. And I'm going to teach guys what it means to walk with the Spirit of God. Because a lot of guys don't have that sense of a personal relationship with God. And I'm going to be as transparent and as real as I can of talking about what it means to walk with God. Not just to go to church. Something Crawford, I think, was getting pretty emotional about last night. The second semester is in two parts. One is a man and his design. We've got a guy who does all the design testing for NASA astronauts in our church. And he's helped our church develop a really great thing called Service by Design that helps men understand what their gift mix is, and what motivates them, and what settings they're motivated by. So that we can help guys discern not only their gifts, but how to employ their gifts as a ministry in the world. And then the last part will be a man evangelizing the lost. I have a little tool that I use to help, I think it's real creative, to help men engage other men in a real short evangelistic Bible study. And I train guys on how to do that. So I'm going to train them to do that. Now, here's how that builds. First year, it's processing your manhood. Second year, the two most important things in a man's life. His work and his woman. Third year, it begins to make him think ministry-minded. What ministry he's going to have. What gifts he has. How to walk with God in a consistent way in that world. And then how to win other men and women to Christ. And at the end of that time, they'll be challenged to be group leaders back in Men's Fraternity 1. And then we'll start the whole process over again. And there are all kinds of spin-offs off of that that we've had. We've had men who created a ministry to third and fourth grade sons. They have a whole thing called Squires of the Cross. They have several hundred men and their sons in it, where it's all around developing character experiences. And of course, you've got the Modern Day Knight that I talked about yesterday, where guys are doing ceremonies with their sons and wives with their daughters. So there are things that start spinning off that guys initiate because of their experience there. Then one last thing I want to mention before we open it up to questions. In Men's Fraternity 1, I mentioned to you, I start with the wounds and then I build. The last wound is where I begin to get into theology. And what I talk to them about is this. I'm talking about mom. I'm talking about dad. I'm talking about friends. But when I get to the last one, I said, you know, you may be out there and not identify with any of those. You grew up where you had a great family and you feel like you've got great friends, but I'm going to pull out this last wound that every man has. And I pull out of the suitcase a black heart. And really what I introduce them into is the doctrine of depravity. And I talk to them that we're all wounded. And I try to break that depravity wound down, not only from the Scriptures, but how it feels, how it actually works out in real life. Here's just one of the principles I tell them of how it works out in real life. I say, you know, most men, most men think their problems are out here. This is how depravity works. See, the black heart always puts it out there. Now, they've already seen that in Adam when God came in the garden and said, where are you? And he said, it's the woman. Immediately went to the woman, you know. And I said, but you know what I hear most men, when most men come complaining to me, it's my employer. He's the problem. It's my wife. She's the problem. And here's what I want you guys to know, because here's how depravity works. Depravity always makes the problem out here. And I want you to know that 90% of your problems are right here. And you've got to get in touch with that. So we've talked for a couple of weeks on that depravity wound. And that brings us up to the last week of the last first semester of men's fraternity in December, before we take our break. And the title of that last message is The Solution to the Depravity Wound. And what I get the privilege of doing in that last session before they take Christmas break, is I get to talk to them about what heals that depravity wound. And so I get a great opportunity with these guys who now trust me to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and to give those guys, without shame, to stand up in front of men and say, I'm going to receive Jesus Christ today. And it's an exciting time. So we get to all start off, second semester, knowing whether we're in the faith or not. But that's one of the great joys of my heart, is seeing men come to Christ in that regard. So that's the outline of men's fraternity, kind of how we do it, kind of the curriculum of it. As I said, we have the first year curriculum that we give away to other churches and we have a number of churches who are doing that. And here's what the pastors tell me, most of them, who do the work that I just told you about. Most of those guys call me back and they say, it's working. That's all I can tell you. I can give you the names of guys, if you want to call them, that you can call. A good friend of mine, several years ago, called me named Tim Hawks down in Austin, Texas and he asked me if he could do men's fraternity and I told him how to do it. So he did it and put it out in front of his men. And he's a chaplain for the legislature when it meets in Austin. And the first time he offered men's fraternity, he had 200 men come. And 50 of them were from the legislature. And that's grown from 200. So I flew down and did one of his men's fraternity sessions this last year. He had 400 men there. So I'm just going to tell you, I see guys that if you want to do it and start, and then you can build from it, you can build your own curriculums from it. But what I've tried to do is give every man at least the basic session that begins to help you identify with men and men identify with you so that you can at least get that first year under your belt and you can go from there. Okay, I'm going to stop there. Let me see where I am time wise. Yes, let me give you a couple of things. I am so glad you're here. There's one other thing I didn't say and I want to say. Men's fraternity as outreach. Let me just mention a couple of things and how you can get a hold of that. I mentioned to you, you know, we start out kind of almost secular in our presentations in the beginning. But we don't even pray the first five sessions. But I want you to know the team, the men's fraternity team, they're praying over every seat every week. We meet on Wednesday. All the men's fraternity team meets on Tuesday at 5 o'clock and we go in the auditorium and pray. But then after that initial beginning, we begin to introduce prayer and we begin to mix the secular music with contemporary Christian music. So it slowly changes as we go through the year. But the thing I want to mention to you is we advertise. And we put large ads in the newspaper about six weeks before men's fraternity began. And here's the way we do it. We have a big picture of my host. We have a little picture of me. And then we have all the subjects. And we invite anybody to come from the community that wants to. And the very first session for the next five weeks, every time Bill Smith stands up and welcomes them to men's fraternity, he says, and guys, I just want to remind you, this men's fraternity is a community event. It is not a Fellowship Bible Church event. We're not here to recruit members to Fellowship Bible Church. If you're here from another church and there's something here that helps you, or here's what we want you to do about it, you take what has helped you back to your pastor and encourage him maybe to come up with something to do for the men of your church. We constantly tell them we're not there to recruit people from their church. And the last men's fraternity we did, we had I think 16 different churches represented in the room of guys from other churches. Out of that, we started two men's fraternities in a Methodist church and a Presbyterian church in our city. Of guys taking our advice and going back and starting it. But we also had of the seven, we had I think almost 800 men at men's fraternity this last year. And we asked the guys who didn't go to Fellowship Bible to stand up, and 450 men stood up. We had all the sales guys from Merrill Lynch came. They read it in the paper and there was one guy from our church that works at Merrill Lynch. And he's got these wild men down there. But they like the subjects. Becoming a man. A man and what it means to love your wife. 25 ways to love your wife. Things like that. Those kind of user friendly things. So all the guys down at Merrill Lynch came. All the guys from that car dealership came. A number of those guys in the car dealership, they all moved just from Memphis. A number of those guys now come to our church because of what it did for them. But when you open it up and you continually emphasize, it's not trying to get members and things like that. It's trying to identify and help guys have a safe place. I'll just tell you, that builds your reputation in your community. As someone who is a servant to the community. And that's what the church ought to be. Now, then the question. How do you get your hands on these materials? We had those materials and I want you to know they all are sold out. We don't have any. I think we will have, after this session, a young lady who flew down from Little Rock who manages our bookstore and resource center. And so if you want to talk to her about that, you can. I think she can give you a card. And you can order those things from our church resource center. But there are three things we provide pastors who call us and say, Can you give me help? The first thing we do is we say, You can talk to Robert and he'll kind of give you an overview of ministry. I do that as a ministry to other churches. Second thing, you can get these basic materials. You can buy those from our resource center. We can't give them to you for free, but we'll send them to you. And then the third thing is that Bill Smith, who runs Smith Capital Management and Company, he has cut back on his work in order to help promote men's fraternity to other places. And so he will provide for you free consulting and answer any question you have. I'll give you his phone number. Here it is. Area code 501. Area code 501-228-0040. And if you'll call Smith Capital Management, you can say, I'm a pastor or church leader and we're wanting to start a men's fraternity and I'd like to have a consult with Bill Smith. You may not be able to get him that day, but he will call you and give you materials that he's personally created for me. And he will personally consult with you on any question you have about starting a men's fraternity from a layman's perspective. Okay. So we can provide you a first year curriculum. Next year we'll be able to provide you a second year curriculum. But a first year curriculum, a free consultation or free consultations. And then I'll be more than happy to interview you at least one time and give you that. So that can help answer those questions. Okay, let's stop. And we've got a mic here to hand out for other questions that maybe I didn't touch on. Okay. Well, you heard me say one of the things we ask men to do in men's fraternity is to register as groups. Because if they'll register as groups, they've already made those determinations. And then if they don't register as groups, if they come in and Bill meets with them, what Bill's job is to size those men up, knowing the groups and try to place men in appropriate groups according to age, interest, those kind of things. So that's how we do it. It's best to have them register as groups if they can. Let's go here. Yes, we do. We graduate everyone who's completed their plan. I got to graduate my son who's 17 years old. And he came down with his plan. And by the way, young men who are in high school, we only take seniors in high school, and they struggle with the first part of men's fraternity on wounds because they're, you know, they're thinking, You know, they don't have a clue. But it helps them. It helps them. But we help them make their plan. And the way we ask them to do high school or college guys is just to plan for the next four years of his life and to get some specific goals and things that he can do around work, women, and will, and those kind of things. So it's fun getting to read my son's plan about what he's going to do in college and what social group he's going to get, how he's going to try to encourage his men in that regard. Well, the thing I tell the guys, and that's a great question, and we go into it some, not probably in the depth that you're probably asking for, but the last thing I want to do is make a man emotionless. In fact, the first part of men's fraternity is very emotional. And I tell guys it's good to get in touch with emotion because you need to feel because it's the fact that men, their feelings are packed away is why they can't relate to people around them. So I want them to have that experience. At the same time, I want them to know that emotion is not what should rule their life. And that's why a biblical man is going to be able to feel, but in moments of decision is going to be ruled by principle. And what I think that translates into is vision. If a man has vision, and it's an exciting vision, it's not that it's the lack of emotion, it's something bigger than emotion. And I think that's what men lack. It's not the fact that if they have emotion, they're somehow going to collapse back in that emotion. They will collapse back in that emotion if they don't have something bigger to live for. And so I think it really puts the onus on me to create a biblical vision where men can step beyond their emotion, not to deny their emotion, for the sake of a greater, more transcendent cause. And my job is to present that transcendent cause to call them above their emotion. I'm a pastor in the East Coast, and I've got a ton of guys that are commuting into work, hour, hour and 15 minutes, getting home. You're talking about starting a program that begins at 6 in the morning and stays until very early, 730, before they take off or do whatever they would do. How did you orientate your men to do that, to take that kind of time before they take off and go to work? Well, that's one of the beauties of living in the South. We're still civilized. No, I'm kidding. You know, there are guys who do have that kind of schedule, and some have gone even to their employers and asked for that one day to have that time to do that. But if you're in an environment where that is so intense and so consistent that it would keep your men from coming, then here's the hard question. Where can you find another time? Is it an early Saturday morning? An early Sunday morning? Again, I think you'd have to work at that. That's a problem you're going to have to solve. My daughter works over on the East Coast, and she has that same kind of schedule. So I understand that it's problematic. And maybe you'd have to change it to an evening. But I think you have to look... If I were answering that question, I would look for a time where the majority of my men could meet. That's the time I'd look for. That just happens to work in our community. Let's let some of these guys over here. We don't get clumped up too much. When you first started this, what percentage of your men from your church were coming? Where were you at when you began this, with your church size and from the community? How did it all get started? Well, it's grown proportionally with our church. That's how I would answer that. But as I told you guys in the plenary session, it changed dramatically when I went from a Bible study to a manhood study. It was a quantum leap, and it's kind of tracked with the size of our church. And there are guys who go through and finish men's fraternity and don't come back to session one. They'll take session two, and then they'll take session two again. They've got the information they want, and they stop there. But I would say we've probably processed, through men's fraternity, about 3,000 guys. No, over 10 years. Okay, to me, step one, that's what I was saying. To me, if I were doing a step one, you might... Don't worry about the numbers. I'm just saying you might have a host and yourself. I'd get a good host. I wouldn't start without a good host. But I'd have a host and myself, and if all he did was just host and welcome, and was warm and talk to the guys, that would be good. And yourself, and a clear direction of curriculum for a year, that you could meet with a group of men around. And whatever things you can build with that, offer that that first year, excellent. If that's all you can do, is just meet with a group of guys, and your host gets up and welcomes guys and tells them how excited he is that they're there, and maybe has a guy share or interview a guy occasionally, and then bring you up and you speak, and they break up into small groups. You've got the components to pull off a men's fraternity, regardless of what size the church. Yeah, I sure would. You could be just right in there with them. You know, one of the things I would recommend, if you don't have pastoral involvement, I know a number of churches that are doing this, where a guy will get real interested and will want to do it. Now this is a much more reduced form. I gave you the idea because I keep wanting to push it to pastors, because I think that's real key. But if I'm a layman, and I can't get that kind of pastoral support, but I want to go through that, and this is what a lot of college campuses are doing, they'll get a group of guys, probably good to not be any bigger than ten, probably less than ten. But what they'll do is they'll just meet in the morning, and they'll just plug in a cassette tape and listen to it, have coffee around it, and they've got the study sheets, and they'll just fill them out. And what's after, whoever organized it, just leaves them in the discussion. So it's real portable in that way. I don't really like to sell my stuff. I'd rather a pastor process it and be himself. But where that's not possible, you can sure use it just as a tape ministry, and just listen and just be the host. I mean, I do that with the Dobson tapes with my son when I'm doing preparing for adolescence. I just plug in the tape, let him speak, and then my son and I discuss it. It works real well. But if it's reduced to a real small group, you can do it that way. And from what I hear, the guys are fine about it. I just want pastors to develop... My heart is for pastors to develop a men's ministry. That's my passion. Well, thank you for that affirmation. How does it play out demographically? Blue collar or white collar? How does it play out demographically is what the question is. For our church, which has a broad demographic, although if we were to lean somewhere, we're more white collar. But I'll tell you the thing that was most exciting about the fact that we advertised it was sitting out there that first Sunday, and this car dealership mostly was African American. And then I had these policemen in their police uniforms who had come. They played out the whole year with us. It was exciting. The thing I'm praying for right now in our city is I'm praying for an African American pastor to take this material because the greatest joy of my life this last year... I've got to tell you one story. The greatest joy of my life, and I don't know how he got it. Don't ask me how he got it. He just said he found it. But I got a letter one day. And it surprised me because the letter at the top, the return address was the Minnesota Correctional Facility. And I opened it and it was a letter from a guy named Richie Servine. And Richie had been in the prison. He's a lifer. And he'd been in the prison. Somehow he picked up the tapes. And he listened to the tapes for two years. And then he went to the chaplain and said, can I teach this? And so he began to teach it. And I'm still corresponding with him. And he began to teach it. And he has three men's fraternities that he does. And he has a waiting list. And there's not one white guy in the group. There's Hispanics and blacks, but no white guys. And at the end, he gets those men when they're finished to send me their plans. Let me tell you guys, if you want to have a good cry session, you need to read these plans. I mean, I was reading Jose's plan. And Jose's plan was to call his wife back and ask her forgiveness after he shot her on drugs. That's part of his plan. You know, Richie's was to reconnect with his illegitimate son. And to begin to build a relationship as a man to do that. And last year, the prison got too crowded. So they transferred Richie to Colorado. And he trained a guy to take his place. And now I get letters from Minnesota and Colorado where he's doing those. And the thing I've been amazed at, he tells me, and again, I can only tell you what I've experienced, he tells me that these guys immediately identify with it. They love the wound part, you know. Of course, I'm going to have to add another wound, the gunshot wound. But with these guys. But I tell you, and Richie's been so fun, they won't let me send stuff on tape to him, but he sends me a tape every so often where he just talks to me on tape. And I tell you, it's powerful. But I think it can be transported not just to a group of professionals, but to all kinds of guys. I've got a men's fraternity in Beijing, China, and one in Prague. And in fact, I got a letter from all the wives of the men's fraternity graduates of Prague. A bunch of Germans, Czechs, people like that who were all there as businessmen. And they sent me this real big picture of the guys doing their men's fraternity party at the end of their graduation where they took their wives out to a real nice restaurant. And all the guys stood up and did what European guys don't usually do, and that is they openly expressed their love to their wives and read a tribute to their wives in front of all the other guys and their wives. So, it has some transportability, is I guess what I'm saying. Let's take one more question. We've got to stop. Appreciate you guys' patience too. With regards to the emotional side, one of the questions you said you would ask them is to describe their father. Yes. What is their absence of a father? What is another question that you will leave to get to the emotional side? Well, I talk a lot. If they don't know who their dad is, is that what you're asking? How do they do that? Well, see, that's where I think I get a chance to identify, because I get to talk a lot about the absent father wound. So, when it comes to that, they're not talking about their dad. They're talking about their wound at that point. And so, their wound may relate to the fact they didn't have a father and where that's left them. So, they're the guys that are most identifying with the things I'm saying. The guys that kind of have to stand there and listen because they didn't realize how deep this was are the guys who had a great dad. But here's what I want you to hear, guys, as pastors. There are more guys in the circle with the wound. Much more. And it's helped the guys who had a great dad to appreciate their dad all the more. And then to serve as a guy who can share what it was like to have a good father. Can I do one thing before we leave? Would you guys stand just for a second? Can I just pray for us? And all I'd like to do here at the end is just ask that maybe the Lord Jesus would touch some of you guys to be the heralder of this message. Not my message, but just to the message of manhood, of biblical manhood, to a culture who is desperately hungry for it. And make a difference. This concludes the message. Please call Audio Mission International 748730. For additional materials or a catalog on building strong families, call the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood at 847-573-8210. Or Family Life Ministries at 800-FL-TODAY. That's 800-358-6329.