Because building a discipleship ministry for men is so tough:

• It can not be done effectively with a half-hearted commitment.
• It can not be done effectively without a wise, carefully thought out strategy.
• It can not be sustained over the long haul without a trained, committed, lay men’s ministry leadership team to lead it.
• It can not be done effectively without an investment of significant resources. Staff time, funding to train the men’s ministry leadership team, leaders who are freed from other church responsibilities, strategic time on the church calendar, funding for a men’s ministry library, funding for speakers and/or retreats, are just some of the resources it will take to be effective. (Now is the time that many church budgets are being formulated; make sure you get the funding you need to do ministry well in the coming year.)
• It can not be done quickly. Pat Morley says it takes 10 years to build a strong, sustainable disciple-making ministry to men in the local church. Only tough, stout-hearted men who know how to persevere need apply for this job!
• It is not for wimps, lightweights, or immature Christians who want instant success. The battle for men’s souls is an all-out war, and it requires an all-out effort!! Dare we give our Lord anything less!!

Making disciples is all about taking men who don’t know Christ and helping them become mature, passionate followers of Jesus. This journey can be represented by a continuum:

Your ministry to men will need to help men at every stage of this journey. We call this the wide-deep continuum.

Every man in your church can be placed somewhere on the continuum, and that determines the offerings that will appeal to him. As a man matures in his faith, he will move farther down the continuum.

You will interact with men at all points along this wide-deep continuum. On the left, or "wide," side are men who are not all that interested in spiritual things. To reach guys on the wide side, you need activities that reach them at their point of interest. These are activities that require little or no preparation and low commitment. Typical activities at the wide end are softball teams, BBQ’s, a Super Bowl party, golf, hunting, or fishing.

To reach men on the "deep" side, you need activities that meet their spiritual needs more deliberately. These activities probably have a connection from week to week, they require preparation; they’ll go deeper into Biblical concepts; they will offer accountability and transparency; and their focus will be on more mature Christians. Typical activities might include small groups, Bible studies, leadership training, service projects, or spiritual retreats.

No activity you plan can meet the needs of every man in your church. As you plan, make sure you are offering different types of activities to reach the different types of men in your church. Build a seamless process to move men across the wide-deep continuum.

Also be sure your leaders are clear about your target audience. (to order No Man Left Behind, click on here.)

Reliable studies indicate that over half of the Christian men in America have a major struggle with the pull of temptation to look at pornography. As Reformed believers, we understand that the only answer to this struggle is the power of the gospel to transform our hearts. We understand that the Biblical approach to the battle with lust is heart transformation, not just superficial behavior modification.

In our last issue we emphasized that the root issue of sexual sin is idolatry. We are looking to the God of sexual pleasure to satisfy our hearts rather than looking to the one who says he is the answer to our deepest longings. But confessing our idolatry is only the starting point for heart transformation. There are many other Biblical principles that reveal how God changes our hearts. We discover, for example, that one way our Lord transforms our hearts is through obedience to Romans 12:9, "Hate what is evil; cling to what is good."

God commands us to do something with our heart. That action is to hate. God wants us to develop a heart-felt hatred of our sexual sin and a passion for sexual purity. The way to hate sin is to realize how much pain and destruction it causes. Joe Dallas, who teaches the Every Man’s Battle Workshop writes:

To train his heart to hate sexual sin, one man wrote out the following list to meditate upon:

1. The guilt of lust destroys your inner peace and temporarily breaks your communion with God.

"Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day and they hid from the LORD God. Genesis 3:8

2. Impurity steals the spiritual growth you need to be the spiritual leader your wife and kids need.

"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." Matt. 5:8

3. Your sexual sin brings shame on the name of Christ. Can God boast to Satan about your sexual purity?

"Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." Job 1:8

4. Surrender to lust inflames your sexual desires making it harder to resist temptation next time.

• The more you indulge your lustful appetite the stronger that appetite becomes.
• You are on your way to building a habit that will soon enslave you.
• Each surrender to temptation further entrenches the habit, making it harder to resist next time.
• Every sexual sin adds one more picture to the scrap-book of enticing sexual images stored in your memory and accessible to your sinful nature for awakening lust.

Remembering this list is not some magical cure for lust. But obeying God’s command to train our hearts to hate evil is part of the process by which God redeems us. He wants us to hunger and thirst for righteousness and to loathe evil because we know that sin’s wages are always death.