If our discipling of young men consists merely of encouraging spiritual disciplines and checking sexual temptation, why would we be surprised when our men are spiritually immature, and our churches are deprived of leadership?
Since before I could drive, I have watched men’s discipleship groups struggle to rise above accountability for Bible reading and pornography. We talked about other issues, even important issues, but the real agenda was to make sure we had read our Bibles and hadn’t looked at porn. The unintentional message over time was that this was spiritual maturity: consistent devotions and sexual purity. By setting such a low bar for men, though, we inevitably train men to be lazy, selfish, insecure, and ambitionless. We raise a generation of men to check spiritual boxes and then live for Xbox.
But men are capable of so much more in Christ than Bible reading and self-control (not to diminish either). God has wired and redeemed us with energy to lead, to risk, to serve, to initiate, to work hard, to sacrifice — to love like Christ loved. To put our backs and shoulders into something eternal, into caring for others and drawing them to Jesus.
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