Amendment to the All-Inclusive Men’s Ministry Concept

from Pat Morley

Volume 200
October 2, 2006

The all-inclusive men’s ministry concept is simple: However many men you have in your church, that’s the size of your men’s ministry. It’s not just the six guys who meet on Wednesday mornings or the dozen men who gather for pancakes once a month. So if you have 100 men, then the size of your men’s ministry is 100.

But when asked to estimate how many men they have in their churches, most leaders don’t include young men who are still in high school and college.

We simply cannot afford to wait until men enter the workforce before we teach them what it means to be a Godly man. The age of 15 is when a boy begins his journey into manhood.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2004 there were 113,000,000 men in America 15 years of age and older, with about 15,000,000 of those men 15 – 21 years of age.

As boys turn 15 and start to become men, we have a responsibility to include them in our men’s discipleship ministries. Is there any better time to teach them the principles of biblical manhood than as they transition from boys to men?

Therefore, we would like to amend the all-inclusive men’s ministry concept this way:

However many men you have in your church 15 years of age and older, that’s the size of your men’s ministry.

As we talk about it in this exact way, we trust that God will do great things for the young men we have coming up through our high schools and colleges. There are 15,000,000 young men depending on us to get this right. And that says nothing about the impact they will have on their future wives, children, churches, workplaces, communities, and the world.

For the glory of Christ and no other reason,

Pat Morley, Ph.D.

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