the only 3 options we have as men
Help, LORD, for the godly man ceases!
For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men.
Psalm 12:1
“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise.
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
-C.S. Lewis
To be honest, I never expected to have a ministry dedicated to discipling men.
I was about to launch a cultural apologetics ministry when I had a dinner with Pete Greig, and that changed my life.
I had just finished The Primal Path with my son Nathan and returned from hiking the Camino de Santiago across Spain. He asked me what I planned to do with all I had learned.
“Plan to do? I have no real plans, mate,” I replied.
“What you did for your son wasn’t just for him,” Pete said. “I think it was for a generation of Fathers and Sons. You have to do something with it.”
And just like that, the Primal Path went from a file on my computer to something I launched into the world.
But I kept hearing the same feedback from dads as they took their sons through it.
“No one taught me any of this.”
“I feel like I need someone to do this with me before I do this with my son.”
“Do you have a Primal Path thing for men?”
That’s where a vision to serve men was born.
We need to serve men because there is an often-overlooked crisis among men today.
At a recent Kinsman event, I had the honor of participating on a panel with Richard Reeves, author of Of Boys and Men. As he discussed the reality of how men are doing in the world, I struggled to hold back tears.
Here are a few of the stats he shared from his book:
5% of men under thirty say they don’t have a single close friend. It was 3% in 1990. Two-thirds of them say that no one knows them very well.
The suicide rate of men in their twenties just overtook the rate of men in their fifties. It's now the highest of any demographic in the US
The US loses 40,000 men a year to suicide. That’s about the same number of women we lose each year to breast cancer (a horrible disease)
The suicide rate of men is four times higher than women. It has risen by a third in young men just since 2010
23% of boys in K-12 age have been diagnosed with a developmental disability
Men today who don’t have a college degree earn less than most men did in the 1970’s
40% of children are born outside of marriage. That’s a quadrupling since the 70’s
While he was sharing this, I wondered where men can actually get together in our modern world to talk about the issues they are facing in their hearts.
The workplace is inappropriate, the church is often indifferent, and the home is a place where men often don’t want to burden their families.
That brings me to today…
When it comes to the issues men are facing, we really have three options.
(1) Pretend nothing is wrong
(2) Do nothing
(3) Try to help
And for the last few years, that’s what Jefferson Bethke and I have tried to do.
To help.
We have had the honor of a lifetime of walking alongside men who deal with shame, heartache, insecurity, and sin. It's been amazing to watch them find freedom, dignity, community, and a vision of God's love.
After processing the things we have learned along the way, it felt like another moment much like the one I had with Pete Greig. It felt like the stuff we had worked on needed to leave the hard drives and make it into the hearts of men.
So, sitting around a fire in Vermont two years ago at a retreat we were hosting, we felt called to write a book.
But we didn’t want to write a book for the sake of writing a book. We wanted to write a book that would help men.
A book that would name the things they are wrestling with and don’t often have a space to share. A book that would shine the light of truth into the darkness of lies that so many of us believe. A book that would get men talking about the deep stuff in their hearts and move them beyond sports and banter to the stuff that keeps them up at night.
After a couple of years and a lot of work, that book comes out today.
Here is our dream…
We want to normalize men being vulnerable and open about the wars they fight within.
The war with loneliness.
The war with futility.
The war with lust.
The war with ambition.
The war with apathy.
The war with despair.
The war with shame.
We are asking God for a movement of men who break out of passivity, apathy, and the feeling that nothing can change into the grace and life that Jesus offers—a life of meaning, love, significance, and joy—a life that leads them out of the darkness and into the light.
Jesus promised, "Whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”
We want to help a generation of men become what God has called them to become.
Men like Jesus.
We would be honored if you would help us.
Maybe you need a fresh vision of hope for change in your own life.
Maybe you know someone who could use a biblical vision of how to be a man amid the cultural chaos.
Maybe you want to grab a group of men and process things together.
We would be honored to play a role in your journey of freedom and formation.
You can pick up a copy of our book today, and I would be grateful if you would help get the word out to men who need it (and the women who love them).
You can grab a copy here at Amazon.
Listen here on Spotify.
Grab an audio version here on Audible.
Get a copy here at Barnes and Noble.
Or here at Christianbook.com.
I hope you know how grateful I am for all of you who take the time to read this each week, and I hope I can continue to be helpful.
It’s a joy to do this with you.
Cheers.
Jon.
