CASSELBERRY, Fla. (WordNews.org) Jan. 21, 2012 – Patrick Morley wasn’t planning on leading a men’s discipleship movement.
He told WordNews.org he would have been content writing books and riding off into the sunset.
But now he finds himself in the forefront of a movement seeking to find 330 men who will be area directors, each working with 1,000 churches interested in discipleship training for men.
The goal is to have 40 in place by next month.
“The thing that’s really interesting about this is if somebody else would have been willing to do this or had the ability to do it, I would have loved to just get behind them and support them and I’ve actually been looking and asking who wants to do this for years,” Morley said.
The time is right for the concept that Morley has in mind.
“In 1996, I started a group called the National Coalition of Ministries to Men. We’re a group of about 100 denominational, para-church ministries. … The bottom line is that we’ve experimented with every conceivable way of proliferating men’s discipleship in the local church. I won’t go into all those ways. But here’s our conclusion: You just need to have boots on the ground. You need to have men in communities who are the ‘go-to guy’ for men’s discipleship in that community.”
Morley anticipate a wide range of needs from churches that area directors will be serving
“When a church wants to know something as simple as, ‘What would be a good resource for my men if we wanted to study marriage this fall in our small groups?’ or all the way to the complete other end of the spectrum—they want a consultant to come in and help them design and implement a sustainable men’s discipleship ministry for their church,” Morley said, “you just have to have boots on the ground.”
Morley sees the Internet as a great tool for ministry and for creating a flat organization. But it doesn’t replace having a physical presence in a location.
“We’ve had an Internet-based model for many, many years. And it’s been very, very impactful. We can count 10 million men we’ve impacted. But the deep transformational stuff, that’s really where we want to be moving.”

Come back tomorrow for the next installment