CASSELBERRY, Fla. (WordNews.org) Jan. 23, 2012 – Patrick Morley, author of the bestselling “Man in the Mirror” series, says he’s learned a lot about what not to do.
At 63, he finds himself heading up a men’s discipleship initiative that seeks to hire 330 men to help 330,000 churches nationwide disciple men.
That’s right, one man who will be an area director for a region covering 1,000 churches.
“There are some guys around the country that are already doing this effectively,” he said. “The main thing is that we have figured out through a lot of mistakes how to actually help a church actually develop a sustainable discipleship ministry to men. And that is the No. 1 problem in men’s discipleship”—sustainability, Morley tells WordNews.org.
“You can fill a room on a Saturday, but then how do you sustain what you started?” he asks rhetorically. “We’ve figured it out.”
Morley outlines the model that he believes will work best to keep men engaged in their walks with God and grow in ministry.
The model looks like this: A circle with the words “Making disciples” in the center. At the top of the circle, it begins with “Creating momentum,” which leads into “Capturing momentum” when then points to “Sustaining momentum” and then returns to “Creating momentum.”
“The problem is creating momentum,” Morley explains. “The greatest amount of energy that is required in nature is that amount of energy that is required to put a stationary object in motion. It just takes a lot of energy to overcome inertia.”
In this case men are that stationery object.
“As one of our leaders likes to say, ‘A man is a hard thing to reach,” Morley says.
But Morley said churches know who to get the ball rolling. It can include an adverture trip to the mountains or ice fishing or having a big-name football player come speak to a group.
“But here’s the problem that we found: Most leaders have not though through what to do after that, how to capture the momentum of that,” he says.
So, men’s group leaders typically make one of two mistakes: Do too little or do too much.
“In other words, you just have the event and then let everyone fritter away,” he said. “It would be like inviting someone into an automobile showroom and they see a beautiful red car over in the corner and they get all excited about buying the car and you say, ‘Well, that’s really great. Let’s get your name and phone number and we’ll give you a  call in a couple weeks.’ It doesn’t make much sense.”
The other mistake is also costly.
“You have these guys, the come to this pickup basketball game and at the end you say, ‘We had a good time. W want to go to the next step with youguys. We’re going to start a three-year inductive study into the book of Revelation in the original Greek and we’ll begin that with a 40-day fast.’”
“I’m caricaturing, of course,” he says, but what he has discovered is men need “a believable next step, [like] a four- or six-week one-hour a week follow up discussion group where you unpack the material presented at your gathering event that created momentum. Every guy can visualize himself succeeding.”
Morley has experience. He said he’s done more than 1,200 men’s events, where 67 percent of the attendees then connect in a six-week follow-up group. Of those, 72 percent had never been in a small group before.
Oh yeah, and 33 percent of those attending the large gathering accept Jesus as Lord and Savior or recommit their lives to Christ.”