How To Disciple Men: Short And SweetSample

Know Their Name

In the next five days, we’ll cover five overarching principles for discipling men. That’s why you’re here, right? You already have a heart for rescuing men from a life without purpose and empowering them to reach others for Christ.

Principle one focuses on this idea: To impact a man’s life, you need to care about him as an individual — to know his name and extend a personal invitation. You can print thousands of flyers. You can preach to hundreds. But men respond best man-to-man. You must shake his hand, look him in the eye, and let him see you care.

Patrick Morley, founder of Man in the Mirror, recalls the early days of his own faith journey in the following excerpt How to Disciple Men: Short and Sweet:

“Hugh Lake preached the gospel with simplicity and clarity. H. O. Giles and Bob Helmling walked out their faith in such an authentic way that my resistance melted away. Then God used Dan Stanley to bring me to conviction of sin during a young couples’ class one Sunday morning by simply reading from God’s Word (Ephesians 5:25, to be specific). Next, Jim Gillean invited us to be part of his small group, where my wife, Patsy, and I were equipped.

Jim saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. He believed in me more than I believed in myself. He spoke words of encouragement that I’d never heard. That unchained something inside me. His faith in me released the power to become a man I didn’t even know was ‘in there.’ He started me down a path to become the man I wanted to be — a godly man, husband, father, and disciple-maker.

“God has given us a clear, simple prescription to bring men to maturity. It’s for mature men, like Jim, to take younger men, like me, under their wings and show them how to walk the Christian life. Why? Because it takes a man to teach a man how to be a man.”

Of course, you don’t know Hugh, H.O., Bob, Dan, or Jim. But those individuals took the time to care about a young man named Pat. They lived out the mandate of Ephesians 4:11-12. And Patrick went on to found one of the most influential ministries for men in the world.

We are all called to make disciples. Tomorrow we’ll look at the discipleship principle “Know Their Passion.”