These are a couple of things I took away from the fearless fathers forum:

A couple take aways:

1. When we confess our sin that is it. We are forgiven. Stop doing it and move on!

2. Men need some real relationships not just more guys to hang out with. That means other men who will look them in the eye and ask them tough questions.

3. I don’t think most men have ever had a spiritual mentor.

4. We are to talk with our children about what it means to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength when we sit at home, when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up.

What does that look like? It looks like  not only wanting what is best for them, but doing something about it. Something like spending time with them (quantity time). It means having the difficult talks with them about bad decision making leading to bad results. It means disciplining them when they disobey. It means holding them and loving them and learning to communicate with them. It means telling them the truth about your own relationship with Jesus Christ.

5. Jason Tovey our Shepherding Pastor wrapped up and reminded us God wants what is best for our children even more than we do.

Last night we packed out the meeting space room with fathers and soon to be fathers who wanted to talk about what it looks like to be fearless fathers the kind who embrace their failure and aggressively pursue Jesus. There were three objectives of the night:

1. Own up to our failures.

2. Step up to our responsibilities.

3. Begin a conversation about how to step up to our responsibilities as fathers.

We started the night with a time of repentance and prayer followed by a very brief challenge by me to our men from Ephesians 6:4 which reads: Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

We then began our conversation about how to do this by introducing a panel of fathers who while not perfect have aggressively pursued Jesus and pointed their children to Christ. Our panel consisted of: Mike Michaels, Graham Self, Danny Lotz and Jim Young. We were led through this time by Allin Foulkrod. I want to thank these men for their willingness to share with all of us there that evening. Thanks guys.

Allin fielded questions that our men had written out for him and the questions consisted of everything from, “How do you discipline a 2 year old?” to topics like confessing sexual sin and regret. It was a great step for our men to begin to have this conversation about how to be fearless fathers. I believe we established a place where we can have some real conversations about how to be men who are not afraid to lead our families not only physically, but spiritually.

Fearless fathers have an overwhelming responsibility that cannot be delegated to the church, to mom, or to the anyone else because fathers are responsible to lead their families. We desire to equip our fathers the best we possibly can to lead their families. I believe last night was a step in the right direction.

For next steps our Dads were given a couple books Raising a Modern Day Knight (for Dads with sons) and She Calls Me Daddy (for fathers with daughters). Some men signed up for this Falls Men’s Fraternity ministry that we will be hosting. Some men even pursued potential mentor figures who were there last night (fathers who were further along in their journey of fathering and pursuing Christ). I thought last night was a win.