Men's Ministry

 

On May 29th, Fr. Jim, Bob Stevens, John Steinmeyer and I went to the Church of the Holy Spirit in Osprey to attend dinner and a presentation by Jay Crouse entitled "Welcoming Men Back to the Episcopal Church" attended by 85 participants.

 

Dinner was excellent. served buffet style, and included steak, baked potato, greens, salad, "gator ribs" (a real treat), and pie and cookies for dessert. Following dinner we went into church for the main presentation.

 

Bishop Smith's introduction, although short, emphasized the need for male participation in the church, as he recounted that his spiritual development was mostly due to women, even though both his father and grandfather were priests. He went on to say that by reading the Bible we can see that spiritually is a masculine characteristic, and that we should not be embarrassed to show our spirituality.

 

Jay Crouse's presentation began with the history of men's ministry in South West Florida over the last ten years and involved developing and deploying plans for training groups of men for evangelistic work.  He provided a method to use in getting men involved in the church.

1. Personal Invitation: Man to Man
2. Team Work: Side by Side
3. Ask the Question: How are you doing? No, really how are you doing?

In other words, let's work to establish a relationship between men that will involve us in work for God and the Church.

 

We need more than just this however and Jay showed us a quotation from the famous system analyst, Edward Deming.

"Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you are getting"

In the end, this means that the Episcopal Church (and most other churches) don't provide, a method for men to work in transforming the world.

 

A conference in disciple making, to work on this problem and change our system will be held at Dayspring on September 8-9. Information and registration from Episcopal Men's Ministries 957-1271