"How to Duplicate Mighty Men?": Part VII ...."In the Beginning!"

Wow! What symbolism I thought, when I first saw this painting by G. Harvey called “Takin’ a Soakin’”. It just flew off the page at me. Five cowboys on horseback, in a driving thunderstorm, on top of a mountain…. now that’s impressive, if you can relate to it. I can remember one of my last guided mule deer hunts in western Wyoming. We were riding on horseback at about 10,000 ft when all of sudden in seconds our mountain top was enveloped with a thunder Cloud. The wind howled and hurled rain and sleet sideways at us…….and then the “Boom!” This wasn’t a thunder clap you hear from your porch on a spring afternoon. No, when you’re IN the cloud there are no words to describe just how loud and terrifying that “Boom” really sounds. It’s not like you can just walk into your home and shut the doors and windows and curl up on the couch and turn the TV on. Nope, when your 15 – 20 miles from the nearest access road, you can for the first time appreciate how truly awesome God really is and just how small and fragile we really are. Death seems but a breath away in those conditions.

I continued reflecting on this scene and my thoughts quickly turned to my band of brothers. We have 6 men in our band today. But, I imagined the painting ….is that of five riders who are desperately searching for their lost brother, whose in the middle of his “thunderstorm” and doesn’t know how to get back home. Those five riders are likely trailing an additional horse loaded with fresh water, food, dry clothing, a medical kit and any other provision that their lost brother may need to be restored back to health and safety. In the lost brother’s darkest hour….soaked to the bone, starving without food and water….how refreshing it would be to look up and see the hand of God peel back that haze of sleet and rain and see his five brothers coming up over that hill top to rescue him.

Now, that’s imagery worth keeping handy as I reflect on the history of our band of brothers ………..Well, from a scene out of a western movie, you’ll find our campsite encircled by our wagons, sitting in our fold-out chairs, nestled deep into our sleeping bags and blankets, smoking our pipes, sipping on our coffee, welcoming the first ray’s of sunlight every Wednesday morning at 6 am for almost 12 years, you’ll find us….“The Backwoods Brothers!” Well, most of the time you’ll find us. Actually, during the winter months we meet inside the church building, which is boring compared too our campsite outback of the church parking lot where from April to late November we get to weather the elements while admiring God’s beautiful wildlife and creation.

We formed our “Backwoods Brothers” in July of 1997, before “Wild at Heart”, at a time when most of us were married, but we only had a couple children between us then. We formed our “band” with 6 men in the beginning, but lost one of the originals, Rich, 2 years after our group started. For the 9 years that would follow, we built our group around the life experiences of five 5 men, our marriages and families. Loosing Rich in the beginning was unfortunate but it opened the door for Eric to be added last fall and our 5 became 6 once again.

A lot has changed over the years from what our group looked like and acted like, to the men that have come and gone, to the variety of locations we’ve met at. We started our group married with a couple children to now we’re married with 24 children. We’ve had to conquer the threat of divorce to the manipulation and addiction of pornography. We’ve suffered the loss of a parent to the successes and failures of business to the baptism of our children.

There wasn’t some formula followed, it was a mixed and matched approach at best. Today, If we advised anyone who was looking to start their own “band” we’d encourage them to look for a variety of men, from different backgrounds, utilizing each others own “strength’s, failures, lessons learned and successes” which will ultimately provide a more stable foundation for new groups in the long run.

We started meeting at 6 am, every Wednesday morning at the local Rams Horn Restaurant. We tried using a typical meeting agenda approach when we first got together, setting worthy goals and missions for ourselves. We explored and studied books such as “Point Man”, “Finishing Strong” and “Everyman’s Battle”, which laid a great foundation to our eventual study of “Wild at Heart”.

But, our problem back then is we acted like men. We kept our cards close and didn’t know how to open up and be “Real Men”. But, what is a real man anyway? We acted like salesmen, very automated and machine like. Outside of our agenda, goals, and a book that we read, we might “get really deep” and talk about sports, hobbies and family vacations. Bottom line, we played “safe” and didn’t openly elaborate about our “true” emotions, temptations, frustrations and anxieties of life; simulating the lifestyle of a caged grizzly bear.

What we needed was to learn “How to live in God’s Grace?”…. “To love and accept our wives and parents as God would love and accept them?”…..“How to admit and share our personal addictions, abuses, challenges, fantasies and other life struggles, without feeling judged?” Those were too “raw of topics” to discuss, mostly because we didn’t have the “tools” to understand how to handle and digest them. We just didn’t have a clue. We meant well….had great intentions… “The lights were on”…. but no one was home.

By 2003 things settled down on my home front and by then all of us were married and had children. This was the era when our group bloomed. We needed to ensure that what happened with Michele and I didn’t happen to anyone else. We invested a lot of time in prayer and searching for resources to help us get to the “root” of our marital and relational issues and most of all, what God truly expected from us as men and as leaders of our homes.

I don’t remember who recommended “Wild at Heart”, but it became an awesome tool that helped us clarify our many emotions and wounds that we all had lived with and suffered. It shed light on and helped explain why we reacted the way we do under relationship(s) duress, whether with our wives or with people in general. It also helped us understand why we were so passionate for God’s Great Outdoors and why we “hated yet craved” for the battles that would ensue to “rescue OUR beauty’s….our wives!”

But, even as good and informative as “Wild at Heart” was, nothing compared to our ability to “apply” and communicate to each other about “what we were feeling inside”. within the safety of our group. It became very clear that this weekly commitment to each other, both in person and in prayer has truly blessed us with an “unequaled male relationships” that allowed us to be genuine, transparent and authentic in the Lord…..while we allowed ourselves to explore our hearts desires, pains and struggles without fear of judgment.

As explained in Part I of this blog series…..“My relationship with God, my wonderful wife of 15 years Michele and my beautiful kids are extremely important to me. Therefore I needed warriors to defend or protect me and hold me accountable at all times. I need them to be in my face...to slap me around...to cry with me...to hug me and tell me I'm going to be fine. It's a "man love" that is hard to describe. The world may fear our group because they equate man-love with homosexual behavior, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is a God-ordained man-love. Not the type to be feared.

I have no idea what it's like to carry a child or give birth to a baby. Likewise, my wife has no idea what it's like to be a husband, a father, a leader, a provider, a warrior, an employer, a role model, the point man who is consistently watching and praying over and around his family. My wife knows just about everything about me...probably 85%...but that last 15 + % she'll never understand and I can't expect her too. But, my "Backwoods Brothers" understand. We're all different, with different personalities...but we have the same common goal.
“Be Godly examples for our wives and children. To live a "Wild and Joyful" life that has purpose for His kingdom!” Backwoods Brothers

“So, would you guys welcome new men in your group?” we’ve been asked? Well, simply put, if I had to describe in one word, what type of relationship our group would best relate too, I’d say it’s like a “Marriage”. It sounds weird but that’s the closet thing we can compare it too. You just don’t keep adding more “wives” to our homes….our wives wouldn’t appreciate that anymore than our group would embrace adding new men. The other problem is when you add new men to your group the “history of issues and successes” within a group is watered down. Bottom line, it’s hard to add someone who doesn’t have that history or understanding of our group’s personal hurdles and successes.

Part VI of this blog series, you may recall that I described growing up, going up north with my father, uncle, Doc and other men early in my youth. Those trips and relationships were essential in my upbringing as a young man and set an expectation as to how I live my life today. Because of that experience, I’ve always thought other men had similar trips and relationships. It wasn’t until my adult years that I realized it was far from the truth. Therefore it has always been on my heart to help other men “experience what I’ve experienced”.

Over the last 25 years, I’ve taken what I’ve learned as a young man and have invited other men to the point where we’ve had as many as 17 men in our deer camp during recent deer hunting seasons. The problem became that my passion to “save” other men, was greater than those men’s own desire to “save” themselves. Therefore, my passion started to affect my “band of brothers” relationships and our trip experiences, much like the way my wife reacts when I get to far down the road of a plan or idea without including her or bringing her along for the ride.

See, I needed to step back and take myself and my opinion out of the equation and recognize that if our group was to continue to flourish….everyone needed to feel valued and included. Again, much like our wives would feel valued when we acknowledge their wishes and dreams. We are a very diverse group, with very different needs. We’re made up of “Passive” and “Type A” personalities. Some guys love to read and study and play instruments. While others like team sports and play cards. Still others love to run marathons and work on trucks. Some like check lists and live within a plan and some don’t. But, we all found a common activity that we all enjoy together and that’s “Hunting and Fishing” in God’s Great Outdoors.

Come end of the day, we realized that we all had different “expectations” of our trips that needed to be considered. It became very clear that for our trips to continue “we” needed to “hear each other’s hearts”. This is how our group’s relationship started to really benefited our own marriages. We realized for the first time that our issues with our wives are really no different. My wife wants to be on the same page with me. She wants to be apart of the decisions we make for our household. She wants to be apart of the trip. My “band of brothers” aren’t any different.

If we’re really serious about answering the question “How to duplicate Mighty Men?” and take what we’ve learned and help other men build their own group, then the answer isn’t just feed a man a fish….take other men on our trips with us or include them in our group. We believe the answer is to model that of a mentor…a disciple to bring “other brothers” alongside our group and teach and encourage them how to fish! ....to teach and show them how to build their own groups, through a possible bi-weekly relationship over a years time, with the sole purpose of each new group growing within themselves and be able to eventually foster their own mentoring groups.

As the late Paul Harvey always said during his recount of “….the rest of our story” I’ve left out one significant piece that really supports this answer. Well, as we all know that every successful team really isn't successful on their own accord. Sure a teams players ambition, dedication, discipline and passion to win is apart of the formula. But, there is always a coach, a teacher or a mentor that has provided counsel and encouragement from which a solid foundation is built and success is fostered.

We each carry our own burdens, our cross’s, and are ultimately on our own trail of life. But, it’s how we walk and what trail we take that will positively or negatively impact our lives. At the time, I didn’t have any idea that my choice to restore my marriage had anything more to do than take away the pain of our separation.

Gods plan for me to endure my hardship benefitted my marriage and children initially. But, it also provided our band of brothers with a connection from which my mentor became “our mentor”. Dr. Reinhart Schelert was not just a counselor he was my friend and biggest fan. He started with me, he pruned me, pulled out the weeds around my heart, fertilized and watered me, allowed me to flourish so that I could function as a Godly Christian husband and father needed to operate. Then eventually, one by one, Rhinehart started pruning my brothers, their marriages and families and through much persistence and perseverance Rhinehart helped our group become truly who we are today, coupled with a huge dose of God’s Grace and Blessings.

We feel that this “mentoring model”, is a more simple approach that could be the answer we’ve been searching and praying for. This answer shouldn’t surprise me or any of us for that matter. It’s a method that God’s been using throughout scripture for thousands of years. What we feel God is directing us is towards is to helping men develop their own “band of brothers”, by each of us “fostering” our own “Discipleship” group if you will. One group for each of us to “take under our wing” keeping the “Backwoods Brothers” as the “hub”. Our focus is to mentor new groups that will in turn “foster” and disciple their own groups, thereby “Teaching a man how to fish, not just feeding them a fish.”

In ending, our prayer is for God to provide us a way to accomplish this first step. A step that won’t rob our current group OR our marriages OR take away from our family or current church responsibilities, but will help honor “God” and strengthen men as leaders of their families.