A Gift to The City – The Roanoke Men’s Initiative

Mens IniativeThe prison ministry I had been doing for seven years changed my life.  Going with a team of men from Roanoke to live out the gospel in the heart of maximum security prisons in Southwest Virginia is powerful: I’ve seen the lives of men transformed by Christ. But I began to ache for the young man back in Roanoke and wanted to intersect their lives before they ended up at Wallen’s Ridge or Red Onion.

 So in the summer of 2013, we (somehow!) recruited a group of nine young men in their twenties from the City and met with them weekly to study the new book/video series by Eric Mason called: MANHOOD RESTORED: How The Gospel Makes Men Whole. Mason’s ground-breaking ministry on the streets of Philadelphia was an inspiration to us all.

 The summer came to an end, but a seed had been planted in our hearts. A vision began to grow! In the Spring of 2014, we hosted three Consultations with local pastors and ministry and lay leaders from the Roanoke area to develop a way to mentor young men in their twenties in the City.

 What does it mean to be a man?  Here’s a compelling portrait:

My father was the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness. As we grew older he made us understand that the same standard of clean living was demanded for the boys as for the girls; what was wrong in a woman could not be right in a man. He combined insistence on discipline with great love and patience … He was a big, powerful man, with a leonine face, and yet he was filled with gentleness for those who needed help: on Sundays he taught a mission class for street children. We called him, “Great Heart.” – Teddy Roosevelt’s recollections of his father, Theodore, Sr. 

 In ‘fatherless America’, boys are rarely initiated into manhood by such role models, so they stumble into grown-up bodies with teenage minds. They take short cuts. The discipline of delayed gratification is a foreign language. They live short term, pornified lives.

Adolescence used to end at 18, now it extends into the early thirties. Young men are stuck in an extended passageway to manhood without a compass. They’ve never known their father’s ‘blessing’ so they’re plagued with the worst disease of a man’s heart: self-doubt. Their schooling has given them plenty of self-esteem, but no one ever schooled their souls!

They know how to make a baby, but haven’t a clue how to make a marriage, treat a woman with respect or be a father. The world tells them: “Have sex, make babies, and then (maybe) get married.” But just ask the case workers for social services in our City how that’s working out for most people?

The movie, “Knocked Up”, is about a pathetic young man who gets a girl pregnant and is finally forced to confront himself: Ben confesses to his father: I don’t know how to take responsibility for myself. I don’t know what to do. I’m an idiot. Tell me what to do.”  But his father, unfortunately, is just as clueless as his son, and stammers out that he has no idea either.     

 There are about 6,700 young men, age 20-29, in the City of Roanoke. Their role models for ‘being a man’ are celebrities, sports stars, rappers and thugs – whoever seems to have an edge that’s working for them. Less than 1/3 of them were raised in a traditional Father-Mother household (2010 Census).

Fatherlessness is the engine driving our most urgent social problems”. (David Blankenhorn). Which means there are thousands of young men in Roanoke, who have graduated from high school, who have aged-out of youth groups and ministries and are haphazardly trying to grow up without fathers, mentors or models for manhood. It can’t be done, the self-made man is a myth.

The vision of the Roanoke Mens Initiative is to gather 20-Something men from the City, disciple them week after week for nine months, pair them up with older men as mentors, and forge strong, Christ-centered relationships that can help equip them as they navigate the difficult journey to manhood.  We’re not a youth group; we’re not The Boys Initiative. We’re going to ask them to step up; we’re going to fight for men’s hearts. We don’t just want them to show up at church once in a while.

We need better men today who work hard, love perseveringly, play well, serve willingly and age gracefully.

On May  we held graduation ceremonies for our first year’s class. We met with these guys every Tuesday evening since last September on the third floor of the City Market Building (Charter Hall).  Black and white, young and old, ear studs, tattoos, gray hair, shirts tucked in and shirts left out. It was beautiful. (The kind of thing our cities desperately need today!).

We’re in this for the long haul. Next September we’ll start all over with another class. The Roanoke Men’s Initiative is a gift to the City.

Do you know some young men who are out of high school, who have aged-out of youth groups and other youth ministries and have no one counseling, guiding or discipling them anymore?  Send them our way!

 Do you know some young men who were raised in the Church but who now seem adrift on the sea of life without a compass?   SEND THEM OUR WAY!

Tom Oster

Lead pastor, Christ Our Redeemer
www.christourredeemer.com
540.915-0897(c)

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