“The UMMen are a bunch of guys that sit around the stove and complain about things in the church.”
“The UMMen are a group of guys from a church that eat together and talk a lot.”
“The UMMen is a vast potential wasted on men.”
“The UMMen is a group that sometimes actually does something awesome.”
Each of these quotes has its own kernel of truth. Who are we? I believe that we should be one of the best tools a senior pastor can have. Those senior pastors have common goals of moving their constituents forward in their faith journeys, increasing the scope of their constituency, reenergizing their congregations by attracting new “under 40” constituents, ministering to the local and world communities and building an external image of the church as the place to turn to when you need assistance. How we can actually be the super tool to help accomplish these goals is the rest of the message.
If we were already doing things well, this message wouldn’t be necessary. We have some fundamental flaws beginning with an inability to communicate adequately to our constituents. We have no leadership teams in 4 of 5 districts and even in churches with chartered men’s groups, they only involve a small part of the men of the church. In the past, if a church didn’t have a men’s group, we didn’t reach those men effectively. That would include close to 75% of Missouri churches and nearly all of the small and/or rural ones. Although we have many issues, until we resolve this one, most of the others won’t be adequately resolved. Following is my approach to attacking this issue.
- Identify an agent/advisor at each church of 25 or more members as the primary interchurch and district/conference contact for matters concerning UMMen and UMWomen.
- Establish a weekly contact between groups of 5 or 6 agent/advisors and a district representative. During this contact, each individual will identify in Wesleyan accountability fashion 1-2 actions he intends to accomplish within the next week (normally a 1-2 hour commitment) and the results of his past week activities. The district representative will transmit these results in summary form to district and conference leadership. This requires the fleshing out of our district leadership teams.
- Develop a dialogue through the agent/advisor with the Sr. Pastor and any men’s group leader to establish existing or desired goals for the church’s men’s group. The district/conference will be available upon request to provide assistance.
- Encourage the Wesleyan accountability concept be implemented for all UMMen members. Older members can be particularly effective communicating to low activity folks. Interest/skill interviews are particularly effective at finding “hot buttons” for these folks. The 1-2 hours per week aren’t real significant until you see the team effect.
- Establish an internet presence where all agent/advisors have access and can display locally pertinent images or information. A common calendar for geographically centered groups of churches is one example. Consider creation of a local unit communiqué.
- Reinforce our commitment to inclusion of non-member men in UMMen activities. For small churches, think of the men’s group as a community men’s group in order to get the economies of scale necessary for an effective group.
- Expand the resource library at conference level to include lists and explanations of events and activities, timelines for these activities, lists of commitment activities that anyone can do, leadership development materials and instructions on how to write a successful request for a grant of available UMMen’s funds.
- Encourage the commitment to preplanned event driven programming to take UMMen outside the walls of the church and involve the community in men’s activities.