by Rev. Jason Waeber
Foundation BP Mission in Lockland, OH
the Missions Banner, November 2022: Online edition

So, we began a college ministry this year at Foundation.  I’m not sure where it’s headed yet.  It’s still finding its feet, but truthfully, this was never an angle we really expected to be pursuing at Foundation.  While we are close enough to downtown and the University of Cincinnati to make it a reasonable option, it certainly wasn’t something we had built into the concept of our plant.  I’m still trying to figure out the ways of getting my arms around the opportunities it presents, but even the first few meetings of the small group we have gathered have shown me a few things about the current climate of emasculation and how we might fruitfully address it.

I have to nod toward the conversations which led to this door being opened in the first place.  They happened at our presbytery church camp this previous summer when I spoke with some of the young men in the cabin I was assigned as a counselor.  We’re required, as cabin counselors, to spend at least a short time in a one-on-one conversation with each of the campers in the cabin.  In one of these conversations, I recall commending a young man for the drive and aggression he displayed whenever he was involved with athletics and encouraging him to take that attitude to life more broadly after graduation.  He gave me a confused look and we discussed it for a while.  I mentioned (as I often do these days) that we could always use help at the plant, since he was planning on going to college at UC, and we left it at that.  I had a similar conversation with another young man later in the week, with a similar result.

I pitch the church plant in a lot of conversations, and I confess, my ordinary expectation is that nothing will come from the vast majority of them.  Any of you who have done work in outreach or evangelism know that you often have to loose a good many arrows before you find a target.  Contrary to my expectation, however, both young men decided to begin attending the church plant and were willing to spearhead setting up a Bible study at UC.  Speaking with them about the reasons why they made this choice, they referenced the conversations at camp.  It was clear that the exhortation to lean into their aggression and drive was not a message they had heard so explicitly from a church before, and they wanted to explore it some more.

Two lessons come out of this rather loudly for me. First, while many of us do really want young men to show more drive, we have to let them know that their natural tendency toward aggression is a good thing if it is harnessed for the kingdom.  Scripture often uses the language of war and battle to describe the Christian life (Ephesians 6 is just one example); our young men need to hear that it is good to be a fighter.  The world tells them to always be passive and agreeable, but we need to be willing to counteract that message, loudly.

Second, we should strive personally to be men of godly ambition and drive.  Many young men see spirituality as something which is about being quiet and nice to everyone, not something which is about exercising dominion over the world and ruling our own homes and lives with excellence.  If we would call them to this ideal, we must be willing to live it as well.  There is a reason that Paul’s qualifications for elder rely heavily upon the man’s ability to rule his family well.  If our spirituality only has substance in the abstract, intellectual realm, we should be unsurprised when the vast majority of young men find no use for it.