Apprenticeship

  August 18, 2021

Back in the mid-90s when Promise Keepers was in vogue in Evangelical circles, a bunch of men from Park church drove to Cleveland for one of their seminars. As is often the case with seminars like this, a variety of Christian publishing houses were hawking their materials around the perimeter of the room. At the time, we had a pretty strong men’s ministry, but I felt something was missing. We were getting together to read and study the Bible, but it didn’t feel like we were making much progress in discipleship, so I approached one of the displays.

The rep smiled and began his little speech extolling the virtues of their product. I interrupted. I had seen enough resource material to know that though the specific material varied with the publisher, the format was nearly identical. The subject could be a book of the Bible or a theme; the format was the same, and it wasn’t working.

“I’ve noticed that everything on these tables takes an academic approach; open a book, read a bit, answer the questions, and fill in the blanks. It’s like it was written for middle-class suburbia. My men are mostly blue collar. They aren’t stupid, but their reading is mostly limited to instruction manuals, hunting magazines, and the sports page of the newspaper. I’m looking for apprenticeship, not academia.”

The gentleman behind the table looked at me like I had two heads. “No one has ever asked me for that before.”

“Well, I’m asking.” I might as well not have. He didn’t have anything, and neither did any of the others.

That was more than twenty years ago, and though I’ve come across plenty of study materials since, I’ve not seen a single men’s discipleship program or process based on an apprenticeship model, so the search for it slowly faded into the background of other pastoral responsibilities.

Tonight, Bri Katilus led our team leaders in a teacher training exercise. Her enthusiasm was infectious, her material organized, and the process she led us through imaginative. Part of her presentation involved having us brainstorm what we believed God has called us to do. Since I already lead our men’s Bible study, I began by thinking of them…until this old dream began bubbling to the surface: an apprenticeship-based men’s group. The big question is, “How, and Who?” I’m not sure of the former, but two faces popped into my mind for the latter. 

When God leads, he doesn’t usually shine a searchlight revealing the entire path ahead. Psalm 119:105 tells us that God’s Word is “a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” The lamps of those days were pretty primitive, a flickering wick in a small oil lamp, unable to illuminate much more than a step or two at a time. I can barely see the next step, but I don’t need to. God sees, and that is enough. Thank you, Lord for the original vision, and thank you, Bri for rekindling it.