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This past Monday night I spoke to a group of guys here at Union on the topic of manhood. Some students had organized “The Month of Man” (‘official’ website) for some humorous celebration of manhood and also to call on themselves and others seriously to pursue maturity in manhood. I applaud their efforts and was honored to speak at the event.
You can see the rough notes of my address here as well as a link to the audio. This is not a sermon, but more of a ‘sit down chat’. Somewhere I came across an author saying every young man needs an older man who regularly gets in his face about growing up and becoming a man. That is basically what I have tried to do here.
One of the real needs in the church is for us to encourage, help and challenge our young men to resist the culture’s call to perpetual immaturity and encourage them instead to pursue maturity.
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Dr. Ray, I enjoyed looking over your notes. Did you challenge the young men concerning pornography? I think that is a sin destroying many, many young men today, and I think it contributes to the passivity problem. I think one reason there are so many passive dads today is pornography.
Along the line of challenging young men and women, has there been any progress in bringing John Ensor ("Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart") to Union?
Since Union's servers don't always like to let people access what's hosted on them, here's the link to the original download page for the audio recording.
http://www.freewebs.com/hamlet111104/vanneste.html
You know I hope that the work you do, Dr. Van Neste, will have lasting impact on the generation coming up through the college ranks.....maybe then when they get to be husbands and have kids they won't have a stupid look on their face when someone brings up accountability and discipleship...they'll be jumping right in on the ground level and then preparing to teach others when they get some years under their own belt......
I know your teaching will have a lasting impact on my life!
Thanks Dr. Van Neste for the excellent talk! I thoroughly benefited from it.
In Christ,
Shep Shepherd
Dana,
I do hope we are able to host John at Union soon. I did not mention pornography in this talk but you are exactly right
Thanks Mark. That means alot to me. I have been enriched by our interaction.
I'm sorry to have missed you after the kids' recital today. I did not get a chance to see Tirzah!
Yeah, we had to run after the recital...and I'm equally sad that we'll miss you at the Union Christmas presentation....Our girls will be there to sing, but we'll be in Richmond for Canidate Conference!
Alright, you keep this up and I might have to re-enroll at Union and get another degree in something so that I can participate in these types of awesome events. :)
Seriously, for a moment, I clearly remember going to Dr. Van Neste's office (very clean I must say ;)) one afternoon during my second semester at UU asking for a resource to help me write a mini-paper on the issue of women in the church. He recommended this HUGE book (at that time of my life, anything bigger than a Hardy boys book was huge) called "Rediscovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood." Little did I know that day that it would be one of the most treasured books in my library. Thanks for planting this book in my garden, buddy. :)
Great message Dr. Ray. We blogged about this over on the BoundlessLine at http://www.boundlessline.org/2007/12/real-men-initia.html and got quite a lively conversation going. Your message reminds me of an ad that Boundless ran last year that said, "Risk. Commitment. Sacrifice. Some young adults see these as roadblocks to fulfillment. Would you believe they're actually the path?"
Thanks for the heads up Steve. I'll check out the conversation.
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