Meeting in a school gym decorated with camping equipment, pine trees, and target deer, The Grove attendees are invited to help themselves to assorted carbohydrates and high-octane java before seating themselves coffeehouse style around circular tables. The bongo-harmonica-playing Doebler gave the crowd the day's "game plan" before he and the back-up musicians launched into pulsating praise choruses. The message was broken up into reinforcing sound bites scattered throughout the hour with two 10-minute illustrated talks that I hesitate to call sermons but were nevertheless Biblically grounded. The morning ended with a "men's huddle" at the front of gym where, according to my male spy, the message points were reiterated and each man was given an item to help him remember what he learned. In this case, it was a knife.
Who attends a church service geared for men? An unscientific observation noted that the assembly was more than half (roughly 65 percent) men with the average age in the mid-30s. A prediction: Unmarried women WILL find this church.
If God used a trawler to prep fishers of men, He used the U. S. Army to ready Doebler, a career army sergeant, to lead and disciple men for spiritual battle.
"The battleground is making disciples," said Doebler. "Men are looking for are a spiritual father and a band of brothers around them. They are scared to death of it but they want it. Men need to be in spiritual groups - not classrooms - with a leader who has goals, who is speaking into their lives and challenging them. The Grove is playing down the classroom and playing up discipleship. We want to personally disciple men and get them ready to disciple other men through relationships rather than have disconnected men who are here to sing songs and listen to a sermon."
Murrow says that his two-to three-day Church For Men Summits are to help men understand the specific ways churches can rally other men, especially without alienating young single men.
