A Church Man — Steven Brubaker

Our theme: Accepting Responsibility. And I was talking with one of you and just remembering an article that I read years ago in Time Magazine. It was an editorial written by a business lady, and she was telling in this article how that 20 years before she had divorced her husband because she was liberated. She was a feminist. She didn't need a man in her life.

Anything was possible for her. And so she went out to seek her fortune and to really make it in life. And then she continued writing, and she said, "You know, I saw my ex-husband the other day." She said, "I was riding the bus, but I saw my ex-husband, and he was riding in a Lincoln.

And he had a cute little 25-year-old something sitting right close to him with his arm around her." And she said, "I had to ask myself, who was liberated? Women's liberation. Who is liberated?" And she went on to say, "I realized that what I did was to liberate my husband."

You know, what I find is that in our fallenness, men don't naturally want to take responsibility.

We'd be happy if someone else did it. And so that's why we have to call each other to this. It's why we have to remind ourselves of God's call on our lives to accept responsibility. So godly men take responsibility for themselves.

Godly men take responsibility for others.

35 years ago, approximately, a plane left National Airport in Washington, DC, and headed north following the Potomac, but it didn't get very far. It crashed in the Potomac River, hit the 14th Street Bridge, and fell into the icy waters of the Potomac right on the other side.

Of the passengers, 78 people were killed. There were six survivors, at least initially. And of those six, they were there swimming and trying to stay afloat in the water, but it's icy, it's cold. There's bystanders that have seen what's happened, but they can't get to them. So here these six are getting ready to drown, but a rescue helicopter is soon on the scene and drops one of its lifelines, and it drops it to one of those six.

And that man took that lifeline, and he moved it over to one of the others and helped that person to get to safety. And then the helicopter came back and dropped the lifeline again. And again, that man helped another person to get situated and rescued.

In fact, he helped all five of the other six to make it to safety. At least two of those five times, he actually pushed the lifeline away from himself. It was specifically dropped for him. He pushed it away to someone else.

That man's name was Arland Williams.

And when the helicopter came back the sixth time, he was not to be found. He had gone under.

Mr. Williams took responsibility, accepted responsibility for others. And in this case, people he didn't even know. Godly men follow suit.

Godly men live for more than themselves and their own advancement. Now, what I want to do in this session is focus specifically on taking responsibility for people in our local churches. Taking responsibility for others involves a world full of people. And we could talk about all of that appropriately. And toward the end, I'll probably broaden back out. But at least for a while, I want to focus in on this responsibility we have to take to look after the needs of others, particularly in the church. Galatians 6:10 says, "So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are the household of faith."

Godly men are church men.

One of the defining issues for your generation, for my generation, for this time, one of the defining challenges, it seems to me, is radical individualism.

I hear some amens, some mm-hms.

One of the ways that I'm hearing that in the church goes something like this. I've heard a number of people in our community say something along this line, "You know, if you just love Jesus, that's really all that matters."

Now, it's hard to argue with that, isn't it?

But it seems like that that language winds up becoming, "If you love Jesus, then nothing else matters, including his body, the church."

And we probably should take some time and just talk about that for a bit. But I'm going to go on. But I would argue here that if Jesus is the most important, then a whole lot of other things become really, really important, including the bride of Christ, his church.

Real men, godly men, are church men.

And I'm going to suggest that there's three components to being a church man. The first is, let me give it in one word. The three one words are going to be, it's going to be, you're going to need to be developed, you're going to need to be submitted, you're going to need to be engaged.

Those are the three words of being a church man. By developed, meaning that we have something. As an individual, I have something of value to offer others in my congregation. By submitted, it means I am responsible to others.

And by engaged, I'm responsible for others. Submitted, responsible to others. This isn't just being responsible for. It's also being responsible to. And that's submitted. And then the engaged word is capturing that idea of being responsible for. So I'd like to unpack those three words: developed, submitted, engaged. And maybe to help us think about that, I have a mental picture for us. And this is a picture that, in my mind, was taken when I visited the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

Now, that's not the largest cathedral in the world by any means, but it's a large one. I'm told that there's about 150,000 tons of stone in that cathedral. It's 500 feet long this way. And then you have a crossing area as well. So it forms a cross. And the cross piece is about 300 feet wide.

So 500 feet long, 300 feet wide. And where those two pieces come together, a large, large area, and you stand in the middle of that, you're surrounded by four humongous pillars. And if you let your eyes go up those pillars on up, up, up, over 100 feet up there, you see those pillars bend in toward the center and form just a beautiful arch. And right at that center, I'm told that what we're seeing is that arch, but on top of that is a bell tower that goes on up another 200 feet, I believe, 300 feet in all.

Thousands and thousands of tons of stone in that structure, all supported there by that arch. The bells themselves, I know one weighs over 12 tons, just one of the bells, but there's quite a few bells in that bell tower.

All supported by these two arches. I remember when I was visiting, they took me down into the basement underneath that center area. And they said, "Down here is where you see the beginning of those pillars, those large pillars you saw." And I was looking around trying to see where these were, and I missed them because of how big they were. They looked like walls. They were so large. Strong, strong columns that had then come together in an arch in order to form something that's incredibly strong. In fact, architects say that it's the arch that's one of the strongest structures that we know.

And it's interesting sometimes how architects actually talk about the structure. And they'll say that an arch is made of columns.

Two columns, strong in their own right, possible to even just remain the way they are without anything else. But they talk about those columns as falling together.

And then being joined in that by what they call a boss, a BOSS, a boss. Now, in Pennsylvania, we call it a keystone.

But same thing. So the arch is this structure that's made of two columns that have fallen together, joined in that relationship to form something that is stronger than either of the columns by themselves. And I find this to be a rather compelling picture of what God calls us to in the church.

And so our three words, the first one was developed. And that's speaking of the strength of the individual members here.

And then this falling together, that's our submitted word.

We're falling together in relationship with Christ and joined, we're engaged with each other, taking responsibility for each other. Submitted, we're responsible to each other.

And so that's the image, the ideas that we want to develop as we move forward. I'm looking in Philippians chapter 2 for a text, a passage, one of those just incredibly compelling and beautiful passages from scripture. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, I'm starting in verse 1 of chapter 2. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy, Paul says, by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Now, we could stop right there because in that first verse, we have these two ideas strongly developed. But we go on for the third.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Do you hear the call for taking responsibility, accepting responsibility for others? If you haven't heard it yet, hang in there. Notice, let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Jesus, the perfect model of what it means to be a godly man, is showing us the way.

What it means to be a man who takes responsibility, accepts responsibility for others. So let's go back. Start in verse 1. It says, "So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy." What Paul is saying here, are you experiencing God?

Are your quiet times meaningful with him?

That's this experiencing encouragement in Christ, comfort from his love, and so on. You're relating to the Lord and you're finding that good. You're meeting God in your closet and it's powerful for you.

What does he say? Then bring that life of God that is in you, bring it to the church community in such a way that it leads to unity. It leads to this kind of submitted engagement with each other. So he describes things like, "Complete my joy by being of the same mind, same love, full accord, one mind." But the first thing we see there is this question, do you have any encouragement in Christ? Are you developing? You as a person, are you finding, are you spending time with God? Are you becoming someone who has something to give, something to bring to the church community?

If I'm going to accept responsibility for others, I must bring something of value that is needed by others. If I have nothing to add to you, nothing to contribute to you, then accepting responsibility for you is meaningless. In fact, I might do more damage than good. I remember reading a story of a lady who just cared so much about animals. And she heard about these animals in the zoo and how that they're all day long in cages. And I guess she didn't quite realize that they have quite a bit of space to roam in a zoo today.

But she heard about this and she felt so bad for them and she wanted to accept responsibility for these poor animals. And so she filled a bag full of fun things for animals and somehow snuck that past the zoo admissions folks. And she walks into the zoo and she's going around from region to region and she's pulling a ball out of the bag, pulling a toy out of the bag, and throwing it into the pins of these different animals because she's accepting responsibility, trying to do something to encourage the health and well-being of these animals. And the ball that she throws into, this is a true story, threw into a lion's den was a hard ball.

It was a hard rubber ball that the lion clamped down on it and impaled it on one of its teeth and it wouldn't come off. It was just there. And it was driving this lion mad. And finally, the only way they could deal with it was to, they had to put the lion to sleep and then remove the ball. Well, you see, now here's a lady that wanted to help, wanted to do something good, but she really didn't know. She didn't have the skill. She didn't have the knowledge needed to really offer something.

And that's the call here in this section. As men, if we're going to accept responsibility for others, we need to be developed. We need to be men who, first of all, know God ourselves, are experiencing the Lord. We're growing in our capacity to serve and offer something of value to people around us.

Now, to make this point, I want to tell another story. And this is a story that some of you probably know better than I do. And I'm particularly thinking of Uncle James and Uncle Edgar. It's a story about a woman, two women, one that I never met, but I'm very grateful for. The other one is my grandmother, Heatwall.

Now, the woman that I never met, her name was Mrs. Rosen. When my grandmother was 39 years old, she contracted the mumps and just a personal connection there. I believe it was my mom that got the mumps from a schoolmate and brought them home and gave them to my grandmother. Well, grandmother at 39 years old, the mumps caused her to lose her hearing.

So here she is with 10 children, 39 years old, and she can't hear.

This was incredibly difficult for her.

The doctor told my grandfather and grandmother that it's harder in many cases for an adult like that to lose their hearing than it is to lose sight. And he said that many adults that lose their hearing actually can lose their mind as well. It is so the emotional impact of losing your hearing, it so disconnects you from the world that it's very difficult to stay sane.

And grandmother experienced some of that. And she really, it was to take care of 10 children and to keep the household going, she began to spiral down. Grandfather, he was sensitive to all this and he would take her on rides. When he sensed that the pressure was getting too much, he'd put her in the vehicle and they would go driving until grandmother could calm down. But still, it wasn't getting better, better.

And grandfather was, as I read the stories, as I hear the stories, it sounded like he was just almost desperate. What do I do?

And finally, he heard about a school 30 miles away for the deaf and the blind. And he thought, "Maybe they can help." And so he drove to that school and him and grandmother were together and grandmother stayed in the car and he went in to talk to someone and see if they could offer him any help as to what to do to alleviate the stress and the pressure and to help grandmother.

He went to, they sent him to the principal's office. President Harding was the principal's name. And he was a president rather than a principal of the school. But he asked grandfather if he could help him and grandfather explained the situation to him. And as he did, President Harding said, "No, there's nothing we can do for you.

We're a school for the deaf and blind children. We know what to do for them. But adults are very difficult to work with in these kinds of situations. We don't know what to do for them."

Grandfather went to leave. And then he stopped. And he said, "I can't bear to go out to the car and tell my wife that there's no hope here. Isn't there anything you can do?"

And somewhere in that conversation, President Harding found that grandfather and grandmother were people of faith. And maybe that had something to do with it. But anyway, he said, "I tell you what, there's one thing I can do. And that is, I can let you talk to our very best teacher. Maybe she'll have some ideas for you." That very best teacher was Mrs. Rosen.

And so a flicker of hope. They meet with Mrs. Rosen. And Mrs. Rosen repeats basically what President Harding had said, that, "You know, my skill is with children. I can teach them how to lip read. And that opens up the world again for a deaf person.

But I don't think adults can learn to do that."

And grandfather said, "Would you be willing to try?" And she said, "I don't have any spaces in my schedule. But," he said, "I tell you what, I think if you're willing to really do the work here, I'm willing to take one of my lunch breaks every week and try to work with you to see if you could learn to read lips."

And that's what happened. Over the next, I forget the number of weeks that they met, but it was quite a few. Grandmother learned to read lips. And it was very, very difficult.

But at the end of that period of time, grandmother realized how significant Mrs. Rosen was for her.

And she said, "Thank you. I will never forget you." This is really a story about Mrs. Rosen. I told it because of her. You see, Mrs. Rosen was able to offer something to my grandmother to save grandmother's life in some respects because she was developed.

She had a skill that was needed. And that's the call for you and I. If we're going to be men of responsibility, it means we're developing skills. We're developing knowledge. We're becoming people who have something of value to offer other people.

This may mean, well, this will mean we're going to spend time with the Lord. It means that we'll do things like going to men's seminars. This is a way of developing. It'll mean reading. It'll mean maybe starting businesses, developing new skills, taking classes. There's a wide variety of ways to keep growing, keep developing. I was so inspired recently. I heard about a lady. She was in her 70s and she had started taking piano lessons.

That's the kind of continued growth that we can do as men. But now, the reason we're doing this, you see, we talked about this in the first session, taking responsibility for ourselves. That's what first session was about. But here, the piece we're adding on to it is to say the reason we're developing is so we have something to offer, something to give. It's pouring that cup of cold water so that we have something to offer to other people. The motivation behind it.

Developed. Responsible or godly men are men who are developed. Now, second word, if we continue to read here in Philippians, "If there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection of sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind."

Now, brothers, what's being described here is a kind of relationship between men that calls for submission. This is not a relationship that just happens because developed men happen to be in the same room. It calls for something. It calls for this kind of bending.

Our Anabaptist forefathers used the word galassenheit to talk about this. A yieldedness. A yieldedness to God and to the people of God.

Abandoned rest in the brotherhood. But let's understand, this is a submission not from weakness. This is not a falling together because we can't stand on our own. Although there's some truth in that too. But it's not a falling together because of weakness. No, there's strength there that we're bringing. There's developed men that are coming to this and bringing that strength and submitting it to each other.

That's the picture here. I'd like to read a few verses from 1 Peter 2 that continue a similar theme.

"As you come to Him, as individuals come to Christ, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house." And that's the piece that I'm just going to pull out here and reflect on a moment. As you come to Christ, you and I are like stones. We're like these individual pillars.

But we're stones being built up as a spiritual house. So there's the individual here, the individual stones, but there are those stones then forming one structure. The individual, these are not just dead stones. These are living stones. They're alive, growing, developing, taking responsibility. These are hungry stones. These are not just mere pew warmer stones.

These are not just clones on the bench, lethargic and sleepy and dead. No, these are living stones. And what an amazing picture of what individual Christians are look like. That's what each of you and I are to be. Developing people that have something to bring and offer.

And then what? Build up as a spiritual house. God is up to something in the world. God is at work in the world. And what He's doing is building His church.

There is one and only one way for you and I to be involved in what God is doing in the world. And that's to be a stone in a church that God is building.

There's no other story. There's no other path. And yes, to be a stone in that church means a lot of cutting and shaping and that submission.

I want to just offer two things along the lines of what we've been talking about here that submission means. First of all, being submitted means that I hang in there when the going is tough in my church.

Submitted means that I don't quickly cut and run when stuff gets tense. I want to read an article or about two paragraphs from an article that just says this so well.

And I do not have the author, unfortunately. But it was published in Christianity Today about 15 years ago in an article called Suburban Spirituality.

"For all of its foibles, which at its worst include lousy preaching, political infighting, self-centeredness, stagnation, a gaggle of special interest groups, the pokey local church is still the most fertile environment for spiritual development." Now, I'm not done, but I want to stop there.

Because I want you to hear that list again. "For all of its foibles, which at its worst include lousy preaching, political infighting, self-centeredness, stagnation, a gaggle of special interest groups, the pokey local church is still the most fertile environment for spiritual development."

Do any of you feel like you might be in a pokey local church?

And maybe you've complained about lousy preaching and political infighting and self-centeredness and so on. Listen to what he says. "Genuine spiritual progress doesn't happen without a long-term attachment to a pokey local church. I'm all for improving the organization of a local church to make it more biblically effective. But the maddening frustration that prompts someone to leave one church for another may be the precise thing that holds the great potential for spiritual progress if one stays.

Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate with ourselves," Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote. "Only that fellowship, that church which faces such disillusionment with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.

Disillusionment with one's church then is not a reason to leave, but a reason to stay put and see what God will create in one's life and in the local church. What I perceive to be my needs—I need a church with a more biblical preacher who uses specific examples from real life—may not correspond to my true spiritual needs.

Often, I'm not attuned to my true spiritual needs. Thinking that I know my true needs is arrogant and narcissistic.

Staying put as a life practice allows God's grace to work on the unsanded surfaces of my inner life.

The biggest problem in any church I attend is myself and my love of self and my penchant to roam when I sense my needs aren't being met. Staying put and immersing oneself in the life of a gathered community forces one into eventual conflict with other church members, with church leadership, or with both.

Frustration and conflict are the raw materials of spiritual development. All the popular reasons given for shopping for another church are actually spiritual reasons for staying put. They are means of grace, preventing talk of spirituality from becoming sentimental or philosophical. Biblical spirituality is earthy, face-to-face, and often messy." I need brothers.

I need the church. I need to stay in relationship with, in submission to the church, if I'm going to continue to develop. It's vital that as a man, that I'm not only responsible for, but I'm responsible to other men. That's submission.

Now, so I say that submission means that we hang in there when things are tough in our churches.

Submission also means—and I think this is along the line of the transparency and humility—but it means that I live close enough to other men that they can see my life and they can call me to responsibility. I need to be called to responsibility.

But if I'm going to let people observe my life, that means I'm giving up my right to privacy. That's submission.

If I'm going to be close enough to other men that they can call me to responsibility, they can say, "Stephen, you're not doing so well with your wife. You're not spending enough time with your children."

And on and on. If I'm that close enough to some men where they can say that kind of thing to me, that means I'm giving up some things. I'm submitting.

Maybe just two stories here. There's a young man from our church that recently asked for a couple of the men to meet with him. He's a mechanical engineer, and he works in a company that's not owned by Christians.

And anyway, so he called some men of the church to tell us about a difficulty he was facing at work. And he said that when he took the job, he didn't specifically ask, but he really did his research to make sure that this was not a company that did work for the military because he didn't want—he knew, first of all, his own convictions wouldn't have allowed him to do that. Plus, he was a part of a group of people that stood against that.

But he met with this group from his church to say, "I overheard the person doing bids the other day talking to a military contractor." And he said, "It sounds like we might be working on a bid with the military.

What should I do? How should I handle this?" Now, notice he was bringing his life to other men. He was being responsible to the men in his church. That's what we're talking about here. We gave him some direction. In that case, he went and talked to his boss, and his boss expressed a lot of appreciation, first of all, that he was a man of conviction and also said that, "We will honor your convictions here.

And if we take a job like that, we would not expect you to participate with it." A second story, and this is not from our circles, but I remember one of my teachers years ago, he was talking—this was at Columbia Bible College—and he was telling us how that he has three other men in his life that they meet several times a year, just that group. And he said, "We've been doing this for, I think it was about 30 or 40 years."

He said, "We're scheduled to meet about a month from now." And he said, "I'm not really looking forward to the meeting because," he said, "I'm in trouble. They are going to get me for—" and he told us, I think he had just really overloaded his schedule, and that's something they were paying attention to in each other's lives. He said, "They're going to let me have it."

He was being responsible to them. But this is what he then said. After he told us numerous stories about this group and so on, he said, "See that phone over there on the wall?" And of course, this was back when there were phones on the wall. And he said, "I could go to that phone right now and call any one of those three men, and they'd be on the next plane to Columbia, South Carolina, if I just said the word."

And I remember feeling something really, really deep there, saying, "Oh, that's what I want. I want to be in that kind of relationship with other men. Men that I know are going to call me on the carpet if I'm not fulfilling the commitments I've made, but also then men that have my back, men that when I need them, they're going to be there."

And that is the kind of man that God is calling us to be in His church. Developed men, submitted men.

Maybe before I leave that point, since we're thinking of the arch, I am told that there is a palace in Spain called Escorial that it's a sprawling structure. And at the heart of the structure, a lot of the kings and queens of Spain are buried there, and it's a palace, but there's also a chapel. The Chapel of San Loreno, I believe, is there.

And when it was built hundreds of years ago, the king, he looked at the plans, and he saw this large chapel area with a dome ceiling. And he said, "There's no way that that's going to stand." And he said, "I want something that's going to stand the test of time. And that's just not going to work. It's not strong enough. There's no way that that arch can hold things up."

And so he ordered the builders to construct a column at the center of the chapel, right up to the middle of that arch up at the top, just to keep it from falling down. And that was a time when the rule of kings was absolute. You didn't challenge them too far. And so the architect, who was absolutely convinced that his plans were sound, had to give in. They built the column. But the architect, again, it's a great story. And unfortunately, I haven't been able to find complete documentation for all of it. So there may be—you need to check it out.

But the story goes that the architect instructed the builders on the sly to, when they reached the bottom of the arch with their column, to stop and leave a space.

And the word is that after the king died, the architect sent someone up there, and the space was still there. The point of that story is that the arch is an incredibly strong architectural structure. The point is also that you and I can be strong as individuals.

We can be strong alone. We can be strong people, develop people. But our strength is magnified. Our strength is maximized when we fall together in relationship with Jesus Christ.

Our third word is engaged, connected. This is where we're talking about the being responsible for. See, a godly man is connected with other people close enough to get dirt on their hands on behalf of the other person. Back to our Philippians passage, I'll just look out or lift out that one phrase. "Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others." This is our connected, engaged word. We're to be submitted to each other, responsible to each other. We're also to be responsible for. I love Charleston. It's one of my favorite cities. And close to Charleston is Boone Hall Plantation there in Mount Pleasant.

And as you drive into the plantation, if any of you've been there, you know there's this three-quarter-mile avenue of oaks. Those oaks were planted in 1743. In 1989, when Hurricane Hugo came through, it went right up through there.

And just about, I mean, most vegetation was devastated. And it did some damage to that avenue of oaks, but most of them are still standing and still doing well. The botanists that study these things say one of the primary reasons that they have endured so well is because these oaks, the roots have gotten so large that they're actually intermingled and intertwined.

And it forms a fabric. It forms an engaged relationship among the trees where they can strengthen and they can take care of each other. And I find that to be just a beautiful picture of the kind of engagement, the kind of involvement, the kind of taking responsibility for each other in the church that we're called to, letting our roots intermingle with our brothers in ways where we can add strength, add value. So it means things like if a brother is struggling, we take him out for coffee, and we hear him. We listen to them.

If the church needs a Sunday school teacher, and this is something you can do, that you say, "Yes, you're available." It means bringing our skills, our time, our energy to bear on behalf of the needs of our brothers and sisters and the needs of the church. On a physical level, we've just started in a building project there at our church. And I've been amazed at how many of the needs that we've had in the planning process, and now as we actually start getting into the building, how many of those needs are met by developed men in our congregation. I mean, we talked about the sound system. Well, there's a man or two in the church that are really into that and the acoustics and how all that works.

They're able to help with the planning of that and on and on and on. That's what we're talking about, bringing the skills that we have, the skills that we have developed and are developing, bringing that to bear on behalf of our church.

And so we need to ask these questions. Who are the men in my church that God is calling me to intermingle my roots with, to invest in? This isn't just something for the ministers to do. This is something for all of us as men to say, "What does it mean for me to take responsibility for the brothers and sisters in my church?"

But now here's where I want to broaden it out beyond the church again. We're not called just to accept responsibility for each other within the church. We're also to accept responsibility for people all over. And I want to just give an example or two. I was blessed with the kind of work that Pete is doing. Notice that there's a man who's developed. He's developed some skills, some knowledge that allows him to take responsibility for those with dyslexia.

That's an amazing and beautiful thing.

This past summer, I was able to check one of the items off my bucket list. And that is I wanted to attend Sunday school with Jimmy Carter. And he's getting to be an old man. He's 92, still teaching, and teaches 40 Sundays out of the year.

So we were there Sunday morning and enjoyed that. But that's not really what I want to tell you about. One of the things that I read about while we were there in the area, because they have a very nice museum, they have the farm where Carter grew up and so on, one of the things I read about is something that the Carter Foundation worked on. And the Carter Foundation is an example of some people taking responsibility for others. One of the areas they felt like they wanted to take responsibility was with the guinea worm disease. I hadn't heard of this disease until just recently.

It's a parasitic infection that's caused by a nematode roundworm. And you ingest it by swimming in water that's infected with this roundworm. It's very small. It gets into your stomach, and then it starts to grow. And it grows and grows and grows until it's that long.

And then it wants out. But it doesn't come out the easy way. It goes through your flesh and will come out, say, on your legs or arms. And it's incredibly painful. In fact, they say when you have it, you can't work until it's out. It is just that painful. It just absorbs you so much. And so you can imagine this worm coming out, and you can't pull it out. It has to work its way out over time. They said the one thing you can do is take a stick, start wrapping it around it, and you can put gentle pressure. But still, it's weeks before the thing comes out.

In 1986, there were 3.5 million people with this condition.

In 2014, there were 126 people with it. And in 2015, only 22 cases. And they were saying that I think now it's just a couple, a handful. They feel like we're very close to having it completely eradicated. That didn't just happen.

Somebody took responsibility for others and accepted that responsibility. As men, we need to be people who are seeing needs, looking for needs, and saying, "You know what? There's a need that I have skills. I have something to give. I have something to offer there to address that."

And so, in conclusion, godly men are like glass, forged in the fires of rigorous development. That was our first session. In addition, godly men are also like steel.

And Proverbs tells us that iron sharpens iron. We're not only like glass. We're like steel.

Men, you and I, need other men. We need men that we're responsible to. We need men that we're responsible for. Need to be developed, submitted, and engaged. Lord, we thank you for making us men.

We thank you for your church. And we want to accept the responsibility to be men who are church men. And we acknowledge that not only do we need other men in our lives, we need the church. So we bring ourselves to that responsibility here this afternoon as well. We ask for your grace to be godly men, to be church men in Christ. Amen.