Envisioning Fatherhood

00:00:00.000 | We are back one more time with Eric Mason, a church planner who lives and ministers in

00:00:08.840 | the heart of Philadelphia.

00:00:10.600 | He's the co-founder and lead pastor of Epiphany Fellowship, and he's a husband, father, and

00:00:15.160 | the author of the book, Manhood Restored, How the Gospel Makes Men Whole.

00:00:19.600 | Eric, yesterday you talked about how and why you explain manhood to the men in your neighborhood

00:00:25.400 | who don't have these fundamental categories to work from.

00:00:29.000 | How is godly manhood different from cultural macho-ness?

00:00:32.520 | Well, we would look at cultural macho-ness, we would connect that more to Genesis 3, the

00:00:39.000 | fall.

00:00:40.000 | We would say that cultural macho-ness is just man emphasizing the fact that he's responding

00:00:47.040 | rightly to the curse.

00:00:49.520 | You know, the whole he will try to, he will dominate.

00:00:54.120 | It's a reflection of domination, and it's a reflection of more of external persona versus

00:01:00.560 | internal reality.

00:01:01.960 | And so the whole cultural macho thing is just really a caricature and an attempt for man

00:01:10.240 | to put on paraphernalia of manhood versus being a man.

00:01:14.440 | That's a powerful way to put it.

00:01:16.160 | I want to talk about the local church now.

00:01:19.720 | A remarkable point in your book is how you tie the gospel's mission to strong biblical

00:01:24.320 | manhood.

00:01:25.320 | On page 165, you talk about the risk-less environment of a lot of churches not on mission

00:01:32.200 | and how that actually creates a boredom among the men.

00:01:34.800 | Explain how manhood and mission are connected in local churches.

00:01:39.400 | Yeah, yeah.

00:01:40.760 | One of the big things that I'm learning, from being a church planter, I've seen the impact

00:01:45.840 | of vision casting and what it has on men and people giving their lives to a cause.

00:01:52.320 | I mean, and this is true of women too, but it's even more true of men because I do believe

00:01:57.320 | that God has given man sort of this conquering desire that's redeemed, that can be redeemed

00:02:03.520 | through Jesus Christ.

00:02:04.520 | And when you present men who, and Carl Ellis talks a lot about this in his dissertation

00:02:11.000 | that's going to get published on the difference between social concerns and core cultural

00:02:16.160 | concerns and how men are very, he talks about how men are very much drawn to cultural concerns,

00:02:24.720 | not just relational concerns, social concerns.

00:02:27.040 | And so one of the things that I think vision casting does, and global vision casting, not

00:02:33.240 | just community, even though I'm in the inner city, so I believe in doing community ministry.

00:02:38.320 | We do it.

00:02:39.320 | But we're also building a school and helping empower pastors in Malawi to do church planting

00:02:45.200 | movements and to engage their own people in Malawi and Uganda with the gospel.

00:02:49.720 | And so with that in mind, as men are drawn basically to a broader vision than just the

00:02:56.520 | pastor's personal vision or a local church's personal vision in their neighborhood, I think

00:03:02.680 | that it's phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal for pastors to think through a lot of the

00:03:08.520 | reasons why some men aren't at the church because we have very small God-sized visions.

00:03:13.320 | Yeah, that's a fascinating connection that you make, and you do a great job explaining

00:03:16.880 | this in the book.

00:03:19.440 | Fatherlessness is, of course, a major problem faced in our culture, but fatherlessness,

00:03:24.200 | you write, can also be manifested with a dad who's in the house who simply neglects the

00:03:28.600 | needs of his family.

00:03:30.440 | And I think this is my biggest fear as a husband and a father of three.

00:03:33.960 | I never feel like I've done enough.

00:03:37.800 | What are some warning signs that signal that a father is maybe physically there, but he's

00:03:43.760 | not engaged like he should be?

00:03:46.160 | What would you be looking for?

00:03:47.880 | You know, it's interesting.

00:03:48.880 | I read this book, Fatherless America, and it has different categories of fatherlessness

00:03:53.680 | in it, which is mind-boggling.

00:03:56.400 | And I was watching The Incredibles with my kids one day, and I'll never forget, and

00:04:03.280 | this thing sounds weird, but it's going somewhere.

00:04:07.760 | One day, Mr. Incredible came home, and he was living a mediocre life or whatever.

00:04:12.720 | He wasn't Mr. Incredible anymore.

00:04:14.200 | And his mom was at the table, and she's like, "It's interesting they made her an elastic

00:04:20.000 | girl or whatever."

00:04:21.000 | And she's trying to manage all of these different things, but even with her being so elastic

00:04:27.920 | and being able to break the kids up from fighting at the table and all of this, and he had walked

00:04:31.480 | away and was doing something else, and she asked him to engage.

00:04:35.360 | I never forgot that because I looked at that as an example of how a father—and you saw

00:04:41.440 | the impact on the children and especially his daughter, the impact of him not engaging

00:04:46.920 | in his family.

00:04:47.920 | And I think that men need to recognize it because one of the things that especially

00:04:53.480 | suburban men of different ethnicities can fall into the trap of is because they provide—or

00:05:00.840 | blue-collar men as well—because we provide and we work hard, that's enough for the family.

00:05:07.160 | And the issue is it's not enough to just work, then come home and sit because you're

00:05:11.960 | drained from being able to engage your family.

00:05:14.560 | Now one of the things that men have to do is they have to have moments in time regularly

00:05:22.040 | during the week in which they're specifically engaging and knowing where their kids are.

00:05:26.960 | Sometimes we'll eat in front of the TV, but other times we'll eat at the table.

00:05:30.640 | I know people got different views on that, but eating at the table is not just eating

00:05:34.360 | at the table because you can still be present.

00:05:36.480 | Asking them about their day, specifically engaging them and having a trajectory for

00:05:41.440 | their spiritual formation and development.

00:05:43.600 | That is so—that's why I spent a chapter on vision, just really—actually it's within

00:05:49.680 | the family chapter, working on that idea of vision because most men can't communicate

00:05:54.400 | a vision that they have for their household.

00:05:56.120 | They just say, "I want my kids to be good kids and I want my wife.

00:05:59.160 | I want to—even good Christian men will say, 'Man, I just want my wife.

00:06:02.560 | I want to have a great marriage.'"

00:06:03.560 | What's the plan?

00:06:04.560 | That doesn't just happen.

00:06:05.560 | The Bible says the plans of a man are established by the Lord.

00:06:09.600 | That means God is sovereign, but He sovereignly works with plans.

00:06:12.640 | So plans are put—that's why I said the plans belong to man, but the answer from the

00:06:19.840 | tongue belongs to the Lord because man has been given the responsibility under the sovereignty

00:06:24.560 | of God to plan.

00:06:26.520 | For me, that's something that men have to practically work on because most men are being

00:06:34.120 | hit at by their wife, "Baby, can you leave?

00:06:36.440 | Baby, can you—" and it's like, man—and they see it as a nag, but the reason why they're

00:06:40.840 | getting nagged is because they don't have a plan.

00:06:43.560 | That was Eric Mason, a church planner who lives and ministers in the heart of Philadelphia

00:06:47.480 | with a good closing exhortation for us dads.

00:06:50.080 | Eric is the co-founder and lead pastor of Epiphany Fellowship, and he's a husband and

00:06:54.640 | a father and the author of the book titled "Manhood Restored, How the Gospel Makes Men

00:06:59.400 | Whole."

00:07:00.400 | Well, we are now going to break for the weekend, and to all of the fathers out there who are

00:07:04.680 | listening, have a wonderful Father's Day weekend, and we will see you on Monday on

00:07:08.760 | the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:07:10.480 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:07:11.480 | We'll see you then.

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Envisioning Fatherhood

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