It's like, oh, you know, what does it mean to be like a man in terms of like what God calls us to be like a biblical man? And I think it's hard to figure that out on your own. And this course does a really, really good job on like helping you understand, oh, this is God's will for my people.

What's God's will for my life? Like as a man, well, this is what God's will for your life is. Not to do noblemen, right? But you learn what that means. Hello and welcome to the official, unofficial Acts 2 Network podcast, where we are launching Lifelong Kingdom Workers from every college town.

My name is Stephen. I'm with Isaiah. And today we have Antoine and David. Welcome, guys. Welcome, guys. Thanks for having us. Say hello to the internet. Say hello. Hello, internet. Well, I'm really excited to talk to you guys today. We've been wanting to talk about this for a while.

We want to talk about how you guys have been leading this thing called Nobleman, which is a, I believe it's the Navigators. Is that right? Navigators created like a really cool, like men's curriculum thing. But before we get into that, why don't you guys just introduce yourselves? We can have David start.

You can just say like where you're at right now, what ministry you're serving in. Some of your peers are on the network. And we just something like that. So, David and then Antoine. So, hello. My name is David. I am class of 2014. I'm over here at George Mason University or Fairfax, Virginia DMV area.

So, my peers, we've got Brian Mao back in Berkeley. We have all of those Rutgers guys up at the Jersey area. I don't need to say the name. People already know who they are. We've got a lot of guys up in Boston, Sam Cho, those folks. And so, those are my peers.

And I already forgot what was your follow-up question to that. Just what ministry here you're involved in? Oh, yeah. So, I do college ministry at George Mason University. And that's where I got to do nobleman. I also am a part of our inner high ministry here as well. So, every Sunday morning, I spend time with the youth.

Double duty. Right. And were you at George Mason starting 2017? Is that when you went out? Yeah. George Mason. I'm originally from UC Davis or the area. And then 2017, that great migration or the great explosion or whatever people called it. I believe it's the great scattering. That's our internal name.

Awesome. Wow. So, seven years at Jamie. That's awesome. All right, Antoine. How about you? Yeah. So, my name is Antoine. My wife and I serve at Rutgers in New Jersey. And the ministry that we're a part of is the college ministry. Some of the peers around the country. Well, in New Jersey, we have Bat Salad, Alex Lin.

I'm in California. There's Henry Chum. There's Ivan. There's Noah. Agape. Mike Jean. Just, oh, yeah. 2015, there's a lot of us. We'll just stop you there. You know, you guys don't get hurt if Antoine didn't say your name. You know. Cool, cool. So, how about you guys share a little bit of your story?

How did you start coming out to our church? How did you become Christian? Or, you know, even entering into ministry? I know, Antoine, you have a funny story about that. So, why don't we start with David? Just how did you become? How did you start coming out to church?

And you have an interesting story about that, too, actually. My story goes a little too long, though. The hard part is going to be how to keep it short. Yeah, yeah. Well, just do your best. Do your best. I'll do my best to keep it short. In terms of how I became a Christian, I think it kind of ties it back to when I was younger and where I learned about Christianity, actually.

And so, I come from an immigrant family. There's nine of us, nine kids. There's a lot of us, Vietnamese, Brady Bunch. I went to foster care as a kid. And so, actually, that's where Blessing in Disguise got to live with Isaiah. Yeah. And his family are foster brothers. I didn't know that.

We are foster brothers. He was the bully. He still owes me money. Oh, my gosh. We said, you give me Madison Gardens, and I will give you a dollar when we get home. And a lollipop. And I said, okay. Despite my sisters all saying, don't do it, I get it.

I never saw the lollipop. I never saw the dollar, but I got in trouble by, at that time, Auntie Kelly, because we were messing with money when we shouldn't be when we were six years old. The thing. But anyways. Never trust Isaiah again. Never trust Isaiah. That was not bullying.

That was just winning a game. My goodness. Also, I just want you to know that I did that sort of thing to my brother and sister all the time. So, it wasn't personal. He just bullies indiscriminately. It was just bullying you're part of the family. But, yeah. So, it was during that time, actually, I learned about the gospel.

I actually attribute a lot to, like, at that time, though I might not have became a Christian at that time. The mere concept that I could actually say, oh, there's a God. This God loves me. I could pray to this God. And this is a long story. But eventually, there was a time in my life when I was 15.

I was in a very big pigsty in my life. I got involved with the wrong crowd. I made a lot of mistakes. There was a moment in which I cried out to God. And I was asked God if He could rescue me from my situation. And I'm like, how did I know to do that in the midst of, in that moment?

And it's because of what I learned about God when I was a kid. And this is after I came back to my family and everything. So I think at that point, God started to bring people into my life, other Christians who would continue to share with me the gospel, help me to understand who God was.

And so eventually, when I moved to Davis, because I needed to kind of get out of my situation, my sister, Amy, Amy Kinder, shout out to her, Godly Women. She was able to kind of hook me up with a place, talking to some of our pastors and living in Davis.

And that's where I got exposed to our church. And I think that was the space I needed to understand the gospel, go to church, see it lived out in community. I was like, wow, these people are so weird. They have lock boxes. That was the thing, because I came, we don't want access to your house.

But there was lock boxes everywhere. And people were like, oh, just going into Pastor Johnson's garage and grabbing things. I was like, this is so strange. Yeah. Yeah, it was that year and then that summer when I made my decision. I don't know if we have time to go into the message.

Anyways, August 29th, you know, I just made my decision and the rest was history. And I think because it was like that college age where my life was transformed and I was saved. And I was like, man, you know, I want this. I don't want to continue. I want to help other people experience God like this.

And so I always saw myself as like, I'm going to be one of the staff members one day. And lo and behold, I guess that's what happened. And then when church planning came, I'm like, sign me up. And then great scattering. Nice. Yeah. You know, when I when I first saw the lock boxes as a college, I was like, whoa, this is weird.

Yeah. I mean, did you ever have a lock box on your your apartment, house, whatever? Do you have one? Well, I have one now. I thought we stopped doing that. I thought we stopped. We stopped. I thought we stopped. Same as everyone knows that, you know, the assumption was like, don't do it.

And everyone uses the same password. But no, I'm just kidding. My my my my my camera went crazy. Let me keep doing this. Isaiah, do you want to clarify what lock boxes are? Yeah, we probably should. Yeah. If you I don't know what the common practice is now, but yeah, it was just it was just back in the day we would access, you know, we didn't have like that many buildings and stuff.

So often like, you know, sports equipment or stuff for outreach is sort of people different people's houses. And so we just made it a practice to have a key, you know, with a combo on the outside so someone can get in. And it was sort of a way in which I don't know.

It didn't strike me as weird because I grew up with it. But yeah, it is. It is weird when you think about it. Yeah. Like all these people are just willing to give other people access to their house. So. Yeah. I think it's pretty neat. Yeah. I think it's pretty neat because like it was church people giving up like their garage space so that yeah, we could store church supplies and stuff there.

But yeah, I think it's our like church grew and it was like random people kind of people we didn't quite know coming into your like we should probably and then we got a church building and we're like, OK, that's that we're good now. It's a little different when you have a church of, you know, 200 versus 2,000.

So yeah. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, just go to that person's house and grab that thing. And you're like, what? Cool. Cool. Well, that's one. How about you? How'd you strike them to our church? How'd you, you have a very interesting story in terms of like deciding to do college ministry, you know?

So maybe you could talk a little about that, your spiritual background in that. Yeah. Oh, man. There's so much to say. But anyways, we'll start from somewhat the beginning. I grew up, I would say I grew up going to church, but not necessarily grew up. I'm like a super strong Christian.

Things started to develop in high school where I was, I ran into a church. I was baptized there, first pilgrim in Los Angeles. But I really wasn't taking it seriously because I didn't know the ins and outs of what it meant to be a Christian. And because of that, I was just sort of making up my own thing.

Like, oh, God would want me to, you know, do X, Y, or Z because that's just, you know, what, what just what people would do anyway. So a little confusing, sorry about explaining on that. But anyways, when I made it to college, I had the opportunity to really seek out a church.

I ran into some random coupon guy at a supermarket. And long story short, he convinced me that when I'd finally go to college, I should check out a church. And so I wrote it down as last on my list of things to do, because I was a junior transfer.

So, you know, and so then I was like, find a church group. Last on my list. Wasn't planning on like seeking it too heavy. Lo and behold, though, I find it on the very first day I land on campus. UC Riverside, we have a thing called Block Party, which kicks off the school year.

And I was at that campus. I met some friends. They were pre-gaming. They were not around. And so I felt really self-conscious. And so I just kept standing in the longest lines possible. So I didn't look like a loner. I went to all these people around and it just turned up and I was standing in the Korean barbecue line that, you know, it turns out that our church was putting on.

I bought my first Korean barbecue. So everybody who had free Korean barbecue, as they're like intro to our church, I'm really jealous. I bought it with like, it was like 12 bucks too. Anyways, but it was good. It was good. In that line, Dennis Plescott, he fired to me because we were fired to people in that line.

And so from there, I just joined. And I think the thing that stuck out most about our church in those days is that people actually served God to a fault. Like it was detrimental to them. It was painful. It was hard to keep up with this lifestyle, but they would still do it.

They would still sacrifice. They'd still give. I was used to seeing Christians who, once things got hard, you just sort of like, you know, make things a little easier for you by compromising or backing down. And so that was amazing to see day in, day out. And when it comes to come my senior year, I remember really not wanting to join college ministry.

And I even told my mentor at the time, he's Jasper Chang. I was like, hey, Jasper, you know, I really don't want to join college ministry. And I just don't think it's for me, you know? And then he responds by saying, yeah, I don't think you should join either.

I'm like, what? That is not the right answer, sir. He's supposed to try to convince me and beg me and tell me all these Bible verses. But yeah, I mean, it just showed me that he was really thinking about me, my situation, and really just looking out for what I needed at the time spiritually, because, you know, you're not supposed to just dive in to do something like ultra crazy.

If you know you're not at the place, you're going to become bitter and all that good stuff. So that's a little bit of why I decided to join college ministry in the first place. And yeah. So it was a couple of years, right? Like you did other ministries. Did you jump into college right away or after that conversation?

So I did a youth ministry first. Oh, okay. But it was only for like a semester. Okay. And then you were like, let's go call it. Yeah, yeah. People brought up to me because I did this. It's very similar to how some of the new grads are kind of easing into ministry here.

Yeah. They allowed me to be in inter-high while at the same time helping out with college. And that was around 2015, 2016. And so, yeah. So easing into it, yeah. Yeah. I remember, man, back in the day, Isaiah, when you and I would join college, it was just like you just get thrown right into it.

And it was like sink or swim kind of feel. But it was good. It was good. I remember thinking at the end of my first year. I don't know. Like, would I do that again? I think I would. Like, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm glad it was hard, but I'm glad it happened.

Like, that's kind of how I felt at the end. But yeah. That was my senior year, I think. That was your senior year. First year, I really loved. Okay. You know, it's a really good class. Oh, you were in law school. Oh, that was my second year. Second year.

Anyway. Got it. Cool. All right. Well, let's jump into talking about noblemen, guys. Because I think that, you know, that is the main thing we want to talk about. So, what is noblemen? Let's just start with that. David, you want to just kick us off? Yeah. Well, the pamphlet says noblemen is an application-rich discipleship course that offers a compelling biblical path to true manhood and impact.

And, well, that's a pamphlet. In terms of, and that's true. But from my experience, I just kind of expand on that a little bit. It's like, oh, you know, what does it mean to be like a man in terms of like what God calls us to be like a biblical man?

And I think it's hard to figure that out on your own. And this course does a really, really good job on like helping you understand, oh, this is God's will for me. People are like, what's God's will for my life? Like as a man, well, this is what God's will for your life is.

Not to do noblemen, right? But you learn what that means, right? How to relate with other men, right? And how to, like, when it comes to things like community, what does that look like? What is your role when it comes to community and the church, building up the church?

What is it, what is like godly relationships look like with other men, older and younger and your peer? Um, so a lot of good stuff, even like maybe they're not ready for that yet, but then around like marriage, like as a father, like how should you be responding to your wife and your kids?

And what does that look like? So it was really awesome. Um, and I think so it's, it's good, like biblical manhood content, but what, like, what's the format and like what else is involved with it? Yeah, so what happens is, so it's a combination of things. So two of it will be a weekly.

So, uh, so we meet weekly, uh, for sessions where we get together and we kind of go through some content together about like different values, principles, that kind of thing. But on top of that, we do challenges, right? And that look cool. So some of those challenges will range from like writing a letter to your father, right?

Like, well, who's done that before? Wow. Even, uh, like outreaching salty groups, finding a group of people where you can kind of discuss spiritual conversations with, with those things. We also have three big events or, um, not events, trips going. Yeah. So launch week is the first week we go into it and that's where we kind of kick things off together as like a cohort.

And we do this together. Uh, we have our boost trip mid week, our mid semester. And at the end, there's something called fort week. We won't go too much detail into that, but then fort week is what you want to get the whole time. You're trying to just accumulate or just keep your points.

Okay. Cause when you don't do yours, you lose points. So you want to get a certain amount of points so you can make into fort week. Cause that is super awesome. And that's usually, that's like 75% of like the transformation you experience through courses for a week. So, and then I, so I also heard that there's like daily calls and daily Bible reading.

Like you have something, man, is that? Yeah. I can take that. So yeah. One thing about nobleman is the every single dayness. I think dailiness is like not even descriptive enough. Every single day. Wow. You are calling a person, your wingman, who you get paired up with the changes every week.

It's somebody was sitting in the group and you're also doing daily Bible readings Monday through Sunday. And yeah, you're talking about that, you know, praying over things with your wingman every single day. And, um, that's on top of the assignments that you have to do or the sessions that you have to join.

And that's really creates a lot of bonding between the guys. Um, we're going to be student and student and lead. Wow. Sounds like, um, I mean, it's more than just content, the local men and content. It's really trying to create like a, forge a group together around a lot of work.

Actually, there's a lot of stuff. Yeah. It's a lot. It sounds like you have to do a lot. Is that, I mean, is that, it's a pretty high bar? Yeah. It is a pretty high bar. Actually. It'll say like, so we have to memorize this creed, right? So you have the creed, we can talk about the creed later if we want, but like every session you'll come in and be like, Oh, if you don't recite this word perfect, you don't get the points, you know?

And so there are moments like, Oh, you see me. And then, you know, as I'm reciting it, you know, I get one word wrong. Right. And then another student recites, he gets one word wrong. And then these other students are like, Hey, just give it to him. You know, it's like just one word.

And I'm like, Hey man, we just gotta, just gotta look at this, you know? And it says, um, we're perfect. So I'm going to hold myself to, I didn't get points, you know? And then one student, this is kind of funny, Steven, because it was a message that you helped to prepare about like the heart of the law, which I gave that Sunday.

But the law, David, you know, and I was like, Hey, you know, I think their heart is that like we keep to the structure, right? Because the structure will help us grow and the hard work of working towards that is going to help us. So, but that was, that was a fun incident.

The structure as well as just honoring the exact word of God, because it's not just the creed, you got to memorize word perfect, but every scripture that we have to memorize, it needs to be word perfect as well. Well, so it is, yeah, it's a very high bar. And I mean, I was, I was not involved in Nobleman, but two of the staff that I'm mentoring were part of Nobleman and was like, I never saw them, man.

It was, it was busy. So I'm wondering like the process of like getting students involved in this, like, I mean, A, do they know what they're signing up for? And B, if they do know, how do you convince like a busy college student, like we're having trouble just getting people to come to Bible study, you know, like how do you get someone to sign up for something like this?

Yeah. Um, well, I'll just share a quick thought. Maybe Antoine, you could share about like the process. I wonder, like, you know, it's kind of weird because you'd have students who are like irregular, maybe like last year. Just the value of like a consistent Bible study. Maybe that's not like as valuable, but then when you share, Oh, Hey, there's a men's biblical discipleship group that on the other side of that, you will have a transformed relationship with God and with other people.

The way that I tell people, I'm like, Hey, this is probably the biggest investment into your relationship with God as a man that you can do this semester. I don't know about anything else that if you do this, you're not going to come out of it going, Oh, I wish I, I've not met anyone yet.

That's like, I wish I didn't do that. But then we actually had a one guy and he knows who he is. So if you're listening, I love you. And, uh, we have a great relationship hung out with him at FH workday today, but yeah, so he, he was like the, just a semester before it came back in and meet our group transform.

We're 180 now. We're not make new. And then he was like, I think I know these people, you know, I think I know familiar, but I don't know, but he's been in our group like before. And then, so it's so funny. And then, but that spring he said, Oh, I'll do local man.

And, and he went through that and he'll, he'll be the first one to testify. Like, Hey, this was like, like, this was an answer to prayer for him. He's like, I'm graduating. What does God want for my life before I graduate? And we're like, Hey guys, we're doing nobleman.

He's like, Oh, this is it. You know? And he did nobleman and man, big proponents for nobleman for sure. Wow. I just see him one day, maybe doing his own nobleman, a group as well. So, so what, what do you think is the draw for people? Is it the fact that it's like a men's thing?

Is it the fact that it's intense or like, is it the promise of like, Hey, there will be progress in your spiritual life. Cause I'm kind of hearing a couple of different things from you, but what do you think is, yeah. What, what, what is the draw for people?

I think it's across the board. When I asked our guys who went through Rutgers, I asked each and every one of them, Hey, why did you join Rutgers? I mean, how did you join Nobleman? And what made you stay in Nobleman? All of them had actually a slightly different reason.

They were, they kind of scattered around what you said. Some wanted the challenge. Some knew that they needed to take a step to grow closer to God. Some just really wanted the camaraderie with the other guys. Some kind of missed the type of frat life that they, that they wanted to pursue before.

And this kind of fit that bill. And so it was all over the place. I do think that when we were pitching Nobleman at Rutgers, what didn't work was when we were trying to pitch it as like a really hard thing that you need to like defeat and, and, and overcome.

When we talked about Legwisks, you have points, you can get kicked out. There's all these different things that you have to meet. You know, people didn't sound that attractive. Yeah. You're pretty strange. As soon as we started talking about like the vision, like kind of like what David was saying earlier, like one day you're going to be a father, you're going to be a husband, you're going to be somebody's last remaining best friend.

Like, don't you want to invest right now in a life that will help you do that well in the future, um, to live a noble life in that way. And that was way more appealing and people really responded to that. So is that like part of what they like?

Cause I know they break down a lot for you and know, in the no man curriculum, like, is the way you pitch it also like included? Like, do they tell you how to explain it and how to pitch it? And cause I heard you guys like try to scare people off, like in the beginning and it's like just sort of like a couple of info sessions or something.

So tell us about that. Yeah, I can, I can kick off and then pass it to David. So yeah, there is an info session. The way that we did it at Rutgers was we didn't invite anyone to join nobleman. Actually, we invite you to come to the info session to learn about nobleman.

Even if you said, Hey, I want to join right now. Hold it. Nope. You're going to go to the info session. You're going to decide to dance. And we, I was doing my best to make sure everyone knew exactly what they were getting into, even so much as to, at the end of the info session, our group, we printed these letters.

We, we knew who was signed up to show up and we printed them all these letters in faith that they would show up. It was in their little folder. And we said, Hey, read this tonight. And, um, yeah, it's going to give you some insight about, um, you know, how you can join and how you can opt in.

And the way to opt in was in that letter and the way to opt out was in that letter, but they didn't call us. We weren't hounding them like, Hey, so are you coming or not? Like we didn't do any of that. It's like, if you do the thing that's in that letter, that's how we know.

And lo and behold, the vast majority of them did that thing in a letter. Are you allowed to tell us what that thing is? Okay. There's like all this secrecy. Yeah, I know. I know. It's like, yeah, it's like, yeah, like they're not allowed to talk about it. Like there's two rules.

Can't talk about no woman. Did you do that info session? Did you guys do something like that too, David? I just want to say Antoine got creative because that's not part of it at all. The whole letter. I see. That sounds really cool. That sounds cool. I should have tried that.

But in terms of like an interest meeting, like for us, yeah, it's kind of that similar feel. You want to invite them so that they can learn and be very clear about like what's the commitment and the commitment level is, Hey, you're going to expect five hours of commitment per week on average five hours.

What's neat about it. Well, just kind of break down for any like staff that are like thinking about doing it, right? Like in terms of what's offered, I think about like, I said, uh, low burden, high impact. Okay. And when I think about this curriculum, cause they do offer like a leader guide and the guy, his name is Bryce Burchard, amazing guy, but he, he's like, Hey, yeah, you know, I made it so that like, I used to do college ministry.

Cause he was actually called the staff for Davis. And he's like, I understand sometimes you're like the day before your meeting, you're like, what the, what are we doing? Right. And so he built it that way such that you can open up your guide and be like, this is exactly what we're doing tomorrow.

So that it's, it's low prep, but high impact. A lot of the prep comes into the events, but for the interest meeting, yeah, they give you a breakdown of all the things that you can talk about and to kind of help you to help them understand. Not only is this valuable to you, but you do have the time, you have the time.

I've heard also that they've like iterated on it multiple times. So it's not like you're getting their first draft. You're getting like their, no, this is proven kind of plans. All right. I think we're, we're, they've done it for 10 years, at least now. Um, so when we got, I think it was around 10 years, they've been doing it.

So yeah. Antoine, I remember, I remember you telling me how, like you learn, I can trust this content and you were kind of telling me about that. Tell us a little bit about, about that, how like that experience. So, um, every now and then, because like, you know, being in our church, you, you get used to running an event here and there, icebreakers game, I'm the icebreaker guy, you know?

So when that's true, I read, he's the master of games. Yeah. When I read in, you know, one of the sessions for the trip, um, the launch trip gives you an icebreaker that you can do and it tells you kind of specifically what to say. And it says like, guys love me.

And when I first read that, I was like, man, man, I can come up with like way better icebreaker than that, but I, but I didn't. And so I was like, you know what? I need to just rely on it. I talked with, uh, John Kim and he was like, Hey, just try to stick to it as close as possible.

It's like, okay, I'm going to do it. And lo and behold, that icebreaker like lit the room up. They were like chatting and talking. It was something simple, but it's like that icebreaker after that specific session, after that conversation was really, really good for that moment. And so, wow.

Yeah. Well, Hey, maybe in the next iteration, they can, uh, incorporate your letter idea into the, uh, the info session. And so, you know, like that, that's pretty cool. So it's a lot of work. It's a lot of like, just, you know, you guys look, sound really excited about it now, but, but how did you guys feel going into it?

Like, did you, were you, were you excited? Were you like, you know, like, yeah, just tell us a little about that. Yeah. I think cause we had heard about it. So a lot of the staff, you guys might've been there too. They went to the EDM conference that year.

They went to, um, I guess he had Bryce Brashardi had a, an event thing he was doing and then they heard about it. Pastor Will was like, Oh, we got to try this. And so he kind of passed it down. And most of us were like, nah, you know, cause it just like, we had our plans.

Right. And, um, luckily, you know, Adele, um, so he runs our college group, Pastor Will, they're like, Hey, we should just give it a try if you can. And we're like, okay, well, let's just give it a shot. And that probably was the best thing to have. Like one of the best things that happened to our college ministry as a whole, that we decided to do it.

So I came in and kind of, so me and Fred Mote, so shout out to him because he, if it wasn't for him, I don't think it would have turned out as well. He's like the backbone of your planet. He's the logistics dude. You know, you need those people.

It made it happen. Yeah. So he, um, we, we were really kind of nervous about it because also for like a, well, we got our own DTs, you know, we do our own devotions with our church and it's like, Oh, we got to do another devotions, you know? And it's this whole separate devotions.

Right. And wait on Saturday and Sundays too, you know, it's like, yeah, you know, you go to church and they're more intense than us, man. It's too much waiting things for a retreat. Yeah. You still got a call. But it was, what was cool is you, you see this.

Um, I mean, yeah. So there's this experience of, Oh, we're at a, um, we're at an outing. We're in New York outing. We're at river lodge. We're hanging out. And these guys are waking up at 6am before everyone wakes up to do their DT and do their wingman calls.

Wow. People see that you're like, Oh, what are they doing on Sunday after church? I mean, you should be hanging out with newcomers, but Hey, you know, they're doing their wingman calls at the end. That's great. Um, so it was, it was like, Oh yeah, you know, it's different.

We're not used to this. Like we took all the people, like it was separated and made a whole different group. What does that do to group dynamics? And we weren't ready for that, but, uh, what came out of it, uh, man, it was, uh, it affected us as a whole in terms of our ministry.

And so, um, yeah, at the time it was a lot of work, but yeah, definitely it was worth it to go through it. What, what do you think it built into the ministry? Like, what do you think it did? Okay. Well, I think what it definitely helped was like in terms of culture and things that we're going to value.

So when we came into the fall, you have, so let's think like, you got guys who came out of a program that said, Hey, you got to value older mentors and, and, and godly men to pour into your life. God has called you to go and do outreach to find younger men to mentor and to become a spiritual patriarch for them.

So these guys are coming out of that with this like mentality, like this fall, we're going to go and we're going to reach this campus. So, um, that kind of, I think this kind of lifted up the level of, of, of zeal of our entire group. Uh, so I think by the end of our semester, we never would imagine at GMU, we'd have something called campus changers, right?

And that's like Vanguard kind of group where weekly we're going out and we're doing evangelism as our students that are driving it. Right. And it's momentum that that creates. It's amazing. So I was really thankful for that. I think we lost Antoine. I think we did. I think we lost Antoine.

Antoine, what do you think? Antoine. Did you, did you enjoy it? He really didn't want to answer this question. Cool. Cool. Well, um, what, what has it done for you personally? Yeah. I think it did a lot. It helped me. I think I understood. I got to, it's like almost like another MBS for myself.

You know, I had to, a lot of reflection. I think this Nobleman Creed definitely helped me. Uh, specifically when I just talked about like the creed itself, like there's certain parts of the creed. So some of the creed is like, I will stride, uh, I will abide daily in the Lord and in his word.

Uh, it's like, oh yeah, I have to commit to that. But then, you know, you realize like, that's important, right? Daily, just abiding with God. The big one is like around my relationship with like my wife and my kid. I remember there was a moment where like, I was just super busy, but there's my son playing on the floor.

And I was just like, I just need to get on my laptop and get stuff done. But I remember it was like, oh, you know, I'm going to remain emotionally engaged and physically available, you know, as a, if married, this is what I'll do for my family. And so I remember that, like going through my mind, I'm like, oh yeah, you know, actually this was God's call for my life.

And so it was like my moment to kind of refocus, like, hey, you know what? I don't need to do those things. I could be available for my son right now. Um, there are other things like, you know, when it comes to like my wife, like, hey, um, and I'm just going to read it.

I will love my wife as Christ loved his church. I will pursue her heart and receive her strength and weaknesses until parted by death. And that, that, that strength and weaknesses part, you know, and we know this all comes from like the Bible, but, uh, it's just one of those things that comes, it reminds me like, God, oh, you know, like my wife, she's going through some health issues and those kinds of things at that time that was coming up a lot.

And that leads to frustrations, like things I want to do or whatnot. And the moments where I just got, you know what? Like God calls me to receive her strength. And are we, and this is a moment, yes, I'm going to receive that. So it really helped me in those areas.

And then also in terms of like my relationship within the church and how I viewed, like where I was in terms of station and status. And because that's like so much drama and ego, but another part of it is, and it's always, it's tied to Philippians two, right. Um, but it's about like seeking the honor of God and those around me rather than my own.

And that's like what talks about in terms of Jesus. So that really helped me to just see like, you know, I'm at my best when I just seek the honor of my friends instead of my mom's like competing or something or seek the honor of it, um, or leading.

Right. And so that helped a lot. And then I got to experience the fruits of that. And that was great. And that, I think if it wasn't for this, um, I think I wouldn't have grown as much in that as I could. Yeah. That's neat. Just like the power of memorization, you're just having that read in your mind and just the verses and rising and that they're coming to mind and those kinds of like, you know, defining like those moments of truth, you know?

So I like that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. I remember one of my, one of the staff who was part of, um, Nobleman. Yeah. He was telling me at a midway through, he's like, man, I feel like every one of our guys staff should go through Nobleman. And I feel like we should all do wingman calls every day.

He's like, it's just been so good for him just to get that daily. And it's like, there's like three questions, right? For every wingman call. It's like, what did you learn about God and something? And what are you going to do about it? Or what was the second question?

Yeah. Honestly, off the top of my head, I went, I probably pull it up for you, but it's pretty much like, Hey, what is like, what did you learn from him? What are you going to do about it? I'm not forgetting. Yeah. It's like every day. If like, and he said, it just forces you to come up with like some sort of application that like, here's what I'm going to, here's how I'm going to obey the word of God.

So I don't know. I just thought that was cool. Just like to get in that discipline and doing that every day. Yeah. Yeah. You just get, you're just getting in a lot of good reps in time, in terms of like engaging with the word of God. So yeah. I mean, there's a lot that I'm hearing from you, David, like about the Nobleman program.

Again, I haven't been part of it, but I've been hearing about it, but yeah, like the regularity of it, the, just doing it with people. Like it really is a community thing, kind of the high intensity that has been good, but and it's like, what else, what else separates this just from other like life group or discipleship stuff you've experienced?

Like what, what makes Nobleman unique? You think? Yeah. So I think you mentioned it just kind of emphasize like the structure. I think where we're committed to the structure, maybe in terms of like, well, I haven't been in part of a discipleship group that ends at something like four week, right?

Where you come together, you live together. So let me talk about that a little bit. So you, so the whole point system, I think it really helps because it really challenged you to keep up and be consistent. And so you're trying not to like lose points as you go through.

So you miss an assignment, you miss your verses or whatever, you're going to lose points. Now there's ways to make it up, right? But you're doing it as a group. So you really don't want to let down your, like your friends, like we're a cohort, we're doing it together.

And we're all trying to get to this thing's called four week. And that experience was awesome in itself. You live together in a house, you go to school, you come back and then we have certain like activities that we do at night. Wow. You finally like wrap all of that up and it's kind of intense actually for a week, but it's like super fun.

And in terms of like bonding that you finally experienced. Yeah. That I haven't seen anything that's better than that. Uh, but then you eventually make it to like commissioning now, maybe to kind of just tie to that is like, as you're going through, it's the brotherhood thing, right? Um, cause you start off, yeah, you're learning about what it means to be a God, but then you learn to depend on each other.

Those wingman calls allow for that. It's like an opportunity for that. Now, not every call is going to be like super deep and whatnot, but because we're meeting so often and you're talking on the phone so often and the content sort of like allows you to bring that out, you start to share a little bit deeper.

And so, uh, part of this content is about purity and I won't go into like too much details, but you know, all guys, we know what we struggle with. And, uh, I think in that moment, it was such a shocking to me because I haven't seen this at any other life group was like, Hey, you know, let's talk about our struggles with purity.

And then like it comes up. And as we, we do that, like you start to forge and we realized, Hey, we can count on each other. And then, um, that, that just leads with them to just be much more closer. So these guys are super close and they, they really just for one another on.

So I think that's one thing that I'd be really excited, uh, that I think kind of sets it apart. I'll say one memory from Fort Week that I just wanted to share just as like a mentor that really, it was around the word of God piece that we talked about because we get so much of it and we memorize so much of it and it coming out at the right time.

Uh, it's because we're storing it. And there was a situation for doing really hard activity. It was three or four weeks and everyone's getting angry at each other. Uh, cause there's one where you gotta, like, you gotta hold your weight. Like you gotta like hold, like there's something, anyway, I can't really go into it, but like you're doing something really hard.

And if you don't all put in the effort, you know, um, like someone else is bearing the burden, right? So you get, people are getting frustrated and whatnot. I can sense it. We're halfway through this thing. We're nowhere near done. And I finally, I'm like, Hey guys, we need to stop.

And I was like, guys, you know, we, we can't like, I know that we're upset right now. People are angry at each other, but we're not going to end like that. Right. And people start reciting verses. I mean, it was a weird experience. You know, it was like, Oh yeah.

And actually it was the Philippians 2 verse, you know, from, and it's like, uh, you know, seeking that the interest of your own interest, but the interest of others. Right. Um, and then someone else recites a verse and then someone else recite, like, I didn't even know you guys remember any of this, right?

Because like, you know, you guys don't know how to do this, but it starts to come out. And it was just this picture that I was like, wow. Uh, this is what's God's done in their life. That's wild. I don't think I've ever experienced that in like a decade of college ministry.

That's amazing. So that was, that was bursting out of people. I know. And it was like, okay, we're going to do this. And then we ended the night. It was, it was, I can't talk about the rest, but yeah, that was, I was like, wow. I know. I'm so curious.

Well, I'm, I'm hearing like, I mean, I think I, in our ministry, there was a guy who ran a freedom fight for a group of guys in our church. It's like a 30 day and he ran their 30 day challenge and there were like daily calls, very similar, you know, because it's like a, you know, for those who don't know freedom fights, like a, yeah, another purity, you know, focused like group for guys and just like the power of habit, right?

So we got the power of like memorization, the power of habit, the power of like these, and then these experiences where they have to live with each other. It's really like embodied all these things. It's not just content, not just information, but yeah, the sense of like needing each other.

Yeah. Embodied relationships, right? Face to face. And, and I think there is something that, that meets a need of this generation right now, maybe even more so than, than in the past. So yeah. I love that. What do you think is, well, so, I mean, obviously in terms of like ministry recommendations, one recommendation would probably be just like do nobleman, but, um.

Pretty cool. One day we had like a bunch of noblemans and like we had like a network gathering, like it just, it'd be awesome. Yeah. Just tossing off the charts. Yeah. We were totally thinking about that. We were saying like, dude, if we had like a network wide nobleman, like, I don't know, like ultra.

Y'all had your own nicknames? Y'all had your nicknames like that you gave each other? You can get like a little badge or something, but yeah. But what do you, what do you think are some, any lessons from nobleman that like we can kind of extract out for the rest of our ministry and the rest of our network?

I mean, other than just like, Hey, try nobleman, which I think everyone should do. It seems like I think I need to try it myself at some point, but yeah. What are some takeaways like for the rest of us that might implement in our ministries? Yeah. I would say, okay.

Well, I'm going to say take a grain of salt. I'm just in terms of what of our, our experience was. I think typically whenever I bring up noblemen, I don't think everyone should do noblemen. Should I, should I say that? Is that okay? I can say that. Yeah. Yeah.

Give us your honest opinion. I think you have to know your, your, but you got to have a really good reason not to do it. And there are a couple of reasons why you should do it. But the people will typically say, Oh, well, Hey David, I'm concerned about like, Oh, if a sub couple of people do it.

Right. And like, what will that, like, how to, how about everyone else and what they feel, you know, how does that do for the group dynamic? Um, and just, you got to weigh the pros and cons of it. Right. Because in the case of like our case, when we did it, where we did pull out like a group of guys and it was looked at and like, Oh, that's the nobleman group.

That's the group that is like super zealous. Right. Um, or they're doing something special over there. And they got like matching t-shirts and stuff. We had matching t-shirts. No, uh, they have cooler looking t-shirts this time around. So for those ordering this time, I guess there's a black. Um, yeah.

So, um, so like, what does that do to the group? I think it's like, what, what, what do you want your group to be about? Right. And what's the goal for the group is what you want to think about. And for us, like we want, um, yeah, I guess our goal is that like students reaching students, uh, students like excited about the lost and reaching them.

Um, and a lot of times, I guess we're trying to gather big group of people and we're trying to move them there at the same pace. And that goes really slow. And it's very like almost sometimes it's like a painful experience. And, uh, in this case, yeah, that's kind of what it was like, you know, and we had a couple of people here, a lot of our, actually our upperclassmen had left.

And so it was like almost a brand new group. And so we ended up doing this group, we pulling people out, but then what it did for our entire group is sort of like afterwards was the results I talked about last and earlier, which that like going into the fall, it kind of changed the dynamic of our entire group.

people saw like, well, this is what's capable, like, like what's like, this is what's possible. There are other students that are challenging and kind of setting that bar for everyone else. Right. And so it sort of does that. And so I guess in my mind, um, I guess I'm, I'm a hard time articulating, I guess, because now as I'm talking, I don't even think I'm being that clear, but in my mind, yeah, I think it's just like, if the concern is about like, oh, Hey, we, we don't want to like, yeah, you know what I made people left out.

Yeah. I mean, just, just to go off that a little bit, it makes me think of what Greg steer always says, which he says, go with the goers. Yeah. And if you can kind of get 10% of your group really on fire and zealous, like that changes the rest of the group, it changes everything, but you can't, it's like really hard to change all like the entire group at once.

So focus on that 10% and that'll really have kind of benefits for the rest of the group too. So, I mean, that, that, that's his, he's very big on that. Yeah. And, and, and just to add to that, like, don't be afraid to call them to something more, you know, don't, don't be afraid to ask the bar for those, you know, you can't do that for everyone, but, um, there are some students when you ask for more, they do respond.

It's not gonna be everybody, but, and if you make that investment, like you said, right. I like that challenge, like to, to even tell that, that is a special challenge to the nobleman that I can see you really believe in, you know, like you will, you will not come out of this semester unchanged.

You're very confident in that. Right. But man, if we could almost like be able to talk about spiritual life and relationship with God in that way, just seem to more of our students, just like, if you want to see growth, if you want to see yourself grow closer to God, if you want to see like these things, it does require investment, you know, and, and I want to call you to that, you know, that, that kind of pitch or that kind of vision casting or, or whatever it might be motivation.

I think that's, that's really valuable too. So. Yeah. Yeah. I guess what I was trying to say, it's okay that not everyone does it. Yeah. Okay. And that was, cause some people will say, well, I can't do it this month and that's okay. Well, we'll have to create another opportunity for you.

There's always next semester. Yeah. And we don't have everyone do the same. So you're doing it, you're doing it this semester too? Doing it this semester, man. All right. Hey, yeah. So we just, I just came out of an interest meeting right into this call. No way. Where, where are any of like, do you, do you bring back the people who did noblemen and now they help lead it or it's that?

Yeah. What happens after? There is a, so there's a role called lessers and that's sort of the student leader group. And so we have two guys who will be lessers for this semester. Yeah. And so this is our first time doing that. Lessers? Like lessers? Yeah. The terminology that NAVs wanted and to do.

And I think it's, we'll super trade servant leadership. Okay. Leadership is not like a status, you know, it's influence. Right. And so like they could have that influence in this group. And so they will be like the student leaders. So are they doing like what you did last time?

Now they're in that role or is it a little different? Maybe less of the logistics stuff for them, but they will be running a lot of the sessions. Wow. It's cool. That's neat. It's really neat. That's neat. Well, man, I, that's it for me. I was like, do you have, do you have more questions or anything like that?

No. Oh man. Antoine never, he told me he would be back on 10 minutes, about 20 minutes ago. So his phone died. So I don't know. Yeah. The charger broke, but maybe we can get him on another time and hear some of his thoughts. But yeah, I think that's all the questions I had.

Actually, here we go. Who's back? Antoine! Are you there? Yay. Just in time for the closing. We can hear you. We can hear you. We can't see you, but we can hear you. That's okay. I'll turn my camera on soon in a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No worries. We were just about to wrap up, Antoine, but maybe I could, I could ask you this too.

So I just asked David this, but like, what are some takeaways from Nobleman that we might be able to apply to like the rest of our network? Like some, like, man, this is something they do really well. Or here's like how I think we can maybe adopt some of this into college ministry.

And I know a lot of it is like, you got to trust the system and you got to do the whole program. But like, yeah. Short of like, just do Nobleman. Like what, what are some takeaways that you think? Some takeaways from Nobleman. I'm going to say that, you know, a lot of the guys, you might think or assume that they might not be willing to do something hard, challenging, something that's costly that they have to, you know, even fork over money for.

But it seems like as long as the content is there, the camaraderie and the ability to kind of meet the need that they really feel deep inside these young men, I really think that they'll be willing to do it. So it made me a lot more courageous in my ask and my expectation of how people will respond when given such an invitation.

It's good. It's that, um, it's that right mix of challenge and invitation. Yeah. Go ahead, put it. Yeah. Oh, man. Thank you guys so much. As always, we could have heard more of your thoughts, but, but again, I think, uh, I think you, you, you'll, you'll just have to watch this and comment on the video or something later.

Like David missed this. You can make a video response. Yeah. Yeah. Here's my response to that podcast I was on, but, um, thank you guys. Uh, I know that there are other, uh, nobleman groups, um, still going, uh, or starting up this, this quarter seems like it is. Antoine's doing it again.

There's, I think OSU is doing it. Uh, we're, we're thinking about it here in Philly. Like I'm like, I'm like, who's supposed to point the trigger? Oh, I think it's, it's going to catch on. And hopefully when more people hear about this, it'll catch on. I know that there are sisters asking, is there a sisters version of this?

And, and I know that they've been trying to develop it. And so we're really looking forward to that. Yeah. They're still in the, the iterating testing phase of that, but they are working on it apparently. So it's coming and hopefully it'll be just as awesome, you know, so that more people can experience growing closer in community, going closer to God, going closer to, and just, just growing in their, yeah.

Just character and all of that. So, all right. I kind of feel like I should pray at the end, but I think we should just sign off. But should we pray? Let me just pray for all the broken men. Yeah. Pray us out. Yeah. I'll pray us out. I'll pray us out.

God, we just lift you. All the nobleman groups are going on and all the guys in our network, God, all the guys, especially those in college and God, we know, I mean, yeah, just the kinds of challenges Lord, that the guys face and just the lostness, the sense of purposelessness and even just an assault on like masculinity in itself, Lord.

And, and God, you, you created us. You created us good. You created us with purpose. You created us with a certain design and you, you created us to be blessings. And, and I just pray that the guys specifically, I know that the girls need this prayer too, but the guys would, would hear this, that, that your heart for them is good.

And in Christ, they can become new creations and they can genuinely experience the blessing of being a new creation in Christ, like in this life and, and make a significant impact on the people around them. And I just pray that that, as David shared, that would just, just raise the tide, Lord of zeal and Christ likeness in all of our groups.

And yeah, we just pray that whether that comes to noblemen or other means, he would just be able to use that in, in show watching world. Like this is what it looks like when we follow Jesus. This is what masculinity looks like. This is what brotherhood looks like when we follow Jesus.

And it would be such a powerful testimony to the power of the gospel. So thank you, pray all in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thanks for jumping on with us guys. Like, subscribe, tune into the next episodes. See ya. Bye.