We are back one more time with Eric Mason, a church planner who lives and ministers in the heart of Philadelphia. He's the co-founder and lead pastor of Epiphany Fellowship, and he's a husband, father, and the author of the book, Manhood Restored, How the Gospel Makes Men Whole. Eric, yesterday you talked about how and why you explain manhood to the men in your neighborhood who don't have these fundamental categories to work from.

How is godly manhood different from cultural macho-ness? Well, we would look at cultural macho-ness, we would connect that more to Genesis 3, the fall. We would say that cultural macho-ness is just man emphasizing the fact that he's responding rightly to the curse. You know, the whole he will try to, he will dominate.

It's a reflection of domination, and it's a reflection of more of external persona versus internal reality. And so the whole cultural macho thing is just really a caricature and an attempt for man to put on paraphernalia of manhood versus being a man. That's a powerful way to put it.

I want to talk about the local church now. A remarkable point in your book is how you tie the gospel's mission to strong biblical manhood. On page 165, you talk about the risk-less environment of a lot of churches not on mission and how that actually creates a boredom among the men.

Explain how manhood and mission are connected in local churches. Yeah, yeah. One of the big things that I'm learning, from being a church planter, I've seen the impact of vision casting and what it has on men and people giving their lives to a cause. I mean, and this is true of women too, but it's even more true of men because I do believe that God has given man sort of this conquering desire that's redeemed, that can be redeemed through Jesus Christ.

And when you present men who, and Carl Ellis talks a lot about this in his dissertation that's going to get published on the difference between social concerns and core cultural concerns and how men are very, he talks about how men are very much drawn to cultural concerns, not just relational concerns, social concerns.

And so one of the things that I think vision casting does, and global vision casting, not just community, even though I'm in the inner city, so I believe in doing community ministry. We do it. But we're also building a school and helping empower pastors in Malawi to do church planting movements and to engage their own people in Malawi and Uganda with the gospel.

And so with that in mind, as men are drawn basically to a broader vision than just the pastor's personal vision or a local church's personal vision in their neighborhood, I think that it's phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal for pastors to think through a lot of the reasons why some men aren't at the church because we have very small God-sized visions.

Yeah, that's a fascinating connection that you make, and you do a great job explaining this in the book. Fatherlessness is, of course, a major problem faced in our culture, but fatherlessness, you write, can also be manifested with a dad who's in the house who simply neglects the needs of his family.

And I think this is my biggest fear as a husband and a father of three. I never feel like I've done enough. What are some warning signs that signal that a father is maybe physically there, but he's not engaged like he should be? What would you be looking for?

You know, it's interesting. I read this book, Fatherless America, and it has different categories of fatherlessness in it, which is mind-boggling. And I was watching The Incredibles with my kids one day, and I'll never forget, and this thing sounds weird, but it's going somewhere. One day, Mr. Incredible came home, and he was living a mediocre life or whatever.

He wasn't Mr. Incredible anymore. And his mom was at the table, and she's like, "It's interesting they made her an elastic girl or whatever." And she's trying to manage all of these different things, but even with her being so elastic and being able to break the kids up from fighting at the table and all of this, and he had walked away and was doing something else, and she asked him to engage.

I never forgot that because I looked at that as an example of how a father—and you saw the impact on the children and especially his daughter, the impact of him not engaging in his family. And I think that men need to recognize it because one of the things that especially suburban men of different ethnicities can fall into the trap of is because they provide—or blue-collar men as well—because we provide and we work hard, that's enough for the family.

And the issue is it's not enough to just work, then come home and sit because you're drained from being able to engage your family. Now one of the things that men have to do is they have to have moments in time regularly during the week in which they're specifically engaging and knowing where their kids are.

Sometimes we'll eat in front of the TV, but other times we'll eat at the table. I know people got different views on that, but eating at the table is not just eating at the table because you can still be present. Asking them about their day, specifically engaging them and having a trajectory for their spiritual formation and development.

That is so—that's why I spent a chapter on vision, just really—actually it's within the family chapter, working on that idea of vision because most men can't communicate a vision that they have for their household. They just say, "I want my kids to be good kids and I want my wife.

I want to—even good Christian men will say, 'Man, I just want my wife. I want to have a great marriage.'" What's the plan? That doesn't just happen. The Bible says the plans of a man are established by the Lord. That means God is sovereign, but He sovereignly works with plans.

So plans are put—that's why I said the plans belong to man, but the answer from the tongue belongs to the Lord because man has been given the responsibility under the sovereignty of God to plan. For me, that's something that men have to practically work on because most men are being hit at by their wife, "Baby, can you leave?

Baby, can you—" and it's like, man—and they see it as a nag, but the reason why they're getting nagged is because they don't have a plan. That was Eric Mason, a church planner who lives and ministers in the heart of Philadelphia with a good closing exhortation for us dads.

Eric is the co-founder and lead pastor of Epiphany Fellowship, and he's a husband and a father and the author of the book titled "Manhood Restored, How the Gospel Makes Men Whole." Well, we are now going to break for the weekend, and to all of the fathers out there who are listening, have a wonderful Father's Day weekend, and we will see you on Monday on the Ask Pastor John podcast.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.