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unSeminary Podcast
Buddies Aren’t Brothers: Why Men in Your Church Are Stuck with Donnie Griggs
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- [00:00]
Rich
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- [01:05]
Unseminary Host
Welcome to the Unseminary Podcast, the place where church leaders get practical insights, tips and strategies for ministry growth. Today you're stepping into something bigger than just a conversation. This podcast is part of a bold mission to help 100 churches grow by 1,000 people. Whether you're dreaming of increasing your impact in your community, empowering your team or or reaching more people with the message of Jesus, you're in the right place. We're here to bring you the stuff you wish they taught in seminary, ideas and tools you can put into action this week to see transformation in your ministry. Let's dive in.
- [01:45]
Rich
Hey friends, welcome to the Unseminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We've got a repeat guest on today which what does that mean? That means that I want you to hear from them again. Really excited for today's conversation because it's super relevant. We've been hearing about this in kind of the broader news and we want to bring an expert on to help us think through these issues today. Excited to have Donnie Griggs with us. He is the founding and lead pastor of a fantastic church, One Harbor Church, a multi site church with him, if I'm counting correctly, three locations in North Carolina. They're passionate about planting disciple making churches in Eastern North Carolina. So glad that you're on the show today. Welcome back Donnie man.
- [02:26]
Donnie Griggs
So good to be with you Rich. Thanks again for having me.
- [02:29]
Rich
Yeah, it's going to be great. Why don't we start with tell us a little bit about One harbor, give us a quick picture of the church and what's been God doing across your locations and since we last talked?
- [02:40]
Donnie Griggs
Yeah, sure. We started 17 and a half years ago in a living room. I kind of thought that's what we would do forever and was really happy with that idea. I didn't tell the person whose living room it was that my long term plan was to use their living room, but. And just God did something different and it just grew a lot. This is the town I'm from. So there's a book about our town and my mom and my granddad are on the COVID of it. And it's very much like, yeah, so huge desire to see, you know, people who just had no. Never thought they'd ever go to church. Like, those are the people that we were after. And. And so anyway, Ben, Benny, quite a ride the last 17 and a half years. Like you said, we're now three locations. We average about 2,500 people on a Sunday across the three locations. And we're in a pretty small rural context. And so that's got a lot of great opportunities to make an impact, but also a lot of challenges as well. So that's kind of it in a nutshell.
- [03:42]
Rich
Yeah, you've been there for 17 or planted 17 years, been there much longer, but you've been pastoring this context for, know, almost two decades. Today we're going to talk specifically friends, about kind of men in the church and what are we doing as churches to engage men. And Donnie's done some really great stuff on this front that I want to make sure we kind of unpack. But what have you been noticing about the men in your church and in your community over the last couple years? What are some of the things that have been kind of on your heart and mind around this?
- [04:15]
Donnie Griggs
Gosh. So I think one of the things, there's kind of a few things. One I noticed kind of just randomly that we weren't doing as many weddings as we used to do. It was just this random kind of data point that I was like, why do I feel like I'm hardly doing any weddings anymore? And then kind of with that I found like almost it felt like every Sunday some really great single woman would come up to me and be like, where are the men? Like, where are the good men? You know? Right. And so that was kind of going on in the background. And then I just kind of, with that, saw so many men that were just stuck in various ways, really visionless, bored, even like older guys who kind of had this really jarring moment where they make it to Retirement, they think, oh, my gosh, like, I've arrived. Now I can just golf all day or fish all day. And really just, you know, me seeing, you know, I'm not. I'm almost 45, some a little ways away from this, but to, like, see how unsettling that was for men and how really jarring and. And honestly, how unhappy they were, you know, like, kind of. They get to this sort of cultural finish line, and. And it just does not satisfy them, you know, in the way that I think they. They thought it would and longed for. And. And so just like, lots of stuff like that kind of going on the last few years that, you know, have, you know, made me feel like, man, we got to do something about this, you know?
- [05:49]
Rich
Yeah. And what. What changes did you end up making in the church, in your ministry? How did that kind of impact how you were. You were thinking about, you know, ministering to your community, reaching out to your community, engaging people.
- [06:01]
Donnie Griggs
Yep. So, I mean, I think. I think we just began to priorit, prioritize, like, trying to reach men. You know, even from the beginning, this was going on, like, very early days. We were meeting in the living room for church. I would. I would do these men's nights in my house. I think what I realized was, you know, and we are so grateful for the incredible women who come to our church. I mean, so many amazing women. But, like, just men weren't coming to church. They were fishing, they were working in the garage, they were golfing, they were hunting. They were doing something. And so kind of from the early days, there was this desire to do something for men. But I think we did a lot more of it in the beginning. And then church got bigger, things got busier, and this thing really fell to the wayside. And so I think in recent years, I was like, man, we've got to put this on the front burner again. I kind of took it back and really owned, like, how do I build a culture of good, strong men? Because if we do that, you know, like, you know, all the data points to. It's gonna. It's gonna lead to better marriages, better families, better, you know, better society, better everything, you know, I mean, all that data around, like, fatherlessness and all the carnage that comes from men not doing the stuff that they need to do. And so I just felt like we gotta really prioritize that. And so it's looked like a variety of things. It's looked like a lot of men's breakfasts and clarifying what we mean by what a Good man is. And some conferences, some. I mean, even, like, really leveraging Father's Day. A buddy of mine said it like this. He said, you know, we've turned Father. Father's Day into, like, toxic Masculinity Awareness day, where we just. We just shame men for, like, being such terrible men. And so we were like, no, we don't want to do that. So how do we. How do we look for ways to encourage men to call something out of them?
- [07:55]
Rich
You know, I want to come back to that, the toxic masculinity question in a second, so I'm going to put a pin in that. But you asked a good question there. What do you mean when you say be a good man? What do. What does that actually mean?
- [08:11]
Donnie Griggs
Yeah, so I intentionally use the word good, not great. I think, like, I think from a Bible standpoint, greatness is something that God does, you know, but goodness is something that's sort of in our hands. You know, he lays out for us in just so many ways what it looks like to be a good man in Scripture. And so that's just sort of a broad thing there. And then I think we've got a cultural obsession with greatness. I think especially of, like, the younger generation who's obsessed with being an influencer, with, you know, with somehow being, you know, insta famous. And I wanted to just push back on that and just say, hey, guys, that's not actually what we're aiming for. We want to aim for. We want to aim for what it means to be a good man. And so you could use words like, you know, reliable and faithful. And, you know, there's all kinds of words you could. You could Google and use for that. But we really just boiled it down to these kind of five things that guys can just hang their hat on and just, you know, aim at. So good man embraces responsibility. You know, he eats it up. He wants it. You know, a good man serves and protects. You know, he looks for ways to step into hard things and make a difference. And, you know, kind of that sort of serve and protect thing. Those. Those two felt pretty straightforward and then. But I thought there's. There's more to that. You know, that. That just in the day, that's. That's pretty cultural. I mean, there's a lot of. Think of Jordan Peterson. Think of all kinds of guys who've talked about, you need to clean your room, you need to, you know, you need to step up, you need. So guys are getting a lot of that. You know, what. What else does the Scripture say that paints a broader picture for what a good man is. And that's where we threw in things like a good man blesses and he encourages, you know, a good man. And then, and then I wanted to talk a lot about friendship. When I think about, you know, we've done this weird thing where we've, we've normalized female friendship and we've really sexualized, you know, deep male friendship. Does that make sense? Kind of told guys you can't. So that I found this data point says the average man in America under 30 doesn't have one male friend he can be emotionally honest with. And so it's kind of that Bible verse, you know, a man of many companions may come to ruin. That's, that's what I think we've done with men. We've said you get to have buddies, but not brothers. And so really, really, really wanting to, like, go hard in the paint on what it means to have deep male friendship. So they walk with other good men and then finally, obviously, they follow the only perfect man who ever lives. So we just came up with that to give guys a grid for what is it we're aiming for? Because, I mean, you're right, being a good man doesn't, you know, it's like, well, what does that mean? You know?
- [10:51]
Rich
Right, yeah, that's cool. Well, I want to dig into a couple of those, but you brought it up, the toxic masculinity thing. Part of what I find intriguing that you're talking about this. There is a version of this conversation that feels very like machismo, super masculine, like in a, in like a negative way, you know, in a, you know, it turns into this kind of like, I don't know, it's like, who can, you know, do the most push ups or whatever. How do you think about this, that issue when you're trying to speak to encourage, you know, grow men? How, how do you think about that?
- [11:31]
Donnie Griggs
Yeah, that is a really great question, Rich. I think so. One of the things we've got to do is just go out of our way to push back on faux versions of masculinity. And so, I mean, what you're alluding to there is the kind of Andrew Tate sort of alpha male, you know, thing where, I mean, I've been to Africa a bunch and through the years doing ministry stuff, and I've been around a bunch of baboons. And I literally think that's what, that's what, that's what culture like that, that's what that sort of cultural lens Is it's more baboon. Like, sure, I can bench press. I'm super strong. I can get any woman I want whenever I want. And so we want to push back on that. That's not what we're aiming for. And also that disqualifies men who tend to be more sensitive or more tender, you know, and that's really sad to me, you know, that we've. We've basically, we've kind of fallen into a narrative there where we tell men, you know, you. You aren't really a man if you're not like this. And I had a guy who's. Who's like that, who's just very tender and very compassionate. And, you know, he said he was like 51 years old when it finally hit him that he was a man, you know, even with that kind of tension. And so I think we just wanted to, like, yeah, I've wanted to make sure we don't. We don't do that. And so. But I do think, like, kind of with that, we do need to own that there are a lot of men who are toxic and are bad. And so I think to, you know, to just act like, you know, that that's not a thing is not helpful either. I think to, you know, kind of in that, to be empathetic toward men who are lacking vision, lacking purpose. I mean, you know, so many of us just, you know, we did not have the good examples that we needed growing up. And, you know, so there's just like layers and layers to this. But I think to stay away from that kind of locker room shame based, just man up, sort of like language is a position that I want to take. And I also want to steer really far away from a kind of masculinity that demeans. That demeans women, you know, and. And demeans men who don't fit, like, cultural stereotypes, you know.
- [13:42]
Rich
Yeah, that's cool. And, yeah, that's just from the little bit I know about you and know about your church. The thing. I think it's great that you're engaging this conversation because you, as a leader, don't come across as like, oh, I'm like the rah rah. Like you say the man up, you know, the baboon. That's a great. You know, that's. That's not my impression of you or your church. And so I love that you guys are tackling this. I think giving a fresh voice to this. Well, at some point, you decided to sit down, put this together, this kind of five into A framework that you ultimately became a book. What kind of. What led you to actually want to do that? The book friends we're talking about is Becoming Good Men, a guide to figuring it out together. What kind of led you to the point where you're thinking, hey, okay, I think now's the time. I want to kind of put this into. Codify this into a book. As an author, I know that that's a. That's a tough amount of work to do.
- [14:32]
Donnie Griggs
It's so much work, man. Yes, it is. So much dag on work. So I think it was a couple of things, I think I felt. So I kept having chats with men, lots and lots and lots of men. And I would ask them the same question, what kind of man do you want to be? And they just couldn't answer it. They just couldn't answer it. And so my heart just began to really be so heavy, you know, for men who. You know, that is a. That's a tough. You know, we live in such a weird moment, you know, culturally, and it's so hard, I think, to be a man in our current moment, so to not even know what you're aiming for just felt like, gosh, as a pastor for men in our church, I just wanted to, like, put something in their hands that could help them. But then really beyond that, I think maybe the most. The thing that drove me the most to it was just being a dad. So I've got two boys. One's 11, Wyatt, and the other one's 14, Jed. And I just was like, you know, if nobody else gets this book, I want my two sons to get it. You know, I really thought I want to put something in their hands so they don't have to wonder, what are we aiming for here? Like, what. What. What does it look like to be a good man? You know? And so I think those two things, you know, really, really drove me to want to do this and. And then, you know, kind of maybe a third piece would just be. I alluded to this earlier, but seeing older men, I feel like, really waste their last years and. And wanting to, like, call older men to finish well and to know, really count to the very. To the very end of their lives. And I'm not saying it's wrong to ever play golf or ever go fishing. You know, I'm not. Definitely not saying that, but. But I. I think this. I wanted to cast vision, too, for, like, the older generation to see themselves as really needed and. And. And. And wanted. You know, that was some of the driving Stuff. I just feel like eventually you have to write this stuff down. I mean, you can't have 10,000 lunches with people, you know, saying the same thing, you know?
- [16:33]
Rich
Yeah, yeah, that's cool. That's great. Well, let's dive into a little bit of, you know, a few. Maybe a few of the five areas. So embrace responsibility. This. This first one. So talk us through this a little bit. What does that look like practically for, you know, maybe somebody who's drifting? And how is that not just another version of, like, you're a bad person because you keep dropping the ball? I know that's not what you're saying, but how do we. How are you handling this with guys to help kind of call something out of them rather than shame them into something?
- [17:08]
Donnie Griggs
Yeah, that shame word is such a big one. Right. It's like the air we breathe as men. I'm not enough. I'll never be enough. I don't have what it takes. I mean, so many men, some of us probably consciously, but most of us, I think subconsciously, we just live in that. And so I just don't. I don't ever want to be part of any of that. You know, no one needs more shame. What we need is a lot of encouragement. And unfortunately, I think a lot of the language that's out there that is on the, like, you know, take responsibility thing does, I think, activate shame in men. And so, you know, shame does work as a fuel source. It's just a really bad one. You know, like, it works, but it's, like, super unhealthy. And so, yeah, so I think with young guys, like, trying to get them to the word embrace responsibility, you know, to stop. You know, Paul talks about it like this. He says, like, when I was a child, I, you know, I acted like a kid. You know, I did all those childish things. But now I became. When I became a man, I put away those childish things. And so I think it's like, what are the steps you can take to begin to put away childish, like, childish behavior? I met with a therapist one time, and I really expected to get a lot more sympathy from this person, since I was paying quite a lot to see them. And I said something like, some behavior I'd done. And I said, I know, that's really childlike of me. And she pushed back and she said, no. She's like, childlike is what Jesus tells us to be. You're being childish. That's different. And it was like a boom for me where I realized, man, I'm justifying childish behavior. And so I want to help young guys especially to first begin to just take responsibility for themselves, you know. You know, the scriptures talk about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so what does it look like to begin to, you know, you know, take responsibility for, like, you as a fully integrated human being? You know, what is it, you know, not just your actions, but also your thoughts and your feelings? And how do you begin to, like, you know, really take responsibility for that? How do you begin to, you know, Scripture, all the proverbs are so great on this, or talks about, like, how, you know, each of us has, like, a field and, you know, is your field overgrown? Is it full of weeds? Is it. Is it. Is there chaos in your life where, you know, if you go back to the garden, like, Adam was meant to step into that chaos and bring order. He was meant to, you know, so what does it like to begin to look at your sphere of influence and begin to, you know, embrace responsibility? Kids have to be made to do. They have to be made to do something, you know, whereas, you know, good men begin to look around them and go, what here is actually for me to do? You know, and how do I. How do I begin to be someone who contributes? You know?
- [20:04]
Rich
Yeah, that's good. I love that. Another thing, different idea. So for some reason, and maybe again, you're the expert on this, I'm not. It's like, guys, we struggle with looking somebody else in the eye. A guy we love, a guy we think the world of. We think, man, this internally. We're like, that guy's incredible, does great stuff, is a good man. I see them doing all kinds of amazing things, but it's like there's something that stops us from looking at that person speaking words of encouragement to them. It's like a language that we're not comfortable with. Why is that? Talk us through that. And then what have you tried to do as a church to try to help with that? Is there anything that you've. You've kind of instilled to try to help guys think that through a little bit better?
- [20:50]
Donnie Griggs
Yeah. So that's a whole blessed and encouraged thing. Right. It's like, men aren't just tough. They're meant to be tender, you know, and we know this by looking at the life of Jesus. I mean, unfortunately, what we've done as a society is we have. We feminized certain things, you know, and so we feminize things like tenderness, we feminize things like compassion, and we See those as a. With men as a sign of weakness or some kind of softness that's not akin to masculinity. And that's where I love looking at Jesus, because, I mean, you know, he's. Over and over again, we read, he's, move with compassion, move with compassion, move with compassion. He weeps openly at a funeral. He just does. He breaks all those stereotypes, you know, and so I think getting a grid for masculinity where we can be tender, we can be compassionate, we can be empathetic, I think that's really important. Yeah, I think. Yeah. I think we've just got to, like, this stuff has been around for a while, right? It's the, like, you know, dad disciplines the child. Mom goes in and make sure the child's okay. You know, it's like we've really embodied these kind of unhelpful stereotypes and. And for far too long. For far too long. So I. I just. Yeah, I think it's unfortunate that, like you said. I mean, to use your analogy, that men can't. Can't use words like I love you. I mean, how many. How many men say things like, I never saw my dad cry. My dad never said he loved me. And that is. That is so not healthy. It's like. And so how do we create. How do we make it okay for men and make it more than okay? Like, how do we normalize and kind of expect men to. To. To embrace these kinds of things, to. To walk in this way? And, I mean, we can't even tell a guy. To your point, we came and tell a guy we love them. We have to say something like, I love you, bro. You know, like, we have to add something on there because we're so worried about this thing looking like we mean something else. And that is just. We really need to put that behind us, you know, I mean, people around us are so desperate for encouragement.
- [23:03]
Rich
I heard you reference something that you do with your own boys to try to break some of this. I think you referred to it even as a liturgy. What is. What does that look like? Tell us about that.
- [23:14]
Donnie Griggs
Yeah, so that one kind of just, you know, came. I look back and think. I remember being in the room when it happened. It was 14 years ago. Jed was a baby, and I was holding him in his room, and I just found myself. I prayed this very simple prayer for him. Very simple prayer that. Where I asked, you know, I was asking God to. Thanking God for him, asking God to help me be a better dad. And just some of those things and then. And then I just fell in this little kind of call and response thing with him where, I mean, he was a baby, literally holding him in my arms. And I. So I had to say the words for him. But, you know. And you know, I. It sounds so simple that I struggle. Is it even worth saying? But I'll tell you, since you're asking, but it was basically what. Basically what I do is I just say, like, you know, Jed, you know, you're a gift and you're made to be a. And he's supposed to say a blessing. And I say, you're safe and your daddy's strong and you're not. And he's supposed to say, alone. And I say, and you're strong, and he's supposed to say, too. And so I just did that one night, simple prayer, said this little thing. And then the next night I did it again, and the next night I did it again. And I've been doing that. I did the math. I've been doing that, like, over five. I've done over 5,000 nights.
- [24:26]
Rich
Wow. Wow.
- [24:27]
Donnie Griggs
And obviously with my son Wyatt, now. I do it with him every night now. They're like preteen teenagers. Some nights they're, like, happy about it. Some nights they're like. They just say the words kind of begrudgingly, you know, like. But. But I really wanted them to hear. As long as they're. As long as I can. I wanted them to hear these things. I wanted them to know that, like, there's security for them. There's, like, their dad loves them, there's strength in their dad for them, but also that they were made for something that there's, like, gifting to them and there's blessing that they were made to give and they're. Strengthen them. And so, I mean, if I was to sit down and try to script it out, maybe I'd come up with something different. But I just fell into this. And I mean, if nothing else, my kids. I don't. I don't think they'll ever forget it. I mean, they just. It's like one of those things. They just heard it so many times, you know, and I'm just committed to continuing to say it over and over again.
- [25:18]
Rich
Yeah, I love that. That's a great. What a great, vivid example for, you know, for parents, particularly young dads, who. Who are, you know, early in their. In their walk with their. Their sons. That's fantastic. That's. That's so cool. Well, if you were. Well, I want to get to the book a Little bit more. What have been as you've kind of. It's been out there in the world as people have started to use it would have been maybe a surprise in a positive way. Like, oh, here's the way I've seen a church use it. Or here's a way that it's interacted either inside your church or outside the church. Talk to us a bit about the journey of the book.
- [25:53]
Donnie Griggs
Some of the surprises have been like, the amount of like, wives and moms of boys, especially single moms who have really enjoyed it. How they, you know, actually I spoke with a young lady the other day. She just got engaged. She read it and she said she felt like she was able to put her ear to the door, ear to the door and hear a conversation that she really needed to hear. Like she was eavesdropping on a conversation. She's like, man, I'm about to be. She said, I'm about to be married. And I just thought, man, I'm getting a glimpse into the kind of man that like, my husband, my future husband, you know, wants to be. And so like, from like young engaged women to single moms who are going, I need to know how to help my son here. I don't have a. There's no dad in the picture, you know, wives. That's been really surprising. I think also, like people outside the church who aren't Christians who've like, really enjoyed it, I mean, like with their co workers and God Guy just, you know, got a copy and said he sat down and read the whole thing that, you know, in one sitting and. And then bought copies and dealing with his co workers at I think some construction workshop work site or something that's like, I did not see that coming. I didn't have a co, you know, but I really didn't want it to be easy to read and be accessible. So I'm glad it is working in that way. And we've got lots of churches doing it in lots of different ways. So there's questions at the end of each chapter that are for discussion. And so I've heard everything from middle school boys and high school boys and young life groups and all kinds of like that younger group, you know, sort of thing, working through it. Some of them are like 50 kids at once. Some of them are like three kids at once all the way through. I mean, all the way through to like men. I just had an email from a guy in South Africa who read it. He's in his like, 80s, I think, and he was so inspired and so encouraged. And it's like for. I mean, for God, that age to be like, man, I. I am still needed. I'm still wanted. There's still. It's like that Caleb thing. There's still strength in me. There's still purpose for me. So really, the, like, almost the full gamut there and then I've heard of churches doing. I just spoke at a church up in. In. In the, like, kind of Gaithersburg area over the weekend in Maryland. And they got like 40 guys going through it at once all the way through to, like, small group, you know, men's small groups. And it's really been kind of wide, you know, which, again, I didn't know what to expect. I mean, but it's been pretty encouraging.
- [28:24]
Rich
Yeah, that's very good. I love that. It's. It's cool to see when it kind of starts to live beyond you. Right. It's like, hey, it gets kind of a life on of its own, which is pretty cool to see. That's. Yeah, that's super encouraging.
- [28:35]
Donnie Griggs
What.
- [28:35]
Rich
When you think about the book as a tool, what are a couple of the ways that you can imagine it being used? You mentioned a few there. Like, it could be used in your men's ministry. It could be used as a small group. Talk us through one. A couple of those ways that you were, as you were writing, you thought, oh, I could see how churches could use this.
- [28:49]
Donnie Griggs
Yeah, I mean, I really. When I think about our church, my goal is that every man who comes to our church is meaningfully connected to some other men. Goes back to that friendship thing. I want men to have more than buddies. I want them to have brothers, you know, drinking buddies, hunting buddies, golfing buddies, whatever. Buddies, you know, that. That is not going to get you where you need to go. And so I wrote it thinking primarily, like, what if two or three guys went through this together? You know, because the questions are they're not easy, you know, at the end of the chapters, they. They really do unearth stuff. Is the goal is for them to unearth stuff and, you know, to, you know, get you to begin to think about some pretty significant things, you know. And so I think it's really great. I mean, I've heard lots of guys reading it on their own, which is awesome. But I think in my mind, it's best lived out in like, those small group kind of like getting all the men in, you know, your church to. To go through it and to break up into groups and to go through it and then, you know, I think then like a, in my mind, like then a kind of once a month or once every couple months, you do some kind of a breakfast thing or something and you, you pick up one of these, you know, one of these chapters, one of these kind of aspects and you just kind of camp out on that a little bit and go, hey, you know, when we, you know, what does this look like in, you know, in our church? What does it look like in our community? What does it look like in your lives? And so that's, I guess, primarily how I imagined it being used. And I think I'm seeing a lot of fruit from guys using it like that.
- [30:19]
Rich
Yeah, that's really cool. Love that. Where do we want to send people to pick up copies of the book? I'm assuming we can get it at Amazon. Is there somewhere else we want to send people to grab these?
- [30:29]
Donnie Griggs
Yeah, so there's a few different avenues here. So obviously Amazon, straightforward. It's on Amazon, it's on Kindle. There's that. It's also an audible because, I mean, you probably know this, rich dudes just don't read, you know. And I mean, I've even had guys say, man, I'm like severely dyslexic. I actually can't read. I mean, we've got a guy who church who reached out, just said, like, I've got a guy in my church who's blind. Like, you know, and so the audible thing, I think a lot of guys are in, they're just in the car a lot and they're listening to like 3 hour long Joe Rogan podcast, you know, so you can listen to the whole book in like, I think four hours or something. It's not right easy, you know. So the audible thing I think is, is, is another one I'd point guys to. If like you're a church and you want to order like a bunch of them, I'll, I'll work a deal for you and get them to you cheaper than you can get them on Amazon. You can just go to becoming good men.org and there's a whole thing there for that. And I'll, I'll, I'll make it work for you. And then the last thing is I actually you mentioned machismo earlier and I, I'm, I've done a lot of work in the Spanish speaking world, have a huge heart for that part of the world. And you know, machismo, it's a big deal. You know, it's, I have a single lady in our church who's From Mexico, who said she reckons like nine out of 10 men that she knows, she grew up around in Mexico have been pretty much have just bought into this machismo kind of thing. And really, it's created just a huge mess. I mean, and so actually then I actually got the book translated into Spanish, so.
- [32:04]
Rich
Very cool.
- [32:04]
Donnie Griggs
So that's on Amazon too. Unfortunately, there's not an audible yet for that, but if somebody's like, man, you know, I've got some Spanish speaking folks that there's, there's that avenue as well.
- [32:16]
Rich
That's really cool. Well, I love, I love all that. And, and friends, I would encourage you to pick up a copy. I love the idea, the picture even. You might be listening into this today and say, hey, you know, get a couple copies of this book and find two or three other guys and why don't we work through it together? And even as a way to say to someone like, hey, man, I want to be your brother, not just your buddy, you know, I think is a great framework. Right. For, you know, as you're interacting with, with other folks. So I really appreciate this, Donnie. I'm. I hope this helps get more people connected with the book and that it helps more folks that are, are out there today as we wrap up any final words, any final comments you'd have for a church leader that's leaning in today and thinking, man, I like, feel. I feel like we got to do a better job on this front.
- [32:57]
Donnie Griggs
Yeah. Gosh, I mean, I just think the time is so, like, right for this. It's such a necessary thing. So hopefully what I've done can be helpful to you. If not, there's other things out there. But I mean, you know, we, we're living in this weird moment with so much gender confusion. And then you add cultural hostility where all masculinity is deemed toxic and men are unwanted and unneeded. And then you throw in so many of the guys in your church who walk with a limp because they didn't have a good dad, a good male figure, really poor faux versions of masculinity. I mean, I just want to say you can't afford to not think about this. And so, I mean, and I just think it's one of those things where it's like, if you can build a culture of good men in your church, that title lift all the boats.
- [33:41]
Rich
Yeah, that's great. Thanks so much, Donnie. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?
- [33:48]
Donnie Griggs
Yeah, one harborchurch.com has got all the church stuff. And then for me, I'm pretty much, you know, I do some stuff on Instagram and Facebook. I'm not the biggest social media guy in the world, but yeah, but I'm on there pretty frequently.
- [34:07]
Rich
That's great. Thanks so much, Donnie. Appreciate you being here today, sir.
- [34:09]
Donnie Griggs
Thanks a lot, Rich. Thanks for having me.
- [34:11]
Unseminary Host
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