Raise up Godly Men [By Jen]
My friend Harold used to say that God never hurries, He never worries, and He’s never late. We thought we would travel the world after we married, but God’s perfect timing planted us in this soil just six months after our wedding. Our nebulous, pie-in-the-sky dreams had to grow legs, and we had to work out our faith muscles to keep stepping forward even when we didn’t really know what we were doing. There were a lot of things that needed to be decided in those days, the most pressing of which was the decision about who we should serve. I had always envisioned a place for women, and Craig had always envisioned a place for men. We knew we had to pick one to start, and a restoration ministry for young men continued to press on our minds.
There was a man that lived nearby who had been talking about starting a “boys camp” for years. Though we’d heard those words, “boys camp” seemed different to us than what we were envisioning. One Sunday at church we were pushed into a conversation, and we realized that we were both actually talking about the exact same thing. Dick Jones, the same Dick Jones who founded Kidder Creek Camp, had been rallying people behind this vision for years. He was ninety years old now, and he needed some feet on the ground to do the work.
Being the visionary he was, Dick laid the groundwork for people to be excited about a ministry for young men. I have fond memories of Dick from the early days of Rockside. He talked a lot about mentorship and family. He’d been dreaming of a place where young men could learn how to lead with servant hearts--deeply connected to the Lord, one another, and the land. I loved Dick’s heart, and I loved what Craig had envisioned, but I felt left out. I wondered how I could be involved in a ministry for young men. I believed that God had a special place for me in this ministry, but it wasn’t clear how that could be so if we started by serving young men.
Right around this time, I attended a women’s retreat in a nearby town. The speaker shared how she found Jesus after, as a young girl, her father murdered her mother and then himself in front of her. A handful of other women shared some of the most horrific stories I had ever heard--abuse, trauma, and pain--all at the hands of men. Men whose lives had been hijacked and who were not living the life that they were created to live. These were stories that shouldn’t have happened. Stories that didn’t have to be. Sitting in that church, I heard a life-changing sentence, ”If you want to serve women, raise up godly men.”
From that moment, I chose to trust the special plan God had for the dreams I’d been storing up for our restoration ministry. It was then that I pivoted from feeling left out to feeling so incredibly and perfectly included. God spoke to my heart so specifically and allayed my concerns about living on the sidelines. His words did not spell out the details or give me any clarity as to what it would look like, but they invited me to trust that His plan for this restoration ministry most certainly included my dreams and vision too.
These last ten years of serving young men have confirmed everything I believed on that day about God’s sovereignty in guiding the early decisions of Rockside. I didn’t know then how much I loved hospitality, and I had no idea that creating a loving home was one of the most powerful elements in the work of restoration. God built a life for me where I had no choice but to learn how to cook and keep a home, how to resolve conflict with my husband, and how to show hospitality when I felt like I had nothing to offer. He showed me that the mothering work of raising up godly men was actually going to raise me up too. Because moms make space for better stories to happen, and they fight for the place of good food in the lives of their children. All the experiences in my life somehow prepared a place for me here that couldn’t be more suited to the things I love the most.
There’s a photo from Craig and my first dance at our New Year’s Eve wedding that I’ve always loved, but I noticed something very special about it long after it was taken. We got married at a drug and alcohol rehab ranch, a seemingly strange choice to many of our friends at the time, because we loved the idea of using our wedding money toward ministry. Green Oak Ranch had different ministries over the years and had grown to serve both men and women, but hanging on the wall behind us in the photo is a painted mural with the words, “Boys Camp.” When I look at this picture now, I can feel the foreshadowing of what was to come for us, and I marvel at that young couple dancing as married people for the first time. I marvel at the ways that God took that young couple, realistic yet so naive as to what it would take to grab hold of this dream, and extended grace upon grace to them, knit their hearts together, and gave them this opportunity to serve Him. I marvel that Dick Jones’ “Boys Camp” vision has come to fruition before our eyes, and that somehow those words were spoken over us long before we even knew them.
God is a masterful storyteller, and He has a powerful story in mind for each one of His children. If we want His story we have to submit, trust, and obey, words we certainly don’t prefer, and as we do we are able to see that God knows us better than we know ourselves and has written a storyline for our character that is far better than the one we could have written. I’ve learned that the better stories we want to live are founded on faith and held in the hands of the greatest storyteller of all time.