FORGING MEN

A 10-Module Men’s Ministry Leadership Training Course for local church leaders. 

OVERVIEW

Forging Men is a comprehensive, men’s ministry leadership-development course that equips Seventh-day Adventist pastors and lay leaders to build biblical, relational, disciple-making men’s ministries that multiply leaders and reach the next generation.

Cohorts forming January 2027.  Stay-tuned! 

THE PROBLEM WE ARE ADDRESSING

Too many men’s ministries produce activities without transformation, attendance without discipleship, and momentum without multiplication.

“Forging Men” addresses that problem by helping leaders:

  1. Become credible leaders.
  2. Define the biblical objective.
  3. Understand the men they serve.
  4. Build an aligned team.
  5. Create an executable strategy.
  6. Mobilize men around the mission.
  7. Develop mature disciples.
  8. Form authentic brotherhood.
  9. Guide men through real-life challenges.
  10. Reproduce leaders who can carry the mission forward.

VISION

To create the most comprehensive and effective men’s ministry leadership resource ever produced.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This will be a professional certification curriculum that will be on the level of a Maxwell Leadership course while remaining distinctly Seventh-day Adventist in theology and worldview.

OVERALL FLOW

This is an intentional progression that begins with you, an aspiring leader of men!

PART I: BUILD THE LEADER

1. Lead Yourself

2. Understand Men

PART II:  BUILD THE MINISTRY

3. Biblical Ministry

4. Disciple Men

5. Leadership Teams

PART III:  BUILD THE MEN

6. Family

7. Brotherhood

8. Life Integration

PART IV:  BUILD THE FUTURE

9. Ministry Strategy

10. Legacy

10-TRAINING MODULES

1. Lead Yourself First

  • Central Question: Why should men follow me?
  • Core Concepts: Developing the character, spiritual maturity, and disciplines required for leadership.
  • Deep Issue: Leaders can become spiritually depleted, undisciplined, or privately inconsistent while continuing to lead publicly. This eventually produces burnout and loss of credibility.

2. Establish a Biblical Vision

  • Central Question: What kind of men are we trying to forge?
  • Core Concepts: Defining God’s purpose and priorities for ministry to men.
  • Deep Issue: Men’s ministry can become a collection of events without a clear biblical purpose or definition of the man it seeks to develop.

3.  Understand Today’s Man

  • Central Question: Why aren’t more men engaging?
  • Core Concepts: Recognizing the needs, pressures, barriers, and opportunities facing men today.
  • Deep Issue: Ministries often answer questions men are not asking while overlooking their actual pressures, wounds, responsibilities, and barriers to participation.

4.  Align Around the Mission

  • Central Question: How do we get everyone pulling together?
  • Core Concepts: Building a unified leadership team around a shared purpose and direction.
  • Deep Issue: Lone-ranger leadership, competing priorities, unclear roles, and unresolved conflict keep ministry teams from moving in the same direction.

5.  Develop a Strategic Ministry Plan

  • Central Question: How do we turn our vision into action?
  • Core Concepts: Translating vision into focused priorities, practical initiatives, and measurable outcomes.
  • Deep Issue: Leaders may have passion and ideas but lack clear priorities, achievable plans, defined responsibilities, and ways to measure progress.

6.  Communicate and Lead with Influence

  • Central Question: How do we move men from interest to commitment?
  • Core Concepts: Casting vision, building trust, motivating participation, and navigating change.
  • Deep Issue: Men may hear announcements without understanding the mission, seeing their place in it, or feeling challenged to take ownership.

7.  Equip Men as Disciples

  • Central Question: How do we move men toward maturity?
  • Core Concepts: Helping men grow toward spiritual maturity, meaningful service, and leadership.
  • Deep Issue: Men can attend breakfasts, events, and church services for years without developing spiritual maturity, biblical competency, or a life of mission.

8.  Build Transformational Small Groups

  • Central Question: How do we create relationships in which men truly grow?
  • Core Concepts: Creating relational environments for belonging, accountability, discipleship, and mission.
  • Deep Issue: Many men remain relationally isolated, and some small groups never progress beyond information-sharing or surface-level conversation.

9.  Mentor, Coach, and Shepherd Men

  • Central Question: How do we help when a man’s life gets hard?
  • Core Concepts: Guiding men through growth, decisions, challenges, and seasons of personal crisis.
  • Deep Issue: Leaders may know how to teach men but feel unprepared to mentor, coach, correct, encourage, or shepherd them through difficult seasons.

10.  Develop Leaders and Multiply a Legacy

  • Central Question: What happens to the ministry when I am gone?
  • Core Concepts: Identifying emerging leaders, transferring responsibility, and building a ministry that reproduces across generations.
  • Deep Issue: Ministries often depend on one charismatic leader and weaken when that leader leaves because no one has intentionally developed successors.

The Iron Works Connection

The first step in leading other men is to “lead yourself”.  If your aim is to be a leader of men, a disciple-maker, a man-builder, you must first engage in the discipleship journey yourself.  And that’s what we provide in The Iron Works.

The Iron Works is a man-building, disciple-making system that brings men together for the purpose of educating, equipping, and empowering them to live, love, and lead like Jesus… The Blueprint for Men.

To discover more about the Iron Works man-building, disciple-making system click here.