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UNC meets weekly at the Atlanta Bread Company in Cumming GA. Each Friday, the morning’s opening talk is posted to the blog. Don’t forget, you can easily subscribe to our RSS feed.

Also, you can subscribe to our Podcast in iTunes. Start iTunes, enter the iTunes Store, and search for “UNC Friday Morning”.

I set out this summer in search of my leadership lids. I asked the Lord to twist the lens into focus on those things that hinder me from fully experiencing the man God created me to be. (By the way, I suggest you secure a healthy self-esteem before you pray this for yourself).

The exercise is still in motion, but it sparked me to wonder in a general way why men tend to shrink from their potential. Then, I remembered the kid at the pool.

A while back, I spotted a future man in a line of three-year-olds learning to swim. The instructor was plucking each in turn for a practice float when junior ripped loose a with a scream that curdled the wax in my ears. Three life guards on duty, two very alive and breathing girls before him, one instructor with arms stretched at the ready, and the kid thought he was going to drown!

Did he believe his mom brought the camcorder to record the moment? Why was he so distraught?

It’s because he only saw the pool. The pool and his own tiny little body.

My coaching instincts told me it was time to throw the kid in the water. “He’ll figure it out…”

Years and pounds don’t dull the reflex, do they? Sometimes our circumstances look as long and deep as a competition pool to a screaming shrinky-dink. All we see is a sea of impossibility against our itty-bitty biceps while we lament the loss of our floaties.

I have observed men most often pursue one of two courses in effort to maintain their bouyancy. We either shrink the pool to a size we can manage or we shrink ourselves from the pool’s challenge.

“It’s better to shrink than sink,” we reason.

The former requires that you lower your sights, settle for less, be a nice guy, and play it safe. The latter provides you retreat into unreality, apathy, escapism and addiction. Neither speaks to the man God imagined when He created you.

You know where this is going. You’re already in front of the words. Let me ask you then, straight up: “What do you fear?” Loss of income? A pouting wife? Failure before men?

Good grief. Get over it!

If you’re walking with God you’re going to get wet anyway… so you mine as well just jump.

Click the ‘play’ button below to listen.

(If you cannot see the audio controls below, click the title of this post to refresh. Flash Player is required,click here to download.)

UNC meets weekly at the Atlanta Bread Company in Cumming GA. Each Friday, the morning’s opening talk is posted to the blog. Don’t forget, you can easily subscribe to our RSS feed.

Also, you can subscribe to our Podcast in iTunes. Start iTunes, enter the iTunes Store, and search for “UNC Friday Morning”.

Were you to ask me to name the guy in Scripture I relate to best, I would tell you that man’s name is Peter. Peter is a case study in good intentions run amok. Hardheaded. Ambitious. Daring. Loyal. Impetuous. Ultimately… broken. Busted at the core. Wounds gaping, bleeding all over himself. A pathetic sight.

Such is the destiny of strong-willed men who think they can do favors for God. They come to a place where self-sufficiency’s carnage drives them to a hapless, helpless, hopeless hole. Here… they meet Jesus.

But they don’t get there on their own.

Okay… Well… the crashing, burning and bleeding part? You can get there all by yourself. I’m talking about that place where the healing begins to soothe the wounds inflicted by self-reliance. It’s that place where Jesus drags you to a sitting position, tips your chin and trickles cool water down your parched throat.

Peter knew this place well. It became the launching pad for his ministry.

We later see a tempered Peter. The fire still burned in his belly, but no longer was Peter distracted by self-importance. Same guy, different Master.

God used this Peter to shape the early church. As the good news of Jesus spread, demand grew for Peter’s account of the years he walked with the Saviour in flesh.

“Tell us about Jesus…”

“What was He like?”

“Are the stories true?”

Early church fathers agreed that Peter told his own story through the Gospel of Mark. Some smart guys who were born way, way later say otherwise. They say Mark’s Gospel is random, more akin to the pronouncements of a roulette wheel than inspiration. As for me, I’ll bet black on this one and ride the spin with the ancients.

So… being a guy who claims Peter as his personal emissary to the Disciples, I pay attention to the things he must have thought important enough to download for posterity. What I see interests me.

Mark’s Gospel moves quickly. Fourteen verses deep, Mark has dispatched John the Baptist, passed the baton to Jesus, and set the stage for Peter’s entrance.

Peter’s story is a story of brokenness and redemption, of abandonment and restoration. Yet, we would not have Peter’s story were it not for a very simple, catalytic setting into which Peter wandered.

Mark writes, “After John was put into prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God”.

Somewhere in the crowd a man listened anonymously to Jesus’ words. He hung within ear shot of Truth’s voice and then discussed what he heard with another man… his brother.

A man named Simon.

The man we call Peter.

Two ideas smack me square between the eyes here. First, someone invited Peter to participate in community. Second, that community was gathering around Truth.

The next three weeks at UNC, we will be discussing the environments we have created to encourage men to walk with God. (We have four). I’m going to do my very best to articulate where we are headed in light of where we have been so that you can better leverage these environments for the benefit of the men around you.

As we’ll discover, what we are doing is nothing new. In fact, it’s been going on for a long, long time. I suspect we will also discover that we have Peters in our midst.

Were you to ask me to name the guy in Scripture I relate to best, I would tell you that man’s name is Peter. Peter is a case study in good intentions run amok. Hardheaded. Ambitious. Daring. Loyal. Impetuous. Ultimately… broken. Busted at the core. Wounds gaping, bleeding all over himself. A pathetic sight.

Such is the destiny of strong-willed men who think they can do favors for God. They come to a place where self-sufficiency’s carnage drives them to a hapless, helpless, hopeless hole. Here… they meet Jesus.

But they don’t get there on their own.

Okay… Well… the crashing, burning and bleeding part? You can get there all by yourself. I’m talking about that place where the healing begins to soothe the wounds inflicted by self-reliance. It’s that place where Jesus drags you to a sitting position, tips your chin and trickles cool water down your parched throat.

Peter knew this place well. It became the launching pad for his ministry.

We later see a tempered Peter. The fire still burned in his belly, but no longer was Peter distracted by self-importance. Same guy, different Master.

God used this Peter to shape the early church. As the good news of Jesus spread, demand grew for Peter’s account of the years he walked with the Saviour in flesh.

“Tell us about Jesus…”

“What was He like?”

“Are the stories true?”

Early church fathers agreed that Peter told his own story through the Gospel of Mark. Some smart guys who were born way, way later say otherwise. They say Mark’s Gospel is random, more akin to the pronouncements of a roulette wheel than inspiration. As for me, I’ll bet black on this one and ride the spin with the ancients.

So… being a guy who claims Peter as his personal emissary to the Disciples, I pay attention to the things he must have thought important enough to download for posterity. What I see interests me.

Mark’s Gospel moves quickly. Fourteen verses deep, Mark has dispatched John the Baptist, passed the baton to Jesus, and set the stage for Peter’s entrance.

Peter’s story is a story of brokenness and redemption, of abandonment and restoration. Yet, we would not have Peter’s story were it not for a very simple, catalytic setting into which Peter wandered.

Mark writes, “After John was put into prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God”.

Somewhere in the crowd a man listened anonymously to Jesus’ words. He hung within ear shot of Truth’s voice and then discussed what he heard with another man… his brother.

A man named Simon.

The man we call Peter.

Two ideas smack me square between the eyes here. First, someone invited Peter to participate in community. Second, that community was gathering around Truth.

The next three weeks at UNC, we will be discussing the environments we have created to encourage men to walk with God. (We have four). I’m going to do my very best to articulate where we are headed in light of where we have been so that you can better leverage these environments for the benefit of the men around you.

As we’ll discover, what we are doing is nothing new. In fact, it’s been going on for a long, long time. I suspect we will also discover that we have Peters in our midst.