My son, for HIS birthday last year, gave ME, his brother, and his brother-in-law a gift.
It was a copy of Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul by John Eldredge. Inside the front cover, he wrote an inscription that pierced straight through to my heart. It read:
Dad,
This book has been a display of God’s goodness & love. He used the words of this book to change my life. It has reshaped my understanding of who I am and in doing so he has changed the way I view my wife, son and daughters.
My hope in gifting you this book is not only that you might read it but that it might help reveal who God designed you to be in ways that impact your life & family but mostly your heart.
In love,
Your sonI pray that together we, as men, can impact each other’s hearts & the hearts of our wives & children so that they love the Lord & the world like Christ does.
A few months later my son sent me a text message inviting me to get a cup of coffee with a small group he had started with a friend from church and a couple of others. While I was apprehensive, I accepted. I prayed before entering the coffee shop that I could keep my foot out of my mouth and not embarrass myself or worse, my son. The men in this small group had recently participated in a custom course inspired by the very concepts in Wild at Heart being developed by their men’s pastor.
These young men were realizing that a performance-based, rule-following Christian life wasn’t enough. They were pursuing something I had been completely oblivious to for my entire life - an actual conversational intimacy with a loving Father.
The only way to truly know someone is to be with them and talk with them. I had spent decades talking to God through one-way prayer requests, but I had never learned to sit in quiet surrender and let the Shepherd speak back to me.
Safe Spaces for Hearts
Sitting in that small coffee group with my son didn’t just change my personal relationship with God, it changed my relationship with my son and planted the seed for what Coffee Disciples will eventually become.
True discipleship doesn’t happen in a giant stadium or a classroom. It happens when a few individuals gather together in a safe, transparent environment to share their stories of faith and failure without fear of judgment.
That is our long-term goal here. We want to facilitate the formation of online discipleship groups where people can connect—anonymously at first to ensure safety and vulnerability—to encourage and disciple each other using godly principles.
My son prayed that together we, as men, could impact each other’s hearts. The journey starts by learning to listen to the One who created those hearts.
Let’s grab a coffee. The Shepherd is speaking.