small groups in their homes and
went through some kind of Bible
study together? And that was
literally the Genesis of Manhood
Journey. That was a little over
five and half years ago when that
whiteboard session happened.”
I was still surprised at how
quickly this built into a multistate
and international ministry. I wondered if he had any expectation
that it would spread so widely?
Kent explained: “ I’m a little bit of
a fan of those business stories,
you know where some company
started out making golf tees and
today they’re an airline company. Whatever they started out
doing they never imagined that,
like eBay starts trading Pez containers and then they turn into
eBay. Absolutely not! Our initial
vision was, what if, at our church,
we did get fathers and sons
engaged over Scripture. Get the
dad doing that and get the son
plug-in. Wouldn’t that be cool?
And that was five years ago.
Now we find ourselves with God
having made all these connections and blessed us and gone
out in front of us. So now we
find ourselves asking could our
little nonprofit have an impact on
fatherhood for the next hundred
years? I’m not suggesting that it
will, but we’re asking much different questions today than we
were five years ago.”
gram for boys and young men.
Trail Life and Manhood Journey are ministry partners and I
wondered how that relationship
developed.
“Trail Life had, in its very early
days, a meeting in Louisville Kentucky, and a friend of mine was
a part of that meeting. He took
a Manhood Journey brochure
and handed it to the board.” Out
of that, a friendship developed
between Mark and Kent. “We
met under God ordained circumstances and I have the utmost
respect for that guy. He helped
with my book. He’s promoted
Manhood Journey.” The relationship between Trail Life and
Manhood Journey helps you to
appreciate the interactive nature
of Manhood Journey.”
But what Mark had demonstrated, in that chapter, was a
technique and the quick recognition of an opportunity to draw his
son to manhood. Kent is very
outgoing and exudes with confidence, but he has four sons, four
different personalities. I wondered, what do you do with the
more reserved, quiet son?
“I have four sons, 16, 14, 12 &
4 years old. The jury is still out
on the personality of the youngest one. Of the three older sons,
two are more talkative, one is
When you read Wise Guys it more quiet and thoughtful. I
will become clear to you very don’t have some magic formula
quickly that Kent likes to learn and I don’t always do it right in
from people.
In Chapter 5, my own house. I do try to pull
Kent discusses something that out from th e one who is a little
he learned from Mark Hancock more quiet some of his thoughts.
about drawing out and reinforc- The thoughts that are in there are
ing his son. Mark Hancock is amazing and powerful and very
leader of Trail Life U.S.A., a insightful. I may have to work a
Christian Outdoor Adventure, little harder to get them out. But
Character, and Leadership Pro- I remember a book I read years
ago by Tedd Tripp: Shepherding a Child’s Heart and he talked
about, as parents if you ask your
fourteen year old kid ‘How was
your day?’ and they say ‘Fine.’ If
you don’t like the answer, then
ask a better question.”
Kent says he is not great at it,
but I suspect he is better than
most. Chapter 3 of Wise Guys
is titled: Always Be Asking. Kent
has clearly learned how to ask
questions and to listen, carefully and thoughtfully to what
people are saying. He says,
so frequently parents wrestle
with teenage children: “They
won’t listen! They won’t listen!
Maybe that’s because we’re talking all the time and we’re never
asking. … We’re never asking
them questions about life that
matter.” Kent then related a
personal story about one of his
sons. Boys throw things. Kent
was trying to discipline one of
his sons about throwing things
inside the house and it finally
occurred to him to probe more
deeply into the thoughts behind
the behavior. He finally asked
his son, “You tell me three reasons why you shouldn’t throw
things?” His son started listing
off reasons quicker than Kent
could have and the behavior
changed.
Kent credited the
Wise Guys in his life with leading him to this new approach.
Kent said: “I credit those guys
because they taught me how to
do that. To make people think.
Most teachers think it’s their job
to impart information. It’s not.
It’s to teach people how to think.
Questions do that better than
statements.”
As you read Wise Guys, you
will realize that Kent is a sports