Noticing the patterns of behavior that show up in
ourselves and in others and our responses to them
reveals the work we have to do to become a healthy
family unit.
KEM: How can the church better support and mentor
men to walk in God’s divine purpose for their lives?
BMC: There are father wounds and father issues in
the current culture. The social scientists refer to it
as “father-deficit” and “father-absence”. We face an
epidemic today that is due at least in no small part to
the way the laws of the past few decades have changed
and failed to recognize the sanctity of both parents in
the lives of children. Genuine fathers want to take a
much more active role in the lives of their children.
Divorced fathers have all too often been devalued
and marginalized, and social institutions have been
inclined to dismiss their significance in the lives of
their offspring. The result of that absence in the lives
of children leads to mind-boggling and staggering
statistics of major dysfunction in their young lives
(whether that child is male or female).
The developmental cycle for manhood (and
womanhood) has to be understood and renewed.
Rites of passage, once a part of the culture have been
removed, and now men and women no longer know
when they have come of age, except for a driver’s
license and the right to buy alcohol. The social
containers in which those rites of passage over the
course of their development and maturity could be
worked out have all but eroded away. The Church
needs to recover those rites of passage and chart
courses for spiritual formation and faith formation for
men and women throughout the adult life-span.
Founder and Senior Pastor of Church on The Living Edge, Bishop Mark J.
Chironna, is a man uniquely gifted to train, mobilize, and ignite transformation in God’s people, both in the local church and beyond its walls. His is
a clear voice for the 21st century—one that resonates throughout our global
society with the cause of Christ and the message of His Kingdom.
With the nurturing heart of an apostolic father and the veil-rending cry
of a proven prophetic ministry to the nations, Bishop Chironna serves to
empower believers and equip the Body of Christ in this age. Having planted a thriving Raleigh, North Carolina church prior to coming to Orlando,
Bishop Chironna has been gifted by God as an authentic Kingdom builder.
Today, COTLE serves