I walked into my father’s office. I watched as he packed up 40 years of work in cardboard boxes. I was worried for him. He was riding out his last months before his official retirement in May of 2014. Since his appointment as president of Evangel University in 1974, he had given himself to the development of a struggling faith- based institution. From the day he began his work, my father never took his hand off the wheel of leadership. With the Lord’s guidance, he sculpted the vision for the university; students would earn an education that would integrate their faith in Christ with their sacred calling of vocation, as teachers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, artists, or pastors.

Since 1979, I’ve been committed to mentoring emerging leaders— both students and young professionals. I became a father myself in 1988 and now have two adult children. Over time, I identified the experiences that are the most meaningful to my mentees, the experiences that mature Generation Z kids need to build grit and depth. Collectively, they serve as a sort of “rite of passage.” I invite you to consider inserting these experiences into your own investment in your kids.

I agree with Eldredge. He says there is one significant question echoing in the soul of every man. It’s a question that can haunt him and be the source of every insecurity. It’s the question that drives a man into an out-of-balance work life and unhealthy ambition.

What is that question every man needs answered?

Do I have what it takes?

A few weeks after Father’s Day in 2019, I was on our back patio having a phone conversation with my father. We talked for what had seemed like more than two hours, a wonderful conversation. Towards the end of the call as we were wrapping up, he said; “Peter, I need to tell you something; I never should have left you and your brothers, I’m sorry.” I almost fell apart because these words from him were an affirmation that meant “Son, I love you, you are my beloved.” For the past 30 years, each time we’ve spoken, my father has always told me “I love you,” but this time it was different. If only I could have jumped through the phone; I would have wrapped my arms around him for a very long, long time.

As I stood in church and listened to the words of that popular worship song, I tried not to roll my eyes. One specifically frustrating line went, “You’re never going to let me down.” That couldn’t be further from the truth, I thought, not where I was today. Instead of singing it, I stood there wondering, is it possible for God to let someone down?

Known affectionately by the family as Granddaddy, Mitchell never liked drawing attention to himself. As the son of a farmer and school teacher growing up in the Deep South of Mississippi, I’ve never been sure if his strong yet humble demeanor was a result of how he was made, how he was raised, or what he endured on the battlefield. But now at ninety-seven years old, when the beloved patriarch starts telling stories, everyone listens.

We were in the final days of our pregnancy awaiting the arrival of our first son. I am the last male descendant carrying our family name, so after having three beautiful daughters, I was humbled to find out we had a son on the way. The family name and its legacy would continue beyond me.

When I say the phrase “male friendship” what comes to mind Your first thought may be a co-worker, or your college roommate, even though you haven’t spoken in 4 years, or perhaps another dad who you coach soccer with every Spring. All reasonable examples, but these are not the friendships I have in mind. Funny enough, when I first thought of this phrase, I picture a group of guys meeting together in someone’s basement as an “accountability” group. Though this can be productive and, in some cases, necessary, I don’t believe this is the type of friendship most guys seek out.

When I was a young engineering student at the University of Minnesota my apartment overlooked the I35W bridge that crossed the Mississippi River just north of campus. It was an impressive structure with its four lanes of traffic each way and massive steel beams holding it up. I had driven over that bridge hundreds of times. But on August 1st, 2007, the unthinkable happened. During evening rush hour, when traffic loads were peaking, the I35W bridge suddenly collapsed into the river below. In engineering terms, the integrity of that bridge’s structure had been compromised and down it came.

Ruth and I live where the high plains bump up against the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. In an hour we can be high in those mountains looking a hundred miles to the east over a vast sprawl of America’s, west scribed with highways, roads, trails, rivers, creeks, and ranch lands. I have to tell you, it’s a moment. This article is that kind of moment. It is not possible to write about finishing well without, as they say out here, “looking down my back trail.” But, we’re not looking at roads, ranches, and rivers. It’s people- met and places-landed and God in the middle of it all. Whatever faith I have and have attempted to live out comes from there.

There’s one thing standing between you and the life you want—one of adventure, transcendence, and meaning, a life that literally changes the world beneath your feet. It’s passivity... and it’s a damn lie. I’m not using that four-letter word lightly. It’s exactly what I mean. That lie will damn your efforts before you even begin. It will keep you pacified with the “good” when the “great” is still out there. It paves the road to a life of safety when what the world needs are men willing to move—to take risks, fail forward, and die with sweat on their brow.

We express our love to God because he’s worthy and because he’s God. He expresses his love towards us through forgiveness, by adopting us into his family through the redemptive and sacrificial death of Jesus. It’s because of this expression, of love and forgiveness, that we can now confidently express who we are and whose we are.

During his college years, Steve was involved in a campus ministry that emphasized being sold out to Christ which was demonstrated by entering “full-time” ministry and becoming a pastor, missionary, or parachurch worker. Yet, Steve loved soccer and had a growing interest in international business. After college he joined a large corporation that gave him a global assignment. Yet, over the years, something continued to haunt his heart. Over a cup of coffee, Steve expressed it to me this way. “For so many years, I felt that not being a pastor or missionary meant I was on God’s B-team. That the best I could do was to support God’s A-team.” Hearing Steve’s heartfelt words, I was able to assure him that he was no B-team player, that all apprentices of Jesus, whatever their calling, were on God’s A-team.

There I was, sitting in a large conference room across the table from the Under Armour marketing team and one of basketball’s greatest players, Steph Curry. It was the kind of thing I had long dreamed of. My years of designing and hustling to build an agency had given me an opportunity I would have once thought impossible. I was presenting my work to two of the biggest brands in sports.

We are facing an epidemic of discontentment and disillusionment amongst men, particularly those like myself, millennials. We’ve been told our entire lives that you can be anything you want to be, but by thirty the truth has finally started to set in. It’s not entirely true, at least not the way we imagined it would be.

In recent months, we’ve had the privilege of enjoying a dinner gathering on two separate occasions; one with friends and the other with guests we didn’t know much about. Looking back, I didn’t realize how much I needed to be with others, breaking bread and sharing in mutual curiosity and a general well-being of one another, fellowship is good for the soul.

The word stewardship has greatly changed my life.

I recently celebrated my 39th birthday and spent some time reflecting on what has changed over what I perceive to be the best decade of maturation in my life. I spent much of my young adulthood trying to come to grips with dangerous narcissistic tendencies that were, in the words of a very helpful therapist, “destroying all the relationships that mattered most.”

My goal is to convince you to embrace discomfort.

As I type those words I’m sitting on my couch, wrapped in a soft warm blanket, drink beside me. I realize the hypocrisy of my goal, but hear me out.

Early on, when we began designing the framework for how we’d create content for this platform, we envisioned a breadth of stories and perspectives, yet each with a deep introspective view into our own lives as men. This resulted in the primary lens’ by which we’re sourcing our content; Faith, Fatherhood and Work. We believe these three encompass a great deal of a man’s life.

“What do you do?” As if by some unspoken law, that question has come to follow nearly every handshake between men. Interestingly, we find that question, and the resulting answer, to be the foundation for what may become a relationship, albeit without much depth.