Band of Brothers Bootcamps…
Leaving His mark in the path He set for us
Band of Brothers Bootcamps are not a retreat about the seven things a man ought to do to be a nicer guy. It is a four-day quest into the recovery of a man’s masculine soul, the release of a man’s heart – his passions, and his true nature – all of which has been given to him by God. It’s an invitation to rush the fields at Bannockburn, to go West, to leap from the falls and save the beauty. For if a man is going to know who he truly is as a man, if he is going to find a life worth living, love a woman deeply, and not pass on his confusion to his children, he must simply get his heart back.
Everyone’s wound has a story behind it… “This is huge and before you can get to the “rest of the story”, you have to start by healing your wound. Everyone has wounds and John does a great job of unpacking the wounds most men receive and how to recover their masculine hearts, given to us in the image of a passionate God. John explores three big theme’s that he says are essential to men; a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue, and an adventure to live.”
God is up to something with men
- something mythic, profound, powerful and beautiful. He’s after the hearts of men, freeing us to be what we are: Men made in God’s image…Passionate, alive, free, living from the heart, not from the list of “should” and “ought tos” that has left so many of us tired, bored and in a spiritual malaise. God is pursuing, rescuing and unalterably changing the lives and hearts of men around the world.
Why is it that most messages and ministries for men ultimately fail? The reason is simple: They ignore what is deep and true in a man’s heart, his real passions, and simply try to shape him up through various forms of pressure. Verbally or non-verbally they say, “This is the man you ought to be. This is what a good husband/father/Christian/churchgoer ought to do.”
Fill in the blanks from there. He is supposed to be responsible, sensitive, disciplined, faithful, diligent, dutiful, etc. These are good qualities. But men need something more, something deeper. They need a change that emanates from their hearts.
Written on every man’s heart is a yearning for adventure and battle and a beauty. A man needs a deeper understanding of why these longings govern him — and why it is that God made him just like that. And he needs a deeper understanding of why women long to be fought for, to be swept up into adventure, and to be the beauty.
What if these deep desires in our hearts are telling us the truth, revealing to us the life we were meant to live? God gave us eyes so that we might see; He gave us ears so that we might hear; He gave us wills so that we might choose; and, He gave us hearts so that we might live. The way we handle the heart is everything. A man must know he is powerful; he must know he has what it takes. (Wild at Heart, p.18)
The Band of Brothers Boot Camp experience is designed with one primary objective: To restore the hearts of men through a real encounter with God.
When we take folks through a discipleship program whereby they master any number of Christian precepts, they miss the most important thing of all, the very thing for which they were created: intimacy with God. There are, after all, these troubling words Jesus spoke to those who were doing all the “right” things: “Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you” (Matt 7:23).
Our hope is that such an encounter with God will:
- Give a man back his heart
- Show him his place in the battle
- Begin to teach him how to live
