WACMM's Iron Sharpens Men's Equipping Conference will be an outstanding opportunity for dads and sons to experience worshiping God together with over a thousand men, learning what it means to be a man of God, and being in the company of men pursuing God together.

You'll hear from St, Louis Pastor Darrin Patrick, author of the new bestseller "The Dude's Guide to Manhood: Finding True Manliness in a World of Counterfeits". Pastor Gregg Harris, a pioneer in Christian education, will share the platform with his eldest son Joshua Harris, lead pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg MD, to talk about father-son relationships. Also, Pastor Tom Joyce, former Top Gun aviator and survivor of the Pentagon 9/11 attack, will  be interviewed with his oldest son, a recent warrior in Afghanistan, about faith under fire.

This is a "Don't Miss, Don't Get Shut Out" Conference. Inform, Invite and Mobilize Your Sons, Fathers, the Men of Your Church, Neighborhood and Networks to the Experience the Region's Premiere Men's Gathering. Special discounts available!

Former lesbian activist professor Rosario Butterfield describes her new freedom in Christ and offers three views that Christians should avoid about homosexuality. Rosario writes as follows:

"Homosexuality is a sin, but so is homophobia; the snarled composition of our own sin and the sin of others weighs heavily on us all. I came away from that meeting realizing-again-how decisively our reading practices shape our worldview. This may seem a quirky observation, but I know too well the world these students inhabit. I recall its contours and crevices, risks and perils, reading lists and hermeneutical allegiances. You see, I'm culpable. The blood is on my hands. The world of LGBTQ activism on college campuses is the world that I helped create. I was unfaltering in fidelity: the umbrella of equality stretching to embrace my lesbian identity, and the world that emerged from it held salvific potential. I bet my life on it, and I lost". READ MORE

"We never 'get beyond the gospel' in our Christian life to something more 'advanced.' The gospel is not the first 'step' in a 'stairway' of truths, rather, it is more like the 'hub' in a 'wheel' of truth. The gospel is not just the A-B-Cs of Christianity, but it is the A to Z of Christianity. We are not justified by the gospel and then sanctified by obedience but the gospel is the way we grow (Galatians 3:1-3) and are renewed. (Col. 1:6).

... The main problem, then, in the Christian life is that we have not thought out the deep implications of the gospel ... The key to continual and deeper spiritual renewal and revival is the continual re-discovery of the gospel." - Dr. Tim Keller

We live in the first generation in history that's confused about what it means to be a man. Consequently, women are confused about what it means to be a woman. If mom and dad are confused about their gender, their children will be confused about childhood, masculinity and femininity . The confusion is devastating, it's accelerating and it's not the way it's supposed to be!

Genesis 1:27 says God created humans "in his own image; male and female he created them." Last week Facebook trumped God by adding 50 gender identities to choose from for your online profile. Hard to fathom? What's next? READ MORE

Men, we're called to the rampart against our therapeutic culture and its heresies against God and biblical manhood. What we're up against sounds like this from Ross Douthat's "Bad Religion - How We Became a Nation of Heretics"

"God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problem that arises, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves." ...[He] is not demanding, He actually can't be, because his job is to solve our problems and make people feel good."

"Therapeutic religion is immensely tolerant: since the only true God is the one you find within, there's no reason to impose your faith on someone else. But a tolerant society is not necessarily a just one. Men may smile at their neighbors without loving them and decline to judge their fellow citizens' beliefs out of a broader indifference to their fate. [Tolerance can] easily turn out to be an ego that never learns sympathy, compassion, or real wisdom."

"Therapeutic to its very core, it emphasizes feelings over duties, it's impatient with institutional structures of any sort".

Columnist and bestselling author Dave Barry's new book "You Can Date Boys When You're Forty: Dave Barry on Parenting and Other Topics He Knows Very Little About" humorously takes on some cultural idiosyncrasies. Check out the Wall Street Journal's excerpt from the book on "51 Things a Man Should Know How To Do":

#1. Make sure you choose a good steak. The main "cuts" of steak are the Brisket, the Loin, the Round, the Chuck, the Rump, the Groin, the Niblick, the Flanker, the Grommet, the Cosine and the Stirrup. They are all basically the same because they all come from the inside of a cow. You should select a manly-looking steak that is approximately the size and density of a standard manhole cover and does not have too many visible fly eggs." READ MORE

This is WACMM's 15th year of ministry to men in the mid-Atlantic region and more and more to men around America. We are firm in the view that men are foundational and as go the men so go the marriages, the families, the churches, the communities and the culture. We are men at war against the flesh, the world and Satan. We are fighting to set people free through the power of the gospel and we have Jesus' promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his Church!

Dave Brown
Director and Pastor-at-Large
Washington Area Coalition of Men's Ministries
Chairman, Foundation for Manhood
10309 Freeman Place
Kensington MD 20895
240.447.1363
dave@wacmm.org