One of life’s greatest challenges and gifts is parenthood. Not only do we feel the pressure of getting our children to succeed and become good people, but we also have the responsibility of leading them into a life of faith.

Guest Don Manning shares his story of surrendering completely to God and creating a family of soft hearts and change makers. Don and his wife Suzanne founded their ministry, Crazy Cool Family, with a mission to connect family relationships to each other and Jesus.

Don talks about the major lessons he’s learned from being a father and husband, giving him the ability to instill the right values in their children. The contrasting approaches to relationships and parenting of Don and Suzanne have helped him become a more compassionate and encouraging father.

Highlights include Don’s most significant fence post story, the clarity that comes with taking a leap of faith, Don’s ministry (Crazy Cool Family) and the meaning behind its name, how Don learned to be a better father from his wife, Hebrews 3:13 and encouragement, why men struggle in fatherhood and marriage, and Don’s prayer for dads who may be struggling.

Get your FREE Crazy Cool Family Membership here: https://basecamp.crazycoolfamily.com. You’ll gain access to all their content, including 10 Core Courses of short videos that take you through how to create a vision for your family. To learn more about the Mannings and their ministry, check out the Crazy Cool Family book and podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or visit their website, Facebook page, or Instagram page.

Simply preaching and sharing your own story, no matter how powerful, is often not enough to make someone a believer of Christ. Living in the strength and truth of your faith gives you a platform to share your story with others, but how you do so is of equal importance to your message.

Through his ministry, which has included experience as a chaplain and Director of Evangelism at Athletes in Action, Doug Pollock has learned a lot about how to have meaningful God conversations with people around the world. Doug’s own discussions with authentic men around him were pivotal moments that inspired him to do the same, through his own self-awareness and the Holy Spirit’s guidance. He knows that, to be heard, you must also be willing to listen, and this has helped him develop an ease in starting a dialogue with non-believers.

Men have the responsibility to converse about their faith, but building trust and safety is key to successful ministry. Tune in to hear how to open a God space to engage in a significant way!

Highlights include the obligation to share your faith, Doug’s “fence post” story, lessons learned through his evangelism, having gospel conversations with others, signs a person wants to learn more, making people feel safe and developing trust, a game-changing God conversation, and using social media to start meaningful conversations.

For more information on Doug and his ministry work, head to his website and check out his books, Irresistible Evangelism and God Space: Where Spiritual Conversations Happen Naturally.

Despite all your efforts and your Christian faith, did your marriage end in divorce? Guest Marcus Farris was a man of faith who entered the marriage covenant with every intention of upholding it. When his marriage ended in divorce, Marcus experienced a profound grief that left him with questions but led him to a deeper faith. In this interview, Marcus shares how a God who “hates divorce” can still use it to shape you, how to process deep grief over the rupture of your union, and how divorce can serve as a catalyst to discover your role in God’s plan.

What you have lost is devastating, but it isn’t the end of your walk with God. You can heal from divorce.

Check out Marcus’s book and website as well as Anti fragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Taleb.

1 Corinthians 13:11 says, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” As you think about yourself in this context, are you a man? Or a boy?

To unpack this, we are joined by Kyle Stark, a coach, leader, consultant, and the president of Stark Contrast. Previously, Kyle served as the Assistant General Manager for the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he implemented an unusual development philosophy that involved having the Bucs’ prospects train with Navy SEALS. This raised a few eyebrows at the time. Kyle offers some insight into the reasoning behind his approach, which centers on truth and personal development rather than sticking to tradition.

One of the key elements of our conversation with Kyle is our identity as men. Where do we find our identity? What roles do discipline, accountability, leadership, and empathy play as we transition from boyhood to manhood? Ultimately, Kyle believes that nearly every problem we face can be traced back to leadership, which is why he has made it his mission to help good leaders drive great cultures.

Join us to learn more about his belief that people buy into the man before they buy into the mission, how you can locate your identity in Christ, and so much more!

Connect with Kyle on LinkedIn, and check out Love Does by Bob Goff, Integrity by Henry Cloud, and Tim Elmore’s website.

Guest Torres McLean says that living by the “man code” nearly destroyed his marriage. After Torres came clean about two marital affairs, God put his marriage back together and freed him from sexual sin. We discuss his book, Man Code: Breaking Free from Sexual Sin to Become the Man God Called You to Be, in which Torres recounts this painful but hopeful story.

Torres McLean is the co-founder of The Hope Ambassadors, a ministry that equips Christians with the spiritual and practical tools to address the challenges keeping them from walking in their purpose so they can impact and serve others. When he is not helping fellow believers discover a life of purpose and intention, he’s home in Detroit, MI with his wife Kelley and their 4 children. Contact Torres via email or visit his or TikTok page.

Kevin Harris, President of Radical Mentoring, speaks with us about the power of masculine vulnerability and what happens when men finally let their guard down. Transformation must be preceded by transparency.

Kevin Harris sets the vision and strategy for Radical Mentoring. He also serves as an evangelist to new audiences and an invaluable resource to churches who have incorporated small group mentoring into their disciple-making strategy. Learn more about him here. Also, check out this article on Radical Mentoring, which captures some of the key points of this episode.

God is moving in the hearts of men in the Hispanic community around the world. We talk with Pedro Martinez, National Hispanic Director for Christ Led Communities (CLC), who is riding this wave of the Holy Spirit.

Pedro discusses God’s unique call on his life to serve men at just such a time as this. We get to know Pedro and discuss the significance of CLC’s newest curriculum, Volverse Real, as an amazing discipleship tool for Spanish-speaking men globally.

To learn more, contact Pedro Martinez.

Every Christian man has a lion within, and is predestined to be a spiritual leader at home, in the community, and at church. However, the lions in many men have been silenced because of a lack of faith in God.

Guest Chris Grainger, founder of The Lion Within Us, wants to inspire and encourage men to be the spiritual leaders they are called to be. We discuss the role tragedy and trial played in his life to refine him and make him the man he is today. We also discuss how men can traverse difficult storms in life in a way that increases their capacity for leadership.

Check out resources from the Lion Within Us, including a Bible Study (free with promo code “empowered”) and The Lion Within Us Podcast.

How do you know that the events recorded in the Bible really happened? Your confidence in the veracity of those events is likely to be strengthened by visiting the land where most of those events occurred: Israel.

Dr. John DeLancey has led nearly 80 trips to Israel and participated in multiple archeological digs that have bolstered his own faith, as well as those he’s led on tours. We discuss the land of the Bible and how seeing it first-hand leads to a much deeper understanding of the stories recorded there.

John served as lead pastor for 26 years in two evangelical churches: Stoneridge Covenant Church in Allison Park, PA and Calvary Covenant Church in Evansville, MN. He has led around 80 tours of Israel, with many of them including stops in both Jordan and Egypt. He has served as an adjunct professor/teacher at the Solid Rock School of Discipleship/College (2016-2019) and the International Theological College & Seminary in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2019). John is the author of two books: Devotional Treasures from the Holy Land and Connecting the Dots: Between the Bible and the Land of Israel. Visit his tour website and YouTube Channel.

Dr. Dan Nahrwold had heard of CLC’s life-changing ALL IN discipleship curriculum, but experiencing it for himself surpassed all his expectations. Dan shares about how God planted seeds in his life several years earlier, and how those seeds led to eventually starting his own ALL IN group after moving to Tampa, FL. We discuss the significance of relationships in men’s discipleship and how accountability impacts our approach to work and our careers.

Dan is an Assistant Member in the Moffitt Cancer Center Department of Anesthesiology. After earning his MD at the Indiana University School of Medicine, Dan completed an Anesthesiology Residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center followed by a Critical Care Medicine Fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. Dan’s clinical interests are in acute pain management, ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia, biomedical informatics, and critical care medicine. His research interests are in advancing technology and anesthetic techniques to improve perioperative quality outcomes. Contact him via email.