Training Ground: Healthy Masculinity
I spent some time this week reflecting on my late teens and early twenties. Man, those were interesting days: I had a big wooly mat of hair or a ‘fro as I would proudly call it to anyone who would or would not listen. I could barely grow a beard, but I sported my stubble with pride. I drank black coffee and dark beer because I thought that was what men did (I still like my stout beers, but have matured into putting cream in my coffee). I engaged in epic adventures on shoe-string budgets between my studies at UAF in the geology department. I was horribly awkward in my attempts to date and had many now-laughable attempts at talking to the other sex. In this stage of my life existential questions were on the table to be wrestled with, and I was hungry and scrappy in my quest for meaning. I asked big questions about what sort of man I wanted to be, and what sort of work I wanted to do in the world. I felt like I was the only one out there that didn’t have these questions figured out and locked down.
This week I want to spotlight a ministry that I participated in during my early 20’s that really shaped how I launched into manhood. That ministry is Training Ground. Many young men that are preparing to launch into adulthood feel, like I did, profoundly insecure. In traditional societies a young man usually worked with his father at his trade or on a family farm and as he grew older either continued down that path or was apprenticed out to other tradesmen that could teach him a craft and provide some direction in life. Whatever the venue, there was usually built in mentoring from older men where skills and knowledge were passed organically down from childhood all the way to adulthood. Contrast this to modern societies where a man graduates from high school with some vague inklings about what he wants to do and some portrayals from media about how a man behaves in the world. He adopts a “fake it until you make it” approach based on his best guess of what a man should be that never gives him a sense of having arrived at an identity or a vocation of substance. Instead he consciously or subconsciously fears that any moment, someone will come along to pull back the curtain exposing the fearful impostor behind the razzle dazzle.
Training Ground seeks to help men wade into these questions rather than repress them. It takes young men that are hungry to learn more about themselves on a 12 week journey where they are exposed to three very powerful learning contexts: Work, Wilderness and Worship. All this as they live intentionally and communally for a summer. It’s a place where men can rediscover healthy, life-giving masculinity and their unique way of bearing God’s image to a hurting world. Rich, raw, authentic, gritty, and Holy. It was a powerful lab in which I was able to uncover and understand my human brokenness as well as the glory that I was created to bear.
In the work component of the program, the young men are farmed out to manual labor jobs in the community. Even for those of us that have found our dream job/vocation, work can be hard, feel meaningless and deeply frustrating. You often have to rub shoulders with people you would rather avoid and accomplish jobs that you would rather not do. Many of these young fellers haven’t had much experience with those disenchanting elements of work - they don’t know how to shovel, hammer, sweep. They suffer from the American myth that the perfect job is one in which it’s butterflies and rainbows every day. Immersion in these activities can challenge entitlement and bring anger to the surface where it can be worked on fruitfully. They also get to enjoy the fruits of their labors: building workplace camaraderie, earning a steady paycheck and learning some marketable skills. In the evenings after work, they get teaching on stewarding their finances and they’re able to process in group therapy their experiences and what they’re learning about themselves.
For the wilderness component of the program, there are weekend fly-fishing and hunting trips as well as longer duration trips backpacking, canoeing, mountain biking in the back country. Scripture talks about creation as Revelation where we can learn learn more about God and his attributes (Romans 1:20). Many traditional societies also have nourishing traditions for male initiation processes that include immersion in wilderness. There’s something about being in wild landscapes that can and should put you in your place in creation; you feel your smallness and experience awe in ways that we are increasingly disconnected from as a society. You are also often challenged physically by wilderness trips: you have an opportunity to pit your strength and savy against the elements to see if you can pull through. The simultaneous juxtaposition of humility and accomplishment are good seeds for healthy character development; inoculating against the default templates for masculinity presented by our culture.
The third pillar of the program is Worship. It’s not like they get lessons on how to worship God but more that as they discern and awaken their hearts through their experiences in the program, they have more meaningful connection with the Lord. Something along C.S. Lewis’s idea of prayer as a conversation in which loosely paraphrased the real “I” can meet the real God. To scaffold this idea of worship, the young men in the evenings participate in bible studies, singing, prayer.
As the men travel through this program, they have weekly process therapy groups, built in mentoring with the older men that help run the program as well as nightly teaching on a variety of topics to help them launch better into adulthood. For those that participate, they come out of the program with a deeper understanding of who they are and what they have to offer the world. Do you know of any young men that would benefit from a program like this? Visit their website to learn more about how to apply. Did you feel like you had the right scaffolding, mentoring and insight into who you were as you launched into adulthood?
