We’ve Got Men Down!

Scripture: 1 Samuel 15.34- 16.13; Mark 4.26-34; 1 Timothy 1.1-2


Donald Miller’s latest book is about growing up without a father. In To Own a Dragon, Miller writes about the early “replacement fathers” he had.

“In the absence of a real father, I had a cast of characters that were at times hilarious, pitiful, perfect, kind, and wise. Here they are:

My first father was a black man on television who wore bright argyle sweaters. He lived in New York or Chicago, I can’t remember which. He was incredibly intelligent, and had a knockout wife. I’m talking about Bill Cosby. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Theo Huxtable. I liked the way Theo dressed. I like that he was confident with women and even though he didn’t make good grades still felt good about himself, and he had good-looking sisters who were both older and younger and who always gave him encouragement and advice about life. I liked that Bill Cosby had money too, tons of cash and certain philosophies about saving and spending that gave the family a sense of security. . .Bill Cosby never panicked about small things, he never got worked up about broken windows or cereal on the floor, and if he did get worked up, it was more like a comedy routine than a drunken rampage. He also laughed at himself, which was endearing, and I would sit in front of the little black-and-white television in my room and live vicariously through the made-up life of the Huxtables, who had celebrity guests coming through the house every few episodes to play trombone or tap-dance. . .I would watch and roll over backward on the floor and sigh under my breath, Black people have it perfect.”

After an ill-fated attempt to fill in as a dad at the Scouts’ pinewood derby, Miller’s mother introduced him to a series of men to help fill the void for her son.

“Mom kept trying. She asked our landlord’s son, who was a pothead, if he would take me to the Boy Scout father-son campout. His name was Matt and he drove a VW bug and listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd tapes and ended every sentence with the phrase, “Do you know what I mean, dude?” He was pretty cool, but I think he felt out of place around the other fathers, men who were approximately twenty years older than he was, and drove trucks or minivans, and were married, and rarely, if ever, smoked pot, or for that matter, listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I think both of us felt out of place at the father-and-son campout. After all, we had only met once before, when Matt had come over to the house to change lightbulbs on the front porch.

“Hey little man,” he said to me, looking down from his ladder, “how can I put a bulb in this thing when there’s already a bulb in it? Do you know what I mean, dude?”





On the last night of the campout, we were sitting around a fire and the fathers were telling about their favorite memory with their sons, and when it came time for Matt to talk about me he sat silent for a minute. As I said, Matt and I had spent little time together before the campout. I was searching my mind for any kind of memory, and considered talking about that great time he changed the lightbulbs, how he had to move the ladder a couple times, and how I helped him by turning the switch on and off. I knew it was a boring story, but I thought I might embellish it a bit by insisting both of us got electrocuted and had to give each other CPR.

But then Matt broke the silence. Having searched for any kind of memory himself,, he told about the car ride on the way to the campout: how we stopped at McDonalds and had to jumpstart the Bug, and how we played air guitar and bashed our heads against the dashboard to the tune of ‘Sweet Home Alabama.”

“Times with our sons, or with our neighbors kids are important, do you know what I mean, dude?” Matt said to the fathers, most of them looking very confused. I nodded my head.

“I know what you mean,” I said, breaking the awkward silence.

“Sure you do, Doug,” he chortled, rubbing my head.

“Don,” I corrected. “My name is Don.”

“Sure it is, little man,” he said to me with a confused look on his face.


Matt was great, but not much of a guide in the father-sense. The next guy was more fatherly, but he was also nuts. His name was Mr. Kilpin and he went to our church. His thing was to fly remote control airplanes in a field. It was exciting at first, but he would never let me control the plane. He would stand there wearing some sort of military hat he must have picked up in Vietnam, and his eyes would get big as planets as he made the plane dip down and sweep across the field, all the while making bombing noises with his mouth.

I kept asking, every two minutes, if he would let me fly the plane, but each time he would say maybe next time. I had to endure three weekends of simulated bombing runs over the Mekong Delta before he finally gave in to my pestering and let me take the sticks. Within eight seconds I had flown the thing into a tree, at which point Mr. Kilpin shrieked and ran across the field, shouting, “We’ve got men down, we‘ve got men on the ground!”


I can relate to Miller. I too was a failure at Boy Scouts. Though my dad never left, he was, for much of my childhood, preoccupied with alcoholism and other demons. My mother, thank you God, never tried to fill in at scouts or baseball. My grandfather at times did, and admirably I might add. He was there at my baseball games and he sat beside me at the father-son banquet. Having my pappy there was better, many times over, I imagine, than having mom there, no offense to mom intended.

But just as Miller’s father-figures improved (his in the person of a youth pastor) mine became varied and invaluable. God provided the men in my life I needed - my grandfather, my coach, my Sunday school teacher, my English teacher.
In a discussion about the root causes of criminality in America, Richard John Neuhaus says, “Almost everybody who has been paying attention agrees that the big change is in the number of young males who grow up without fathers. This is now an intergenerational phenomenon. I witnessed this harsh reality years ago in Brooklyn. Not only boys who did not know what it means to have a father, but boys who did not know what it means to be a father. They did not know any men who accepted open-ended responsibility for their children. These boys did not expect to be, and almost nobody expected them to be, fathers to their children. Today, 35 percent of all children born in America are born to women who are not married.


Sons need fathers. Daughters need fathers. And oftentimes, fathers come to sons and daughters in the form of a teacher, a coach, a grandparent, a friend. We sometimes call them mentors.


Mentoring as a leader, a teacher, a guide, is a spiritual gift from God. But, as with all spiritual gifts, it is mostly a self-giving, humble passion to serve and care for others.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul writes his letter to the young Timothy, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.”

My true child. . . is how Paul describes Timothy. That is how important Timothy is to Paul. That is an indication of how much of himself Paul has invested in the young man. This is not an isolated instance in scripture.

Samuel, who himself had been mentored by Eli, was a mentor to both Saul and then Saul’s successor, David. It went better the second time. As much as Samuel tried to get Saul to trust God and grow into a mature leader, Saul continued to lead by his impulses.

Finally, Samuel has to tell Saul that he will no longer be King, the Lord has withdrawn his favor and chosen another to replace him.


"And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul." 1 Samuel 15.35

That tells you all you need to know. Samuel had poured himself into young Saul. He wanted to see Saul succeed. That's the heart of a mentor and a leader - to work to see others become great. As I said, Samuel's second mentoring relationship would also present challenges, but would turn out much better in the person of David.



Samuel shows us that mentoring is not a science but rather an art. It is bound to be as a gift of the Holy Spirit. There is mystery in how the Spirit works through us to others.

"The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. . .
With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." Mark 426-32


We plant seeds in young men and women and watch them grow, though we know not how sometimes. But I think we know why. Dwight D. Eisenhower was a great man. I think many think of him as the straight-laced general, the quintessential man of the '40s and '50s. But when he was younger, he was quite a character, causing a lot of trouble, getting himself kicked out of West Point. But there was always in him a sense of confidence. He believed the world needed him - that if he didn't exist, things would fall apart. This self-confidence was not a fluke. Eisenhower said his mother and father had this assumption and instilled it in him - that the world could be fixed of its problems if every child understood the necessity of their existence. The first step of growing into maturity is believing there is something there worth growing.

Too many kids, and maybe especially boys, grow up doubting their value, the necessity of their existence. I sometimes doubted that too. But I remember one time when I was in college that God used an unlikely person to convince me of my value. We were driving back to school, me and some friends, after a Christmas break. My dad was driving us back. My friends and I were talking a good bit and listening to music, you know, being self-absorbed as maybe only college students can be. My dad was mostly quiet, and you would have to know him to know the nature of his solitary confinement. He was there but he wasn't. And this song from the soundtrack of The Color Purple was on the stereo. The song was called Maybe God is Trying to Tell You Something. It's a raucous gospel number and we were all getting into it ,me and my friends that is, singing and clapping. We got back to UPJ and my friends scattered to their rooms and it was just me and my dad in the parking lot. And my dad stepped out of his solitary confinement and he looked me in the eye, something he rarely did, and his eyes were shining as he said, "Richard, I'm proud of you." Now, in that moment and later when I reflected on that moment, I used to think, well, God finally got through to my dad. Now, when I think about that moment I know that it was me God finally got through to. I grew up a little that day when I heard those words from my dad. I knew that I was valuable. I knew that I was needed.









63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes - 5 times the national average

85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes - 20 times the national average

80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes - 14 times the average

71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes - 9 times the average

75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes - 10 times the average

70% of youths in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes - 9 times the average

85% of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes - 20 times the average


Church, we've got men down. The Spirit of God wants to do something about that. He needs our help.