Buddies Aren’t Brothers: Why Men in Your Church Are Stuck with Donnie Griggs

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Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re joined by Donnie Griggs, founding and lead pastor of One Harbor Church in eastern North Carolina. Over nearly two decades, Donnie has led the church from a living room gathering to a thriving multisite church reaching around 2,500 people each weekend in a rural context. In this conversation, we focus on a growing leadership challenge: how churches can effectively engage and disciple men in today’s cultural moment.

Are you noticing fewer men engaging in your church, or struggling to define what biblical manhood even looks like today? Wondering how to call men forward without falling into shame-based or culturally distorted approaches? Donnie shares a practical and hopeful framework for building a culture of “good men” in your church.

• Recognizing the quiet crisis among men. // Donnie began noticing subtle but significant indicators: fewer weddings, more single women asking “Where are the good men?”, and a growing sense that many men were stuck—lacking vision, purpose, and direction. Even older men reaching retirement were finding that the life they had worked toward didn’t deliver the fulfillment they expected. These observations, combined with broader cultural trends, led Donnie to believe that churches must intentionally address the formation of men rather than assume it will happen naturally.
• Prioritizing men again. // Donnie made a conscious decision to focus on men’s ministry, creating intentional environments like men’s gatherings, reframing how the church speaks to men, and leveraging key moments like Father’s Day. Instead of reinforcing negative stereotypes, the goal became calling something out of men and casting vision for who they can become.
• Redefining the goal: good, not great. // Central to Donnie’s approach is a shift away from cultural obsession with “greatness” toward biblical “goodness.” Rather than pushing men to become influencers or achieve notoriety, he emphasizes becoming faithful, reliable, and obedient. To make this practical, he developed a simple framework describing a “good man”: someone who embraces responsibility, serves and protects, blesses and encourages others, builds deep friendships with other men, and ultimately follows Jesus. This framework gives men a clear target, which many struggle to articulate on their own.
• Combating unhealthy cultural narratives. // Donnie is careful to address both extremes in cultural conversations about masculinity. On one hand, he rejects exaggerated “alpha male” stereotypes that emphasize dominance and performance. On the other, he acknowledges that harmful behaviors among men are real and must be addressed. His approach is to call men into a fuller, more biblical picture that includes strength and responsibility but also compassion, tenderness, and emotional health. Looking to the life of Jesus provides a balanced model that breaks down unhelpful stereotypes.
• Moving from shame to encouragement. // A key insight Donnie shares is that many men operate under a constant sense of shame, feeling like they are not enough and never will be. While shame can motivate behavior in the short term, it is ultimately destructive. Instead, churches must create cultures of encouragement. This includes helping men take responsibility without condemning them, affirming progress, and consistently speaking life into them. Encouragement, not shame, becomes the fuel for long-term transformation.
• Building brotherhood, not just buddies. // Another major gap Donnie identifies is the lack of deep male friendships. Many men have acquaintances but few relationships where they can be honest and vulnerable. He emphasizes the need for churches to create spaces where men can move from surface-level connections to genuine brotherhood. Tools like his book Becoming Good Men are designed to facilitate these conversations, helping men process deeper questions together rather than in isolation.
• A tool for churches to implement. // Donnie wrote Becoming Good Men to give churches a practical resource they can use in small groups, mentoring relationships, or larger men’s initiatives. With discussion questions built into each chapter, it’s designed to spark meaningful conversations and help men take tangible steps forward.

To learn more about One Harbor Church, visit oneharborchurch.com. You can also find Donnie’s book Becoming Good Men on Amazon, Audible, or at becominggoodmen.org for bulk church resources.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We’ve got a repeat guest on today, which what does that mean? That means that I want you to hear from them again. I’m really excited for today’s conversation because it’s super relevant. We’ve been hearing about this in kind of the broader news and we want to bring an expert on to help us think through these issues.

Rich Birch — Today, excited to have Donnie Griggs with us. He is the founding and lead pastor of a fantastic church, One Harbor Church, a multi-site church with, if I’m counting correctly, three locations in North Carolina. They’re passionate about planting disciple-making churches in eastern North Carolina. So glad that you’re on the the show today. Welcome back, Donnie.

Donnie Griggs — Man, so good to be with you, Rich. Thanks again for having me.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s going to be great. Why don’t we start with, tell us a little bit about One Harbor. Give us a quick picture of the church and what’s been God doing across your locations and since we last talked.

Donnie Griggs — Yeah, sure. We started 17 and a half years ago in a living room. I kind of thought that’s what we would do forever and was really happy with that idea. I didn’t tell the person whose living room it was that my long term plan was to use their living room. And just God did something different and it just grew a lot. This is a town I’m from. So there’s ah a book about our town and my mom and my granddad are on the cover of it. And it’s very much like our town.

Rich Birch — Oh, wow.

Donnie Griggs — Yeah. So um huge desire to see, you know, people who just had no never thought they’d ever go to church. Like, um, those are the people that we were after. And, and so anyway been, been quite a ride the last 17 and a half years. Like you said, we’re now three locations. We average about 2,500 people on a Sunday across the the three locations. And we’re in a pretty small rural, you know, context. And so, that, you know, that’s got a lot of, a lot of great opportunities, you know, to, to make an impact, but also a lot of challenges as well. So that’s kind of it in a nutshell.

Rich Birch — Yeah, you’ve been there for 17 or planted 17 years, been there much longer, but you know you’ve been pastoring this context for for you know almost two decades. Today, we’re going to talk specifically, friends, about kind of men in the church and what are we doing as churches to engage men. And Donnie’s done some really great stuff on this front that I want to make sure we kind of unpack. But what have you been noticing about the men in your church and in your community over the last couple of years? What are some of the things have been kind of on your heart and mind around this?

Donnie Griggs — Gosh. So I think one of the things is there’s kind of a few things. One, I noticed of just randomly that we weren’t doing as many weddings as we used to do. It was just this random kind of data point that I was like, why do I feel like I’m hardly doing any weddings anymore? And then kind of with that, I found like almost it felt like every Sunday, some really great single woman would come up to me and be like, where are the men? Like, where are the good men? You know?

Rich Birch — Right.

Donnie Griggs — And so that was kind of going on in in the background. And then I just kind of with that saw so many men that were just stuck in various ways, really visionless, bored. Even like older guys who kind of had this really jarring moment where they make it to retirement. They think, oh, my gosh, like I’ve I’ve arrived now. I can just golf all day or fish all day. And and and and really just, you know, me seeing, you know, and I’m I’m not I’m almost 45. So I’m a little ways away from this. But to like see how unsettling that was for men and how really jarring and and honestly, how unhappy they were, you know, like kind of, they get to this sort of cultural finish line and, and it just does not satisfy them, you know, in the way that I think they, they thought it would and longed for.

Donnie Griggs — And, and so just lots of stuff like that kind of going on the last few years that, you know, have have, have, you know, made me feel like, man, we got to do something about this, you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, and what what changes did you end up making in the church, in your ministry? How did that kind of impact how you were you were thinking about, you know, ministering to your community, reaching out to your community, engaging people?

Donnie Griggs — Yep. So, I mean, I think, I think we just began to prioritize, like trying to reach men. You know, even from the beginning. This was going on, like very early days, we were meeting in the living room for church. I would, I’d do these men’s nights in my house. I think what I realized was, you know, and we are so grateful for the incredible women who come to our church. I mean, so many amazing women. But like just men weren’t coming to church. They were fishing. They were working in the garage. They were golfing. They were hunting. They were doing something.

Donnie Griggs — And so kind of from the early days, there was this desire to do so something for men. But I think we did a lot more of it in the beginning. And then church got bigger. Things got busier. And this thing really fell to the wayside. And and so I think in in recent years, I was like, man, we’ve got to put this on the front burner again. We really I kind of took took it back and really owned, like, how do I build a culture of good, strong men? Because if we do that, you know, like, you know, all the data points to it’s going to it’s going to lead to better marriages, better families, better you know, better society, better everything, you know?

Donnie Griggs — I mean all all that data around like fatherlessness and, um, all the carnage that comes from men not doing the stuff that they need to do. And so I just felt like we got to really prioritize that. And so it’s looked like a variety of things. It’s looked like a lot of men’s breakfasts and clarifying what we mean by what a good man is. And you some conferences, some, I mean, even like it really leveraging Father’s Day. A buddy mine said it like this. He said, you know, we’ve turned Father’s Day into like Toxic Masculinity Awareness Day where we just it was just shame men for like being in such terrible men.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.

Donnie Griggs — And so we were like, no, we we don’t want to do that. So how do we how do we look for ways to encourage men to call something out of them, you know?

Rich Birch — I want I want to come back to that, the toxic masculinity question in a second. So I’m going to put ah a pin in that, but you asked a good question there. What do you mean when you say, be a good man? What does what does that actually mean?

Donnie Griggs — Yeah. So I intentionally use the word good, not great. I think like, I think from a Bible standpoint, greatness is something that God does, you know, but goodness is something that’s sort of in our hands, you know. He lays out for us in just so many ways, what it looks like to be a good man in scripture. And so that’s just sort of of a broad thing there.

Donnie Griggs — And then I think we’ve got a cultural obsession with greatness. think especially of like the younger generation who’s obsessed with being an influencer with, you know, with somehow being, you insta-famous. And I wanted to just push back on that and just say, hey, guys, that’s not actually what we’re aiming for. We want to aim for we want to aim for what it means to be a good man.

Donnie Griggs — And so you could use words like, you know, reliable and faithful. And, you know, there’s all kinds of words you could you could Google and use for that. But we really just boiled it down to these kind of five things that guys can just hang their hat on and just, you know, aim at.

Donnie Griggs — So, a good man embraces responsibility. You know, he eats it up. He wants it. You know, a good man serves and protects. You know, he looks for ways to step into hard things and and make a difference. And, you know, kind of that sort of serve and protect thing. Those those two felt pretty straightforward.

Donnie Griggs — And then, but I thought there’s, there’s more to that, you know, that, that just, the end of the day, that’s, that’s pretty cultural. I mean, there’s a lot of, think of Jordan Peterson, think of all kinds of guys who’ve talked about, you need to clean your room. you need to, you know, you need to, step up. You need, so so guys are getting a lot of that. You know, what, what else does the scripture say that paints a broader picture for what a good man is?

Donnie Griggs — And that’s where we threw in things like a good man blesses and he encourages. You know, a good man. And then, and then I wanted to talk a lot about friendship when I think about, you know, we’ve done this weird thing where we’ve, we’ve normalized female friendship and we’ve really sexualized, you know, deep male friendship. Does that make sense?

Donnie Griggs — Like we’ve kind of told guys you can’t… So I found this data point says the average man in America under 30 doesn’t have one male friend he can be emotionally honest with. And so it’s kind of that Bible verse, you know, a man of many companions may come to ruin. That’s, ah that’s what I think we’ve done with men. We’ve said you get to have buddies, but not brothers. And so really, really, really wanting to like go hard in the paint on what it what it means to have deep male friendship. So they walk with other good men. And then finally, obviously, they they follow the only perfect man who ever lived.

Donnie Griggs — So we just came up with that to to give guys a grid for what is it we’re aiming for? Because, I mean, you’re right. say Being a good man doesn’t, you know, it’s like, well, what does that mean? You know?

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s cool. Well, I want to dig into a couple of those, but but you brought it up, the toxic masculinity thing. Part of what I find intriguing that you’re talking about this, there is a version of this conversation that feels very like machismo, super masculine, like in a in like a negative way, you know, in a, you know, it turns into this kind of like, I don’t know, it’s like, who can, you know, do the most pushups or whatever. How do you think about that issue when you’re trying to speak to encourage, you know, grow men? How do you think about that?

Donnie Griggs — Yeah. That is a really great question, Rich. I think, so one of the things we’ve got to do is just go out of our way to push back on faux versions of masculinity. And so I mean what you’re alluding to there is the kind of Andrew Tate sort of alpha male you know thing where, I I mean, I’ve been to Africa a bunch and through the years doing ministry stuff, and I’ve been around a bunch of baboons. And I literally think that’s what that’s what that’s what culture like that’s what that sort of cultural lens is. It’s more baboon like.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Donnie Griggs — It’s like I can bench press. I’m super strong. I can get any woman I want whenever I want. And so we want to push back on that. That’s not what we’re aiming for. And also that disqualifies men who tend to be more sensitive or more tender, you know, and that’s really sad to me, you know, that we’ve we’ve basically. We’ve kind of fallen into a narrative there where we tell men, you know, you, you aren’t really a man if you’re not like this.

Donnie Griggs — And I had a guy who’s, who’s like that. He’s just very tender and very compassionate. And, you know, he said he was like 51 years old when it finally hit him that he was a man, you know, even with that kind of tension. And so I think we just wanted to like, yeah, I wanted to make sure we don’t, we don’t do that.

Donnie Griggs — And so, ah but I do think like kind of with that, we do need to own that there are a lot of men who are toxic and are bad. And so I think to, you know, to just act like, you know, that that’s not a thing is is not helpful either. I think to, you know, kind of in that to be empathetic toward men who, are lacking vision, lacking purpose. I mean, you know, so many of us just, you know, we did not have the good examples that we needed growing up. And, you know, so there’s just like layers and layers to this.

Donnie Griggs — But I think to stay away from that kind of locker room, shame-based, just man-up sort of like language is a position that I want to take. And I also want to steer really far away from a kind of masculinity that demeans women, you know, and, and demeans men who don’t fit like cultural stereotypes, you know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. And yeah, that’s just from the little bit I know about you and know about your church. The thing I think it’s great that you’re engaging this conversation because you as a leader don’t come across as like, oh, I’m like the rah-rah, like you say, the man up, you know, the baboon. That’s a great, you know, that’s that’s not my impression of you or your church. And so I love that you guys are tackling this. I think giving a fresh voice to this.

Rich Birch — Well, at some point you decided to sit down and put this together, this kind of five into a framework that you ultimately became a book. What kind of, what led you to actually want to do that? The book friends we’re talking about is “Becoming Good Men: A Guide to Figuring It Out Together.” What kind of led you to the point where you’re thinking, Hey, okay, I think now’s the time I want to kind of pull, put this into codify this into a book. As an author, I know that that’s a, that’s a tough amount of work to do.

Donnie Griggs — It’s so much work, man.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Donnie Griggs — It is so much daggone work. So I think it was a couple of things. I think I felt…so, I kept having chats with men, lots and lots and lots of men. And I would ask them the same question. What kind of man do you want to be? And they just couldn’t answer it. They just couldn’t answer it. And so my heart just began to really be so heavy, you know for men who, you know that is ah that’s a tough, you know we live in such a weird moment you know culturally, and it’s so hard, I think, to be ah a man in our current moment.

Donnie Griggs — So to not even know what you’re aiming for just felt like, gosh, as a pastor for men in our church, I just wanted to like put something in their hands that, that could help them. But then really beyond that, I think maybe the most thing, the thing that drove me the most to it was just being a dad.

Donnie Griggs — So I’ve got two boys, one’s 11, Wyatt, and the other one’s 14, Jed. And I just was like, you know, if nobody else gets this book, I want my two sons to get it. You know, I really thought I want to put something in their hands so they don’t have to wonder, what are we aiming for here? Like what, what, what does it look like to be a good man? You know?

Donnie Griggs — And, so I think those two things, you know, really, really drove me to want to do this. And and and then, you know, kind of maybe a third piece would just be, I alluded to this earlier, but seeing older men, I feel like really waste their last years and and wanting to like call older men to, to finish well and to, you know, really count to the very, to the very end of their lives.

Donnie Griggs — And I’m not saying it’s wrong to ever play golf or ever go fishing. You know, I’m not definitely not saying that. But, ah but I, I think this, ah I wanted to cast vision too, for like the older generation to see themselves as really needed and, and, and, and wanted, you know.

Donnie Griggs — So that’s that was some of the driving. I just feel like eventually you have to write this stuff down. I you can’t have 10,000 lunches with people, you know, saying the same thing, you know.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s cool. That’s great. Well, let’s dive into a little bit, you know, a few, maybe a few of the five areas. So embrace responsibility, this this first one. So talk us through this a little bit. What does that look like practically for, you know, maybe somebody who’s drifting and how is that not just another version of like, you’re a bad person because you keep dropping the ball. I know that’s not what you’re saying, but how do we, how are you handling this with guys to help kind of call something out of them rather than shame them into something?

Donnie Griggs — Yeah, that shame word is such a big one, right? It’s like the air we breathe as men. I’m not enough. I’ll never be enough. I don’t have what it takes. I mean, so many men, some of us probably consciously, but most of us, I think subconsciously, we just live in that. And so I just don’t I don’t ever want to be part of any of that, you know. No one needs more shame. What we need is a lot of encouragement. And and and unfortunately, I think a lot of the language that’s out there that is on the like, you know, take responsibility thing, does, I think, activate shame in men. And so, you know, shame does work as a fuel source. It’s just a really bad one, you know, like it it, it works, but it’s like super unhealthy.

Rich Birch — Right.

Donnie Griggs — And so yeah. So I think with young guys, like trying to get them to the word embrace responsibility, you know, to stop, you know, Paul talks about it like this – he says, like, when I was a child, I, you know, I acted like a kid, you know, I, I, I did all those childish things, but now I, I became, when I became a man, of put away those childish things. And so I think it’s like, what are the steps you can take to begin to put away childish, like a childish behavior?

Rich Birch — It’s good.

Donnie Griggs — I, I met with a therapist one time and, I really expected to get a lot more sympathy from this person since I was paying quite a lot to see them. And I said something like some behavior I’d done and I said, I know that’s really you know childlike of me. And she pushed back and she said, no, she’s like, childlike is what Jesus tells us to be. You’re being childish. That’s different. And it was like a BOOM moment for me where I realized, man, I’m justifying childish behavior, you know.

Donnie Griggs — And so I want to help, I want to help young guys, especially to first begin to just take responsibility for themselves, you know. You know, the scriptures talk about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so what does it look like to begin to, you know, you know take responsibility for for like you as a fully integrated human being? You know, what is it, you know, not just your actions, but also your thoughts and your feelings. And how do you begin to like, you know, really take responsibility for that?

Donnie Griggs — How do you how do you begin to, you know, scripture, all the proverbs are so great on this where it talks about like how, you know, each of us has like a field and, you know, is your field overgrown? Is it full of weeds? Is it, is it, is there chaos in your life where, you know, if you go back to the garden, like Adam was meant to step into that chaos and bring order. He was meant to, you know…So what does it like to begin to look at your sphere of influence and and begin to and and begin to you know embrace responsibility? Kids have to be made to do, they have to be made to do something, you know whereas you know good men begin to look around them and go, what what here is actually for me to do? you know. And how do begin to be someone who contributes? You know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. Another other thing, different idea. So for some reason, and maybe again, you’re the expert on this. I’m not. It’s like, guys, we struggle with looking somebody else else in the eye, a guy we love, a guy we think the world of. We think, man, this internally, we’re like, that guy’s incredible, does great stuff, is a good man. I see them doing all kinds of amazing things. But it’s like, there’s something that stops us from looking at that person, speaking words of encouragement to them. It’s like a language that we’re not comfortable with.

Rich Birch — Why is that? Talk us through that. And then what have you tried to do as a church to try to help with that? Is there anything that you’ve you’ve kind of instilled to try to help guys think that through a little bit better?

Donnie Griggs — Yeah. So that’s the whole bless and curse thing, right? It’s like men aren’t just tough. They’re meant to be tender, you know. And and we know this by looking at the life of Jesus. I mean, unfortunately, what we’ve done as a society is we have we feminized certain things, you know, and and so we feminized things like tenderness. We feminized things like compassion. And we we see those with men as a sign of weakness, or some kind of softness that’s not akin to masculinity.

Donnie Griggs — And that’s where I love looking at Jesus, because i mean, you know, he’s over and over again we read he’s moved with compassion, moved with compassion, moved with compassion. He weeps openly at a funeral. He just does, He breaks all those stereotypes, you know. And and so I think getting a grid for masculinity where we can be tender. We can be compassionate. We can be empathetic. I think that’s really important. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think we’ve just got to like…

Donnie Griggs — This this stuff has been around for a while, right? It’s the like, you know, dad, you know, disciplines the child. Mom goes in and make sure the child’s OK. You know, it’s like it’s like we we’ve we’ve really embodied these kind of unhelpful stereotypes and and for far too long, for far too long. So I just yeah, I think it’s unfortunate that, like you said, I mean, to use your analogy, that men can’t can’t use words like I love you. I mean, how many, many can say things like I never saw my dad cry. My dad never said he loved me. And that is, that is so not healthy.

Donnie Griggs — It’s like…and so how do we create, how do we make it okay for men and make it more than okay? Like how do we normalize and kind of expect men to, to, to embrace these kinds of things, to, to walk in, in, in this way. And, and we can’t even tell a guy to your point, we can’t even tell a guy we love them. We have to say something like, I love you, bro. You know, like we have to add something on there because we’re so worried about this thing looking like we mean something else. And that, that is just, we really need to put that behind us, you know, because I mean, people around us are so desperate for encouragement.

Rich Birch — I heard you reference something that you do with your own boys to try to break some of this. I think you refer to it even as a liturgy.

Donnie Griggs — Yeah.

Rich Birch — What does what does that look like? Tell us about that.

Donnie Griggs — Yeah. So that would kind of just, you know, came, I look back and think, I remember being in the room when it happened. It was 14 years ago. Jed was a baby and I was holding him in his room and I just found myself, I prayed this very simple prayer for him. Very simple prayer that where I asked, you know, I was asking God to thanking God for him, asking God to help me be a better dad and and just some of those things.

Donnie Griggs — And then and then I just fell in this little kind of call and response thing with him where I mean, he was a baby, literally holding him in my arms. And I so I had to say the words for him. But, you know, and you know, I it sounds so simple that I struggle. It’s even worth saying. But I’ll I’ll tell you since you’re asking. But it was basically what what basically what I do is I just say, like, you know, Jed, you know, you’re a gift and you’re made to be a… and he’s supposed to say: a blessing.

Donnie Griggs — And I say, you’re safe and your daddy’s strong and you’re not… And he’s supposed to say: alone. And I say, and you’re strong. And he’s supposed to say: too. And so I just did that one night. Simple prayer said this little thing. And then the next night I did it again. And the next night I did it again. And I’ve been doing that. I did the math. I’ve been doing that like over five…I’ve done it over 5,000 nights.

Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.

Donnie Griggs — And obviously with my son Wyatt and I do it with him every night. Now they’re like preteen teenagers. Some nights they’re like happy about it. Some nights they’re like, they just say the words kind of begrudgingly, you know…

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Donnie Griggs — …like, but, but I really wanted them to hear, as long as they’re as long as I can, I wanted them to to hear these things. I wanted them to know that like there’s security for them. There’s like their dad loves them, their strength you know in their dad for them, but also that they were made for something, you know. There’s like gifting to them and there’s blessing that they were made to give and there’s strength in them. And so, I mean, you know if I was to sit down and try to script it out, maybe I’d come up with something different, but I just fell into this.

Donnie Griggs — And I mean, if nothing else, my kids, don’t I don’t think they’ll ever forget it. I mean, they just it’s like one of those they’ve heard it so many times, you know, and I’m just committed to continuing to say it over and over again.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s a great, what a great vivid example for, you know, for parents, particularly young dads who who are, you know, early in their in their walk with their their sons. That’s fantastic. That’s that’s so cool.

Rich Birch — Well, if you were, well, I want to get to the book a little bit more. What have been as you’ve kind of it’s been out there in the world as people have started to to use it. What have been maybe a surprise in a positive way? Like, oh, here’s the way I’ve seen a church use it. Or here’s a way that it’s interacted either inside your church or outside the church. Talk to us a bit about the journey of the book.

Donnie Griggs — Some of the surprises have been like the amount of like wives and moms of boys, especially single moms who have really enjoyed it.

Donnie Griggs — How they, you know, actually, i I spoke with a young lady the other She just got engaged. She read it and she said she felt like she was able to put her ear to the door ear to the door and hear a conversation that she really needed to hear. Like she was eavesdropping on a conversation. She was like, man, I’m about to be, she she just said, I’m about to be married. And I just thought, you know, I’m getting a glimpse into the kind of man that like my husband my future husband, you know, wants to be. And so like from like young, engaged women to single moms who are going, I need to know how to help my son here. I don’t have a dad in the picture. You know, wives, that’s been really surprising.

Donnie Griggs — I think also like people outside the church who aren’t Christians, who’ve like really enjoyed it. I mean, like doing with their coworkers and God, God just, you know, got a copy and said he sat down and read the whole thing that, you know, in one sitting and, and then bought copies and is doing with his coworkers that, at I think some construction workshop worksite or something. That’s like, I did not see that coming. I didn’t have that on my note card, you know?

Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yes.

Donnie Griggs — But I really did want it to be easy to read and be accessible. So I’m glad it it is working in that way. and And we’ve got lots of churches doing it in lots of different ways.

Donnie Griggs — So there’s questions at the end of each chapter that are for discussion. And so I’ve heard everything from middle school boys and high school boys and young life groups and all kinds of like that younger group, you know, sort of thing working through it. Some of them are like fifty kids at once. Some of them were like three kids at once. All the way through I mean all the way through to like men I just had an email from a guy in south Africa who read it – he’s in his like 80s, I think…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Donnie Griggs — …and was so inspired and so encouraged and it’s like for I mean for guy that age to be like man, I I am still needed. I’m still wanted. There’s still—it’s like a Caleb thing—there’s still strength in me. There’s still purpose for me. So really the like…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Donnie Griggs — …almost the full gamut there. And then I’ve heard of churches doing, I just spoke at a church up in in in the like kind of Gaithersburg area over the weekend in Maryland. And they got like 40 guys going through it at once, all the way through to like small group, you know men’s small groups. And this has really been kind of wide, you know, which again, I didn’t know what to expect. I mean, but it’s been pretty encouraging.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s very good. I love that. it’s It’s cool to see when it kind of starts to live beyond you, right? It’s like, it gets kind of a life out of its own, which is pretty cool to see. That’s ah yeah that’s super encouraging.

Rich Birch — What when you think about the book as a tool, what are a couple of the ways that you can imagine it being used? You mentioned a few there, like it could be used in your men’s ministry. It could be used as a small group. Talk us through one of a couple of those ways that you were, as you were writing, you thought, oh, I could see how churches could use this.

Donnie Griggs — Yeah. I mean, I really, when I think about our church, my goal is that every man who comes to our church is meaningfully connected to some other men. It goes back to that friendship thing. I want men to have more than buddies. I want them to have brothers, you know, drinking buddies, hunting buddies, golfing buddies, whatever buddies, you know. That, that is not going to get you where you need to go.

Donnie Griggs — And so I wrote it thinking primarily like what if two or three guys went through this together, you know, because the questions are, they’re not easy, you know, um, at the of the chapters, they, they really do unearth stuff. The goal is for them to unearth stuff and, you know, to, you know, get you to begin to think about some pretty significant things, you know.

Donnie Griggs — And so I think it’s really great. I mean, I’ve heard lots of guys reading it on their own, which is awesome. But I think in my mind, it’s best lived out in like those small group kind of like getting all the men in you know your church to to go through it and to break up into groups and to go through it. And then, you know, I think then like a, in my mind, like then a kind of once a month or once every couple months, you do some kind of a breakfast thing or something and you, you pick up one of these, you know, one of these chapters, one of these kind of aspects, and you just kind of camp out on that a little bit and go, Hey, you know, when we, you know, what does this look like in, you know, in our church? What does like in our community? What is it look like in your lives? And so that’s, I guess, primarily how I imagined it being used. And I’m, I think I’m seeing a lot of fruit from guys using and like that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s really cool. Love that. if Where do we want to send people to pick up copies of the book? I’m assuming we can get it at Amazon. Is there somewhere else we want to send people to to grab these?

Donnie Griggs — Yeah. So um there’s a few different avenues here. So obviously Amazon – straightforward. It’s on Amazon. It’s on Kindle. There’s that. It’s also on Audible because, I mean, you probably know this, Rich. Dudes just don’t read, you know?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Donnie Griggs — And I mean, I’ve even had guys say, man, I’m I’m like severely dyslexic. I actually can’t read. And, we’ve got a guy who church who reached out just said, like, I’ve got a guy in my church who’s blind. Like, you know and so the Audible thing, um I think a lot of guys are in, they’re just in the car a lot…

Rich Birch — Right.

Donnie Griggs — …and they’re listening to like the hour long Joe Rogan podcast. You know So you can listen to the whole book in like, I think four hours or something. It’s not it’s easy, you know?

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.

Donnie Griggs — So the Audible thing I think is is is another one that point guys to. If like you’re a church and you want to order like a bunch of them, um, I’ll, I’ll work a deal for you and get them to you cheaper than you can get them on Amazon. You can just go to becominggoodmen.org. And there’s a whole thing there for that. Um, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make it work for you.

Donnie Griggs — And then the last thing is I actually, um, you mentioned machismo earlier and, I’ve done a lot of work, um, in the Spanish speaking world, have a huge heart for that, that part of the world. And, you know, machismo is, ah is a, it’s a big deal. You know, it’s, I have a single lady in our church who’s from Mexico who said she reckons like 9 out of 10 men that she know she grew up around in Mexico have been pretty much have just bought into this machismo kind of thing. And really, it’s created just a huge mess. I mean, and so actually then I actually got the book translated into Spanish.

Rich Birch — Oh, very cool.

Donnie Griggs — So, so that’s on Amazon too. Unfortunately, not an Audible yet for that. But but if somebody is like, man, you know, I’ve got some Spanish speaking folks that there’s, there’s that avenue as well.

Rich Birch — That’s really cool. Well, I love I love all that. And friends, I would encourage you to pick up a copy. I love the idea, the picture. You might be listening into this today and say, hey, you know, you get a couple copies of this book and find two or three other guys. And why don’t we work through it together? And even as a way to say to someone like, hey, man, I want to be your brother, not just your buddy, you know, I think is a great framework, right? for, know, as you’re interacting with with other folks. So I really appreciate this, Donnie. I hope this helps get more people connected with the book and that it helps more folks that are are out there today.

Rich Birch — As we wrap up, any final words, any final comments you’d have for a church leader that’s leaning in today and thinking, man, I feel like we got to do a better job on this front.

Donnie Griggs — Yeah, gosh, I mean, I just think the time is so right for this. It’s such a necessary thing. So hopefully what I’ve done can be helpful to you. If not, there’s other things out there. But I mean, you know, we we’re living in this weird moment with so much gender confusion. And then you add cultural hostility where all masculinity is deemed toxic and men are unwanted and unneeded. And then you throw in so many of the guys in your church who walk with a limp because they didn’t have a good dad, a good male figure, really poor faux versions of masculinity. I mean, I just want to and say you can’t afford to not think about this. And so, I mean, and I just think it’s one of those things where it’s like if you can, if you can build a culture of of good men in your church, it’ll that tide will lift all the boats.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Thanks so much, Donnie. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?

Donnie Griggs — Yeah, oneharborchurch.com has got all the church stuff. And then for me, I’m pretty much, you know, I do some stuff on Instagram and Facebook. I’m not the biggest social media guy in the world. But yeah, but I’m I’m on there pretty frequently.

Rich Birch — That’s great. That’s great. Thanks so much, Donnie. Appreciate being here today, sir.

Donnie Griggs — Thanks a lot, Rich. Thanks for having me.