Thursday, October 11, 2007

What Happened At Manfest 2007?

Last week in church, Pastor Dan Savino was here from AZ for Manfest 2007 to challenge men to be men. Wild and courageous and trusting in God. His theme text was Psalm 118:8 [NIV] which says, "It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man." He likened our relationship with God to riding a motorcycle. Where Jesus actually hands us the keys and lets us drive!!! But where He always rides on the back leaning into the curves and bumps in the road with us. We concluded Manfest with a demonstration of how you could speak words of affirmation and blessing on your child or grandchild. Big thanks and WTG to Jeff for taking awesome pics and Greg for letting us put his Harley on stage!!! What a great visual!!!

2 comments:

The Writer said...

Why does these metaphors bother me? I'm not meaning to be critical, but I just struggle with this testosterone charged images of being a follower of Jesus. Does this just feed into a cultural narrative that could be problematic? I don't know...I'm not really up on this, but it does cause a visceral reaction for me. Of course, I wasn't there and I'm sure the metaphors speak powerfully to many people. Keep up the good work1

Mike Fortune said...

To a degree you're right Ryan. But since there are WAY more women than men in the church, it still tends to, in my opinion, present a softer more reflective Jesus weak in week out. I think we can err on the side of testosterone once a year...the man blessing at the end softened up the metaphor quite a bit too. Making part of the challenge to be "man enough" in your own skin to be softer and more reflective than the stereotypes usually portray. Thanks for posting. Missed you at Innovation 3. How did the meeting with the mayor of LA go?