Leadership Journal

There's something peculiar about my ministry. God uses me to reach "tough guys." This is the last type of person I would expect to reach. I am decidedly not a tough guy.

I have always gotten good grades and done all my homework. I never cut a class. I graduated with honors. I've never used drugs, gotten drunk, been in a fight, or been arrested. I usually use good grammar. I even watch PBS and listen to Public Radio. A lifetime Christian, my testimony has none of the sizzle of a misspent youth. My sermons are long, doctrinal, and expository.

Nonetheless (see, there's a word tough guys wouldn't use!) ever since age 14, I've had an affinity for tough guys, and they seem to respond to me. As a high-school student, I directed an Awana club for 40 boys. I loved those kids and they loved me. My favorites were the troublemakers, the tough kids. I often wondered why the tough kids were so concentrated in this one local school?

What a shock when I attended the eighth-grade graduation ceremony. The principal passed out awards: valedictorian, most likely to succeed, science-fair participation, literary achievement, and others. To my dismay, I had never met any of the winners. I thought I knew every boy in that school, but those award winners were strangers to me. They had never even visited my Awana club.

Without my realizing it, my club had become a magnet for the school's underachievers. What was going on? How could I—a bookish honors student—attract these non-academic tough kids? This question perplexed me then, and it still does.

Sunday after Sunday I look over a congregation in which most of the men are blue-collar guys. Yes, we have a couple of financial planners, a few businessmen, a lawyer—but the vast majority work with their hands and bodies: a bricklayer, a few cops, a dry wall salesman, a baggage handler, a furniture mover. This baffles me.

I preach doctrine. I explain the Greek and Hebrew meanings of words. I use relatively few illustrations, and my sermons last at least 45 minutes. I'm nothing like these men. What is it that draws them to my church?

To find out, I asked some "tough guys" in my congregation what attracted them and what made them stick. Some of them became Christians through our church; some were already Christians when they started attending. I needed to listen to these brothers and learn what God was using in our church and through my sermons to get hold of them.

Bernie Ullrich has been a bricklayer for 12 of his 29 years. He has the biggest, strongest hands you've ever seen. Tall, wiry, and muscular, Bernie gets extra points on my tough-guy scale because he recently had his three tattoos removed: I'm told this hurts more than having them etched on!

He didn't finish high school, but he does have his G.E.D. Bernie religiously practices Jeet Kun Do, Jiu Jitsu, Kali, and Muy Thai kickboxing. He's the kind of guy you'd want on your side in a fist fight. He has to take the bus everywhere while he works on getting ...