A Summary of Meeting on 31 March 2012-Ten Ways to Love a Woman

Next Meeting: 21 April 2012 (Sat AM)

A Summary of 31 March 2012 Meeting

The 73 men present had a great start as we break into smaller groups to discuss the million dollar question: Ten Ways to Love a Woman.

For the marrieds: Ten Ways to Love My Wife

For the courting: Ten Ways to Love My Girlfriend

For the significantly single: Ten Possible Ways to Love My Future Wife

They brainstormed for 30 minutes and from the list, they picked the top 10 and wrote them down on flipcharts. You are free to browse their charts below.

Then they compared their top 10 with the list suggested by Patrick Morley from Man-in-the-Mirror, and make a tick to the point that is similar to his. The groups scored anything from 3 to 7.

Patrick Morley's list can be found here.

In a summary form, these are the Ten Ways:

1. Pray with your wife
2. Pray for Your Wife
3. Spend Time with Her Alone
4. Listen to Her Deeply Without Giving an Overly Quick Reply
5. Touch Her
6. Accept Her Unconditionally
7. Encourage Her with Words
8. Take Care of Her Financially
9. Laugh with Her
10. After God but Before All Others, Make Your Wife Your Top Priority

The men were given this survey form to rate themselves. You (the men) can do the same. This is a self-assessment tool. It will give you an idea where you are at. Obviously, if you score below 5 for any of the point, or in total, take note of them and work on it.

They were then asked to choose from out of the ten, three ways they would like to love their woman better. They will then go and do them. The men in the group will call each other before the next meeting to keep each other accountable. We will come together to share in the next meeting how we fare. I think it will be exciting sharing how we succeeded or fumbled in doing them. I pray it will be a safe environment where we can learn together and it's okay to have a good sense of humour and laugh at ourselves at times.

I also share 70 Things Every Man Needs to Know (also from Man-in-the Mirror). A copy is available here. These will be some of the things we will work through in the coming months.

31 Mar 2012 - Ten Ways to Really Love a Woman!

The men had a hilarious time talking about the women in their lives in the February's meeting. We divided the men into separate groups of married men and singles. These small groups came alive on the word go! They were asked this question:

To the married men: What are the things you find hard to understand about your wife? 

To the singles: What do you think you will find hard to understand about your future wife?

These are the results of the sharing as each group presented their findings:

Marrieds

1. Rules do not apply to them
2. Can't meet her expectations
3. Keeps us guessing
4. Tolerate/long suffering
5. Insecurity (women)
6. Finding it hard to understand her feelings/heart
7. Men not having a listening ear
8. Women (detailed) / men (not!)
9. Women like to give advice
10. For the wife to be more like me? (rational)
11. Irrational
12. The wife can do better by giving advance warning
13. Do not understand what we do not understand
14. She is always right
15. Men to be more specific
16. Moving target (men do not know what they want)
17. Is menopause license for mood swings?
18. Need to the wife to be more specific
19. Difficult for wife to say sorry!
20. Say also wrong, don't say also wrong.

Singles

1. Right all the time!
2. Important to them, insignificant to us!
3. Heart of Compassion
4. More emotional (hard for men to understand)
5. Different from men

From that I shared from my heart from my session at Women of Worth Conference. (Click here for file.)

In a nut shell, the heart of a woman is quite different from the heart of man, and we should stop finding fault in how different we are. Rather, there is a complimentary way of bringing out the best in each other.

I thought it best for March's meeting, I would like to explore a little further about the issues that were listed above. We will do another brain storming discussion on "Ten Ways to really love a Woman!" We will measure that against ten suggestions by an expert in this field of men's ministry and let's see how we fare. We go away with one thing we would do in the next one month and come back and share how we had fare. The way to grow is keep doing and evaluating in the context of a men's community. (See diagrams below.)

It will be an exciting morning! Bring a friend along. Open too to those who are not Christian.

Time and place at the sidebar. 

Father Wound and Mother Wound

Last Saturday's Fathers Club Video Session on "The Overly Bonded with Mother Wound" was powerful indeed. For the first time, our men are discovering how our mothers affect us, even until today. The previous session was on "Facing the Father Wound", and one man testified how he wept through the session and moved on after that not only to be a better father to his children, but he decided to make a day trip back to his hometown to reconcile with his father. He has decided since then to make a monthly trip back to see his dad. 

A story like this makes the efforts all worthwhile! Father Wound are caused by their absenteeism. Mother Wound by their overly protective love and care. All the husbands at the end of the session agreed this is one video their wives must watch :)

Ministry is exciting! It is about transformed life!

And now for the Testimonies! Graduation of 1st Batch.

We have just concluded our 7 weeks for classes for "The 7 Secrets of Effective Fathers" and 7 weeks of small group activities, which we call the Mentoring and Accountability Group (MAG).

I have asked you to write your reflection as a testimony of how you have grown as a father over the last 14 weeks. I am overwhelmed reading your testimonies, which I will post on this blog with your permission. I rejoice with you that your relationship with your wife and children have grown deeper and that you are diligent in wanting to see change in your own life. I am overwhelmed also because I had only wanted to start small and what I am hearing is far far more than I expect. For which I can only conclude that it is God’s work. Can you now imagine with me what other fathers would do when they hear what’s happening? Only an ignorant father could not care less about the testimonies of these men. Our families are at stake here!

Thank you for being such an encouragement! I urge you to write and encourage everyone if you have not done so.

We have just read in our journalling from 1 Thess 1:2-3 and this is how I felt when I read your testimonies:

² We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. ³ We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me just share some thoughts here:

I am thankful for each of you and it is my prayer that the fruit of your fathering will abound more and more.

Therefore our fathering must be centred on three things: Faith, Love and Hope.

1.       Faith – our work must be produced by faith. We must have faith to believe that God is the Author and Perfecter of our fathering. Faith also means that in our fathering, God must be in the centre of what we are doing, because He is the perfect Father. We must therefore grow deeper in love with our Heavenly Father more each day. This is a non-negotiable and we must continually watch out lest we fall. And we get other men in our lives to watch out for us too. We should never be alone in this journey of faith but to walk together with other men in the Body of Christ.

2.       Love – our labor must be prompted by love. Not a selfish or self-centred kind of love. We are not doing this because we want others to notice how good we are as a father. We are not even doing it because we want to feel significant. We are doing this because we love our family too much to have them experienced the blessings of God less than what they deserved. Our wives and children need our best effort.

3.       Hope – we endure and persevere because of our hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. We long for the day when we appear before Christ and to hear Him say: “Well done, good and faithful servant!” That would be the greatest joy. In fact in 1 Thess 2:19 For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? 20 Indeed, you are our glory and joy. What will be our hope, joy and crown some day? To see our family in heaven together. They will be our glory and joy!

What a power-packed meeting!

Someone at the meeting commented to me: "Nothing like seeing 90+ fathers (including three single men) coming together with a common vision to be better fathers!"

For those who missed it, please note that we will be having our first of seven study sessions of the book "The 7 Secrets of Effective Fathers" starting from 2 Aug 2010, all on Mondays, 8.30-10.30pm. Please purchase the book from Burning Bush in Dream Centre at RM 40.

Please download the document "Action Plan from 17th July 2010 meeting" on the right of the page. If you have not submitted your form to indicate your attendance to these studies, please email the completed form back to me.

Remember we have two assignments that you need to do and report when we get together on 2 Aug 2010.

You can view the photos of our meeting here:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/ChrisKamTW/FathersClub?feat=directlink

Inaugural Meeting of DUMC Fathers Club - 17th July

I am looking forward to the 17th of July, Saturday morning, 8.30 to 10.30 am.
Our very first Fathers Club Get Together. Let's be part of this historic event.


We will be having a quick bite between 8:00 - 8:30 am in the concourse and we will start on time in Hall 3.


Already up to 135 men, 9 of them singles, have indicated their interest through the registration form. Among them, they have 254 children and of course, 126 wives.


Guys, we are talking about making a deliberate difference in at least 380 people in the years to come, including ours.


Please start praying! Unless God builds the house, the builders labor in vain.

Psalm 127

A song of ascents. Of Solomon.

 ¹ Unless the LORD builds the house,
       its builders labor in vain.
       Unless the LORD watches over the city,
       the watchmen stand guard in vain. ² In vain you rise early
       and stay up late,
       toiling for food to eat—
       for he grants sleep to those he loves.
 ³ Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
       children a reward from him.
 ⁴ Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
       are sons born in one's youth.
 ⁵ Blessed is the man
       whose quiver is full of them.
       They will not be put to shame
       when they contend with their enemies in the gate.