Dedicated to All Teenagers

At the age 4, my dad can do everything

At the age 6 my dad knows everything

At the age 8 my dad knows something

At the age 12, I suddenly realized my dad doesn't know anything

At the age 16, my dad is so outdated and he is not cool at all

At the age 18, my dad is Jurassic park

At the age 25, hmmmm … maybe I should ask dad about this. He might know something

When I got married at the age of 30, I told my wife, I think I better ask dad about this. He might know something

At the age 40, I came one full circle. I know my dad can do and know everything

At the age 50, what would dad say about this

At the age 60, I wish I could talk to dad.

Source: Unknown

The Parenting Children Course

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Just in time 'husbanding' and 'fathering'

I made a comment last meeting that I appreciated all those who emailed or sms me that they cannot make it for the Fathers Club (FC) meeting. They apologized for not being able to make it and with legitimate reasons too. Two common reasons were:

1. Been very busy with work and realize that he has not been spending enough time with his wife. He should therefore make time for her and hence the Saturday absence from FC's meeting for that weekend.
2. Been very busy with work and realize that he has not been spending enough time with his children. Hence the same reason for the absence.

I commended the men for making that commitment for their family (absent from FC to be with their loved ones) and I encouraged them to do so. This is really what FC is all about - encouraging men to be committed to their families.

However, this speaks a lot too about the lifestyle we are living, that we are not balancing or juggling them too well! This is akin to cramming last minute for our examination and the feeling of being overwhelmed and overanxious.

Do we do the same for our family? I shared that no matter how busy I am, I am committed to be at Fathers Club, and I will be there. It helps that I am the person in charge. :) I have to be there! But that is good for me.

I challenge the men to calendar in (if there's such a verb!) their essential events that they need to be committed to. If FC is important, then it is in the calendar. If our families are important, then it is in the same calendar. Work will always be there whether we calendar it in or not. When we are juggling them well with the planned calendar as our conscience and guide, then there should be no last minute cramming in our relationship.

Notice Jesus was never in a hurry. He seems to have time for ministry, time to withdraw, time to feast, time to build friendship, time for the lonely and rejected people and time most of all for His Father. He's never caught in the "Russian trap" (I mean, "rushing" people). He has time for everything, even ultimately for the Cross!

FC will be our conscience because it reminds us that if we don't make time to learn with others and be accountable to each other in our roles as men, husbands and fathers, then we will continually to be trapped in what is the norm of our world today.

So let's learn to avoid last minute cramming for what's important in our lives!

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. 

25 Feb 2012 - Fathers Club Meeting - Women of Worth (WoW)

I will be sharing in the coming FC's meeting what I taught at WoW Conference on 11 Feb. I did tell the ladies that I will not do justice, if I don't share what I share with them, with the men. This is because it takes two to clap! In any relationship, both must have common ground rules and principles to operate from. Otherwise, there will be much frustration on one end.

Essentially, if we go back to Scripture, this is what is said in Genesis 1:27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Yet we find the greatest failure in relationships is that man is trying to make woman be like a man, to behave and think like him. The same goes the other way round and when we fail to understand why God made man and woman to be two distinct individuals with very different makeup so that man need not be alone (Gen 2:18) and both male and female fulfills a unique role only they can fulfill, we will constantly be in that relationship war.

I am convinced that when we understand our roles in the light of scripture, we will return to what God had originally intended for the beauty of relationships. Our uniqueness dovetail each other so beautifully, you will be amazed by it, just as it had amazed me since I discovered for myself these truths.

See you this coming Saturday! 

WoW Conference Powerpoint Download - Session by Pr Chris Kam

WoW stands for Women of Worth.

Yes, you read it right! I will be speaking at the conference tomorrow afternoon (Sat), taking one of the session and sitting on a forum panel.


Here's the powerpoint of the session if you are interested to know what I have shared on. Click here for the file.


I also shared an interesting video clip from the movie musical "My Fair Lady".
Click here. This is a song "A hymn to him" on "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"