Fight Club, the innovative men’s ministry founded by Pastor Jim Brown at Grace Community Church, a Charis Fellowship congregation in Goshen, Ind., is featured in Multiply Magazine. A portion of the story appears below. Click here to read the complete article.
Fight Club is Bringing Back Manhood
The first rule about Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club. But in Goshen, Indiana at Grace Community Church, a faith-based Fight Club was started in 2011 and it is something that needs to be talked about.
This is not Fight Club, the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, nor is it the 1999 movie with Brad Pitt based on the novel, or even “Fight Church,” the documentary in which guys are getting in the octagon and knocking each other upside the head in the name of Jesus. No, this Fight Club offers a much different approach to solving the problem of man’s ailing discontent.
In his experience as Pastor at Grace Community Church, Jim Brown saw a problem with men and decided to act. He believes men have all but left the scene—and many actually have left the scene. There is an eroding of true manhood, according to Jim, that is affecting homes, schools, workplaces, churches and communities in negative ways.
And despite their best efforts, the Church as a whole is failing in most of their attempts to reach men. They are missing the key ingredients that draw a typical man. Jim would tell us that these missing ingredients are camaraderie, competition and challenge.
“These things run in our blood,” says Jim, Fight Club’s founder. “From boyhood, this is our native language. Every man is intrinsically looking for these three things and Fight Club employs these concepts to accomplish their mission to: AWAKEN Christian men from mediocrity, STRENGTHEN them emotionally, intellectually, physically and spiritually, RESURRECT true masculine community and MOBILIZE them for maximum impact in their families, churches and communities.”
Click here to read the complete article.