In 2005 Donald Miller started The Mentoring Project, an organization that helps churches start mentoring programs and pairs mentors with boys in need. Don’s work with the fatherless led the Obama administration to invite him onto the president’s task force on fatherlessness and mentoring. In 2006 Donald’s book To Own A Dragon: Reflections On Growing Up Without A Father was published. The book is Don’s reflections on growing up without a father (whom he didn’t even meet until he was 35), and the struggles it caused him. In April 2010 To Own A Dragon was reprinted with new chapters and a new title - Father Fiction: Chapters for a Fatherless Generation.

I bought a copy of To Own A Dragon when it came out, but I still haven’t made it all the way through. Not that it isn’t a good read; on the contrary, I love Don’s works. But as someone who, for the most part, grew up without a father and having confronted those demons and made peace with my father, To Own A Dragon is, for me, more of a guide in helping others who are fatherless than helping myself. However, I do plan on buying a copy of the reprint for the new chapters.

Anyways, I’ve been following The Mentoring Project for a couple years now and the statistics Don presents in To Own A Dragon and A Million Miles In A Thousand Years are staggering. Twenty-seven million kids are currently growing up without dads, teens who grow up without a father are more prone to suicide, dropping out of school, drug use, unwanted pregnancies, abortion, divorce and crime. Eighty-five percent of the U.S. prison population grew up fatherless. Coincidence?

Big Brothers/Big Sisters has a thousand boy waiting list, but no waiting list for the girls. That’s a national average for cities across the U.S. There’s 360,000 churches in the United States – what if each one partnered with The Mentoring Project? The goal of The Mentoring Project is to take that waiting list all across the country down to zero through the church. According to Don, “we could potentially mentor all the fatherless boys in America within twenty years, effectively shutting down prisons, curbing teen pregnancy and abortion, curbing the divorce rate…. all those issues would be taken care of through the church.”

Also in the interview, Don highlights the successes they’re already seeing through The Mentoring Project. Imago Dei, one of their partner churches in Portland, Oregon, was recently asked by the Portland Independent School District to provide 500 more mentors for their students!

I should also clarify Donald’s definition of “growing up fatherless” isn’t exclusive to those who were raised by a single mother or orphans and foster children. Absentee fathers are just as big of a problem. Absentee fathers are men who, while still maintaining a home in the traditional sense (husband + wife + children = family), neglect their children, aren’t good examples of what a husband and father should be and therefore aren’t good examples of what a man should be. I was listening to an interview with Donald and he made a good point: the issue isn’t just a fatherlessness issue, it’s a masculinity issue. We have a crisis of masculinity. To quote Donald:

We have a problem where men really don’t know how to be men or what being a man looks like. So you have passive men and then you have the over-macho shouting man, and something’s wrong with both of those pictures.

As Mark Driscoll once said, “we have a lot of boys who can shave”. A lot of men aren’t really men, but boys trapped in a man’s body, clinging to adolescence and not knowing what it really means to be a man. To quote Driscoll:

The sweet-spot is like 18-34 for demographics, because what they do is they know that you guys don’t know what it means to be a man and so they tell you that being a man is defined not by what you produce, but by what you consume.

“Drink this beer, you’ll be a man!”
“Drive this truck, you’ll be a man!”
“Play these video games, you’ll be a man!”

Really?
Seriously?

All too often we’re told our manliness comes from what we consume, but the truth is, when you die, no one is going to care how many women you slept with or how many times you drank your buddies under the table.

What people will remember is what you gave back – what you produced.

So, in honor of Father’s Day, I’d like to thank those men who have been my mentors. Just to clarify, I love my father. And he loves me. He knows he hasn’t been the father he wanted to be. He knows his poor choices in life led to consequences such as divorce and my fatherlessness. And I’ve forgiven him for that. To all reading this, if your father is still alive, make sure you have some type of contact with him on Father’s Day. Whether he was there for you as a child or not, make the effort to show him love. As for the men who have mentored me and at one time or another stepped into that father figure role, thank you. I’m far from perfect, but I don’t even want to know where I’d be had it not been for all of you. I’ve listed their names below as a sort of public thanks (alphabetical order):

Mark Bennett, Allen Boehm, Ron Brown, Lee Haynes, Chad Hays, Mark Leonhardt, Jeremy McCaa, Kenny McCaa, Joey Metz, Arvil Ogle, Phil Parker, Brent Stephens and Troy Wold.

Links:
Donald Miller
The Mentoring Project
Catalyst Interview With Donald Miller
Father Fiction: Chapters for a Fatherless Generation
A Million Miles In A Thousand Years
Mark Driscoll on Adolescence