Motive? We're not talking homosexual or pedophile here, we're talking of a good logical and healthy reason for a man to focus on boys as a ministry. Maybe I can explain.

Because my mother was a devout Christian, and at times as a kid I felt she was a little too devout, every Sunday my sister and I were in Church. We moved around a lot but my mother would manage to find a church and she would faithfully take us to church ... and Sunday school. (Sometimes I wonder how much of my Christian education was accomplished in Sunday School.)

Through my Church and school years I made some observations. Us boys were different than the girls. Boys were the trouble makers, the clowns! They were wiggly, noisy and had a short attention span. Us boys were more immature, and worse were definitely not Christ like! Girls, however, were beautifully different; they were quiet, studious, smart and articulate ... more mature! They were more loving and loveable but best of all they were Christ like. Men liked the cute girls and teachers liked the quiet studious girls, but who really liked the boys? Us boy's? We were always the problem!

As I saw it, women pretty well ran the Church, and women school teachers ran the school classes ... So in my life Mama and the rest of the women seemed to rule! Men were strangely absent from leadership. Men rarely said anything ... the preacher being the exception. Fathers in many of the homes were the dysfunctional factor.

To be honest, most of the men in my young life weren't real winners. They weren't really interested in us boys. They gave us little or no attention. (Fact: If a boy doesn't get positive attention, he'll seek negative attention ... he'll get his attention some way.)

Early in my life I was blessed with common sense reasoning.

A burst of logic helped me find the missing piece of this puzzle. Ahh, the mystery is solved ... boys turn into men! (How profound). Men come from boys. As a rule, messed up men come from messed up boys! Good boys good men ... bad boys bad men!

We need more good men.

Boys are natural leaders. Good boy leaders turn into good men leaders. Conversely ...

It didn't seem to take a Phd. to figure this one out.

So, early on I determined to do what no man I knew of was doing, work with boys. I started studying them. They had potential. They needed the attention. They needed the time. The boys needed a male example ... someone they liked and looked up to.

Result:

I still do the unusual, the unthinkable and the un-do-able, I'll invest in these confused and disoriented boys.