There is a conversation that happens in the driveway. You know the one.
The engine is off. The house lights are on inside. You are sitting in the dark, staring at the front door with an ache in your chest you cannot quite name. Before your hand even touches the handle, you can feel the weight of it: the expectation to be the provider, the spiritual leader, the unshakeable rock. You have spent all day climbing the ladder, absorbing stress, proving your worth at work. Now you have to take a deep breath, put on the mask, and go do it all again in your own living room.
You are exhausted. And if you are honest with yourself for even a moment, you are lonely too.
Many men step out of the working world and into the church hoping to find relief from that pressure. Instead we often just trade one ladder for another. We bring the same performance review mentality right into the sanctuary, as if God were a slightly disappointed manager with a clipboard, auditing our weekly output. When our souls start sinking, the church too often hands us a thimble to bail out the flood: read your Bible more, be a better husband, try harder, stop struggling. A checklist like that cannot raise a dead man. What you need is not more effort. What you need is rescue.
This is exactly why I wrote Made For This: Faith Worth Dying For.
The Christian life was never meant to be another mountain for ambitious men to climb. It is the end of climbing. It is the shocking news that your place on the Rock was already secured by Jesus long before you tried to earn it. Paul tells the Galatians that God sent his Son so that we would receive adoption as sons, and that because we are sons, we are also heirs (Galatians 4:4-7). You are not an employee waiting on a review. You are a son who has already inherited the kingdom. Made For This is an invitation to step off that treadmill, to finally exhale, and to say out loud what is true: I am a son, and I have nothing left to prove.
But a theology that stays locked inside a man’s own head will eventually die there. Grace that never leaves your armchair is a tragedy, because men are not just tired, they are isolated. We have golfing buddies and we have drinking buddies, but very few of us have someone who actually knows what we are carrying. The enemy’s oldest and most effective weapon is keeping men separated and pretending everything is fine. If we are ever going to drop that mask, we have to do it together, in the presence of other men who are done pretending too.
That is why Made For This was never meant to be read alone in an armchair. It was built to be the spark for a men’s retreat. Alongside the book you will find a complete, free digital toolkit, including a Leader’s Command Center and a companion web app for the men in your circle, designed to help you take your guys out into the woods and into the dirt for a weekend that actually changes something.
Maybe you are a pastor with a men’s ministry that has gone stale. Maybe you lead a small group and you know two or three guys who are tired of performing for each other. Maybe you simply know one other man who needs to hear that he is not alone. Whatever your starting point, this toolkit gives you everything required to lead the weekend yourself, walking your men through naming the silent burdens they carry and finally laying the mask down. It walks them through picking up the basin instead of the crown, drafting what we call a Covenant of Service, a shift in how a man leads his family, away from demanding respect and toward the posture Jesus took when he knelt and washed feet (John 13:14-15). It gives you tools to build what we call the Thicket, using the Fire Pit Planner to make sure no man in your group keeps walking alone, but instead intentionally invites a Paul to mentor him, a Barnabas to stand beside him, and a Timothy to pour into. Solomon wrote that two are better than one, and that a cord of three strands is not easily broken (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12). That is the picture we are building toward. And once the weekend ends, a twenty one day challenge carries the men past the mountaintop high and into a daily rhythm of silence, Scripture, and surrender, so that what happened at the retreat actually survives until Tuesday morning.
You do not need a seminary degree or a counseling license to lead this. You need your own scars and a willingness to go first. None of us were called to fix each other. We were called to witness, together, to the rescue we have already found.
And if you would rather not lead it alone, you do not have to. I would love to come lead the retreat for your church or your group myself, walking your men through this material in person as the author. Or if your team is ready to take the lead, the full retreat guide equips your own leaders to run it start to finish, no outside help required. Either way, the invitation is the same.
If you are tired of the constant pressure to perform, start with the book. Let it remind you who you actually are. Then reach for the free retreat materials, text two brothers, find a fire pit, and go into the dirt together.
You were made for this.
To get the book and access the free Interactive Retreat Dashboard and Companion App, click here. To have Chad come lead a retreat with your men in person, or to request the leader’s guide for your own team, reach out through the site.