A couple of months ago, my wife and I led a church retreat in the North Carolina mountains for another Presbyterian church near us. Prior to one of our sessions, I found myself walking in the rain with two other dads. Both my age, 37, and both fathers of toddlers like myself. As we walked toward the childcare drop-off, we talked about what men in their 30s talk about. Man, isn’t this weather nice? What sports are you watching? Any breweries in the area? How’s the job?
As the rain transitioned from drizzle to deluge, one of the other dads let out a deep sigh. “Some days I just don’t know how I can juggle everything. Job. Wife. Kids. Work. Faith. What even is a man in 2026?” The pace of our walk slowed. Finally, another middle-aged guy said it out loud. And so we did something men typically don’t do. We walked alongside one another and talked about more than sports and weather. We shared what was in our hearts. We shouldered, if just for a moment, the common malaise we feel as modern men.
This conversation reminded me of one of my favorite tracks of the last few years. Artist “Petey,” whom I’ve affectionately named the “sad dad whisperer,” talks about the male longing for intimacy in his song “Don’t Tell The Boys.”
“Don’t tell the boys that you’ve been crying in my arms.
Yeah I believe it’s sharing season for the feelings in our hearts.
Sign the dotted line, go ahead and join my little cult
We’ll talk about how childhood traumas guide our actions as adults…
And now we’re howling at the moon, Hell yeah, we’re making lots of noise
You know I hate to say “I Love you”
But there ain’t no other choice
This clip of Petey doing his thing live speaks for itself. A bunch of guys moshing to and belting out the lyrics of a song about male friendship.
Petey’s track gets at the dual reality of male reticence to be vulnerable, on the one hand, and the deep yearning for it on the other. When I was sixteen, I had a motley crew of guy friends. We did everything together. We TPed houses, ding-dong-ditched, and cruised around town with a Rage Against the Machine soundtrack; we played music at coffee shops, we howled at the moon, and we talked about what we wanted to be when we left home. Now I’m 37, and I find myself so nostalgic for the days of my youth. Not because I was young and spry with no care in the world but because I miss my boyhood buddies.
As with many other things, the places men go for respite are void of answers. The political right offers a vision of what a man is. Say what you want about Shane Gillis, Kill Tony, Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, but the one thing they get is that men do want to talk about what it’s like to be a man. I think that’s why they’re so popular. At least for me, many of the answers given from the far right side of things are too extreme — the wrong answer to the right question. But on the left, I feel nothing but a deadening dearth of any conversation at all. I’m not sure the left has any answer to the question I find myself asking: “What is a man in 2026?”
Perhaps the church can carve out something in-between. Three months ago I decided to try. I started a men’s group that I jokingly call “More than Sports.” If a guy asks me what we do at 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday mornings, I just tell him, “We talk about more than sports. We talk about being Christlike men. We talk about the feelings in our hearts.” And you know what? Men are showing up. Eighteen-year-old college guys, 85-year-old retirees, hedge-fund managers and photographers, manly men who work with their hands, and artistic empaths who listen to audiobooks. It isn’t just a place where we accumulate biblical knowledge. I begin each session with our thesis statement, “We’re here to become more Christlike men in our families, in our jobs, and in our church.” There have been tears, there’s been vulnerability, and there are always jokes, donuts, and church coffee. And more than anything else, there has been the grace that comes from knowing you’re not alone in this world.
At the end of each Tuesday morning, I find myself so relieved. Sometimes in ministry the simplest things are the best. Sometimes the very thing you most long for is the very ministry Jesus wants to accomplish through you. And every time, every Tuesday, I look those men in the eyes and remind them who they are in a world where they have to be a million things at once: “beloved sons, in whom God is well pleased.”
In other words, “I hate to say I love you guys, but there ain’t no other choice.”
