Building a UMM Ministry

2. Set an appointment to begin implementing your dream.
3. Think about how to make your ministry to men inclusive and intergenerational.
4. Minister out of the overflow of your own expanding relationship with Jesus.
5. Do fewer things better.
6. Don't try to bring about a particular outcome, be faithful to your call.
7. Repetition is reputation. Repeat your vision, dream, and purpose during every meeting.
8. Men can see your strengths, so reveal your weaknesses. God uses the weak things of this world for His glory.
9. Make yourself dispensable. The architect does not have to occupy the building for the building to stand.
10. Appeal to the men you have and the men you want to have.
11. Build around relationships, not programs. If it's not going as well as you had hoped with your men, don't get angry. Love them more.
12. Plodders win after the hare has quit.
13. Manage expectations: All disappointment is the result of unmet expectations. It takes a long time to make a disciple. Richard Foster said, "Our tendency is to over estimate what we can accomplish in one year, and under estimate what we can accomplish in ten years." Think in terms of what you want to do over the next ten years.
14. Evangelism must be central. The best method of evangelism is the one you will use.
15. As the leader you will receive more credit and more blame than you deserve.
16. Do not teach men to be better. Call them to join the cause of the gospel of Jesus Christ and to live in the shadow of that call.
17. When you think about "what's happening" what do you see? If you see the present you are operational. If you see the future you are visionary. Both are needed. Sometimes we must substitute discipline for a lack of natural interest.
18. What kind of men are we trying to produce: Disciples, not workers. Most men don't have enough Jesus for themselves, much less to give away. Help men fill up to the overflow in their relationship with Jesus. At a point, they will feel compelled to serve Him.
19. Focus: If we know that we will only have a man and  his family for five years, what lessons are so important that if he were to leave without them, we would have failed that man? This, then, becomes  the discipleship curriculum.
20. Chinese proverb: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
21. Zechariah 4:10 says, "Do not despise the small beginning, for the eyes of the Lord rejoice to see the work begin."
22. Hudson Taylor said, "All God's giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and presence to be with them." Not even God can change the directions of a stationary object.
23. Planning without prayer is presumption. Prayer without planning is presumption.
24. "Go and make disciples." If the Great Commission is true, our plans are not too big; they are too small. 

Morley is the founder of Morley Properties, one of Florida's 100 largest privately held companies. In 1989, he wrote The Man in the Mirror, and in 1991, he sold his business and founded Man in the Mirror, a ministry to men. See. www.maninthemirror.org .