172- The What, Why and How of Barnabas- with Dale Lewis

The Barnabas Method has silently transformed over 500 men's lives across decades, and now this powerful discipleship process is available to every church leader seeking authentic spiritual formation for the men they shepherd.

What's the difference between knowing biblical information and becoming like Christ? According to Pastor Dale Lewis, most discipleship approaches focus too heavily on knowledge acquisition while neglecting the transformational aspects of spiritual growth. 

"Barnabas is about becoming the right person, not just having the right answers," Lewis explains, drawing from his decades of experience implementing this 13-week process.

The genius of the Barnabas Method lies in its radical relationality. Built on what Lewis calls "the three Ts" - teachability, transparency, and transference - this approach creates safe spaces for men to admit they don't know everything, share vulnerably about their struggles, and commit to passing what they learn to others. The process unfolds through weekly meetings where men practice focused listening, report on dates with their wives, tackle biblical concepts like new covenant living, and hold one another accountable with remarkable specificity.

Perhaps most counterintuitive is the requirement that the pastor or leader position themselves as a fellow learner rather than an expert who has "arrived." This vulnerability creates the conditions for authentic community where true transformation can occur. "If you can't learn from another man," Lewis warns, "that's saying something about how much you're actually going to learn from the Holy Spirit."

The curriculum traces its origins through a discipleship lineage including Ray Stedman, Harry Ironside, and J. Vernon McGee, but has been refined and streamlined into a reproducible process any church can implement. After completing the 13 weeks, participants are encouraged to begin discipling others, creating exponential multiplication that transforms not just individual men but entire church cultures.

Ready to move beyond programs to transformation? Download the free Barnabas curriculum in any of 103 languages at ScriptureSupply.com and join the growing movement of churches discovering that discipleship isn't about filling positions—it's about forming men who increasingly reflect Christ.

Again, to access the curriculum, go to scripturesupply.com, then navigate to Teachings, then to Special Studies, then to Barnabas. It’s all there.

You can download the curriculum in PDF format using the following link: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fYlSxeF9mEfTOKoUdx5aC2IqVE1GMQxK/view?usp=drive_link

For Poimen Ministries, its staff, ministries, and focus, go to poimenministries.com. To contact Poimen Ministries, email us at strongerpastors@gmail.com. May the Lord revive His work in the midst of these years!

Transcript

172- The What, Why and How of Barnabas- with Dale Lewis

Welcome to Strength for Today's Pastor, conversations with current senior pastors and leaders which will strengthen and help you in your pastoral ministry. And now, here's your host, Bill Holdridge of Poimen Ministries. Welcome to Podcast 172.

Today, once again, we're with Pastor Dale Lewis. We last had Dale for Podcast 168, and we entitled that podcast episode, Dale Lewis, A Pastor You Need to Know. And I firmly believe that.

He's a pastor you need to know. But in that podcast, Dale spoke about Barnabas, which is the name of the men's discipleship class that he has been using over the years to disciple somewhere around 500 men. And Dale learned it from me when I pastored in Monterey, California.

And I learned it from Cliff Stabler, a local pastor in Monterey who discipled me. And Cliff had been discipled by Ray Steadman, the well-known author who's now in heaven. And Ray Steadman had been discipled by Harry Ironside and J. Verna McGee.

Well, all that's kind of a lead into what we're going to be talking about, because the Barnabas discipleship process really had its genesis with these men. So I've reached out to Dale to circle back with me to break down the how-to of Barnabas. And the reason for that is that Dale has taken what was a year-long program when we did it together back in Monterey.

He took it and made a 13-week discipleship process for the church that he pastored in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana. And so he's really done a great job with that whole thing. So anyway, welcome to the program, Dale, with all that long introduction.

It's great to see you again, Bill. It's good to be back with you and the listeners. And it's such a blessing to be able to make this its own standalone podcast about mentoring men and discipling men, such a needed asset for anybody in ministry.

Yeah, totally. So they can find this curriculum where? It's on scripturesupply.com. And when they open it up, and of course, because of that, it would be available in 103 different languages. So this would also be translatable to those on the foreign field, so they would be able to use it on 103 different languages.

But if they go on Scripture Supply, there'll be other teachings tab. There's the Old Testament and the New Testament, and then extra teachings. As you go on there, you'll see it right there listed Barnabas.

And it's not a teaching on Barnabas. It's a teaching discipleship curriculum. Yeah, yeah, we're not doing a character study on the man named Barnabas.

No, no, no. Well, of course, Barnabas means son of encouragement. So that's really what this process is all about, encouraging each other to walk with the Lord.

Okay, so before we go any further, Dale, I think you and I both agree that there needs to be somewhat of a disclaimer about this concerning how will a process of discipleship be effective or what would keep it from being effective, specifically Barnabas? What do you think? Yeah, we've talked about this before, and I've certainly mentioned this with other people. I do it with every candidate. But I think without a doubt that the people that utilize this material, whether they're leading the class or part of that class, they must remain teachable and open for their own transparency and then transformation.

It's a transformative process. Our salvation is a transformative process. But our sanctification is one from glory to glory, degree by degree.

And in other words, this is so relational that it's radically different. You know, I said this earlier to you, is that so much of our learning is mechanical. You know, it's getting the right answer.

Barnabas is about becoming the right person. That's a whole other level of learning that we must... It's mandated biblically that we remain that way and continue open to being changed from that glory to glory. And then so if somebody is using a material that is latent that way, that's what it's really about.

And then they're not themselves open to that, and this isn't going to work for them. So the pastor who takes this curriculum or the leader and wants to use it as a process to disciple men has to be one of the men. He has to be one of the guys.

He has to be right there, as hungry to learn and as hungry to grow as are the other guys in that group. I can even say probably more so. Because he's modeling that behavior and people won't follow somebody that's just thinking they've been arrived.

That's one of the great parts of it. He has to be the guy that shows and leads the way of what that looks like because the other ones have not necessarily seen it. Mm-hmm, yeah.

You know, there's a lot of study going on, research into what accounts for the number of pastors who are leaving the ministry these days because it's a huge number. And why does that happen? And some of the things that are being discovered are that, number one, pastors are not spiritually healthy. They're not experiencing the joy of the Lord.

They're not experiencing rest. They're not experiencing peace. Their lives are caught up in the incredibly demanding and impossible-to-fulfill expectations of pastoral ministry.

And it sinks them. It sinks them spiritually. And they're also oftentimes, as being discovered, they're not healthy emotionally.

And a lot of times, not healthy spiritually. So you and I had the same experience coming into Barnabas. I came into Barnabas with Cliff as a pastor.

I had experienced an almost total crash in ministry because I'd been operating in the flesh in a specific way of doing ministry that just about sunk me. This is before you started attending Calvary Chapel. And I was introduced to Authentic Christianity, a book written by Ray Steadman.

And that book undid me, frankly. And then when I found out that there was a way to be discipled into these things of Authentic Christianity by Cliff, I jumped at it. I was hungry.

I had to go into it just like any of the other guys that were hungry to grow. You know, it was for me. I wanted to grow.

And I know you had the same experience. It was a different situation for you. You were a relatively new believer.

And you'd not experienced this kind of thing before. But that's important, isn't it, to be hungry and teachable? Yeah, I think that the thing that we— I mean, it's like, I guess, I was talking to somebody the other night about this. I teach a class now.

I call it Growing in Grace. It's knowing why you believe what you believe. That, too, will be on Scripture Supply soon.

But I was talking to somebody about that very issue, about the sense that we look at maturity, and we chronologically base it, don't we? So if I ask you, well, Bill, how long have you known the Lord? You will say a chronological age. Would to God that was true with all of us, but it's not. Maturity isn't a chronological age.

It is Christlikeness. It's looking more like Him. That's the basis of where we really are with the Lord, which is wonderful to hear because that never ends.

But it's also frightening because that means that we can derail it. We can stop that maturing process by not being authentic, not being teachable, not being transparent. We can prolong what we could already enjoy.

And I think that's so—just by the statutes you just said by pastors, that's so important that our identity and sufficiency is in Christ alone. Amen. And not in the congregation, not in the denomination, not in your board or your popularity, which is—oh, that's a horrible one.

Because it's a vicious trap. So I concur. When you and I did Barnabas, we started—it was a year-long program, and we started with an all-day retreat.

So the 12 guys that were in the group for that semester were there all day long with each other, and we would start with sharing our personal story, however we wanted to. And when I led it, I went first and told my story first. When Cliff led it, and I was in his group, he started first, so that's why I started first when I started leading the groups.

And you had to be open and real because— not just to perform a program, but because that's the only way that this was going to be effective for me. If I'm not real and honest, I can't grow. And if I'm not real and honest, the men that I'm trying to work with are likely not to catch that vision and grow themselves.

That's how important it is for us, I think. Yeah, I think that authenticity is so rare with men. We're not—and the vulnerability that comes with that, especially with those in ministry as a whole, we're often, just as men in general, but in ministry even more so, we lack that vulnerability because it comes at a great risk.

But the reward is so much worth it. The risk is that some people know that we're really not all that great, and that there's only one that is great, and that's Christ. Amen.

And that at best, every shepherd is just a sheepdog. There's only one shepherd. Every church has the same shepherd.

His name is Jesus. And I think that vulnerability that moves us off the pedestal that people want to place us on, or the ones that we want to climb up to, is removed when we're authentic and transparent and vulnerable. Well said.

And in reality, even though it seems risky at first to be that way, it's actually a super winning combination, not just for ourselves, so that we're not thinking too highly of ourselves, or more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, but for the guys that we're with, because they know in their heart of hearts that we're just men, but it proves it to them. And that gives them the ability to be just men in Christ and grow in Him. It's just amazing how it works.

Yeah. If there's one statement we should be able to make about every believer, male or female, and that is that there should be a humility and a brokenness in all of us. I'm sorry to say it's a rarity in the body of Christ, especially amongst pastoral leadership at times.

There's an arrogance that's in the pulpit at times. It's just certainly not biblical, but it has to be broken down if we're going to become more like Him. I mean, if there's only one that had the right to be boastful, it would have been Christ, and yet we see His humility and His servant heart.

Oh, my. And those that were around Him all picked up on that. That's why we read the pages of our Bible.

We see men like that that are so authentic and so relatable. And yet a lot of times, I'm afraid that we don't see it in modern evangelicalism. Yeah.

Well, that's encouraging to hear that just even right now. So, Pastor, we're talking to you now, and we're talking to you, leader, who wants to mentor men using something like Barnabas as a process. If you've got the hunger, and if you're teachable, then what we're about to say will be helpful to you, and what you're about to embark on will be helpful to you.

Is that a fair statement, Dale? I can just say amen. Yes. Well, good.

Well, let's talk about, then, the process of Barnabas. We've already hinted at some of it. It starts with a day-long retreat, but there are things— I mean, if that's the way we do it.

In your case with the 13-week curriculum, it wasn't quite the same, but nonetheless, it starts with something like that. So what's the what of Barnabas? What's the what of Barnabas? We've hinted at it already. What is it? It's becoming more like Christ.

It's best summed up by the forerunner of the Messiah. He must increase, I must decrease, and there is a biblical order for that that can't be reversed. I can't decrease so he increases.

He must increase in my life so that I can decrease. It's the what is becoming more like him. It's not just having the right answers.

It's becoming the right person. Okay, so that's the goal. That's what we're aiming at, and that's what you and I would both say is a major earmark of spiritual maturity.

It is becoming more like Christ. In fact, it is the earmark of spiritual maturity. Paul said, Every man teleos in Christ or mature, complete.

Okay, so it's 13 weeks in duration. The version of Barnabas process that you've put together. It comes by invitation from the pastor.

That's how a man is included. He's invited and we strongly recommend that that number 12 is a good number. No more than 12 per group, right? So how did that work out for you in your 500 times that you've used this? I've never went over 12 and a lot of times it's been all sorts of numbers.

I try to pair off people. By the way, though Barnabas in the materialist. There's a section on marriage.

I would take single guys. It's amazing how many of those single guys just really grew and their understanding what marriage was either because they maybe had been divorced or they had never married and they didn't have, you know, good understanding what marriage look like. So it didn't matter whether they're single or married, but I take all various numbers of that equation.

So that in pairing the guys up that that was always a fun part too. Yeah, the way we when we started Barnabas, there were six of us in our church in Monterey. We started with six and then after six months, we added another six guys and they were the newbies and they paired up with the old timers, the guys that were there for six months and we called that a relationship, a mucker relationship.

Yeah, still use that word. Okay, don't use that word. Yeah, I think it's a Scottish term.

Yeah, kind of like the idea of back-to-back fighting in a war or something like that. I also like the idea that it always carried the idea of those that work on a ranch or farm around cattle or sheep. You put it on your mucking boats.

I always thought that was, I don't know if that's where that word came from or not, but it sure is appropriate. It really is. So no more than 12 per group and then there was the invitation.

So we're wanting to invite men, but we don't want to just invite any man. We want to invite men that are ready to benefit from this, just like Jesus did. He selected 12 and the night before he selected those 12, he spent all night in prayer to God.

So I assume that that's what he was talking to the Father about, was who are these men going to be? So we need to invite men who are what? What are their characteristics? They need to be teachable. They need to be transparent. So I always called it the three T's.

Teachable, transparent, and transference. And so they need to first know they don't know. Secondly, they need to be able to admit openly they don't know.

And third, they need to be willing to take what they don't know, but now know to other people. Oh, that's great. Teachable, transparent, and transference.

Yeah, the three T's. Yeah. Cliff would tell us men of the word, people-oriented.

They need to have a heart for people. You can observe that about some men. And then they have to show some type of pattern of faithfulness.

Are they going to be reliable? Are they going to do anything with it? So before we invite, we're observing men, aren't we? Yeah. And I think that one of the keys with that is that it doesn't matter where they are or how long they've chronologically known the Lord. None of those things really matter.

In my case, again, I don't know what the heck you were thinking when you grabbed me at a year old in the Lord, but you did. And it didn't really matter, those things. I think you'll find these people just hanging around.

There's a sense you get about these guys that you're going to invite, irrespective of their backgrounds or all the other things. But you get a sense for them because you're around them. They come to your midweek service, not just Sunday morning.

They're part of the men's prayer group. They're picking up bulletins or whatever else, sweeping the floors. There's something about them that you could tell they want more.

And usually that comes about you being a part of another group where you begin to recognize that. Great. That's great.

Great stuff. So we watch these things in men's lives. And then we extend an invitation to them.

Now, in my case, and I'm interested to hear what you would say about this. In my case, I always wanted that invitation to be individual. So I would meet a man for lunch or at his workplace or someplace where we could just talk for about a half an hour at least.

And I could extend the invitation. How did you do it? The same way. It's interesting.

Some of the things over the years I've seen with it is the men care. I've never had a hard time finding men. They find me.

And so it's always interesting. They just, they're Elisha to Elijah, you know. They're just kind of, you can't get rid of them.

And they're just always hanging around. Or another thing that's been very interesting over the years is the guys that were married that were part of Barnabas, when their wives started seeing the radical transformation of their husband, I started getting phone calls from other wives. Please take my husband.

And so a lot of times I did. And a lot of times I took guys that would come in to me for marriage counseling. I would disciple the men.

So they came in myriads of ways. Other churches. I would get a lot of guys from other churches that weren't part of the fellowship that somebody had, that I had discipled had started sharing with them.

So it's amazing the different ways that they would come. But in any case, you looked for those qualities and those characteristics. You know, I've met guys that seemed like they had a hunger.

They were studying the Bible voraciously. They were becoming fountains of information. But then when I got to know them personally or exchange with them personally, there were guys that they just could not learn anything from anybody else.

And I was always terrified for men like that. If you can't learn from another man, then that's saying something about how much are you actually going to be learning from the Holy Spirit. It's that thing about knowledge and wisdom, you know.

Knowledge is the accumulation of information. Wisdom is the application. I was always looking for the guy that had wisdom.

He may not know all the Bible verses, but what he knew, he was seeking to apply. Yeah, there you go. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

That's the bottom line. So then after the invitation, you extended that. But part of the invitation includes helping them understand what the commitment is.

What's the commitment to a Barnabas process? Right on the beginning table of Barnabas, we have what that commitment level is. And so when you tap onto that on our website on Scripture Supply, it'll speak about who Barnabas was. What is the commitment level? You know, it initially says, what is Barnabas? To learn and practice.

How to be encouraged by Scripture and how to be better than that transformative work to encourage other people. And learning to practice the new covenant, which we explain later to people. And then growing man-to-man, small group learning from each other and passing it on.

And then there's actually what is expected. We even have a commitment level. We have a confidentiality agreement.

And all that on the first few pages of Barnabas. Okay. So what is the commitment level? Commitment level is to attend each meeting unless an emergency.

And if something came up, they needed to call. So we're talking 13 weeks. They needed to make 13 meetings.

If they couldn't make it, something came up. They needed to let their mucker know who they were paired up with if they were unable to attend. And also, they needed to be on time.

None of this 30 minutes late stuff. Be on time. Do the assignments faithfully, which included meeting your mucker and dating your wife.

They needed to share in the group. They needed to be transparent to their comfort level. But they needed to be transparent.

They needed to share again the lessons with their spouse weekly. They were required to teach. And we told them they needed to teach their wives within 48 hours.

They would all look at me with their eyes rolled back in their head as if I'm being legalistic. I said, look, guys, I say this because you're going to procrastinate this to the last day anyway. So I want you to be intentional about getting it done.

Teach your wife. It's your job. You are the pastor of your home.

Start doing that. And then pray for each one of the group daily. And that was the commitment level that we had with them.

Okay, that's clear enough. So they had to count the cost is what they had to do. Absolutely.

They had to look at their calendar and say, is there anything coming up that would preclude me from being part of this? Exactly. They needed to talk to their wife and say, is this okay with you, babe, that I do this? Okay, the whole thing. They got to clear the deck and then make the commitment based on that.

Yeah, I think a lot of the discipleship stuff that people do, you meet with them once a week. They don't show up. They show up, you know, or it's just heavy laden with information, but not so much transformation.

They're repeating or memorizing a verse or something to that extent. This is a very relational aspect. It's hard to have a relationship if these things aren't maintained.

Yeah, really. Any relationship. Yeah, that's right.

I mean, if I say yes, I'm all in, and then my yes becomes no, that's an integrity issue. I haven't learned much, etc., you know, all those things. Okay, so that's the commitment.

Do all the assignments, show up, and all the things you listed. And then the goal. As you have stated already, Dale, to disciple men in the New Covenant, to disciple men in their marriages, to disciple men in how to put on the armor of God and stand against the spiritual warfare that certainly comes against them, how to live authentically as a Christian.

Right. There is also a section that we put in. I don't remember if this is in the original.

So, you know, when it says under what is expected, there was the commitment, then there was also an accountability. And we would hold each other accountable. They would hold me accountable.

We'd all hold each other accountable. And those things are equally important. One of them was in our discussion is that discuss where you are, not where others are.

Use the pronoun I rather than you. Don't give advice or suggestions to someone less asked. Support each other.

Help others to share by being open yourself. Meet each other where they are, not trying to change them. Not your job.

That's the Holy Spirit's job. Amen. These are accountability questions that we wanted that group to really bond.

And those lack of those six things are accountability busters. You know, you can't bond if those things aren't maintained. Same thing with confidentiality.

Yeah. Men needed to know that what they were sharing with their muckers wouldn't be shared with the group unless permission was given. They needed to know that what was shared in the group wouldn't be shared to their wife or to other guys.

Right. So, all those things are a key part of that. So, practically what that means is that if you share something in a group and I'm there in that group with you, I have to go to you and say, Dale, you shared such and such a thing.

Is it okay if I share that with my wife? And you can either give me permission or not. Right. And we even say, yeah, you didn't say it further.

Let's say that you and I were muckers. Yeah. This wouldn't, you couldn't share, if you share something to me, I couldn't share it within the group.

There you go. We wanted that level of intimacy. Yeah, that's great.

And then when it comes to the whole advice section of this, I'm not going to just throw around exhortations and give advice to people during our meeting times. I have to have permission from that person or they have to ask me a question. So, I could say, Dale, is it okay if I, I've got an idea right now about what you're saying.

Is it okay if I share something with you? And then you've got an opportunity to say yes or no and I got to be okay with it. That's right. But that's a relational courtesy.

Boy, I bet you it's been true of you. It sure has been of me over the years. That has been all by itself, such a huge ministry tool.

Yeah. Because who says no for one thing? And if they do say yes, you can share something with me. It automatically puts them much more in a teachable mode than they had been before I asked that permission.

Yeah. It opens people up to know that they have the keys to unlock that door. And then it also shows them that you're not going to violate it.

There's nothing worse. I've heard this for years in the church, that's the women are the gossipers. In my perspective, men are far worse gossipers than women ever imagined to be.

And again, it's terrible. But we need to have an environment where men, especially men, because we're not told to speak about our feelings and emotions and relational aspects. So we need a safety to be able to do that.

Well, so there's another point about Barnabas, and it's all process, like you've said. When we come together in a Barnabas meeting, okay, there we are, we're going to be together for two and a half, three hours probably, right? Whatever it might be. So that first hour is dedicated towards just mutual sharing with each other.

And the way we've learned to do that is, say we've got six guys in our little lunchtime or our mealtime group, we're eating our sack lunch. And so how many guys are there? Six guys. We've got 60 minutes.

So that's 10 minutes a guy. You've got 10 minutes to talk. And we're going to give you a little tea, a little tea for time out when you've got a minute left.

So you'll know you've got to wrap this up. And you can talk about anything you want to. But while that man is talking, nobody else is talking.

So what are we learning? No checking your phone. No checking your phone. And we're learning how to listen.

Right. Which is a hard thing for men to learn, all of us. But we're also learning how to communicate, which our wives crave for us to be able to communicate with them and give them something of ourselves.

Because they're willing to give something of themselves to us at a drop of a hat, usually. So boy, what transferable skills those are. Yeah.

Again, I always said the funny thing throughout the years, a universal truth. Like I said, I usually get some of the wives, friends of the wives of the guys that were there, calling me, can you take my husband? I also said about the baked goods, cookies, cakes. If the guy was applying the Barnabas material to his wife, she was thrilled.

And without us saying a word, the baked goods would start coming into the Barnabas meetings. OK. Just because they were so appreciative of their husband listening or dating her or teaching her.

They'd never seen it before. Yeah, and we even provide tools for that, the dating of our wives. I know you've got a list in the curriculum that you've used.

Cliff gave a list. I think he called it 42 Ways to Romance Your Wife or something like that. And these aren't things that cost anything, necessarily.

They're free. They're something that's just intimate. It's personal.

It's a planned, intentional effort on the part of a husband to spend time with his wife. And a lot of guys, men in general in our society, think of, I date my wife. I date the woman I want to marry to win her.

And then after I've won her, I don't need to anymore. And the reality is that we, I told Denise before we got married, I said, don't ever settle for a man that will win you once. Settle for the man that will win you every day the rest of your life.

Because that's what Christ has done with us. He's never stopped winning us. And we need to be men, if we're married, to continue.

And by the way, if there's a single guy out there, if you desire to be and feel called to be married, you won't have any problem finding somebody that wants you if you're going to treat her that way every day of her life. Absolutely. You could look like a Basset hound and find somebody that will love you.

Well, I do. And I have. So there you go.

Proof positive. You're a good looking guy, Dale. Yeah, anyway, yeah, that's all good.

So the marriage part is really important. And then we report on our dates during our sessions together. How'd your date go? So what if a guy doesn't have a date to report on? What does he do? Well, we cut him a slack at the time.

And we ask him why. And we don't let it slide. We say, look, Ben, you need to, I mean, there's things that come up when I get that.

Especially guys with young families and a career. And she's working. And I understand society.

But I think we say, hey, look, maybe it's, hey, we'll watch your kids for you so you can go out. Or maybe just a date doesn't have to be financial. A lot of people, they're on fixed incomes.

It's hard to financially go out. And we understand all that. That's why we called it 50 Ways to Lead Your Lover.

And so pick one of those. Sometimes I've had guys actually take and read those 50 things to their wives. And that was their date night, just laughing at how crazy some of those things were.

And my list came from counseling sessions. I would ask couples over the years, what do you consider a good date? Good question. And in Montana.

And in Montana, some of them were, if you go out hunting and skinning a deer, we'd be there. So it just depends on asking people, what could you consider a good date? What would you enjoy? Going to coffee? Yeah, that's great. That's really great.

So that's the commitment. And those are the goals, the process. So first of all, the pastor observes potential candidates.

We've talked about that. Invites them. Confirms the commitment of each candidate that says yes.

So we don't want them to say yes right on the spot, do we? We want them to think about it, pray about it, talk to their wife about it. And then they can come back with their yes. And after that, then we actually do what the Barnabas process is.

So we start with some kind of an introduction of ourselves to each other, whether it's at an all-day retreat or you take a part of the first session for that type of thing. And then we move on from there. How did it go with you? Yeah, the same thing.

It's interesting, the time frames I think about recently that I have done that, there was a group I did, the first group I did, I did not do that. And that group, I mean, they made it through the 13 weeks, but I wouldn't say it was successful. But then I learned something from that.

Because getting away from people is challenging at times. So what I did is I planned a meal and had the guys with their wives come to the dinner. I think there was four, so there's eight total, plus Denise and I, ten people.

And we had a meal together. And after the meal and during the meal, we got to know each other. Because I didn't know them, I was new in the church.

And then I had fielded questions about Barnabas to the wives as well. And that group, man, was that ever a successful group. All of them just took off on it.

So it was, one of the guys just called me last week. He just came on staff at this particular church. And he was only two days on staff at the church, and they had a pastoral retreat.

And one of the questions was, what was the most successful thing, the most impactful thing that's happened to you in the last year? And he said, Barnabas. Wow. He said, it's changed my life.

Okay. So I think that kind of connection, like you said, that early connection, is something that I, at times, haven't always been able to facilitate. Because I've done this off of, I've Skyped it too, Zoom meetings.

I've done a lot of different ways, and it's kind of hard to do it when you're doing it that way. I prefer the way that you've described. Yeah, yeah.

So we get it started that way, highly relational, like you've said a couple times during this podcast. And then we just dive into the weekly schedule, and it's a 13-week curriculum, and we just do it. But that doesn't make it wooden or mechanical.

It's highly relational. We're talking about things. Like, it would be great, wouldn't it, if we would deliver our teaching on Sunday, and then we immediately had a post-service time where everybody could just kind of resonate with the material, talk about it, ask their questions.

Well, that's what Barnabas is. Barnabas allows that to happen. Yeah, exactly.

And the weeks are self-contained. I don't encourage people, and pretty much tell them not to go ahead. Each week is self-contained.

At some point in time, they overlap, the different aspects of Barnabas, which is, of course, the New Covenant, the marriage aspect, spiritual warfare, and master plan of evangelism. Those are the four key components. And they overlap at certain times.

And a few of those weeks, I think week six or seven, they've got a lot of stuff to get done. But it's not in the beginning. It's more in the middle part of that.

They're self-contained, is the idea. In other words, the questions there, and again, they're not questions that are about finding the right answer. They're questions that are so relatable that what one person may say is the answer may not be the answer for another person.

They're very specific. And then they're even asked at some aspects to dial that down further. In other words, it could be one of the questions you could deal something with.

I need to love my wife more. I would never let them pass with that. I'd say, how? What are you gonna do? What specifically does that look like? So that's how we would work it.

Aim at nothing, hit nothing. Yes. Okay, well, this part of the discussion reminds me of something, Dale.

And I remember this. This stood out very powerfully to me with Cliff when he brought us into his group. He didn't have an output expectation.

In other words, he wasn't discipling us in order to fill a position in the church program. He wasn't, it wasn't about that. There's room for that.

I mean, if somebody's gonna be a church administrator, they need training. So we disciple them in admin, whatever. But this was not that.

He wanted, and of course the Holy Spirit wants us to be conformed into the image of Christ. That was the thing. And he knew that if that became the outcome in a man's heart, he'd find out what his spiritual gifts are eventually, and he'd find out where he can serve, and he'd discover his ministries and his stewardships, and that would happen.

And I so appreciated that, that there was no, well, sometimes those kinds of approaches, there was no manipulative approach to it at all. It was just, it was me, the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the other men in that group. That's what it was, and my wife, of course.

I think, I so agree with that, because I see it, I've seen guys try to use this material, and churches, and particularly probably pastors, as another program, because they're looking for, a leadership manual kind of a thing. And again, I think there's room, clearly, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, gives you some of the qualifications, and a mandate, really, to go out and disciple people for finding positions. But again, this is more geared towards becoming the right person, and allowing the Lord to direct them to what position he may want them at, instead of saying, no, I have a guy that's an elder, so I want you to, you know, well, no, let's just get the guy healthy spiritually, and go in the right direction, and the Lord, but I will say that, over the years for me, I didn't have anybody on my board, or in leadership, that I didn't personally disciple.

What an advantage. I mean, I used that as a pool basis all the time, but I didn't do it initially, because they were an elder, they became that after spending that much time entering them. Yeah, that's golden right there.

That's golden. Because you have the same heart, you have the same mind, you're speaking the same language. Yeah, that philosophy of ministry.

I didn't want yes men, but we needed to share the same philosophy. If we don't share the same philosophy, you're just going to pull apart. Yeah, yeah.

People are one in that sense, to that philosophy, instead of, you know, being divisive, or could have been divisive. So during those 13 weeks, a lot of stuff happens, a lot of growth occurs, a foundation's been laid for the rest of our lives, and it's all good, and it's a commitment that is definitely worth it, and men move forward, and their wives move forward accordingly, because of what they've learned. That's what's so great about this approach, and this kind of a training, if you will.

You know, I remember first hearing the phrase New Covenant living, or something along those lines, and I thought, what does that mean? But it became clear, the difference between the Old Covenant and New Covenant kind of living. Basically, it's the contrast between the flesh and the spirit, but these are biblical words. Paul used them in 2 Corinthians, right? Right.

And biblical phrases, but I remember verbalizing those things among some of the people in our tribe, and they'd go, what are you talking about? What kind of a, is this a cult that you're part of? You know, that kind of thing. No worries, we're just dealing with something that's in the Bible. So we do the 13-week curriculum, and at the end of it, there's an acknowledgement that this part of it is finished, and so on and so forth.

What's next for the guys after that? Well, it's always the thing that challenges what to do after the 13, because that 13-week for these men, some of them is just so life-changing relationally with other men. And so I have guys right now that they still, in all the places I've been, they still contact me on a regular basis. They still meet with their mucker.

It's an amazing thing, and they still, you know, I call every month, the pastor now in Montana, every month I call him just to chat, and it's sort of the you and the cliff thing, you know? We still have these relationships. So that doesn't end. As it relates to the body of Christ and to your life, my first wife Donna said it well.

She used to always say to me, she goes, isn't it about time you go through another Barnabas? And her statement was basically, you know, you're kind of letting some of these things slide about dating your wife and teaching her, you know? Okay, there we go. And so I really encourage guys that have been through Barnabas to now be part of that group of discipling others. It's that last phase of transference.

And so I encourage them throughout this time to start looking for men that you can disciple. And right now in this church that I'm attending here, I think there's about, I don't know, maybe four or five guys that are discipling other people right now. And so that's what I want to see happen.

And so that becomes what I call the 14th week. You know, they start getting involved in doing that. Some of the guys begin to see, like I said, one guy that I just finished here about six months ago, eight months ago, he is now on staff of this church.

He just got put on staff. So some of them go into ministry, which is always wonderful to see. Well, like the current pastor at Bitterroot Calvary Chapel, Bill Daly.

He was discipled by you for 13 weeks in Seattle, Washington. That's right, yeah. And then mentored further into ministry.

But yeah, I think you see all of that. The other thing I like to do with these guys is, and this is, again, something a pastor can have a lead way of doing, but if you don't have a men's study or a men's Bible study or a men's group, that can facilitate something really cool as well. Because that can be a landing spot for some of those guys that maybe not yet ready.

But it also can be a hunting ground for guys that you might want to grab for the next ground to go around. There you go, there you go, because we're always looking. Because I am doing right now four studies a week here.

So much for retirement, but I'm teaching four studies a week. I have a study on Friday night here in the Gospel of Luke. I have a marriage class I'm doing on Sunday mornings.

I have a men's study on the life of David on Sunday night and Growing in Grace on Sunday night. So I have a lot of things that I'm always looking for those guys. And if you have a men's group or something you can plug them into, it's just a really, and I facilitate that men's group.

I don't teach it per se, I facilitate it. So it has that Barnabas feel to it that they're familiar with it. And then hopefully, I'll work myself out of jobs.

I'll turn it loose and say, hey, why don't you take tonight? So then they can get their feet wet a little bit that way too if they have teaching giftings or other aspects of ministry. So you've probably told them along the way that, hey, just watch closely what I'm doing. Because if you've got this gift of leadership, you're going to do it too someday.

Yeah. I encourage them right away, really. Hopefully, of course, what they're doing by teaching their wife is discipling their wife.

So they're doing, they already have somebody they're already discipling. They may not be aware of that yet, but they're doing their wife if they're married right away. But to look for the next guy, and that's always the goal.

Because the trouble is that it can be bottlenecked. If it's dependent upon Bill or Dale, it's limited. But if we each had 10 guys we discipled, and let's say five of those 10 discipled other men, this thing would spread like wildfire.

Oh, it's multiplication rather than addition. That's right. The math of that is staggering.

Yeah. And that's how you can effectively change the dynamic of the church globally. Absolutely.

Not just locally. Totally agree. Totally agree.

Well, we've had so much to share, Dale. And I think it's time to wrap this up. But thanks so much for joining us and sharing what you've learned over the years.

Because this is golden. I'm going to be praying, and I'm sure you are too, for this to reach the ears of those that the Holy Spirit wants it to reach. And we'll see what happens.

But to access, again, the curriculum, one must go to scripturesupply.com, follow the teaching links, special subjects, and then you'll find Barnabas. Click on that, and that's the curriculum. My question, though, you've also got the entire curriculum in a PDF format.

I have a copy of that. I think my copy is probably close to what you have now. But would it be possible for us to include a download link to the PDF copy of the curriculum as well? Yes, you can certainly do the PDF so they can do that.

And by the way, the material is all, everything on that site is 100% free. You don't need any permission to grab it and steal anything you want. I'm not stealing it because it's not mine.

But they can take whatever they want that way and utilize for any way they feel led to utilize it. So the material is there, and they can grab it. So how can a pastor or a leader, a would-be men's disciple, how can they get in touch with you, Dale? How would you like that to happen? They can email me.

There's an email address on Scripture Supply. They can also email, and I think you sent that out last time, my email address. So you can tag that if you want.

They can contact that way. And if they have specific questions, some of them called me or texted me. Whatever they want to do that way, I can be, you know, I'm repurposed.

So I have more time to do some of those things. Between four studies a week, I can do that. That's good.

OK, that sounds great. Well, to wrap this up, we've been listening to and talking with Pastor Dale Lewis. He lives in Navarre, Florida, retired from two long Calvary Chapel pastorates, but not retired from ministry in any stretch of the imagination, as you've heard.

We've been talking about Barnabas, which is a process of developing men and helping them become more conformed into the image of Christ. So again, thanks to Dale Lewis for joining us. And reach out to him.

All of this information will be in the show notes, and you can take it from there. And we'd love to have feedback from you, by the way, as to what the Lord is doing. It would be wonderful to hear some of those stories because we want what happens to be God things.

We want them to be God moments, God experiences. So feel free to share that with us as well. And the show notes will be available, like I said.

And the announcer will give you information as to how to reach out to Poimen Ministries. God bless you, and thanks for joining us on Strength for Today's Pastor. Strength for Today's Pastor is sponsored by Poimen Ministries.

You can find us at pointmanministries.com. That's spelled P-O-I-M-E-N ministries.com. If something in today's program prompts a question or comment, or if you have a topic idea for a future episode, just shoot us an email at strongerpastors@gmail.com. That's strongerpastors@gmail.com. May the Lord bless you as you serve him, his pastors and his church.