Warren Mainard: Hello and welcome back to another edition of the IMPACT Players Linking Shields podcast. The Linking Shields podcast is all about men from different backgrounds and aspects of manhood, ministry, life, husband, father leader type of backgrounds, figuring out how we can link shields together to better do this life of manhood as one army of men. And that's what we're gonna be talking about today as we talk about this theme of real weapons for the real war with my friend Chris Rondeau from Man in the Mirror. IMPACT Players exist to inspire men to be great husbands, fathers, and leaders by equipping them to thrive in the relationships that matter most. And that is the heart of this podcast. If you're interested in learning more about IMPACT Players, please visit us at impactplayers.org. Follow us on social media, on YouTube, like, subscribe, rate, review, do all that good stuff, and help us spread the word about IMPACT Players as we try to reach men and begin cohorts and chapters for IMPACT Players all across the country in the months and years ahead. With me is my co-host, Jon Beazley. Jon is the founder of Mind & Body and an impact player, on his own, a husband, a father. and leader. Our guest today is Chris Rondeau, who is the Man in the Mirror representative for the upstate of South Carolina. I met Chris through LinkedIn, because of the journey that I'm on preparing to lead a new chapter of IMPACT Players, moving to Charleston in the fall of 2024. And, Chris comes to me by way of a great recommendation from my good friend John Camerer, who leads impact or who leads Man in the Mirror up here in Washington State. But, Chris, you've got a pretty impressive background starting with growing up in Ware, Massachusetts, attending, and achieving a BS In aerospace engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. You've built helicopters and engines for over 20 years, and now you're living outside of Greenville, South Carolina, building men and building men's ministries. So, Chris, thank you for being on the show. Welcome and please tell us a little bit about yourself that we haven't already covered.
Chris Rondeau: I could embarrass myself very quickly with that question.
Warren Mainard: That's okay.
Chris Rondeau: Warren and Jon, thank you so much for having me on the call. Looking forward to just sharing a little bit about what's motivated me to be a man in the field, being on the offensive, and playing defensive strategies against the world. And yeah, God has taken me through an exciting pathway, being from the New England area, and now being in the South for, gosh, over 30 years now. I've been settled here in the upstate for 15 years. And, I'll say that this is an interesting, say a tidbit. Part of my aerospace background is I fell in love with the space program when I was in elementary school when the space shuttle started and I wanted to become an astronaut. My brother and my dad said that I just wanted to take up space, you know. And I still don't know if that was an insult...
Warren Mainard: Dad jokes here.
Chris Rondeau: ...or that's a compliment yet, but that my exposure to a early dad joke, I guess.
Jon Beazley: Yes.
Chris Rondeau: But, I wanted to go in the Air Force. I was in Air Force ROTC, and I did wash out of that program, but I stayed with the aerospace program and became a licensed engineer rebuilding helicopter engines and engines for the commercial airline industry. Dare to say, I have one regret in life, and that would be that I never, ever served actively in the military in my lifetime. My dad did for 10 years in the Guards. I've got plenty of friends who are former Marine. Once you're, you're always a Marine, you're never a former. But I appreciate all the guys that have served. But I, if I can say one interesting tidbit is building the helicopter engines that I did for the aerospace company here, we service six different militaries around the world. I mean, the company I worked for, we were building two to 300 jet engines a year in repair and overhaul, rebuilding it and sending them back out into the field. And to say, I never served as a vet, it's an honor to say that I've given our veterans the tools that they needed to fight in a 40,000 pound helicopter that's the size of a school bus that can lift 30,000 pounds, and it can fly a forward speed of almost 350 miles an hour with 24 men inside of it. It's a great machine, a great tool. And again, as I said, I never served directly in the military, but if you do remember back to the movie Zero Dark Thirty, the mission that took out one of our prime enemies in Osama Bin Laden, there were two Chinook helicopters in that battle. Of the four jet engines, two of them came from our facility here in the Greenville area. And dare to say, my hand that signed off that those jet engines met performance showed that I released those into the hands of soldiers to fill out, to fulfill their battle. So yeah, my part, my desire, the passion to equip our military was in that battle. So it's a unique fact, but I mean, I never got shot at, thank goodness. But again, I give honor to those guys that do, and it's been great to be a part of it for almost 28 years, building engines like that.
Warren Mainard: Wow.
Jon Beazley: Wow.
Warren Mainard: That's amazing. And, you know, I think most guys hearing you share that there's probably something inside of them that they're automatically going that's so cool.
Jon Beazley: Oh yeah.
Warren Mainard: There's just something about men that are drawn to the idea of powerful helicopters and, you know, secret missions and attacks and battles and warfare. And that really kinda leads into the heart of what I wanted us to talk about in our time together today, Chris, is that we're talking about the fact that men are in a battle, and it is a battle that is raging on all around us at all times. And I think for many men, the last few years, they've kind of begun to understand it a little bit more. That, that there is a battle for manhood, for masculinity. There's a spiritual battle, there's a battle for identity, there's a battle for sexuality, there's a battle for the heart, the soul, the mind, and the body of men. But it goes all the way back to the way that we're wired, the way that we're created, in any man who has done any kind of work in the world of men's ministry or men's organizations, probably familiar with John Eldridge and the seminal book, Wild at Heart. Eldridge though, has that this well-known quote, "Deep in his heart, every man longs for a battle of fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue." So let's talk about that first point, that deep longing that every man has. Why do you think it is that men are wired to be drawn to a battle and how have you kinda seen that played out in your life or in the lives of other young men that you've invested in over the years?
Chris Rondeau: Well it's, I can almost go way back to a study that I did many, many years ago. It was Kyle Idleman and the name of the book was called Not a Fan. And too many men are on the sidelines watching other people set records, do cool things, jump out of helicopters, jump out of airplanes, take on battles, and they just say, wow, my life is missing 'cause I don't do that. And, but if you look around you as a Christ follower, there is a battle around us that we need to be in. And we have a deep purpose, you know, Ephesians 2:10 talks about, we are all created by God through Christ to do things that he has ordained for us to do. We have breath and a heartbeat because God has a plan. And some of us want it to hit us in the forehead like a two by four. But I think more than anything, we need to just to go out and jump in and try different things to find that heart's passion. And one of the Bible verses that really hit me hard early in my walk was Psalm 37:4, which is, "If you delight yourself in me, I'll give you the desires of your heart." He will put the desire to want to be in spiritual battle, to help other people, to care for those that are less fortunate. And one of the biggest thing, you know, my clients are the local church, but into the lowest common denominator though is the man. The man in the church, because they are to be the leaders of the home, the family - the prophet, priest and king for themselves and those around them. And I'd like to share a quote with you from our book, The No Man Left Behind, which is how we help churches build this process. And I think it will explain this desire of the heart. It says, "Too often men go to church without any real sense of purpose. They participate in activities because they're supposed to, or because someone asks them to, but they don't really know why they are involved. Most of them have never been given a compelling reason why the church should be a priority in their lives. They have never heard in a language that they can relate to that joining Christ and transforming the world is the adventure that their hearts have always longed for." Instead of saying, you know, a lot of people will say, well, I waste two hours on Sunday. I go to church, I serve a little bit, I give a little bit of money. If you read the stories in scripture, it is an adventure. It's a mission. There's combat, there's battle. Gee, dare to say, there's opposition, right? There's plenty of opposition. There's plenty of battles to take at hand. And we just need to be, you know, if you try to define what a disciple is, a disciple is somebody who's willing to take a risk for Christ, in his own identity and his own belonging. You're somebody who can lend a shoulder for someone to cry on. Or better yet, you can find a shoulder for someone to lift you up when you're taken out at the knees, whether it be financially, relationally, professionally, all the things that we got going on. But on top of that, we wanna know why. We wanna know why we should do this, or what's in it for us. And I would say that's the truth of the Gospel. 'Cause God said it, I believe it. Let's go do it. Get in the scriptures, find out what he wants, and speak the truth to one another. But I just think we need to get that, that desire in our heart to know that we have a purpose and a mission, and that we are in an exciting environment as a Christ follower.
Jon Beazley: I really love that. I love the sense of adventure because we live in such a culture that's very cynical and a lot of churches have become cynical of like, man, look how dark everything is. And certainly we live in dark times and confusing times for sure. But I love how what you're saying seems to be really focused on, we have our, the message of the Gospel through and through is about hope in Jesus. And we have something to say. We have something to give that actually could bring healing to our, to the people around us. And so I really love the sense of hopeful, brave adventure that you're trying to call people to. Matter of fact, it reminds me of the passage in 2 Peter where, Peter's talking about, be diligent to add to your faith. And the first thing that he mentions is add to your faith, virtue. And that word virtue is 'arete', is the Greek word for it. And arete has to do with excellence. But the way the Greeks would define excellent is that whatever the, whether it's a person or an item, it's only excellent if it's actually performing its purpose. So an excellent set of like, knives are only excellent if they cut. If they don't cut, they're not arete, they're not excellent. If a boat doesn't float, doesn't do its job, it's not arete. It's not an arete boat. And so add to your faith, arete, is this idea of really, I think coming down to like, Hey, am I actually fulfilling my purpose I'm a blood bought child of God, but now I need to add to my faith everything that you were just saying. Just finding that God-given purpose. And in 1 Peter, he says that we're really called to show forth the praise of him. He's called us out darkness into his marvelous light. So I think there's a kind of a neat connection there, but that's what initially hit my mind. Warren, I don't know if you have anything thoughts that came to your mind when he was talking about this hoped-filled adventure.
Warren Mainard: Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, most of the men that I talked to who have decided that they're done with church, that church is not, you know, something that is a priority for them or an interest to them anymore. It's basically because they said, they've said, number one, I don't really understand what it's all about. Like it's not, I don't feel like I'm moving anything forward in my life by going. And number two, it doesn't seem to be addressing the issues that I'm facing every day in my day-to-day life. It doesn't seem to be helping me to be a better husband, a better father, better leader. It doesn't seem to be helping me navigate difficult decisions or stress in my workplace. Those kind of things. And I think, like you were saying, Chris, is that where we failed, where the church has failed, is to help men to see that the battle that is raging on inside of them and around them is a spiritual battle. And that the church is a place for men to be equipped, to be trained, to be mobilized, to be able to engage in the battle effectively, to lead their families, to lead themselves, to lead their businesses in a way that does move the kingdom forward and moves themselves and their families forward. So I, I'd love to just kind of hear some of your thoughts about that, Chris, on how do we help men, number one, to connect the dots, to see that there is a battle going on around them. And to see how that, that spiritual battle really does relate to the things that they're facing in the day-to-day, that they're working on. So how do they connect the dot there? And then also how do they connect the dots to see how growing in their spiritual walk is absolutely essential if they're gonna have any hope of succeeding in winning some of those battles?
Chris Rondeau: Wow. That's a lot of, that's a lot of questions. Yeah, and I think, you know, one thing is men wanna, they wanna belong to something that they wanna show that they're made for a purpose and be a part of something.
Warren Mainard: Yeah.
Chris Rondeau: And that their input and their service is value added. And a lot of the experience I've seen, a lot of, some environments that are created are, well, here's our church model. Do these eight, eight or 10 classes, and you'll become a disciple. But none of them are relevant to your issues. It's just jump on our freight train and follow our one size fits all process. Men want to be known and they want to be relevant in some way. And I think that boils down to genuine relationships. We've looked at our model over the years and, and we've shifted a little bit of our mission over time, but, you know, Patrick Morley, when he started the ministry wrote the book, The Man the Mirror, and he was talking about the rat race. You know, 35 years ago, men were trying to keep up with the Joneses, get the bigger house, get the bigger boat, the better vacation, the fancier car, and they're working 70 hours a week. The phrase I like from the book, I think I have most of it in my head, but it says, "We work long hours to make a lot of money to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like."
Warren Mainard: Yeah.
Chris Rondeau: That was what was collapsing us as men. We were trying to measure up to a status. And I think the shift has come to, okay, a lot of us Gen Xers stop going to church. And we drive right by them. And a lot of the young are going, what is this church we keep driving by? What's in it? Why do people go there? What's in it for me? But they also want to have genuine relationships. Those are missing. And again, I'll beat the drum. I mean, I love technology, but the technology has also ruined personal, intimate relationships. So they know, they want, young people want spirituality. They just don't want some of the process, the procedure, the legalism, the materialism, the commodification of faith. They want relationships to say, oh, why should I get rid of this in my life? And what's the value for me? But more than anything, I believe, you know, it says in 2 Timothy 3:15-17, in summary, we are all called, equipped, and God has a mission for each of us. And once we go find that, yeah, it may be a church of 5,000 people that you don't know, but if you can stay in a foxhole of five to 10 guys that you know, and you share the same hobbies and skills and interests, but you also share the same beliefs, then you find your significance, or people can help you find your purpose in God's kingdom. And then we can just become aware of what's around us. And I think a lot of people don't realize that, or let me say this, we take the feel good Bible verses and let's apply those to your life. Oh, I'm a Christian because I accepted Christ, so my life's gonna be wonderful 'cause God's in control. Well, as we all know the story, how the story goes, Jesus was killed by the church for his faith in what he was doing. Is that not an adventure of speaking truth at the risk of losing your life in the process?
Warren Mainard: Yeah.
Chris Rondeau: So, we need to be aware of what's around us that, you know, there is a devil. There is a force trying to take the church down. There is the rat race. There is the dilution of the perversion of what we may see as common. One of the things I always like to share, I mean, it's kind of the proverbial flaw that most of us men have. And that's lust of the eyes and lust of the flesh. And it's not that the devil hates sex. He doesn't hate it. He actually likes it, but he wants to corrupt it.
Warren Mainard: Right.
Chris Rondeau: To keep the Christian man from reproducing more Christians to growing a godly family. So he'll corrupt it. So the normal male female relationship has now gone down the other 56 or whatever, how many genders people say there are in the world today. It's been totally corrupted to say it. And, it's now been, dare to say, left invaluable in many ways.
Jon Beazley: So how do we move, like, so we have this on one side, the presence of a lot of technology, the rise of AI, more connectivity, but yet more isolation more than ever. And we're trying, you mentioned that a lot of, like millennials, generation Z really crave, connection. Which actually, one of the things that I'm seeing in just media generally, there's a lot of play on nostalgia. And the play on nostalgia goes back to this slower time, you know, time where it was more quiet, more peaceful, less technology. There's a lot of play on that, which is probably playing on most people's intuitions of a fear of what the future holds with this AI craze. What is that gonna look like? As well as just the inner intuition for, man, I miss the days where we were really connected. Whether that was a religious context or not. So how do we cultivate men to break from, you gave an old picture of the rat race, there's probably a maturing of that, but some of those same desires and lusts would be the same today, right? How do we help men go from being so occupied with that, to getting a vision for what you're talking about? Like, what are some actionable steps maybe a church could do, or how a man could think about this type of thing? Does that make sense? Do you get my question?
Chris Rondeau: I think so, yeah. Is, you know, it was funny when I hopped on the call with Warren, I said, oh, I said, nice to meet you, pleasure to meet you. And we had a virtual handshake, and I said, you're still in two dimensions. And I hope when you move to South Carolina, you're only three short hours away from me, that we'll share a cup of coffee together. And to say, to get back to the bare bones basics, when you're giving up an hour, hour and a half to drive to a meeting, to talk to somebody for 45 minutes and drive back home, that's a valued investment of time, of effort. And the physicality of meeting together, just the tone of hearing someone else's voice vibrate you when they talk to you. That provides more fulfillment than just a two dimensional screen does. You don't hear that vibration. I can't fist bump you. I can't shoulder hug you, I can't jab you in the ribs, you know, or whatever. I, we need that tactile, connection as men.
Jon Beazley: I was with you until that last one. That jabbing.
Chris Rondeau: I didn't say tickle. I did not say tickle. I said a jab under it.
Jon Beazley: Gotcha.
Chris Rondeau: But I think it's getting back to the basics. It really is. And I will say, I'm anti-trend right now, I guess you'd call it. But I actually finally took the step of faith and left, most social media channels back in January. And it's allowed me more time to pick up a book and be tactile with the book. I'm meeting more face to face. I actually saw something the other day that showed where, right now, only about 5% of the population actually prefers digital church over physical church attendance. So to say, we're over the covid separation, yeah. The digital media helped people stay connected. The media of the world help the church grow in leaps and bounds, and get exposure out there. People use recorded messages and preaching as litmus test and window shopping. But the numbers show that 95% of the people want the tactile, the closeness, the physicalness, the group environment, you know, to touch, feel, shake, to bond with guys. And yeah, going back to Eldridge's quote with Wild at Heart, we need that adventure still. And if you can get, you know, I see a lot of churches turning to fire pit ministries where they build a fire pit, have a little bit of red meat, sit around a fire, and men just won't stop talking.
Warren Mainard: Yep.
Chris Rondeau: But if you put 'em in a room behind a desk with a notebook and sitting in pews, it's not conducive to, you know, a testosterone push. But to sit around a fire with 20 guys share truth, weep a little bit, and then you got two or three conversations going on on different corners of the firebox. And that's kind of a reality experience.
Warren Mainard: Yeah. I'm a huge fan of that. And, you know, to me, what I love about what you're talking about is that like, there's a spiritual realm that feels ethereal and feels non-material. And yet the way that we cultivate strength for that spiritual realm is when we interact with our brothers in an incarnation way in the flesh.
Chris Rondeau: Yeah.
Warren Mainard: And that's, I think there's a powerful lesson in that in, you know, the incarnation of Christ, that Jesus could have found a way to maybe send himself digitally, but instead he sent himself incarnationally. He lived with a band of brothers. He lived among us. And even like, within the IMPACT Player structure, although we do have opportunities for people to engage online and digitally, at the very heart of it is men getting together in person. The IMPACT breakfast that we do is anywhere from 30 men to 150, 200 men coming together, eating food, eating bacon and great breakfast, hugging each other, high fiving each other, you know, interacting face to face, giving each other that, that physical, presence. A lot of times we have a fire or we have some sort of gathering center that the men are drawn to. And I think that you're right, Chris, that there's something about creating an environment where men can experience that, that it just, it opens up men to share what's going on inside of them spiritually because they've created that, that common ground that they're actually experiencing physically.
Chris Rondeau: Yeah.
Warren Mainard: And I think, you know, when we talk about this idea of helping men find the right weapons for the real war that they're facing, there are the, there're well-known spiritual weapons of war, but how is men getting together, kind of having those fire pit moments or those times of sharing, how does that, that process of men coming together and sharing life, sharing struggles and sharing God's truth with one another, how does that really help men to feel like they're better prepared to fight the battles that they face every day?
Chris Rondeau: Well, when you're in the midst of a battle, spiritual, emotional or whatever, there's two things that we can do. One, we can typically, we can fight it or we can run away from it. That's the fight or flight mentality. And the second one would be the freeze mentality, which is you stand still and do nothing. And both in nature are probably not the best to have, you know, as we've always heard, take a step back, count to 10, and then make your decision. I think that's the best way to do it. But I think when we get attacked or we're in battle, or life gets hard, what's the easy thing to do? To isolate, right?
Warren Mainard: Yeah.
Chris Rondeau: Step back, try to do it alone. I can't handle this. I don't want anybody to see me, that I'm weak. I mean, we all look at, who was it, Elijah, Mount Carmel, you know, biggest battle in the world, and what did he do the next day? Jezebel threatened him, and he went and hid in a cave. That's what we do. And I think, to answer your question, that the hard thing is to take a step forward and find other people that are dealing with the same thing that you're dealing with or something in similar nature. I've got a close friend, and he called me up on the phone one day and said, hey, man. He was in some Bible studies that I had for several years. He moved away. He lives about an about 45 minutes away. And then he called me up one day and said, hey, or he sent me a text: hey, we need to get together. I did a bad thing. I said, what happened? He said, well, I had an affair on my wife. And I'm like, okay, let's meet tomorrow. So we met for coffee. And then that next morning as we met, and this was my first time seeing him in almost two years, and I said, what's going on? And he said, well, throughout the conversation he had shared, he had three or four different, affairs on his wife in recent days. And I said, okay. I said, what is one thing you would've done differently in the last two years to prevent this from happening? He said, I would've answered one of your six text messages to get together for a cup of coffee. So he withdrew, isolated, alienated. I don't wanna talk about it. So, through our church, they have a great process, a great program. It's a 12 step process. It's called Regeneration Recovery. It's very similar to a C12 type process. They're based out of a church in Dallas, Texas. So I said, you need to go there and you need to get a professional counselor. I can guide you as a brother as an encourager, but this is beyond my scope of training. So let's go talk to these people. And when he walked into the first Regen class, he had eight other men in a circle in his small group, and he was ready to throw up and die. I mean, it was that bad. He was so nervous and scared. But come to find out, three of the other guys had also had the same, shortfall as he did. There were several there with addiction issues and unemployment issues, same sex attraction issues, adultery issues. And he realized, I'm not alone. And I think that's a thing of man, is we need to realize we're not alone, and that's what will separate us. So it is getting together again, as we shared earlier, being aware of the battle that's out there. And, you know, I always like that, you've probably heard this from other people, but the acrostic or acronym HALT, H-A-L-T. When you're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, that's where you're most susceptible to falling to something. You need, you're gonna overeat, you're gonna be angry, you're gonna hit something, you're gonna steal or break something. And when you're lonely, you're gonna hit the internet. And when you're tired, you're gonna hit a bottle and go to sleep. Those are the methods. So are you aware of the triggers that are out there and find other people that have those triggers. Not that I have them, but this friend of mine, whenever he feels the temptation and recognizes what's coming at him, guess who he calls or texts on his phone? Me, I'm his first point of entry or exit from that situation to encourage him, to build him up, to show him what the, where the exit door is and how to avoid that. So if you think you're not gonna be tempted, you're a fool. I hate to say that, but you will. James said it in James 1 you know, if you love Christ, people are gonna hate you just as they hated him. We're gonna go through these trials. We gotta figure a way out of 'em. And how do we fight back? And you talked about the typical, the armor, the belt of truth, the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the sword of the spirit, you know, the feet of peace. These, these are the things that we've heard, but do you know what they are? Do you know what, how do you use them? Do you know how to sharpen them? How do you defend yourself? You know, how do you gain that salvation? And how do you learn the truth? And honestly, it's a simple thing by reading the word of God and spending time with other men asking how they sharpened it, but asking God, what does this mean to me? What does this mean to me? I mean, years ago when I was, I had one foot in the church leading men's groups for prideful reasons and I had another foot still in the world holding onto desires of the flesh. And this one friend said, I'm gonna walk you through 28 days of truth. And we read one chapter a day at 5:00 AM and we texted each other. What did this verse say to you? What did this chapter say to you? And what one verse are you gonna apply your life that day? And we did it for 28 days. All we did was walk through the book of Acts, not to undersell it, but when you dissect it one chapter at a time, take it down to one verse and say, okay, God, I see what these guys did, but what does the spirit say to me? Help me find that Ephesians 2:10 - my purpose, my mission. What can God say to me through these 10 verses and this one takeaway? And that's what really showed me, you know, how God can use my brokenness in other people's lives, and that I'm not alone, and that I'm on a journey, a journey moving forward, and to share that journey.
Jon Beazley: Yes. So, if I had to bring it down, I wanna get to Ephesians 6 'cause you mentioned that.
Chris Rondeau: Yeah, yeah.
Jon Beazley: If I could bring it down, tell me if you feel like this is a good summary. So you have, you talked about like being connected, like, hey, drive whatever you need to an hour, hour and a half, meet with somebody for 45 minutes. You talked about that bonfire concept. Just fight for that real connection. And then you talked about the, basically the accountability that kind of stemmed from that. And when men would go through a struggle, they pull back instead of leaning in to the community and finding the encouragement, but also the accountability. Then that it seems like you ended with like a consistent diet of scripture. So it's like connection, like this accountability encouragement, not drawing back, and then that constant diet, if you would, of God's word being almost like that nutrition that we get every single day. Is that a good summary of kind of how you're thinking about this?
Chris Rondeau: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, one of the things that we've, I've learned through, Pat Morley is he's mentions that a Bible, a small group, and serving someone else will solve 90% of your problems.
Jon Beazley: Yeah.
Chris Rondeau: If you're digging into the truth, you're helping understand that truth, but you're also living it out. We call it head, heart, and hands. We have knowledge, we have emotion, and we have tactile touch and action.
Jon Beazley: Yes.
Chris Rondeau: We have to have all three of those. And I lost my train of thought.
Jon Beazley: I love the beauty of the simplicity of that. You know, just like this is simple, which a lot of times things can get so super complex. People make things so complex. And then no one ends up kind of jumping at it 'cause they're like, well, that sounds good, but I don't know where to start. That's really, really simple, actionable steps. So I love that. Ephesians 6, Warren, you might want to jump in here. I was just gonna ask, 'cause we were talking about spiritual warfare and, one of the foundational passages for like, hey, we're not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, spiritual darkness, so on and so forth. And, but then passage in Ephesians says, in order to withstand, you know, the devil in these forces put on the armor of God. So this sounds like a really important passage. It's like, I need to put on the armor of God. And you mentioned some of 'em, the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, helmet of salvation, feet. I'm using the old King James here, shod with the preparation once a peace, you know and then you do have like the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Like, can you help us, maybe in a very succinct way, make sense of these almost analogies? Like, what is the belt of truth? What is the breastplate of righteousness and so forth?
Warren Mainard: Yeah. And before you do that, let me just kind of jump in real quick to say, this is a great little plug for me to say. We have an amazing study through IMPACT Players called Battlegrounds, in which men learn, number one, that the fight is a spiritual fight. They learn to fight the right fight. Number two, they learned the weapons of war, AKA the spiritual armor. We talk about that for a couple weeks. And then we talk about the four battlegrounds: heart, soul, mind, and body. So, Chris, maybe just to kind of tweak that question a little bit, I'd love to get a little bit more personal if you're okay with that.
Chris Rondeau: Sure.
Warren Mainard: And I would love to ask you, how do you personally employ the weapons of warfare in spiritual battles? As you maybe go through your day, go through your week, when you face temptation, when you find yourself in that HALT position of hungry, what is it? Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Like if a guy's listening to this, what does Chris Rondeau do when he is engaged in that battle?
Chris Rondeau: I've shared some of it, but, every day. And what I wasn't doing 12 years ago when I was trying to be in ministry, is I wasn't in the scripture every day for myself personally. And I, I've seen pastors fall this way over and over again, is they say, oh, well, I'm in the Bible every day. You're in the Bible professionally every day. You're preparing a message to carry out to your people on Sunday. So are you in it personally for you as a person? Now, you can read the same verse every day for seven days in a row. You're in God's word. You're asking him to figure out or to tell you, what you need to do and how you need to apply that Bible. That Bible verse, this weird, I don't wanna make it sound, too pompous or headstrong, but I don't have a list of Bible verses sitting over here next to my lamp on my desk to say, I'm gonna memorize these verses. But the Bible verses that I have memorized are the ones that I have actually read, learned, asked God how it changes my life. And when it does change my life, I then tend to know what that Bible verse is. So when I, when it, when I get in that situation, it'll be recalled to me. It'll come up to me. I always like to go back to The Book of Eli. You've seen that movie? Denzel Washington, fantastic book where he knew the word inside and out. And if you learn it, your heart changes. But you will always recall those verses. So again, if you're not in the word every day, you're not gonna learn it. And if you can't learn it, it won't change your heart or your chart, your heart's desires. And that's Romans 12:1-2, "Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." You know, delight yourself. And then back into the Psalms again, "Delight yourself in me. I'll give you the desires of your heart." I will, he will transform our heart to do that. My favorite one, favorite verse that really hits me hard is the "Resist devil and he will flee from you, draw near to me, and I will come near to you." And the great picture with those words is, if you resist the devil, he will flee. The word flee means run as fast as you can. It doesn't mean saunter. It doesn't mean tiptoe. It doesn't mean walk away slowly. It means run. So if you draw near to God, the devil will flee in the other direction and run away from you, because dark and light cannot exist together. So I just, I just love that picture on how, okay, you know, another, one of my words that kind of goes with this, this, mindset that I've got going on is audacious. Oh God, I wanna follow you. Oh, I want to be blessed. Oh, I want to be a good Christian. And it's like, okay, well, are you willing to get rid of Netflix? Are you willing to get rid of Facebook? Are you willing to give God 10% or more of your first fruits? What are these bold moves? I mean, who was it that, who was it that that asked God that, to keep that, to have the sun stand still? Who was that? Joshua. Joshua asked God just to keep the sun from going down, because we're losing the battle when the sun goes down. So God kept the sun up another day. Are we asking for bold prayers like that in our lives for God to move and use us in that way? And we need to.
Warren Mainard: Yeah.
Chris Rondeau: We need to be dependent on it and know that he'll do it.
Warren Mainard: I think you're right. And I think again, you know, it's like we as men, we long to be doing something with meaning and purpose. And that requires challenge and sacrifice. It requires us to overcome adversity. And so we can't have it both ways, right? We can't have a Christian faith that is full of adventure and battle and challenge and victory if we're not willing to, you know, take on some danger, if we're not willing to make sacrifices, if we're not willing to be bold and courageous and strong and convictional in the way that we live our lives. And I love what you're saying, because men need to be challenged like that. They need to say, if your left eye is causing you to sin, gouge it out. If your, if your hand is causing you to sin, cut it off like extreme. You know, challenges call for extreme measures. And that's part of what it means to be a man, not only for yourself, but for your family to be the one to say, hey, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. We're going to do these hard things because we want to be men of integrity. We wanna be families of integrity. I wanna protect my children. and I'm willing to take on the cost of that. So I wanna wrap up our time together. Let's kind of conclude with some final thoughts, and then let us know how we can continue to follow what you're doing, Chris, with Man in the Mirror.
Chris Rondeau: Sure. Well, one of the closing thoughts I wanna share is we don't typically tend to remember the mundane drive to the office, or the trip to the mall, or the trip to get ice cream for the 35th time with your kids. we want that adventure or that thing that's gonna make us feel proud, make us feel honorable, make us feel that life is just different, or not that we're better, but it's a memorable thing. And you did something, or you took a step of faith, or you did something that was different than what most people did. You know, people will call me crazy, but after building helicopter engines and jet engines for commercial airlines, I had a goal and a dream. I said, you know what Jumping out of a helicopter, jumping out of an airplane looks pretty cool. And everyone's like, why did you do that? I mean, you, I said, it's because they have parachutes and I wanted to use it. It's like, why did you do that? I'm like, because I had never done it before. Not a lot of people have done it. I mean, per se, with the, when you look at the population of the world. But I can go back to look at that, and I can put myself right back in that situation. Every time I think about it and feel the pride, the honor, the invincibility of that, of jumping out of a plane at 14,000 feet, free falling for a minute, and then soaring like an eagle for seven minutes and landing on the ground. It's exciting. It really is. I ran into a gentleman yesterday at Lowe's. Now I, like I said, I worked in the industry for almost 30 years, 2019 my company closed. I went full-time with Man in the Mirror in January of 2020, eight weeks before the world shut down. Okay, God, I'm taking a step of faith, and now you're shutting the world down. And I'm a face-to-face kind of guy. And now I'm locked in my house. What am I gonna do? But it's, it's interesting because most everyone else was like, hey, are you gonna stay with this company? Are you gonna go to Arizona? Are you gonna do this? Are you gonna be an engineer? And I'm like, no, I'm going into full-time ministry. And they're like, what? Why? Why would you do that? I'm like, I don't know. But God called me to do that. So it gave me more opportunities to share what God was doing in my life and how more people should trust him in that manner. So yesterday I saw a gentleman over at Lowe's, and he recognized me, but he forgot my name. I finally recognized him. So I hadn't seen him in 10 years, but he used to work at that same company. And he said, hey, man, I heard you went into ministry. And I said, I did. He says, well, what are you doing? And I said, I'm helping churches to reach out to more men to help them grow and become bolder in their faith. He's like, man, that is so cool. That is exciting. Let's get a cup of coffee. I'd like to hear more about how you did that. Is that not any different than jumping out of a helicopter, jumping out of an airplane? I keep saying helicopter. Is that any different than jumping out of an airplane? It's because I think people, like we talked early on, they wanna see that being a part of a church, of a faith walk, it is exciting. They want to see that there's more to faith than just writing a check, sitting there for an hour and a half, going through the motions and doing it again next Sunday. You know, you kind of hit upon it, Warren, is I like Sunday, it's a time to rebuild, rejuvenate, reenergize. But I look at it a little bit from the opposite side. We now have been out in the world for six days. Let's go back and show God what he's done and celebrate what he's done the previous six. Let's get geared up and ready to see what's he gonna do for the next six days. How can I be fired up and motivated to get back out there and move forward? Yeah, I know the world's against me. How can I be bolder this week? How can I help a need needy or a homeless person? How can I help somebody who needs help? How can I go coach or mentor somebody younger than me? Look at that as a mission gathering meeting, and you go do it for six days and now you report back to God. I think that changes the purpose of why you're there is to, you can praise him for what he is done in the previous six days. It's pretty cool. So to say that, you know, what I'll say is I have a real simple website. It's just maninthemirror.org/ChrisRondeau. My email's there, you can contact me through that location. You know, our parent website is maninthemirror.org. We have tools for individual study, much like you do, and small group, studies for men to connect, to get together and really just start dissecting life. And, you know, much like this guy said, I want to hear more about your faith walk and how you stepped into ministry. A lot of people will ask me, how was that parachute jump? What was it like? How did you feel? Whatever, what's, if someone said, hey, I heard you went into the low end of town and fed the homeless for a Saturday. Tell me more about that. What's that like? Because some people have never done it. And I say that's the adventure of being involved and getting that, being more excited about your faith and doing crazy things for God. So we're here to help the church get to know their men. And I'll, not a plug, but I'll just say there are five types of men in the church. Natural men who have not accepted Christ. Cultural men, biblical Christians, disciple makers, and hurting or struggling men. Those are the behaviors and lifestyles of men that are in a church setting, even in your small group settings. And we want to see each men be ministered to, and they all need something different at the stages that they're in. So once you realize where your men are, you can better minister to those. And that's what I love about what I do, what God's called me to do. And, you know, we talked a little bit earlier on about the whole generational thing. We need the men who are 40 and above to be willing to share those stories, what they've gone through with the men under 40. They want to see that faith lived out can be exciting. And how do I avoid these problems? A lot of men look at it and say, I don't want to be, I'm not a seminary grad, so I can't, I have, I don't have anything to contribute. Well, show me somebody in scripture who was. Not very many were. So you have a story to tell and you can tell it to other people. First Peter 3:15, "Always be prepared to give a testimony, a testament to what you believe, and do it with gentleness and respect." Be willing to share your faith, use your story and give it to other people. I think that's very simple to come down to that concept. But to go back one more question. Yes, I'm in the word every day, but I have two different men's groups that I meet with on a weekly basis. And these are the guys that I don't mind them, through a covenantal relationship of putting their finger in my chest or grabbing me by the collar and saying, dude, what's up with you? Why did you say that? Hey, I didn't like the way you put me down like that. Where's your walk? Have you taken your wife out? You know, hey, you mentioned something about your kid. I wouldn't have done it that way. Why did you do it that way? I don't mind being called out like that. And I think we need to put the pride to the side and do that and make that happen with other guys
Warren Mainard: Thank you, Chris. Jon, any final thoughts?
Jon Beazley: No, I just wanna say thank you for sharing your life. Life story's been a huge encouragement, like a good reminder of just staying connected. But also, I liked what you said about the five different kinds of men and yeah, maybe even kind of thinking about like, how do we, how can we pinpoint each of these men and encourage them in their, along their journey. But no, this was really good. Thank you for sharing your life.
Chris Rondeau: Yeah. You can't give a man what he needs if you don't know what he wants.
Warren Mainard: Good.
Chris Rondeau: So once you get to know him, ask questions, have a cup of coffee, spend time, you can then say, hey, you know, my purpose as a Christ follower is not to lift myself up. It's to help another guy. How do I get to know Warren and help Warren to walk closer to Christ? How do I get to know what Jon's needs are so I can help him walk closer to Christ on any given day? I think that's the purpose of a Christian man, is to serve others around him and help them not really lift yourself up. And again, you can't give them what they need if you don't know what they want.
Jon Beazley: Yeah.
Warren Mainard: Thank you. Thank you, Chris. And to go from building helicopters and airplane engines to building men and men's ministry is a risk just like jumping out of a helicopter. And I just wanna say, as a final thought to our men, to our IMPACT Players, if you are practicing a faith that doesn't cause your heart to race, you're not being an IMPACT Player. If you're practicing a faith that doesn't cause you to sweat, you're not being an IMPACT Player. If you're practicing a faith that doesn't put calluses on your hands, you are not an IMPACT Player. And if you are practicing a faith that does not require sacrifice, then you are not an IMPACT Player. So guys, let's get out there. Let's get our hands dirty, let's break a sweat. Let's risk a little bit and let's sacrifice for the kingdom of God because it is worth it. And it is what living is really all about. Thank you guys for being on this podcast. We look forward to seeing you again for our next episode of the Linking Shields podcast. But for now, for Jon and for Chris, I say thank you and we will see you guys next time.
