Men’s Study


Squires to Knights Study Guide

A five week study of Squires to Knights - Mentoring Our Teenage Boys

This Study Guide will take you through the book Squires to Knights, guiding you through five group discussions with an optional sixth planning meeting. During these discussions you and the others will gain a better understanding of the information, inspiration and instructions found in Squires to Knights. You will hear ideas and experiences that will enhance your vision for mentoring our teenage boys. And you will have the opportunity to share your ideas and experiences with the group.

Read Squires to Knights - Mentoring Our Teenage Boys before or simultaneous to these discussion meetings. The discussion leader will read through the guide and ask the questions. Each group member should contribute the the Q & A and discussions, while the discussion leader will use the Discussion Leader’s Guide to help keep the discussion going.

We must alter the current path of family breakdown, community disconnectedness, national crisis, and faith erosion. Tomorrow’s knights are the future leaders of the family, church, community and nation. Their hope lies in a “few good men” who will raise them up; raise up a generation of men who will serve, lead and love as God purposed.

Be their hope!

Going International

Squires2Knights is going international.

I’ve been asked to share the S2K Vision at a Bible seminary in Moldova. Pull out your maps, go east from Europe, across Hungary and Romania. It’s a small country - a former Soviet State - a little north west of the Black Sea.

As I am always excited when I get to talk about mentoring our teenage boys, what I am most excited about is the opportunity to film a video lesson for Manhood 201. The Moldova Bible Seminary teaches all its classes in English. And while Russian is the primary language in Moldova, everybody at the school speaks English. So in return for teaching at the school, I requested for a few men to plan a lesson to be included in the next course in the Squires2Knights Manhood Curriculum.

We make a concerted effort to change things up in this video curriculum. We want variety and diversity. So the setting for this lesson will be an historic location in Moldova with teachers speaking with strong Russian accents. I can’t wait!

Mentoring in a Group Setting

I just had a conversation with Juergen Kneifel, a board member of the Christian Association of Youth Mentoring (CAYM.org). Among other things, we talked about one-on-one mentoring vs. small group mentoring. He specifically liked the association of mentorship within organizations like the Boys Scouts and the Royal Rangers or as part of school programs.

Here are a few points to be made with regard to mentorship:

Over half of today’s boys will not have their biological father living at home by the time they go out on their own after high school graduation. This brings about a significant void in the lives of these young men. Without the mentorship of a father-figure, these fatherless boys will miss that important relationship with a man. Many of our boys are not becoming authentic men as a result.

One-on-one mentoring can offer the best hope of filling that void. There are men who are called into this kind of commitment. They offer these young men the hope they need as they learn authentic manhood from their mentor.

Some changes in our culture, however, have caused these one-on-one relationships to have some unique challenges today. Because of criminal acts by some mentors in the past, and in some cases, the mentees, background checks are now required. Time spent together must occur in public places. Other trusted adults must often observe or participate as a witness to avoid inappropriate acts and false accusations. One-on-one mentoring, with these new challenges, has become difficult to accomplish.

Here’s the beauty of small group mentoring:

Some of these challenges are solved within the design of a group program. While background checks are still helpful, the inappropriate acts and false accusations can be avoided, if not stopped all together, by having the mentorship relationships occur in a small group setting.

Whether it’s in the Boy Scout program, Royal Rangers, team sports, church youth group or after-school programs, or a dedicated mentoring group, these important mentorship relationships can still be accomplished. But there is an added benefit of accountability as well as the advantages of group activities and discussions. In addition, fathers can participate with their own sons as they develop mentorship relationships with the fatherless boys within their circle of influence.

Take a look at the Vision-Mission-Method statements for Squires2Knights Ministries. See how we are offering ideas and resources to solve these challenges and maximize mentorship results for the next generation of men.

Tony Dungy in Quiet Strength - The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life

Colts win Super Bowl XLI

Tony Dungy became the first black head coach to win the Super Bowl when his Colts defeated the Chicago Bears on February 4, 2007. What makes his story so pertinent to the subject of mentoring our boys is the character and faith of this man. Coach Dungy is well know for his faith in Christ and his proper priorities in life - in spite of his affiliation with professional football.

Coach Dungy offers a great story for our young male athletes. In his book Quiet Strength, he tells the story of his life, his success, and his faith. It would be a great read for a young athlete who is growing and maturing in his athletic endeavors as well as his Christian manhood.

Coach Dungy shares this:

“The competing views of success in our world often create an interesting tension. Society tends to define success in terms of accomplishments and awards, material possessions, and profit margins. In the football business, winning is the only thing that matters.

God’s Word, however, presents a different definition of success - one centered on a relationship with Jesus Christ and a love for God that allows us to love and serve others. God gives each one of us unique gifts, abilities, and passions. How well we use those qualities to have an impact on the world around us determines how “successful” we really are.

If we get caught up in chasing what the world defines as success, we can use our time and talent to do some great things. We might even become famous. But in the end, what will it mean?

What will people remember us for? Are other people’s lives better because we lived? Did we make a difference? Did we use to the fullest the gifts and abilities God gave us? Did we give our best effort, and did we do it for the right reasons?

God’s definition of success is really one of significance - the significant difference our lives can make in the lives of others. This significance doesn’t show up in win-loss records, long resumes, or the trophies gathering dust on the mantels. It’s found in the hearts and lives of those we’ve come across who are in some way better because of the way we lived.”

From Quiet Strength - The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life, 2007, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Squires2Knights Ministries

Squires2Knights Ministries encourages these same attributes for male teenage athletes. Our resources teach principles, practices and priorities for Christ-centered manhood. For more, go to http://boysyouthsports.com/index.html

Mentoring Financial Responsibilies

While money is not inherently bad, the love of money is evil (1 Timothy 6:10). And when it comes to financial indebtedness, the borrower is a servant to the lender (Proverbs 22:7). Now in light of today’s national financial crisis, I can’t help but bring the issue into the topic of mentoring boys into manhood.

Squires2Knights Ministries

The Knighthood Verses offered by Squires2Knights Ministries (S2K) teach from twelve principles about God’s design for men. Among them are “wisdom,” “Be on Your Guard” and “Act Like Men” (from which we teach the responsibility of servant leadership and provision). Had today’s men been taught to be wise with money, to guard against materialism and excessive debt and to responsibly provide for the family, community and nation, our country would not be in the financial crisis we are faced with today.

Financial Responsibility

With the principles taught by S2K, men would not take their families into the mortgage debts that have causes the crash in the housing market and the mortgage banking industry. Men would not allow the companies they run to take the financial risk or to make the poor financial decisions we’ve witnessed of late. And finally, men would not allow the political direction we see with the government welfare and entitlement programs that are rewarding families and companies for the poor financial choices they’ve made.

Equip Mentors

As I have articulated so often, most of our social problems are symptoms of a single problem. For generations now, we haven’t really taught boys how to men. Tomorrow’s hope is in today’s boys. Today’s boys need changed men. They need faithful men. They need men equipped to to model, teach and mentor our boys.

Find our resources for equipping men at www.mentoringourboysbooks.com.

David Robinson the Role Model

From Role Model to Mentor

In my book, Squires to Knights - Mentoring Our Teenage Boys I wrote a chapter titled: From Role Model to Mentor. While role models are great, it’s mentoring that really gets the job done. Role models may never interact with the kids who are watching and learning. Mentoring allows a protege to get inside the mind and heart of his mentor.

David Robinson has gone the extra mile. He is more than just a role model. He’s a mentor. He gets involved with kids beyond the P.R. video clips we see on TV. He founded a school in San Antonio and stays actively involved with the kids. But he also makes clear to the general public why he is who he is.

How to Raise an MVP

From How to Raise an MVP (ZondervanPublishingHouse, 1996)we learn more about this man:

“He is a role model not just because “The Admiral” is basketball’s quickest, most versatile center, but because he neither smokes nor drinks, because he preaches the virtues of church and school and the vice of sex and drugs, because he’s smart and multitalented and the ultimate success story, whether you’re talking backboards, keyboards or college boards.

In an era when so many of us turn to our sports stars only to find them sadly lacking, David Robinson is a true role model.

For all his fame and fortune, David values faith and family ahead of all else.”

David the Christian

And then we hear directly from the Admiral:

“Becoming a Christian has changed by basketball life because it’s given me more of a purpose and determination. When I used to play for myself and my own glory, sometimes it was so much harder to be motivated. Because at what point do you have enough money? At what point do you have enough fame? How do you get over the little aches and pains? How do you find the motivation to get up and work out and push yourself harder and harder and harder? Some people have that drive in them. But I never really had that drive. If I could do things well enough for everybody’s satisfaction, that was enough. Until people pushed me, I never went past that. But God gave me another reason to excel. He gave me something beyond what anyone on Earth has ever given me. God saw in me a perfection, a place to go I could never envision. It was like letting my father down if I didn’t reach for that. I don’t know what my potential is. I don’t know what God has in store for me, but if I don’t go get it, if I don’t push myself toward it, then I have cheated God. There’s no way, when I come before him, that I want him to ask me, “What did you do with what I gave you?” and I have to say, “I buried it in the ground.”
I have an unbelievable responsibility on the basketball floor to honor what God has given me. It’s far more than what I feel toward the fans, and it’s far more than what I feel toward the people who pay me or what I feel even toward my teammates. I have a responsibility to come out here and work, make myself better and better, and not for my glory and honor but for His. So that’s my drive. God doesn’t want wimps. He wants warriors.”

Gotta love it! “God doesn’t want wimps, he wants warriors!”

Squires2Knights Ministries

David Robinson of the San Antonio Spurs

One of the Best Role Models in Professional Sports

I’m currently reading a book titled: How to Raise an MVP, Most Valuable Person (Ambrose and Freda Robinson, Zondervan Publishing House, 1996). It was written by the parents of David Robinson, retired super star of the San Antonio Spurs.

This is how David introduces this book and his parents:

“Families in our society today are faced with a growing number of challenges. Children are pressured daily to try or sell drugs. There is more pressure than ever before to enter into sexual relationships at an earlier age, and they confront crime and violence that are growing at alarming rates. Many parents are too busy living their own lives to make sure their children are living the right lives. Some are more preoccupied with work, hobbies, and self-improvement than with giving their children the quality time they need and deserve.

The family unit is being attached at its very foundation. But without the family, our country has no strength. As the strength of the family grows , so grows the strength of our communities and the strength of our nation. Everything starts in the home. We need to be more concerned parents. Our children need to be more attentive, caring, and disciplined.

My parents laid the foundation. If we ever went astray, they got us back on course. But they were pro-active, as well. Instead of waiting for something to happen, they were active in preventing, directing, and guiding. My dad always had a vision for who he wanted me to be. Parents have to know where they want their kids to go. That doesn’t mean making them into something they’re not, but it does mean giving the kids a direction, a purpose. The parents need a focus in raising their kids.”

I’ll share more from this book later. But I’d like to direct your attention to a webpage that promotes the use of Squires2Knights Ministries resources for youth athletic programs for boys. Check out http://boysyouthsports.com/index.html

Boy Scouts Promote a Selfless, Service Oriented Society

More from Rick Perry’s On My Honor

“A society that puts the rights of individuals above their responsibilities is in danger of creating a generation of children too self-absorbed to contribute to the fabric of community. Scouting resists this temptation - a temptation I believe is as old as original sin in the Garden of Eden, when man began the quest to become his won god instead of settling for the joy and security of submitting to God and living in communion with Him and His creation.”

“Ask just about any parent, and he or she will tell you that, without proper socialization, our children would gravitate toward their own nature, which is to be selfish without regard for anyone else.”

Now there is a view that is, I think, a little too profound for most of our citizens to grab hold of - or, without a faith in Christ, too contradictory to their fleshly human nature. It’s why so many in our country put their hope in a government and a judicial system that will give them anything and everything their heart desires. But they can’t see the paradox of a society of individual rights without the corresponding individual responsibilities to that society. So what has changed in the last 40 years? Governor Perry:

A Community of Shared Values

“It was merely assumed, in a community where parents shared the same interest of raising children to respect authority and live by established values, that other adults exercise their authority in a manner consistent with what was best for the child.”

And now so many parents expect the institutions of public education, athletic programs, or even church to instill character into their children. And when their children exhibit bad traits, they want to blame someone else. And Governor Perry points out:

“This often comes from an unwillingness to set firm rules and enforce guidelines for our children who, I believe, are crying out for established boundaries.”

So where does that leave our teenage young men?

A Support Network of Mentors

“To grow into successful adulthood, young people need a support network. When you consider that not every child is born into the best of circumstances, the greatest hope we have is that society’s institutions such as the education system, athletic organizations, faith-based communities, or mentoring groups will somehow get to those children in a way their parents do not.”

“The ideal remains a situation in which a mother and a father spend time with their children, teaching them a sense of social responsibility and self-worth tied to selfless service. This doesn’t always happen. Some children fall through the gaps. They have no control over the world they are born into or over the values of their parents. For them, there is a need for civic-minded organizations that develop in them a sense of self-worth that they cannot get from home. Nevertheless, I don’t believe a variety of social groups should be able to override the authority of parents.”

“The wholesome activities of the Scouts, backed by sympathetic and caring adults as advisors (scoutmasters or assistant scoutmasters) means that sons of single mothers can find admirable role models as they enter the difficult years of adolescence.”

Fatherless Boys

And when you consider that over half our boys are leaving home after high school graduation without their father at home and, with divorce in excess of fifty percent, over half those dads never see their kids again, ever. So you can see why I believe our boys, especially those of single mothers, need committed adult male mentors who are equipped to teach Christ-centered manhood to them through the Boy Scouts, athletic programs, school programs and church.

Once again I want to commend Texas Governor Rick Perry for his bold stance against the moral decay of our American values and his support of the Boy Scouts of America as our nation’s foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training (Vision Statement of BSA).


Squires2Knights Ministries

Squires2Knights Ministries offers resources to enhance any mentorship effort for teenage boys. We offer a devotional tailor-made for any organization that wants to instill a Christ-centered vision of authentic manhood to the next generation of men.

Rick Perry, On My Honor - Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For, Stroud & Hall Publishers, 2008.

On My Honor, by Eagle Scout and Governor Rick Perry

I received a signed copy of Texas Governor Rick Perry’s new book: On My Honor - Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For. It was given to me as a Christmas gift from my father-in-law, Larry Garner.

I’ll let Sean Hannity introduce the book, as he offers his endorsement at the beginning:

“Governor Perry pulls no punches as he details the relentless assault on the Scouts and the traditional American values they instill.”

And Newt Gingrich offers this:

“For decades, the culture warriors of the left have waged war on societal institutions that espouse traditional American values. In On My Honor, Texas Governor Rich Perry examines the left’s attacks on a venerable American institution that has had a profound impact on the values and virtues of young Americans: The Boy Scouts of America.”

Boy Scouts - Character Building and Leadership Training

I am a strong advocate of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). My father was one of my Scoutmasters as I progressed to the rank of Eagle Scout. I was also a Scout leader while my son did the same. The Boys Scouts of America is our nation’s foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training (Vision Statement of BSA). Unfortunately, the BSA and our American values are under attack. Governor Perry explains:

War on the Scouts

“I also believe this book demonstrates that the so-called “War on the Scouts” is a microcosm of a larger phenomenon, a “culture war” that has been tearing at the seams of our society for forty years, and that pits traditional values such as service, selflessness, and sacrifice for the common good against a newer doctrine that elevates the self above society and relegates morality to a shapeless form of relativity. The attacks on the Scouts are but one front in a larger war. The forces of moral relativity - the most famous of which is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)-would remove any mention of God from the public square, would sanitize our society of bright lines dividing right and wrong, and would elevate doing what “feels good” as a moral imperative higher than doing what is necessary for us to live together.”

In his INTRODUCTION, Governor Perry expands on his depiction of the Boy Scouts and how they fit into America’s value system:

“Scouting’s values are drawn from those of the huge middle class of our nation - a body of people generous to those less fortunate and not envious of those who do well because opportunities are open to nearly everyone.”

“Scouting is firmly non-sectarian, but it expects its members to express a belief in the Almighty, and to live according to that faith in their daily lives.”

Governor Perry then explains where and when the attacks began:

The Culture War

“It’s called the culture war today, but when it began in the 1960s and ’70s, it didn’t have a name. Student campus unrest, rejection of authority, the “self-esteem” movement, moral relativism, and the demands of secularists all gradually fused into a series of attacks on American institutions.”

“The objectives of radicals seemed to be to tear away at the foundations of our society, attacking the role of faith, undermining the role of the family, and exploiting freedom to push a divisive agenda of permissiveness.”

And of course we can’t allow the momentum of this war to continue against the Boy Scouts and America’s value system:

“We are close to a tipping point in American society. If you believe there is right and wrong, that there are acceptable standards of behavior, that ethics cannot be made up on the spot, that judges should base their decisions on interpretations of the law not current opinion, and that this is a nation founded on a belief in God (George Washington called it “Divine Providence”), then you have a stake in this war.”

Go to http://www.boyscoutchaplain.com/ for more about mentorship in the Boy Scouts from Squires2Knights Ministries.

Rick Perry, On My Honor - Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For, Stroud & Hall Publishers, 2008.

Manhood 101 - Opening Lesson

The following are the opening remarks for the first video lesson of Squires2Knights Manhood 101.

Gentlemen. Welcome to our Manhood 101 course. My name is Jeff Purkiss. I’m the founder of Squires2Knights Ministries.

We’ve got six different men who are going to take you through the lessons of Manhood 101. Together with three other Manhood courses, this series will take you on a quest for authentic manhood. That’s right, a quest. You see, we’re going after something that can be hard to find.

Guys, we’ve got to restore authentic manhood in our culture. Virtually all our social problems can be linked to a single problem. For generations now, we haven’t really taught our boys how to be men.

You all are the next generation of men. So you guys, probably in your teens, are looking for a definition of manhood. You’ve probably never thought of it that way. And unfortunately in our modern culture this definition can be tough to pin down. Over the years our society has twisted and distorted God’s design for men. And the cultural pressures on men, especially young men, are taking them down wrong paths.

The young squire of the medieval period had a totally different experience than you do. He looked to the Knight as everything he wanted to become. And his pursuit of knighthood put him on a clearly defined path. He knew exactly what was expected of him and his mentor expected no less than the standards set for him.

A knight was chivalrous. He treated women and children with respect and honor. A knight was reverent. His faith in God was unwavering. A knight was strong and courageous. He was trained to protect his kingdom, his family and even his neighbor. These are only a few of the primary traits of a knight. And a squire, who was in training to become a knight, went through a vigorous training process for more than five years before he himself would be dubbed a knight.

If we considered a modern-day knight, what would he look like? What would he stand for? It’s hard to pin that down because our culture can’t make up its mind about a definition for manhood. We seem to have gone to two extremes. A man is all too often either an egotistical brute, vulgar and offensive. Or he’s a sensitive, new-age wimp, without backbone and without direction.

So you, as young men, have to know where you’re going on your quest for manhood or you’ll never get there. And many don’t. There are way too many thirty-year-olds today who are still no more than adolescents. They’ve never really grown up and they pretty much just wonder and flail through life.

Well I’m excited to offer you guys a biblically sound definition of manhood. Squires2Knights Ministries, or S2K, has derived 12 topics to teach and describe authentic manhood as it was designed by God. These 12 principles come from three Bible verses. We call them Knighthood Verses. Through this Manhood 101 course, you’ll easily memorize the Knighthood Verses and hopefully, you’ll take these lessons with you throughout the rest of your lives.