Our time at a Friday Morning Men’s Fellowship table is designed around three key words and actions that will help you grow in relational leadership. Lessons and discussion guides provided will enable you to conduct a successful conversation with will give insight, inspiration and vision for life and work. When you invest an hour a week with a group of men at a table, it pays dividends in every facet of your life, from marriage, to family, to workplace, and community.

The table is an amazing leadership development platform. Think about it—you spend time at a table every day. You eat from it, work at it. You have conversations, negotiations at the table. Unlike a sofa, you don’t recline at a table, you sit up and at attention. You’re at ease, but still engaged. When you invite someone to sit on a couch, it infers you’re gonna relax and talk about sports or the weather. But when you invite someone to a table, the message is that you’re there to listen and accomplish something. Here are the three things we do at our tables every Friday:

Learn about each other. Relationships are the key to being a leader. Being top in sales, or holding the CEO position, or having the lowest golf score doesn’t make you a leader. All of those things concern a what.Leadership is always about who you are leading. A man who wants to lead begins by connecting to others who he can encourage and influence. Proverbs 9:9 teaches, “Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.” And in Proverbs 13:20 we learn, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise…”

At Friday Morning Men’s Fellowship we begin our weekly time together with an “ice breaker”, a lighthearted question that gets men talking about themselves and their lives. This isn’t just friendly banter. Men have to know one another before they’ll open up about their aspirations, challenges and their own leadership questions. Each week you learn a little more about each other, and that brings comfort, confidence and clarity to the conversation. Leaders spend time learning about people, because they can’t effectively lead people they don’t know.

Live the Scriptures. The Bible isn’t just to be studied or observed. When we read the Bible, we gain understanding of God’s nature, design and plans. This leads to action on our part. After spending time in the Bible, we should go beyond asking, “What do I now know?” and proceed to “What should I now do?” The Bible is not a book of stories. It’s a book of action! 2 Timothy 3:16-17 reminds us, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

At Friday Morning Men’s Fellowship, we start with a key Scripture reference, then ask questions that lead to open discussion. Through this time, we discover what God is revealing through His Word to us. We’re interested in learning what God said, and what did God mean, so that we can then respond with actions that reflect what we have read. In the Bible we observe ancient leaders like Abraham, Moses, David, who all have something in common. The Bible tells us God gave each of these men something to do, and in each case we read that they “did as God commanded”. The Bible is the Word of God. Godly leaders do as God commands.

Lead with intention. If we know the men in our sphere of influence, and this group lives under the authority of God’s Word, then we are in a position to lead with intention. Leadership is not a series of directives or acts of authority. Rather, leadership is a series of acts of obedience to God, and encouragement to others to join a God-given path. When you’re truly leading, you’re not just making decisions, casting a vision or pushing a team toward a goal. Instead you are following God’s direction for your life and work, and encouraging others to do the same.

In Psalm 78:72, the psalmist describes King David’s leadership, saying, “With upright heart he shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand.” This is a picture of relational leadership—the leader as a shepherd, guiding those in his sphere of influence down a God-given path. The idea of a leader caring for people, protecting them, faithfully leading them, challenging them to live and work with upright hearts and skillful hands—this is the noble leader God desires you to be!

For more than four decades, Friday Morning Men’s Fellowships have followed this pattern around a table. We learn about each other. We live out the Scriptures. We lead with intention. Our objective is to be the most effective leaders we can be, to benefit our marriages and homes, and our workplaces and community. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 tell us to “encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” When we spend our time learning, living and leading, we become a positive influence and encouragement to those around us.

It’s not being under the right decision-maker or vision-caster than will build men into leaders. It’s being around those who have a genuine interest in the wellbeing of others, and truly desire to influence them toward Christ. The learn, live, lead model of development is a time-tested means to turn ordinary men into extraordinary, Christ-centered leaders.

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