Male Mentor Program
The Male Mentor Program provides on-hands training for boys age 13-16. This program is taught by senior instructors (who are fully mature) (age 50 or older) that are expert tradesmen. It does not take much more effort to teach one boy than it does to teach six or twelve boys in a group. Therefore, we want to organize this so that our senior mentors will train our boys in a trade skill in which these mentors have become a master of during the course of their lifetime by working in such a field. Each boy will pay a tuition fee so that the senior mentor will be reimbursed for his time teaching. In this manner our boys can have instruction from the best within their particular fields.
Not every father knows everything but if he can rotate his son through a series of male mentoring programs taught by experienced experts then his son can receive a “well-rounded” education derived from actual “hands-on” experience. These boys will have had previous experience in prior “boy-training” programs so that they will be familiar with tool use and tool care and will be able to understand more advance concepts presented to them within the Male Mentor Program.
A man-skill is something that boys will need to take care of themselves in real life. It is a hard and cruel world out there and no one will give anything to these boys for free. They have to know how to take care of themselves and it is “man-skills” that enable them to feed themselves under any situation and help them provide for their future families.
Trade Skills for Jewish Survival
A good illustration of this are the Jewish fathers because even their Jewish Talmud (collection of Jewish writings) says that a Jewish father should impart some kind of trade skill to his son so that he has a means of making an honest living. Throughout the history of the Jews this has proven to be sound advice because often they faced satanic persecution for being God’s chosen people. There were massacres and pogroms and often Jews suffered confiscation of homes and property and were cast out of nations by demonic people in civil government who hate Jewish people. If a Jewish father provided his son with a trade-skill then it was something that no one could take away from him. If a Jewish man possessing these skills were to be expelled from a country (with nothing but the shirt on his back) then he could still go anywhere and start over again with just the trade skill knowledge he carries within him.
Jews Expelled from Rome
Acts 18:1-3 (NIV)
1 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.
2 There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them,
3 and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.
When the godless Roman emperor Claudius expelled all of the Jews from Rome, then a Jew named Aquila was forced to leave together with his wife Priscilla. This Jewish man possessed a trade skill of being a tentmaker. His Jewish father saw to it that he had a trade skill to feed himself just as the father of the Apostle Paul also provided him with the same trade skill of tent-making. This was a good skill to have in that day because soldiers and shepherds and travelers and Bedouins all lived in tents so there was a good demand for this product and those with the skill to make tents were always able to find a ready-use for their trade skills. This means that when Aquila was expelled from Rome (possibly with only the possessions he could carry) he was able to set up shop again in Corinth and practice his trade. This helped him provide for himself and his wife and family and this shows the wisdom of the Jews in providing such training for their own sons.
Man-Skills and Survival Skills
Man-Skills and Survival skills are largely synonymous because if a boy has man skills, then he can provide for himself and his future family under any circumstances.
My Own Experience with Male Mentoring
When I came to Korea in May 2009, my Korean nephew was without a father so I assumed the role of father for him and began the process of imparting trade skills to him. But since I came to Korea, I had no more access to the machine shed and shop and the tools we had on our farm in Nebraska. We were living in a small apartment in an urban setting without tools or shop so I had no way of imparting man-skills to my nephew to prepare him for adult life. So, what I did was to “farm-him-out” to a mechanic shop where he could learn tool use and skills of being a man. He worked here for 15-hours a day in a shop with nothing but an open-air tin-roof. They worked outdoors in the heat of summer and in the cold of winter and we were paying his travel expenses for him to work there for free. But over time he gained the skills he needed to become employable. With that knowledge he found a job with an electrical wiring shop and was paid for this work. It was so much easier than what he did for free at the mechanic shop that he felt like he was on a paid-vacation! Then with the experience he gained from the first two places of employment he was able to get a job in a production factory making casement windows. At this point, I trained him how to ride a motorcycle because the Korean law at that time permitted him to drive a motorcycle of up to 125 cc size before his sixteenth birthday. Then with the experience he had in the first three jobs he finally landed a job at a LED light manufacturing company. He utilized all of the previous job experience in this company and was able to do everything they required of him. On his sixteen birthday I purchased a manual transmission car for him so he could learn to use a clutch and stick-shift. This helped him greatly in preparation for obtaining his truck driving license. When he obtained his truck driving license this helped him a lot at his company because he could drive a company truck to haul materials or supplies. He could also do computers and do office work and other management jobs. He could do production line work and electrical wiring. All of this experience combined from previous jobs all helped him gain promotion after promotion. He soon was in a management position making a good salary and overseeing all aspects of that business. In fact, he was already gaining experience while his former classmates were still sitting in school. So, he obtained his GED while working and later he ended up having college graduates working under him because he started gaining experience before he was age sixteen and he had more experience than they did. He was able to do anything that the owner of the company could ask him to do. Today he is doing well and is driving a nice vehicle and has a nice home and computers and smart phone and a large savings and everything that could be called prosperous.
All of this success and prosperity was derived from the impartation of man-skills to this boy when he was young so that he would have the skills needed to take care of himself in adult life.
It is said that a man needs experience to get a job but he needs a job to gain experience. But in our case, we had our nephew work at a mechanic shop for free while he was still young so he learned tool use and welding and auto-body painting and mechanical work so that he had a strong foundation of knowing how things work. With this understanding my nephew became “trainable” so that he could easily catch up with understanding any type of new concept presented to him. So, this opened the door for him to learn new trade skills and one after another he progressed until he was one of the most valuable employees at the LED Lighting company where he works today earning a good salary.
Wide Range of Man Skills
Man-skills can be synonymous with trade skills but it is a broader category that includes just about anything that would give a boy increased chances of survival and the ability to be able to feed himself and his own family in adult life.
Again, every father should provide “man-skills” for his son because this is true manly love to provide the skills necessary for a boy to feed himself in adult life.
Example of Pioneering Fathers
The pioneers of the early western period of US history would typically begin imparting man-skills to their sons at the earliest age possible. Life was difficult on the frontier and a father could easily lose his life to accident, exposure, hypothermia, dehydration, hostile Indians, bandits and numerous other dangers. If he should die expectantly and leave his son an orphan then he would have done the boy a big favor to have imparted as many man-skills as necessary to his son at the youngest possible age.
A pioneer boy had to learn to shoot because a rifle was not only used to put food on the table but also to defend themselves and their families from attack. He had to know how to fell trees and split rails and make lumber and to how to build a shelter. He had to know how to make fires in all weather conditions and how to prepare and store food. He had to know how to hunt and trap and fish and tan hides and furs. He had to know how to ride horses and manage livestock which were a valuable source of food and income for the family. He had to be able to repair wagon wheels and make just about anything that he needed for himself. Again, the more man-skills that a boy had the greater his chances of survival would be especially if he was left as an orphan and had to fend for himself from a young age.
Father/Son Training
It is good if a father has the time to mentor his son in the man-skills that he needs for survival in adult life but this can be difficult when a father has to spend many hours laboring every week in order to provide for his family. This can leave little time for mentoring his own sons.
Also, there are some men who did not have a good father-figure themselves when growing up so therefore they lack the knowledge they need to train their own sons in needed man-skills.
Gifted Trade Skill Teachers
Sometimes however there are men who are exceptionally gifted in teaching man-skills and these types of men have a wide range of knowledge in many different subjects. Huram of Tyre was just such a man who possessed the ability to work with just about every type of material from stone to cast metal and wood working and even textiles. He was used by King Solomon to build the most magnificent temple structure the world has ever seen!
1 Kings 7:13-14 (NIV)
13 King Solomon sent to Tyre and brought Huram,
14 whose mother was a widow from the tribe of Naphtali and whose father was a man of Tyre and a craftsman in bronze. Huram was highly skilled and experienced in all kinds of bronze work. He came to King Solomon and did all the work assigned to him.
Huram was well-known for his ability to do metal casting especially with cast bronze. He made things like the cast pillars for the temple which would be difficult to make even today with modern technology available.
2 Chronicles 2:13-14 (NIV)
13 “I am sending you Huram-Abi, a man of great skill,
14 whose mother was from Dan and whose father was from Tyre. He is trained to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, and with purple and blue and crimson yarn and fine linen. He is experienced in all kinds of engraving and can execute any design given to him. He will work with your craftsmen and with those of my lord, David your father.
Huram also utilized different types of metals in casting including gold and silver and bronze and iron. He could also work with stone and wood as well as textiles with purple and blue and crimson yarn and fine linen. He was also experienced in engraving of all kinds and could execute any type of design given to him. Huram was a master craftsman who could make anything that was related to the magnificent temple built by King Solomon.
I met a man like Huram who was an industrial arts instructor at a high school I attended in my youth. He could do construction and woodworking and was a master craftsman like Huram. He was also artistic and could do any type of sculpture or pottery or art project as well. There are certain men gifted by God as natural born craftsmen and artists and some of these men are also gifted teachers and can teach any type of subject and make it clear and easy to understand for their students.
If just such a man could be found then fathers who lack trade skill knowledge themselves could gather a group of men together and they could all contribute toward the support of a master craftsman who could teach their sons what they need to know. In this manner, even if the father was not able to do this job himself (because of his own lack of knowledge) he could contribute toward the education of his own son by paying a tuition fee to someone else who has such knowledge and who is a “Huram-type” who can teach anything and is a master craftsman in many subjects.
It would not take much more effort for a man to teach a dozen or more boys than it would to teach only one boy. So, with more boys contributing toward the support of the master craftsman then they could sponsor him so he could afford to teach full-time and they could all benefit from his instruction.
Another possibility is that boys could be rotated through existing businesses enterprises in the same manner that I sent my own nephew through a mechanic shop. My nephew worked for free to gain experience and this also helped the owner of the mechanic shop a great deal. In this way it could be said that my nephew was engaged in a work/study program and his labor working at that shop was paying for the cost of training him.
For example, I know of some business enterprises that are booming and they are having difficulty in keeping up with the orders and the increased demand for their products. Under such a situation we could train up young men to handle much of the overflow work for such a busy shop. Our boys would gain knowledge in that trade and their labor could also help the owner of that business to expand and keep up with orders. Their training therefore would be paid for by their own labor as part of a work/study program.
I also have some boy-projects which would help develop mechanical ability of young boys which would cost only a small amount (especially for the fathers who do not have a large budget to spend on their son’s training). These projects involve making rubber-band powered toy guns which have all of the working parts made of wood. Some of these projects are very simple and elementary while others are extremely advanced (and even imitate a real slide action pistol but which shoots rubber bands). I saved these designs as downloads in the event that they are removed from the internet. This are some of the projects we can utilize to develop “man-skills” in the sons of our members.
Identifying A Boy’s Technical Ability
Those boys who are gifted in mechanical things will be able to display their prowess immediately and thus identify themselves as having a mechanical aptitude. This is one way to help a young man to discover where his gifts and talents lie so that he can define his direction and training to find an occupation that is best suited for him.
Another option is that if a rancher has land and a shop then arrangements could be made to establish an intern program for ranching. Boys could be rotated through such a program which is set up on their ranch. I know of a ranch in Montana that has just such a program for mentoring young men in the ranching business so they would gain hands-on experience in all types of ranch work.
Rotating boys through any type of enterprise is a way of helping fathers who do not have the shop or tools or the knowledge to mentor their own sons in these valuable man-skills. If these boys are started off young (before they are age 16) then they can gain a lot of valuable experience which can make them “trainable” so they are able to “catch-up” with and understand increasingly more complex tasks.
Under hard times those boys who have the most trade skills could survive and create a livelihood for themselves. A group of graduates working together could even form a business enterprise manufacturing parts or products and thus create a livelihood for an entire group of graduates working together.
Progressive Training
I know of a business that makes products from fiberglass, carbon fiber, and composites. In order to train young boys to prepare them to comprehend such an industry we could start out with something simple. Instead of using expensive materials like carbon fiber, our young boys could start making projects with paper mâché using only flour-water and strips of newspaper. This allows young boys to experience layering on a form to create a shell much like the process for the more advanced materials like fiberglass, carbon fiber or other composite materials.
Forms can be created out of foundry sand and even molding material can be made from melted down plastic containers like discarded milk jugs. These cheap materials allow boys to learn to make molds and shapes and to create a shell or casting. Such knowledge helps a boy to become “trainable” so he can grasp more advanced concepts later like making metal-cast parts or objects.
In the military, the farm boys would typically qualify as experts on the rifle range immediately while the urban boys would be wasting large amounts of ammunition and could not hit the target whatsoever. This is because the farm boys started off with homemade sling shots which shoot a slow projectile and the boys could see how that projectile arches through the air while in flight. They had to aim higher to hit farther targets. Then they learned to use a BB gun and pellet gun then a .22 caliber rim-fire rifle then center fire rifles. The projectile from a rifle is so fast that the human eye cannot see it in flight. But the farm boys understood trajectory from shooting the homemade slingshots so they could easily understand trajectory of a bullet in flight even if they cannot see it when it is fired. They could adjust sights for longer range or hold-over a target that is farther knowing the bullet will drop over a long distance. Thus, they were able to qualify as expert marksmen immediately while the urban boys could not hit anything whatsoever at any distance!
The principle here is that the farm boys started with elementary things like sling shots made from a forked tree-branch and some rubber cut out of a car tire inner tube. This taught them trajectory of an object in flight. The same concept was applicable in shooting rifles at long range even if the projectiles were too fast for the human eye to see it. The farm boys understood the concept of hold-over or adjusting sights for longer range and this caused them to “catch-up with” or “understand” more complex concepts which the urban boys were at a total loss in trying to understand.
There are many boy-projects that can be used to develop the understanding and comprehension of boys to be able to grasp more advance ideas. They need foundational and elementary projects at a young age so they can comprehend more advanced concepts later. If they try to start with the advanced projects immediately then they will typically be like an ignorant urban boy who has no foundation of understanding to be able to understand advanced concepts presented to him.
Senior Male Mentors
Numbers 8:25-26 (7KB)
25 and at the age of fifty years they must cease performing this work, and shall no more do the work themselves [but instead serve in a supervisory role].
26 They may assist their brothers in performing their duties at the Tent of Meeting, [in a supervisory role] but they must not do the work themselves. This, then, is how you are to assign the responsibilities of the Levites.”
The 7KB translation above clarifies that the senior Levites (beginning at age fifty) are to cease preforming the work but are to serve in a supervisory role to the younger men rather than doing the work themselves. This is direction was given by God’s wisdom because a fully mature man of age fifty and above has gained years of experience which the younger men do not have. It would be tragic to allow such experience to go to waste while a senior Levite wastes his time doing mundane tasks or repetitive work that could be assigned to younger men. At age fifty the Levite is fully mature and experienced and it is at this time that God required them to stop doing the work themselves and move into a supervisory role to begin to mentor the young men who would replace them. There is a proper way to do things so that the young men can be trained in the proper way.
This is why God required that the senior Levites stop doing the work themselves at age fifty (not because they were to retire and sit in a rocking chair) but instead they were to use their maturity and superior “life-experience” and mentor the young men after them just as their own fathers had mentored them. It is insane to reinvent the wheel by allowing some ignorant young guy to invent his own way who knows nothing about the proper way to do things. The proper way was developed by generations of men knowing the right way to do things so that they could teach their own sons so they will not repeat the same mistakes. It is senseless and foolishly to throw back to a time of 1,000-years ago when people were still ignorant and inventing their own nonsense way by trial and error.
This same principle of the “Senior Mentor” can be applied to just about any type of trade that can be imagined. Those who are fully mature at age fifty are doing everyone a disservice by continuing to do the work themselves. It is at this time that they are to use their superior wisdom and experience to train and mentor the young men. They should allow the young men to do the work while these “senior mentors” are to supervise them and mentor them in how to do the work in the proper manner.
The principle of the “senior mentor” has application for our boys training program as well because fully mature men of age fifty or more can cease from doing the jobs themselves and begin their role of being a trainer and mentor.
Summary
In summary, if fathers will mentor their young sons using simple crafts and projects (like making rubber-band guns) then they can develop the “masculine logic” of their sons. This enables their boys to become “trainable” so that when they are presented with more advanced concepts later in life then they will be able to easily understand them. Once they have developed their mechanical aptitude they can qualify to progress to a place where real life principles are used in industry or trades.
In the second phase boys can be rotated through established shops which are making parts or products or preforming service industry work. If the business owner becomes a “senior mentor” at this point, he can stop doing the mundane work himself and move into a supervisory role instead. Here he can train young men to do the work for him and at the same time the students can also learn while they earn as working students without acquiring any student loan debt.
A senior mentor can also expand his business greatly if he has qualified people to run the work (enabling him to take more orders and expand his business to a level that is not possible if he is doing the work by himself). Serving in the role of “senor mentor” can prosper him financially and expand his business and be of great service to the young men which he mentors in his trade skills. This is a win/win situation for everyone because fathers can obtain “professional training” for their sons that they may not be able to impart themselves. The senior mentor can stop doing the mundane tasks and repetitive work himself but have his students do this labor while he supervises instead. He can also expand his business greatly if he has trainable employees who are faithful and can be trusted to do what he instructs them to do.
When I first got married in Korea in 1997, I remember a Korean businessman who took my wife Helen and I out to eat at a nice restaurant as a means of showing his appreciation. As it turned out the best workers this businessman had working at his business enterprise were those who came from the international fellowship church led by my wife Helen. These workers learned about biblical principles of doing their jobs faithfully as if it was unto the Lord and they were honest and had integrity and the boss could fully trust them. Having good employees who were faithful and trustworthy allowed him to expand his business and increase in prosperity. When he did not have any good employees then he was constantly going back to put out small fires and was distracted by having to do things himself because his past unfaithful employees failed him. But with good employees he could focus on expansion instead of being stuck on a survival level with repeated cycles of hiring and firing and again training new workers.
The point to make here is that when a senior mentor learns to delegate (and he trains young men) then he can stop doing the mundane repetitive work himself but instead he can focus on business expansion and developing new products. Once he has faithful employees who fear God and are honest and have integrity and are trainable then he can place them in charge of matters enabling himself to be free to do other more important things related to business expansion. This thing about training new employees is a way for the senor mentor to prosper and have free time and be relieved of stress and to put things in order. He can train faithful young men to take over every department of his business and once these departments are operational then they can follow a fixed system and produce the exact same results every time. Then he will gain peace of mind and can focus on things important to expanding his business. Learning how to delegate tasks and mentor new employees is a way toward obtaining financial freedom and freedom from stress and freedom for the senor mentor to expand his business enterprise.
With this in mind, a program for boy training can be developed which will provide good trainable young men for a senor mentor to teach and these young men can cause his business enterprise to grow so that all of them can prosper together. Again, this is a win/win situation for the fathers and their sons and for the senor mentor who trains them. They can all prosper together as the young men gain new trade skills and the senior mentor can stop doing mundane repetitive work himself and focus on more important things of business expansion.
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