What Michael Foster Gets Right About Masculine Maturity
(And What the Church Keeps Getting Wrong)

Michael Foster — pastor, co-author of It's Good to Be a Man — sat down with Jon Harris on Conversations That Matter to talk about something the American church seems to have been allergic to for decades: what a mature Christian man actually looks like.

Here's what stood out to me.

Mature masculinity begins at home. A man who leads his household shapes generations.

The Core Thesis: Leadership Is Vision-Casting

Foster makes a simple point that most church leadership books miss entirely:

A good leader — whether father, pastor, coach, or boss — is in the business of getting his followers to go in the direction he wants to lead them — to convince them of the vision.

Read that again.

Leadership is not facilitating a group discussion about where everyone feels like going, and it's not taking a vote in order to abide by some consensus. It's also not sitting quietly until someone asks for your opinion.

A mature man has a vision, he articulates it clearly, he leads people in that direction, and he takes responsibility for the outcome — whether it goes well or not.

This is Nehemiah rebuilding the wall (Nehemiah 2:17); it's Joshua telling Israel to choose this day whom they will serve (Joshua 24:15). And it's a father sitting his family down on a Sunday night and saying — not asking — "Here's what we're doing this week, and here's why."

This is not toxic masculinity; this is just a normal Tuesday for a real man.

The Church Has Feminized Male Leadership

Foster doesn't dance around this, and neither should we. The modern Western church has systematically replaced masculine initiative with:

• Consensus-seeking — "Let's form a committee to pray about whether we should form a committee."
• Emotional safety as the highest value — A young man in the comments shared how his friend was formally disciplined by a pastor for asking a girl out in a way that made her uncomfortable. Think about this: she wasn't harassed, she wasn't stalked, she was just asked out, and the young man got called into the pastor's office for it. Yes, this is one anecdotal story, but I'm sure it's not the only time it's happened.
• Risk-aversion disguised as wisdom — "We just want to make sure everyone feels safe" = "We'd rather nothing happen than risk something great."

The result? Men leave. But sometimes it's even worse than that — the men stay and become even more passive. They might show up on Sunday, sit quietly, and give when asked, but they never lead anything. The church gets what it cultivates.

Foster's answer: stop apologizing for masculine initiative and start channeling it.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Many men I have met as I've served in men's ministry face some version of the same question Foster raises: "How do I lead without getting questioned about it — or even punished for it — by the culture, or even my church?"

Here's what they need to hear:

1. Lead Your Home First

You don't need anyone's permission to be the spiritual leader of your household. Your wife doesn't need to "feel led" before you start leading, and your kids don't need to vote on what the family devotions will be.

Action: Establish a weekly family meeting. Ensure you set an agenda, open with prayer, and review the week ahead. The responsibility is on you to cast vision for what your family culture should look like. Additionally, it is the man's responsibility to plan each and every day in accordance with his vision — he should document and track everything from Bible readings to primary objectives to the overall health of his family.

2. Build a Band of Brothers

Foster emphasizes surplus — having more than you need so you can deploy it for others. A man with surplus doesn't just survive; he builds, he gives, he leads. But you can't build surplus alone.

Action: Find three men that you can meet with weekly — don't think of it as a small group; it is your war council. Share your vision, your struggles, your finances — yes, even your finances. Hold each other to standards no one else will.

3. Initiate — Even When It's Costly

One of the saddest comments on Foster's video was from a man who described church dating culture as "walking on eggshells." Men are afraid to approach women, afraid to lead, afraid to speak directly — because being direct is, for some reason, now coded as some sort of aggression that people are afraid of.

Action: Initiate anyway. Ask the girl out if you're single and pursuing a wife; volunteer to lead in areas you're gifted; speak up in meetings. Recognize that yes, you will be misunderstood and you will make some people uncomfortable. That's not a bug — it's a feature of leadership.

"If everyone is comfortable with your leadership, you're not leading. You're managing."

4. Read It's Good to Be a Man

Foster and Tennant wrote the book I wish existed when I was a 25-year-old Marine officer trying to figure out how faith and masculinity intersected. It's theologically grounded, practically applicable, and unapologetically patriarchal in the biblical sense — not the cultural caricature.

Other books worth your time:

• The Masculine Mandate by Richard Phillips
• Disciplines of a Godly Man by R. Kent Hughes
• No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover (secular but useful for diagnosis)

Cologne Cathedral — begun 1248, completed 1880. Six centuries of men with a vision, building something bigger than themselves. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The Bottom Line

Michael Foster is saying what a lot of pastors are afraid to say: the church needs men who will lead, and the church needs to stop punishing them for doing it.

Maturity isn't comfort. It's not "emotional intelligence" (though that helps). It's not sensitivity training.

Maturity is vision + initiative + responsibility + endurance.

It's a father who sets the spiritual temperature of his home. It's a husband who pursues his wife — not just romantically, but strategically. It's a citizen who engages his community — not with complaints, but with solutions.

It's a man who knows where he's going, knows why he's going there, and invites others to come along.

That's what I'm aiming to build with U.S.M.C. Ministries; it's what the Watchman Bible Plan instills, and that's what Michael Foster is fighting for.

I'm glad he's out there. We need more men like him.

"Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong. Let all that you do be done with love." — 1 Corinthians 16:13–14

Adam "MOOP" Johns is a Christ-following husband and father, retired US Marine, military aviator, and combat veteran (21 years of service), NASM-certified personal trainer, and men's discipleship coach who has been investing in the formation of men for over 25 years. He holds an M.Div. from Liberty University and founded U.S.M.C. Ministries — Uniting, Serving, Mentoring & Counseling — in Fredericksburg, VA.