"He started disciplining me like I was one of his sons..."

(Tim, w/thanks to Taylor) Read this wonderful story and ask yourself where the church turns boys--undisciplined angry ones, at that--into men? Youth groups? Home school co-ops? Christian school science labs? Crew? Membership classes? Men's retreats?

You say your church is not a parochial school filled with inner city kids and your own fathers are the ones training their own sons. I say, "Yeah, right."

Face it. Each of our churches has a bunch of young men every bit as much in need of the discipline of playing on Bob Hurley's basketball team as the kids at St. Anthony High in Jersey City. In the ministry today, we're surrounded by man-boys whose fathers have turned their backs on them. These young men crave discipline--which is to say they crave fatherly love...

So what are we doing about it? What venue have we created to get the face and body time necessary to disciple our young men as the venue of basketball has allowed Bob Hurley to discipline his? How many Reformed pastors and elders would have this sort of comment made about them that this high school basketball coach has made about him?

Hurley, 63, has been a father figure for hundreds of inner-city teenagers over the past four decades.

To have a coach who was dedicated and a taskmaster helped a lot of kids -- and I'm a living testament to it.

He started disciplining me like I was one of his sons. It was to the point where I was like, "Wow, I had never been pushed like this in my life." I learned how to be a man and not a boy.

Hurley's (never taken) more than a $6,500 stipend for coaching.

He should be in the Hall of Fame not for the number of wins, but for the number of lives he's changed.

(S)omewhere along the line, somebody looked at every one of us and said, "I think I'll give that young man a chance."

Fathers and brothers, if we're going to raise up Timothys, two or three hours a week talking at them while they sit and listen ain't gonna cut it.

Just sayin.