#199 A Needed Movement Among Men - The BetterMan Initiative

Everything that our world's not known for, right, are the things where God is just saying, no, we're going to go right there.

That's where we're going. And we're going to bring revival there, and we're going to bring restoration there. Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening. The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports. Welcome to the One Cry podcast. We're so excited to have you. I'm Bill Elofis, Kyle Reno, who you know. And we want to give a little special report today.

So much is happening, Kyle, around the country. and you've had a little something, you had a front row seat on something here recently. And it's a little bit of preparation for a series here on our podcast that we're about to do, a little journey that we're going to go on with Moses into the presence of God. But Kyle, tell us about the Better Man, just tell us a little bit about the Better Man movement and then about this most recent thing that's happened in your city.

Yeah. Yeah, I think, man, and Bill, we can banter back and forth about just things that are popping up around our country right now like that.

I mean, you've talked about, I think that we're going to look back and that this was the start or maybe even beyond the start of a move of God that's exploding and that's going to shape history. I have so much faith because I'm watching what's happening in the lives of people. And one little part, a sliver of that, is what God is doing among men. And in our nation right now, there is a movement among men.

One, there's a hunger. And I think that men are embracing desperation right now in a unique way. I think there's some manipulations in that, that men are gravitating toward voices. And there's a lot of bad voices out there. There's a lot of bravado and masculine. But it's because they're in search of truth. They're in search of what does it truly mean to be a man.

And so one of our friends, Robert Lewis, greatly used of God in the 90s, specifically men's fraternity, got a renewed passion years ago to help give men a biblical definition of manhood that actually works. And I got the privilege of being a part of that our days there in Arkansas. And what ended up becoming what's now known as Better Man, which is a 31 weeks worth of resources over five journeys, really two years worth of here's men's ministry that you can give to a church, a disciple maker.

That's not it's not holistic, meaning it's not everything there is to the Christian life. But what is here is a biblical definition that men can come to know, give them clarity, and then help them get that clarity in the midst of community, that they have other men that they're going on this journey with. Since 2019, man, there have been Better Man groups launched in every state in the United States, 87 countries of the world at this point, over a million something men that have

been on these journeys. That's free resources. Betterman.com. It's out there. It's awesome. Awesome, awesome. The heart behind it is awesome. But what's happened recent is in light of being catalytic, a desire like, We don't want to just start throwing these events, but these events kept coming to Better Man or I would get invited to come preach things, but it didn't have a lot of strategy behind it. It was more of just another men's conference, another men's thing, which are great.

And then promise keepers, things like that in the past were phenomenal. Rally as many men as possible. But what God put in our hearts here in Jackson, we're using the resources. But what if we would believe together to rally thousands of men into the presence of God on one day to, at the very least, give them the biblical definition of manhood, which is based out of Genesis, that a man courageously follows God's word, loves and protects God's woman, excels at God's work, and betters God's world.

That's all based out of Genesis. Like, hey, what if we give thousands of men that definition in the presence of God, but also give them the tools to go and launch groups in their church, in their city, across our state, a moment that can become a movement.

Well, what happened, Bill, was the breath of God. So I'm going to tell you one of the coolest stories, right? So we rallied. This happened March 1st, 2025. The event did, and I'll tell you about that. But about nine months before that, we rallied a group of leaders to cast vision for it. And there was about 80 leaders in the room at that point that we bridged all of our relationships to say hey to believe for.

And painted a picture of like what would happen if a move of God happened in such a way, almost like a manhood Pentecost, where the Spirit of God so fell among men that men would go and reproduce this to bring change everywhere. And I was sharing with them, but right now we need to pray and have our upper room moment. We need to have our upper room. We pray like crazy. And so 80-something men start praying. Bill, no lie now.

We start praying. On the other side of this place that we're gathering at this lunch is railroad tracks, which I was not aware of. When the men start praying, this train comes through and starts shaking the building. And listen, we got Baptists and Charismatics and Presbyterians and everybody, but everybody's eyes are wide open going like, is the Lord shaking the room? Yeah, right, right. Are we having our upper room? But let me tell you this, once it passed, we laugh, all those things.

All the men in the room looked at each other going, But why wouldn't we believe for something that shook the ground, shook the ground of our city? And we entered this journey where, and here's a few things that you, Bill, have shared so many times. If you want to be a part of a real move of God, it's going to be marked with some things. And one was humility. Like nobody, we made a decision together in that room that this is not going to be about any one church.

It's not going to be about any denomination. It's not going to be about any leader. This thing's not going to have a face other than Jesus. It's not going to have a name other than the kingdom. And so we we laid all that down, set all that down. So radical humility, as much as possible, we're going to get low, get low, get low. We don't want to be known. We do want to be used. Right. We'll keep it pure. We decided from the front that this is going to be a free event.

And that way that's a Jackson Convention Center. That's a lunch for every man. This is Jackson, Mississippi. Yeah, right, right. So this is, which means it's free for you to attend. It's not free for us to pull off. We're going to have to faith it. We're going to have to believe our church, other churches contribute to. But from the front side, we're going to keep it pure. That we wanted, I'm not saying you got to do that every time. That's what we felt like we needed to do this time.

And that we're also going to, we're going to bring unity to this. That we're going to make as many steps as possible to step across lines to build diversity.

And what I found, Bill, was one in Jackson, which is known for a lot of things. A lot of them are not good. Racially, that's for sure the case, that there's been a lot of pain. But we intentionally took steps, African-American pastors, white pastors, toward each other in this. Toward each other in this, toward each other in this. And I did a lot of that, but a lot of others did that as well. And what happened was a miracle.

It was a miracle that God gave us instant trust because here's the – and, Bill, man, you've seen – I praise God for racial reconciliation efforts toward that and bridging those relationships. But a lot of times those conversations just seem circular. You know, and we're just we're having the conversation, but are we really growing in unity? And what happened in this moment was we focused on mission together.

And the mission was let's go reach men as many as possible to experience God's presence and give them a work in definition. And because the mission was clear, what happened was unity. But what happened was relationship. What happens now we're in this thing together. So we worked hard months ahead, built toward it. And then it was like any moment that becomes a movement. It's like we worked, we labored, we prayed. Here's the other side.

40-day journeys. We had 100 days of prayer to the event where we had multiple men signed up to pray every day, a hundred days toward the event for what God was doing, but also for what would happen beyond that. And men prayed. Men saw God's face. People fasted and prayed, like a lot around it all. So to say all that, to get to the moment. And people thought we were crazy, like, man, you're going one to Jackson, to Jackson Convention Center. You're going downtown.

You know, all these different things. A lot of hurdles, obstacles like that. But then the Lord breathed. And on March 1st, 3,185 men, you know, gather in the Jackson Convention Center under the banner of Jesus. And it it for the first guy, the guy was Chris Gilliard, his name, who was the colonel for the Mississippi State Troopers, who became a big part of a better man and serves at an awesome church here in the area. But he was a chairman. He stood up, Bill.

Golly, I can cry now. He stood up to open it up. 60-something-year-old, 40 years in police force, tears flowing down his face. He said one of the worst days that ever happened in the state of Mississippi is when the movie Mississippi Burning happened. It was aired, he said, because it painted a picture of what life is like here in Mississippi. And he goes, and in many ways, it set us on fire. It revealed brokenness. It even exasperated it in ways that was bad.

Like, it divided us, he said. It divided us. He said, but I'm here today to tell you that Mississippi's on fire again, but it's a holy fire.

And you talk like the room was crazy crazy yeah crazy so the beauty of and then the lord's presence showed up and and every man that i have encountered since march 1st it said the same it said the same thing i've never been in a moment like that i've never been in a moment like that he said there was yeah it's the presence of god there's such unity there's such clarity around While we're here, there was anointing and worship and teaching.

And we ended the day a cappella with 3,000 plus men singing, our God is an awesome God. And it was unbelievable. But the beauty of it, and this is what happened when revival happens, a real move of God, it's not just a moment. Coming out of that, the last 395 men, churches, than individual men leaders have signed up and are moving toward launching groups now with other men.

So you had 3,000 men in the room. You had 395 of those that have signed up saying, I'm going to go take a group of these guys and other men and you'll walk into God's presence and learn how to be a kingdom man. It was the beginning of something. It was the beginning of something special. You know, Kyle, one of the reasons we wanted to take a moment and kind of talk about this is there are so many things we need to learn about how to cooperate with God in a movement.

And you all have just experienced it there in Jackson, Mississippi. And just from my little vantage point, and it's a little vantage point, but it's a little broader than a sum, I'm seeing this happen all over the nation. For instance, leading up to the Collegiate Day of Prayer in Texas A&M, there were thousands, I'm telling you, thousands of college students who had been fasting and praying, many of them for 20, 30, 40 days. Wow. And they didn't care.

Nobody, it's what's happening right now among Gen Z. So we have this movement that we began to see happening among men. And this movement that's happening right now, very dramatically among Gen Z, is these Gen Z, they don't care who gets the credit. They don't care about names. In fact, they're kind of adverse to it. They don't, they don't, you see, so-and-so is going to preach. Well, we don't, you know, we just want the word. We want the word. We want God. We want his presence, right?

And so these, these marks that you just mentioned of moving in humility, moving in unity. Moving across cultural and racial and ethnic lines, all of that kind of stuff. I mean, everything that our world's not known for, right, are the things where God is just saying, no, we're going to go right there. That's where we're going. And we're going to bring revival there. And we're going to bring restoration there.

And I'm telling you, it's beautiful and it's happening across the country. And now you had a... You know, a formal event that culminated in this that took planning and all that kind of stuff. But here's the deal. It was a God initiated moment. It was just something that the Lord said, I want to do this right there.

I want to do it right in a place that has been known for everything else. But that kind of unity, that kind of presence, that kind of glory. And I love this about what you just said. Is this is not, we're going to come together and set up some kind of separate deal to do something. We're coming to bless the church, the body of Christ and the men in the city, and then go back into the churches. We're just trying to ignite, let the Lord ignite something that will go into

the churches and spread to every church. And by the way, here are tools. They're all free. Here's these tools to help you go into your church and see the same thing happen in your church. What a beautiful thing. And I think we're going to just see it more and more and more, don't you, Kyle? Yeah, and that's what I would say to our listeners, just to wrap this up in faith. Belief. I believe that the wind is blowing.

If you see any way or sense or somebody else is starting to share some things that ways to get the sale up in your community, in your region to believe for igniting prayer at another level or a way of evangelizing your community. I mean, like I'm hearing these things like evangelistic crusades and things that are happening like, man, people's lives are just being changed. Like, you're hearing things on college campuses and regions that's happening. Like, don't.

Be a spectator to it. Like, get in it. Like, at this moment, have faith for what God is doing. It builds mind. Every time I hear a story, it just builds my faith. I hear a story of what God's doing somewhere way out here. It builds my faith for right where I'm at. Let me tell you one of the cool things this year that God did to help my faith was the weekend before we had the event here, I got the privilege to go preach.

At a men's conference with several other Better Man speakers in Salem, Oregon, with 700 men. Wow. Yeah, in Salem, Oregon. And it sort of happened to them in a similar way. You know, it's like they labored, they prayed, and then men just started coming. And they were like shocked in many ways by the amount of men that were ready to be a part of something. And I sat that Saturday in Salem, Oregon, before the next Saturday going to be in Jackson, Mississippi.

And it just reminded me, and the Lord kindly reminded me like, hey, you didn't start any of these things. I'm doing this stuff, Kyle, everywhere. You can't, you can't. And it is, all it does for me is, man, I just want to be any part, any part of what it is. You know, we we often say and guys who've been in revival thinking often say, well, we can't we can't make it happen, but we can set the sails. You know, we can just set the sails. And when the wind blows. That's right.

And I remember Samuel Davies of the First Great Awakening, who was the president of Princeton, and he was a young man, died young. But he they called him the Apostle of Virginia. Can you imagine the president of Princeton being called the Apostle of Virginia? Davies said there's sometimes in a nation when only a revival, a spiritual awakening can cause reformation in the nation. And he said before he said, I watched pastors for years preaching with very little results.

He's talking about the first great awakening. And he said, and then the revival came and I watched the same men preach the same messages and 200 people would be saved in a day. Now, you got to ask, what is that? What's going on there? And here's the statement he gave, and that was the gospel became almighty and carried everything before it. What a statement. And I think that's, you know, we're entering into a moment that's just it's it's a moment of God's favor.

It's a moment where millions of people have been praying for his mercy. And all of a sudden it's coming and it's time to put the sails up.

It's time to to really move with God. And and that means to our listeners, if God is stirring on your heart, follow his promptings. That's right. Call some other guys, get together, pray about it. I had a guy the other day said, man, we need to do this prayer. I said, well, go for it. If ever there's a moment where you're going to have God's favor, it's right now. Right. And and so cooperate with him. So, Kyle, it's just so beautiful. We just wanted to kind of slip this report in.

It illustrates so many things that are indicative of what God is doing right now across the nation. And would you pray for that? I want you to pray specifically for the Better Man movement. I mean, it's an amazing thing that's happening. It's a supernatural thing that's happening that we want our listeners, and they can find out about that just going to betterman.com, I guess. That's it.

And but pray for that, but just pray for this same God initiated, faith filled, humble cooperation on a part of God's people. Would you would you pray for that for us? And we'll join you. That'd be great. So as we enter in, I would encourage each of us to just ask the Holy Spirit to help us to hear how you can be a part of His work where you are. So, Lord, I'm asking for each of us, show us how to stretch out our soul that we might catch the wind of what you're wanting to do.

That you would fill us with your spirit, each listener, in such a way that in the region you've placed us from rural parts of America and the world to city centers, God, would you give us faith to believe for a real move of God? And, Lord, to know how to see you at work and join you in it. And so, Lord, I thank you that your activity is awesome right now. Awesome. And we believe that you are sending a wave. So, Lord, let it build and glorify your name.

Bring as many people into your kingdom as possible. shape as many future families. Lord, future men, women, next generation, college students, children. God, I pray for a holistic movement of God among every demographic of people in our nation and the nations, Lord. And so, Lord, let it be. Let it be because you're worthy of it and we need it.

And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you so much, Kyle. Alan, thank you, OneCry listeners, for hanging with us today. And don't miss next week as we begin this fresh series. We're going to see something really beautiful about what's going on right now, about what went on thousands of years ago. And how you can join in with the activity of God right where you are. So we'll look forward to seeing you next time. Music.