1. [Sons of Scripture](https://sonsofscripture.com/) 2. Starting a men's ministry For leaders # How to start a men's ministry To start a men's ministry you need four things: a fixed night and address, one other man committed to being there every week, a passage of Scripture for the first evening, and a two-hour shape you repeat without changing. Everything else, a name, a logo, a programme, a budget, can wait. Most new men's ministries fail from too much planning and too little repetition. The minimum ## What do you actually need before the first night? Less than most people think. This table separates what you genuinely need from what feels necessary and is not. | Thing | Before night one? | Why | | --- | --- | --- | | A fixed night | Yes | The rhythm does most of the work. A movable night trains men to wait for a reminder, and reminders eventually stop. | | A fixed address | Yes | Same reason. A living room is fine. A room that changes weekly is not. | | One committed second man | Yes | Two men who both turn up is a gathering. One man who turns up is a man sitting alone, and he will not do it three times. | | A passage for week one | Yes | One passage, read out loud, is the whole curriculum you need. Pick something about men and truth rather than something clever. | | A repeated question | Yes | Ask the same thing every week so nobody has to summon the courage to raise it. See [how the check-in works](https://sonsofscripture.com/mens-accountability-group/). | | A name and a logo | No | Naming things is enjoyable and is not the work. Men will name it themselves by week six. | | A website or social account | No | Nothing to publish until the gathering has survived a couple of months. A page announcing a group that folded is worse than no page. | | A twelve-week curriculum | No | Plan two weeks. By week three the men in the room will tell you what they actually need, and it will not be what you planned. | | A budget | No | Coffee. That is the budget. Money arrives once something is worth funding. | Structure ## How do you structure a two-hour gathering? This is the shape Sons of Scripture runs every Saturday. Copy it, or change the names and keep the order. | Minutes | Movement | What the leader does | The mistake to avoid | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 0 to 30 | Fellowship and check-ins | Answers the question first, honestly, and about something that costs him. Then goes round the table. | Letting it become news and banter. It is not catching up; it is telling the truth. | | 30 to 75 | Scripture and teaching | Reads the passage out loud, names book, chapter and verse, waits for men to find it, then asks what it demands on Monday. | Preaching at them for 45 minutes. If nobody interrupted you, it did not land. | | 75 to 120 | Prayer | Prays by name for the specific things men raised in the first half hour. | General prayer for the room. Specificity is what makes men come back. | The one structural rule worth defending: **check-ins go before teaching, never after.** If men have already said where they are drifting, the passage lands on real ground. Reverse the order and the teaching lands on nobody in particular, and the check-in becomes a rushed formality at 8:55 PM. Week one ## What does the first night look like? Three or four men, a table, and about ninety minutes of it feeling slightly stiff. That is a success, not a warning sign. ### Say what this is, and what it is not, in the first five minutes Out loud: this is a men's gathering, it happens every week at this time in this room, it is not a church and does not replace one, what is said here stays here, and nobody has to speak. Men relax measurably once the boundaries are stated rather than guessed at. ### Answer your own question first Whatever you ask the room, answer it yourself before anybody else, and answer it about something that actually costs you. The level you set is the level you get, permanently. A leader who gives a tidy answer in week one has built a group of tidy answers. ### End on time Finish when you said you would, every week, even mid-sentence. Men with families and shift work decide whether to come back based on whether you respect the finish time. ### Do not evaluate it for eight weeks The first four nights tell you nothing. Attendance is noise, the conversation is stiff, and the temptation to redesign everything is strongest exactly when the only correct action is to hold the night, the room and the shape steady. Expectations ## How many men do you need? Three is enough to start. Between three and eight is the range where a check-in works properly. Two men can hold each other accountable but both can go quiet at the same time with nobody to notice. Three is the point where that stops. Above about eight, the round takes so long that men shorten their answers to be polite, which is the beginning of the end of honesty; the fix is to keep the whole gathering together for teaching and prayer and split into smaller tables for the check-in. Growth is not the measure and chasing it will wreck the thing. A group of five men who have told each other the truth for two years is a men's ministry. A room of forty who arrive, listen and leave is an event. Failure modes ## What goes wrong in the first three months? Five things, in rough order of how often they finish a new gathering off. 1. **The leader misses a week.** This is the big one. Cancel once in the first two months and attendance halves, because men reasonably conclude it is optional. If you cannot be there, the gathering still runs and somebody else reads the passage. 2. **It moves to fit people's diaries.** Sounds accommodating, is fatal. A fixed night that some men miss beats a movable night that nobody can rely on. 3. **Nobody says anything difficult.** Six weeks of pleasant conversation and men quietly stop coming, because there is nothing there they cannot get at work. The fix is upstream: the leader has to go first and cost himself something. 4. **Something leaks.** One thing repeated outside the room and the honesty is gone permanently. State the rule out loud in week one and restate it whenever a new man arrives. 5. **It quietly replaces church.** Men start treating the gathering as their whole Christian life. Say from the beginning that this is a supplement to a local congregation and keep saying it. Ontario specifics ## What about police record checks and safety? Only relevant if minors will be present or the gathering runs inside a church's programme, and in that case it is the host organisation's rules that decide, not yours. An adult men's gathering does not by itself require anything. Two situations change that: - **Minors present.** If teenagers will attend, the host church or organisation almost always has its own screening policy, and that policy governs. In Ontario, police record checks are governed by the [Police Record Checks Reform Act, 2015](https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/15p30), which sets out three types of check, including the vulnerable sector check. Which one applies is the host organisation's call, and the check itself is requested from the local police service. - **Disclosures about a child.** This one applies to everybody, always, whether or not minors attend. Section 125 (1) of the [Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017](https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/17c14#BK176) requires any person with reasonable grounds to suspect a child is in need of protection to report it immediately to a children's aid society, "despite the provisions of any other Act". Say this out loud when you state the confidentiality rule, so no man discloses something believing it can be contained when it cannot. Direct links to the Hamilton Police Service and Niagara Regional Police Service record check pages are on the [ministry resources page](https://sonsofscripture.com/ministry-forms-and-resources/), along with the Gathering Leader Guide. Nothing on this page is legal advice; read the statutes linked above rather than a summary of them, and ask your host organisation what it requires. Take it with you ## Where do I get the Gathering Leader Guide? On the resources page, along with the giftings overview and the record check forms. All of it is published openly. If you are starting something in Hamilton, Niagara or anywhere else in Ontario and want to ask a question of men who already run a weekly gathering, email [sonsofscripture@gmail.com](mailto:sonsofscripture@gmail.com). There is no franchise, no fee and nothing to sign; this material is here to be used. [Open the resources page](https://sonsofscripture.com/ministry-forms-and-resources/) [See the gathering it came from](https://sonsofscripture.com/mens-gatherings-hamilton-grimsby/) Short answers ## Common questions from men starting one Anything else, email [sonsofscripture@gmail.com](mailto:sonsofscripture@gmail.com). ### Do I need my pastor's permission? You do not need permission to invite men into your own home to read the Bible. You do need your pastor to know, and it is worth asking rather than presenting it afterwards, because a men's gathering that grows without a church's knowledge starts to look like a rival to it. If it will meet on church property or use the church's name, then yes, that is the church's decision. ### Should it be one church or several? Both work and they work differently. One church gives you pastoral support and a natural pool of men. Several churches gives men the freedom to be honest in front of brothers they do not sit behind on Sunday, which is often worth more. Sons of Scripture draws from across Hamilton and Niagara rather than a single congregation. ### How long before it feels normal? About eight weeks in most cases. Somewhere around week six or seven a man says something genuinely difficult and the room handles it well, and after that night it is a different group. Before that it is stiff, and stiff is not the same as failing. ### What do we do about food? Keep it small on purpose. Coffee and something to pick at is right. A full meal shifts the centre of the evening onto hosting and cooking, and the man doing it burns out inside three months. ### Do we need insurance or a legal structure? For a handful of men meeting in a home, no. If you meet on church property you are normally covered by that organisation and should confirm it with them rather than assume. Once money is being collected or held, that is the point to get proper advice, which this page is not. Next ## Where to go from here Three companion pages. [### How accountability works The check-in in detail: what it sounds like and what stays in the room. Read this next](https://sonsofscripture.com/mens-accountability-group/) [### What a men's ministry is The definition, the comparison table, and what Scripture asks of men together. Read the definition](https://sonsofscripture.com/what-is-a-christian-mens-ministry/) [### The gatherings The live example: two chapters, two hours, every Saturday. See it running](https://sonsofscripture.com/mens-gatherings-hamilton-grimsby/) Written and published by [Blue Crane Works](https://bluecraneworks.ca/) for Sons of Scripture Canada, from the practice of a weekly gathering running in Hamilton and Grimsby · Nothing here is legal advice · Last reviewed 4 September 2026 --- Source: https://sonsofscripture.com/start-a-mens-ministry/