Noble Masculinity
April 1, 2002
The most obvious thing in Robert Lewis's office is the sword. The pastor's desk and shelves of commentaries are standard issue. The large photos of his four children hugging Minnie Mouse and the family in a raft shooting the rapids are warming, but expected. Not the sword. It demands to be examined. A full three feet long, it looks like Excaliber, the sword Arthur pulled from the stone, thereby becoming king. "The men gave that to me," he says. "It's attached to the frame by magnets, so I can draw quickly if I need it." We chuckle and pull our fingers back a bit. "The men" are the Men's Fraternity, the 1,100 who gather at the church Wednesday mornings at six to hear Lewis teach on what it means to be a man. Some are members of his church, Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, Arkansas; many are not. Many are not yet Christians. "We had a car dealer in town bring all his salesmen," Lewis says. "He opened the paper and saw our ad: Learn how to be a man. He said, 'We're all going to go.' And you know what, they did. They stuck with me the whole year and finished, too." The men haven't crowned Lewis king, but they hold him and his teachings in high regard. With fractured families and alternative family forms increasing, and the traditional family in the minority, Lewis's approach is changing his church and his community. He's helping harried working parents to cut back their kids' overprogrammed schedules and to take charge of their moral and spiritual development. He's taking well-to-do suburban men into the inner city where there are few fathers and giving kids a hope and a future. And with his wife, Sherard, he's raised four children. Their youngest son is in high school. Lewis founded Fellowship Bible Church with Bill Parkinson ...
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