Learning from Leaders - Dan Schaffer

Teaching, Leading and Reproducing

It was the second week of September, 1994. I had been on the staff of Promise Keepers for all of two weeks. I sat with Doc Reed listening to one of the founders of Promise Keepers. He was one of those unassuming guys that when you first met you did not quite know how to take him. Although it was over 15 years ago, I could take you back to the Chinese restaurant and to the exact spot we were seated.

Dan was the Director of Training for PK; and as I sat and listened to him, I realized that very little of what he was saying was about PK. He was sharing a clear strategy for building men. It became very clear then and has only been reinforced in the years following that God birthed in Dan a “to die for” passion to see men transformed as spiritually reproducing fathers.

I could hardly keep up with what he was sharing--not because he was speaking in a foreign language or the subject was so complicated. I had never really heard a man speak so clearly about real manhood. The best part was that it was not men against anything but, it was men for God.

Then he hit us with the statement--the one statement that grabs you so hard that you have to just stop and have it repeated. It is not a statement that requires a follow-on sentence to help you understand. No, this statement was clear and required no further explanation.

Dan simply said to Doc and I, “You can’t teach what you don’t know. You can’t lead where you won’t go. You only reproduce what you are.”

In one sentence Dan changed the landscape of men’s ministry for me. I was all excited about what I could do as a Regional Director for the largest growing men’s movement in the world. Dan made it personal. Men’s ministry was more about who I am and not what I intend to do. When I focus on what I will do, it is about me. When I focus on who I am, it becomes all about God.

Hardly a month goes by where I do not quote Dan. Over the years, Dan has become one of my best friends. We have learned to go “toe to toe” and grow stronger. He and his wife, Jan, are important parts of mine and Billie’s lives.

Dan has not changed since we first met. His ongoing passion is to grow strong, maturing, and reproducing spiritual fathers. After his days at PK where God used him mightily, Dan was led to launch a new ministry, Building Brothers (www.buildingbrothers.org). Dan is still doing what God created him to do.

The “takeaway” from my years with Dan is simple--we are all going to reproduce something in everyone we meet. I must put my energies into becoming the man God created me to be, and God will allow me to reproduce that part of Him into others.