Eric Metaxas and Trail Life CEO, Mark Hancock, discuss culture, boyhood, masculinity, leadership, and the rapid growth of Trail Life USA on the Eric Metaxas Radio Show. Watch the podcast below or read the abridged transcript that follows.
Trail Life USA is a Christ-Centered, Boy-Focused Outdoor Adventure, Leadership, and Service Organization. In just over 5 years, Trail Life has grown to nearly 28,000 members in more than 800 churches in all 50 states.
Eric: “I want to say bluntly to all who are listening to this program. We need Trail Life USA in every community in America. There is nothing like it. They are doing heroic work. If you care about boys…start Trail Life USA in your community.”
I am just looking at this handbook. Flipping through the pages and it “makes me want to be a boy again and join Trail Life USA…it is intoxicating, just the chapters: nature, hiking, camping, cooking, ropework, fitness, first aid, aquatics, citizenship, leadership, your heritage, relationship…I think this is just a dream…it is an answer to the prayers of so many parents.”
I firmly believe that “If you want to invest in the country; invest in the young men. These are the leaders of tomorrow, the fathers of tomorrow, the husbands of tomorrow. We need to invest in these boys…This is very big for me. I wrote my book, “7 Men” because of this. When I heard of you I was so thrilled.”
“It reminds me of the muscular Christianity of people like Teddy Roosevelt. There was something in the culture that was extraordinarily healthy and beautiful and it was assumed. But as you and I know we drifted and drifted until we got to the point of sheer absurdity. “
Mark: Eric, we need to once again “Let Boys be Boys!” We have to acknowledge the truth that boys and girls are different. In my “Let Boys be Boys” eBook I talk about 3 winning strategies to equip leaders of boys.
Eric: “What you are talking about is revolutionary, it is monumental, and it is elemental. Because boys haven’t changed across the millennia. Somehow we have entered a very sick period in culture where we act as though we have figured out something else. You can’t. You cannot. Until a rooster lays an egg I am going to go with the idea that there are fundamental differences between males and females. If you don’t acknowledge that and work with that the way you guys do, you are dead. You are going to create a depressed culture.”
“The lies that are coming out of this culture about boys – they are out of the pit of hell. They are a spiritual blight on this nation and on the west. They are destroying families, they are destroying marriages, they are really pernicious lies. For you to be standing against them and vocalizing what is true is heroic…”
“We are in a battle for this culture. At the heart of it is the difference between boys and girls, between men and women. These are differences that God created for his purposes and when we eradicate those things it ends up being nothing less than evil and is doing tremendous destruction. I am so thrilled that you have been doing what you are doing and we can tell people about it….I want to exhort people who are listening, do the right thing, check it out – www.traillifeusa.com. When you find something this good you jump on it.”
