Inside Story
Man in the Mirror
No longer merely an “empty suit”
By Dean Ridings
At 42, Bill Penkethman looked in the mirror and didn’t like what he saw. The finely dressed Columbia, Missouri, businessman knew in his heart he was an “empty suit.”
“Inside I was not the man I wanted to be,” Bill recalls. “I saw a man with an alcohol problem, a man who was self-centered with no moral absolutes. I saw a man without character. I had not started out to look like this, but here I was.”
Not long after the mirror revelation, Bill found himself channel
surfing and then stopping to watch a TV evangelist “just for laughs.”
That’s when God gripped his heart and told him that the first step in
becoming a man of character is giving his life to Jesus. “Through that preacher, God showed me just how bad I was and how great He was,” says Bill, “that He loved me in spite of myself, and that if I would believe that He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for my sins and receive Jesus as my Lord, surrender my life and ask for forgiveness, He would forgive all my sins. I knelt in front of the TV and, through tears of joy, gave my life to Christ.”
Fast forward two decades to the same—yet changed—man in the mirror. The custom-suit salesman looked as sharp as ever. What’s more, his outward life reflected the inward change. He’d stopped cussing and drinking; he loved going to church, reading the Bible, and praying. Yet he wasn’t at peace.
“For the first 20 years of my Christian walk,” Bill says, “I was running in place spiritually. I was busy doing things for God but not growing closer to God or more like Christ.”
Enter Larry Glabe, a “man’s man” with a coaching background. For more than 30 years God has used Larry to disciple collegiates and business professionals, and more recently to coach church leaders to “grow the church by equipping the men.” His passion to minister to men in Columbia led him to speak to a group of businessmen—among them, Bill.
Larry agreed with Henry David Thoreau, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” He observed that even Christian men are isolated, compartmentalized, disengaged. And he said that Jesus modeled the solution when He invested in the Twelve: intentional discipleship, life-on-life relationships to grow men spiritually.
“That was it!” Bill says. “I hadn’t been intentionally discipled. I was a 62-year-old infant spiritually.” So Bill stopped Larry at the door, gave him his card, and said: “We will be having lunch! Do I call you or you call me?”
At lunch Bill told Larry, “I want what you have,” and much has happened in the eight years since. Larry not only discipled Bill, he mentored him in how to disciple other men. To do so, Larry used a key Navigator Church Discipleship Ministry (CDM) tool he helped develop called HighQuest. As its three levels reflect, it helps men Know Christ Deeply, Reflect Christ Authentically, and Reproduce Christ Intentionally.
“HighQuest provides a track that lays foundational principles and skills in the life of another,” says Larry. “It’s put together in such a way that men find themselves saying, ‘I can do that . . . I can use the same tool to help another man live for Christ!’ ”
Bill now uses HighQuest
in his discipling ministry—and it’s working. One man named John
recently told him: “I’ve been a Christian for 20 years and never spent
regular time meeting with God in the Bible and meeting with men to
discuss what I was learning. It’s changed my life. Even my wife and
employees have commented on the change.” Another man, Scott, said that although he has been active in church since his childhood, he never knew what it was like to have a close personal relationship with Christ until he got involved in HighQuest.
Today Bill looks in the mirror and sees a Navigator. Yes, there’s much about him that reflects his mentor, Larry. But at 70, Bill has just joined The Navigators’ CDM team. “In my Navigator ministry among churches in the Midwest,” Bill says, “I encourage and challenge men to be and make disciples. I’m also taking HighQuest to Central and South America to raise the spiritual sights of men there.”
Despite what Bill calls his “late start,” he’s fully engaged and fired up to help men look in the mirror to see “practicing disciples of Christ who help others do the same.”
Learn more about CDM at www.navigators.org/cdm and HighQuest at www.highquest.info.
