How Brotherhood Changed My Faith
When COVID hit, my roommates and I found ourselves without our regular outlets for physical activity. My basketball pick-up league came to a halt, my roommates’ soccer kick-around was cancelled, and of course, fitness centers closed their doors. As if the sudden decrease in exercise wasn’t enough, our communal consumption of ketchup chips and Netflix steadily soared.
At this rate, we were not getting out of this pandemic in good shape. Luckily one day, one of my roommates had an earth-shattering idea—dusting off a pair of running shoes and going outside for a run. The next day, he did it again. And the day after that.
And so this began motivating and challenging my other roommate and me to do the same. On any given day, one guy getting out for a run meant that the other two had to run that day as well. Even though running was never a consistent hobby for any of us, we began to catch the running bug!
We started finding various running routes and exchanging tips with each other about running gear, injuries, favourite playlists and podcasts to listen to while out on the trails. And to our surprise, we found ourselves running distances we had never run before.
Without even intending to do it, we were helping each other become runners, and as a result of the healthy competition, accountability and support that developed among us, two of us are now aiming to run our first marathon within the year and the third guy is training to complete his first triathlon before his 40th birthday.
As this naturally unfolded over the past several months, it gave me pause to think about the parallel to my faith. Like my experience of running, in recent years my faith has taken on a new dynamism as I began to experience it in the context of community. When I began meeting other Catholic men who shared similar experiences like mine, with whom I could journey and grow alongside, my faith came to life in a way I didn’t even know was possible.
In the past, faith was only a task that merited my bare-minimum effort – one hour on Sunday and a few prayers here and there, especially when I needed something from God. My faith was something I merely completed, and it was my experience alone. I never saw my faith as something to be intimately experienced with others.
The way I saw it, even if I and the next person went to the same Church and worshipped the same God and were of similar circumstances, his faith was his faith and mine was mine.
It wasn’t that I wanted to hide my faith from others; I just didn’t know there was more to my faith than what I had already experienced.
When I started to get to know other men my age and hear of their personal faith, my whole paradigm changed. As these men became very good friends based on our shared faith experiences, my eyes began opening to what faith really is.
Over the years, having a more enjoyable experience has led me to a fuller understanding of what my faith was always meant to be: not a task or a set of rules to follow, but a dynamic journey towards becoming a man of God.
Journeying alongside other men challenges me to go deeper because we are brothers on the same journey. We affirm, support, and challenge one another. We share our goals, our victories, our struggles, and our needs with each other. We turn to each other for advice, encouragement, and accountability. Together, we grow in our faith in ways that we could never do alone.
Faith was never intended to be a lone-wolf experience. It’s meant to be communal. And as men, we need other men on this journey. We need brotherhood that is intentional for faith to come alive and become life-giving. With the support of other men, we will reach heights we never thought we could, and we will move towards becoming the men of God that we were made to be.
If you have never experienced a community of faith like this before, I challenge you to step out of your comfort zone today. Find just one guy—maybe even someone you already know—grab some beers and share about your faith and ask him about his.
Here are a few questions to start:
- How does my faith form my role as husband, father, son, or brother?
- What is the biggest struggle in my faith journey right now?
- What are my hopes and goals for my faith journey?
It may feel awkward at first, but you will quickly see that journeying with other men brings on a whole new dynamism to your faith that you never could have imagined.
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