Stay Off the Bench: How Kent Evans Is Equipping Dads to Make Disciples

Picture Derek Jeter at shortstop. He boots a ground ball, and the runner is safe. Now picture him throwing down his glove, unbuttoning his jersey, and walking off the field.

It sounds absurd, but Kent Evans says countless men do exactly that. They just do it at home.

“When they make an error in their marriage, when they make an error as a dad, instead of thinking, ‘Man, it's an error, the game is still going on,’ they unbutton the jersey and walk off the field.”

Evans is cofounder and executive director of Manhood Journey, a fatherhood ministry with one clear mission: helping dads become disciple makers. His story shows what happens when a strategist's mind and a servant's heart are both given to God.

The Question That Started It All

Evans did not have a Damascus Road moment. His faith walk began, as he puts it, with a beautiful bait on the hook. He chased his future wife, April, into a church in college. “She's like, I'm not gonna date a guy who didn't go to church. I was like, sure, I'll go to church.” Thirty-one years of marriage and five sons later, he says God used that pursuit to start something much bigger.

In 2010, he and his team began building Bible study tools for fathers and sons. The starting question was modest: what if we got some resources together that helped dads dive into Scripture with their sons?

He credits a former pastor with the framework that best describes what followed. Some people find their calling in a blinding flash of light. Most find it by progressively experimenting with their gifts.

“It has shaped us a bit like a river bends through the woods. It has not been a straight line.”

There was no single Tuesday when the hobby became a calling. They wrote, built websites, and published Bible studies. Dads responded, sometimes with encouragement and sometimes with a clear “quit doing that.” Over time a team, a board, and some funding came together. This year the Manhood Journey website passed a million users in a single year. Evans says that would have been unthinkable seven or eight years ago.

He borrows Eugene Peterson's phrase to describe it: “a long obedience in the same direction.”

A Strategist in the Ministry Space

Before Manhood Journey, Evans worked in corporate America, including strategy work at Schneider Electric. He believes people enter ministry through one of two doors. Some come in through the heart, with great passion and little strategy. Others come in through the head, with a game plan.

Evans came through the second door. When he entered the fatherhood space, he mapped the competitive landscape, built budgets, and wrote one- and two-year plans. That discipline has paid off. “We've gotten a lot of bang for our bucks,” he says, “because we operated in a fairly efficient way.”

He is also candid about the shadow side of a driven mindset. A strategist can be quick to ask how a project is going when a teammate is grieving. So Evans has deliberately surrounded himself with more compassionate, heart-led people. He is also working to let the fruit of the Spirit shape how he leads, not just what he accomplishes.

Evans also sees nonprofit work as running on the same basic math as any other business: income, costs, and what is left over. About 80 percent of Manhood Journey's revenue comes from donors, around 10 percent from products such as books and digital courses, and the rest from carefully chosen sponsors. The board's running joke is that they aim to be a very profitable nonprofit, making every dollar count.

One Dresser, Not Five Drawers

Many Christian professionals wrestle with how faith fits into a crowded week. Evans points to a sermon from his pastor, Kyle Edelman, who set a dresser on stage. Some of us, he said, treat life like a chest of drawers: a money drawer, a health drawer, a marriage drawer, a work drawer, and one labeled faith.

The pastor's point was that the Christian life is not one drawer among many. Faith is the label on the whole dresser.

Evans lives that out in ordinary ways. He says he is living out his faith by taking an interview call, driving a son to basketball practice, or swimming laps at the Y. “I don't apply faith to my marriage. I don't apply faith to my fatherhood. Instead, I try to live out my faith in Jesus in all areas of my life.”

Wisdom Is Within Reach

Evans traces his approach to mentorship to a counselor who told him, in his late teens, to figure out who he wanted to be when he grew up. The counselor meant character, not career. That advice sent Evans looking for men with strong marriages, financial wisdom, or skill in communicating, and he has been doing it for roughly 35 years.

One mentor, a CEO of a large public company, once told him his greatest asset was extremely limited resources. Evans laughed, and the man explained: “You don't have enough time or money to chase unimportant things.” It is the discipline many leaders with more resources never learn.

Evans offers three questions he asks when he sits down with someone further along:

• If you were in my shoes, what questions would you be asking?

• Since you know what I'm trying to do, what mistakes do you think I'll make?

• What's the number one or two problem on your mind right now?

His challenge to anyone feeling isolated is direct but kind. We have texting, video calls, and a coffee shop on every corner. “If you can't find someone to meet with, that's just because you're not looking.”

What Actually Counts

A few weeks before the interview, several milestones landed at once. Manhood Journey passed a million website users in a year. It received the largest unsolicited gift in its history. Evans calls that one a praise-the-Lord moment.

But what moved him most were short messages from dads. A man in Georgia, another in California, and one in Kent, England, each sent a brief video saying the content had helped them become better husbands and fathers.

“Seeing a guy's face on a video where he just said, ‘Hey, man, you've really helped me raise my son.’ That is the feedback that actually means the most.”

As technology grows more automated, Evans believes real human connection will only become more valuable. Manhood Journey's reach isn't just measured in numbers; its fruit shows up in individual homes.

The Faithful Effort Business

When asked about legacy, Evans says he loves the question and also dislikes it. If legacy means being remembered, he is not chasing it. He is skeptical of the idea that anyone “built” something alone. Every call he takes depends on thousands of people who built the technology he uses. A wealthy friend once credited his business success first to God for the air in his lungs and then to the temperament God gave him.

Evans prefers a different goal. “I am trying to be faithful. Faithful to my wife, faithful as a father, faithful as a nonprofit leader for now.” A friend in Little Rock put it this way: we are in the effort business, and God is in the results business. We get stressed when we confuse the two.

He adds that even strong parenting does not guarantee outcomes. He knows good dads whose kids have wandered. If his wife still loves him and his five sons want to come home for Christmas, he will call that a blessing from the Lord, not a reward for good performance.

Your Monday Morning

Evans's story leaves us with a few practical steps:

• Stay in the game. If you made an error at home, go back and own it. You don't have to play perfectly, but you do have to stay off the bench.

• Remove the drawers. Ask where you treat faith as one compartment, then bring it into your work, your marriage, and your parenting.

• Schedule one conversation. Contact a leader further along than you and bring the three questions above.

• Measure faithfulness first. Do the next right thing this week and leave the results to God.

You may not be able to build something that lasts. You can be faithful in the place you stand, and that, Evans reminds us, is the work God asks of us.