Stronger together

Friendship and community are beneficial for fathers, asserts an article published by Barna Group in June 2025. The group’s study found that fathers who maintained friendships with other men across generations reported a positive impact on their family life, resulting in deeper, more satisfying relationships with their wives and children. But for most fathers, making and maintaining these friendship connections poses a challenge.

“They desire these connections,” Mike Mattes, executive director of Kingdom Dads, told The Stand. “But they do not come easily.”

Kingdom Dads (kingdomdads.org) is an Ohio-based organization dedicated to transforming culture by equipping dads to love and lead their families as God has called them to do. A key feature of the organization’s work is connecting dads to local cohorts of like-minded men for edification, accountability, and community.

Mattes continued: “Part of the reason finding community is so difficult for dads is simply the fullness of life. It’s much easier for men to see the return on investment for their vocational work because they have clear goals, clear expectations, and clear deadlines. We don’t often have that in family life or with friendships, so it can be put on the back burner unintentionally. Once we get dads in the room for their first Kingdom Dads cohort gatherings, they’re hooked. They make sure to make the time.”

A foundational problem

For 21 years prior to working with Kingdom Dads, Mattes was heavily involved in collegiate ministry with the Coalition for Christian Outreach, discipling students as they wrestled with questions of identity, purpose, and faith. Over time, he noticed a troubling pattern. Many students were arriving on campus unformed in the most basic ways, shaped less by family and church and more by the constant noise of digital culture.

“I was watching college students come into college,” he recalled, “with a shallow understanding of the big-world questions of Who am I? Where am I? What’s wrong with the world? How’s it made right?”

This void forced Mattes to look upstream. If young adults were struggling, something was missing earlier in their lives. At the same time, he and his wife were starting a family of their own, determined to be intentional in how they raised their children and shaped their home. What began as a personal conviction soon grew into a larger calling, one that would eventually lead him to serve as executive director of Kingdom Dads.

Family matters

It isn’t only the dads who benefit from a reliable, like-minded community, such as the Kingdom Dads cohorts. According to Mattes, the wives see their husbands experience renewed energy and intention in their roles to be faithful and effective family leaders. Mattes said Kingdom Dads gatherings are designed to invoke that kind of change.

“We have curated material from various resources,” he said. “Each [cohort] is six sessions long, [so] the dads meet biweekly or once a month. Our first course is about communication with the wife and with the kids. As men, we need a clear understanding of what it is we’re being tasked with and asked to do. Bringing … practical, clear theological understanding to that is important.”

Each meeting involves reading the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9), God’s command to take His words seriously and to incorporate them into every aspect of life, including family life. In addition, Kingdom Dads implements practical, measurable ways to live out this command.

“Guys like [to] check boxes,” explained Mattes. “So, we each have this thing called a simple weekly ‘meetup’ with our wife where we carve out at least 45 minutes to talk about important areas of life together. And then one dad does a quick check-in with another dad to hold each other accountable: ‘Hey, did you meet up with your wife?’

“What we’re building is a trellis for marriages to flourish [on],” Mattes added. “We also have meetups with our kids, father to daughter, father to son.”

Practical accountability

This “checkbox” approach is a way to build habits of leading a family in godliness, combating natural, sinful patterns of apathy and passivity. The accountability afforded by a community of other Christian men enforces consistency and creates a space for honest conversation about what is really happening at home. According to Mattes, this work is slow, humbling, and counter-cultural.

“I think we, deep down, desire to have that level of vulnerability with another dad, another husband, another father, another man,” reflected Mattes. “But our tendency is to talk past each other or discuss things that have little value.”

Moving past that surface-level style of communication and into a deeper, meaningful connection requires intentionality. Mattes spoke about developing a “shared language” that helps men name and call out important aspects of leading godly lives as fathers, a tool for understanding one another and opening oneself up to be held accountable.

“That is why we are intentional about gaining a shared language and some very clear practices with God’s Word to anchor it in,” he continued. “Because that’s where the Spirit really begins to move freely. And it’s that shared context that really allows dads to bump up against each other and positively impact one another in life.

“For example,” added Mattes, “I can’t hide how frustrated I might have been with my kids as we walked into church, knowing there was another Kingdom Dad in my cohort who saw me. I’m vulnerable in that way with them and able to be held accountable in that shared context.”

The price of isolation

Biblical instructions like the Shema necessitate togetherness; they require the people of God to be united as they grow in godliness. Mattes described the cost a man pays when he isolates himself from such togetherness.

“The price that is paid … is a slow, wilting death,” he warned. “My grandmother would always say, ‘You’re always growing or wilting in love. You’re never stagnant.’ And the problem with isolation is you feel stagnant, when really – you’re wilting.”

He went on to say that the “pick yourself up by your own bootstraps” mentality that is so pervasive in modern American culture is enslaving men, bringing them closer to that wilting existence. For men to come alongside each other and say, “We will pursue faithfulness together,” is countercultural. Mattes asserted that Christian fathers need to understand that independence and isolation are not what God has called them to. They are called into community.

“The church is not a church of one,” he stated. “And the church is not an online engagement. The church is being messy together and being in the mess together. This is why Kingdom Dads is committed to in-person meetings in a shared context of following God and leading families.

“It is really hard,” he added, “to find that time and carve it out, and it requires you to give up something, but it becomes worth it for the life it will bring to your family and marriage.”