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Welcome back to another episode of It's Time to Man Up. I wonder, when you hear about the word discipleship, what do you think? Like, I mean, does your mind immediately go to the Great Commission? Like, go out into all the world and make disciples? You know, I'm a sole winner, right? Call off for Christ Ministries from day one, the Lord made it very clear to be a sole winner, and certainly, you know, that's where it all begins.
But then, what's the next step after winning somebody to the kingdom, to the foot of the cross, and it's discipling them, right? Well, don't go anywhere, because today you're going to want to hear this conversation I have with Duke Crony. Duke, welcome to the Man Up show.
Hey, thank you so much. I appreciate being part of the show. Well, it's great to have you with us today, Duke. And I know we had met just a while back.
We crossed paths in Nashville, Tennessee, at the NRB convention. And, you know, you really got my attention. And I have it sitting in front of me, Disciple Makers Field Training Manual. And I just want to state for the record, one of the things, for me personally anyway, I know you'll elaborate more on this as we dive into this, in 30-plus years of being involved in following Christ, and in 25-plus years of being involved in ministry, and the last 16, 17 years more focused on men. But all that to say, it seems like discipleship in general has been a, if I'll say it this way, a weakness in the church. In other words, you know, there's a lot of churches out there winning souls to the kingdom. But I hadn't seen a whole lot of discipleship. And that's what your Field Training Manual is all about. And before we get there, though, so our listeners know a little bit about Duke Crony.
Give us a little background, give us a little backdrop. Well, I've lived most of my life as a fan of Jesus rather than a follower. And by God's design for each one of us, there was a time about 14 years ago that an event happened in my life that brought me to my knees. And I asked Jesus to be the Lord and Savior of my life and receive the Holy Spirit.
And it changed how I viewed everything, of course. So that was my transition, Nikita, from a fan of Jesus to a follower. And then within just a few years, I became a men's ministry director at a non-denominational evangelical church.
Jesus called Christ the King. A pastor mentored me, I became an ordained pastor there, and have been leading men's ministries for, oh golly, going on about 11, 12 years now. Mostly fellowship and study, kind of deal where you do once a week at night with food kind of deal. And that's kind of my background. The only other thing that may be interesting is I've been married almost 50 years to my high school sweetheart with a name like Duke. And she was a junior rodeo queen when I met her. So I figure long before I had any mind what was going on, God of course had already arranged exactly the right woman.
We love how that works, hey brother? Well, let me just say congratulations on the nearly 50 years. I mean that in itself is a milestone. Don't they call it, that's the golden anniversary, right? 50 years is the golden, I think. Yeah, we had the silver, the 50s, the golden.
Yeah, I got married when I was 18, so we're working on the 50th here any day. You're just a spring chicken, Duke, that's what I'm hearing there. You're just a spring chicken. And now you base your, correct me if I'm wrong, you base yourself out of Colorado, is that right?
That's correct. I reside just outside of Colorado Springs at about 7,500 feet. And beautiful sunshine, and even when it snows, it's beautiful. Yeah, I mean Colorado is a beautiful state.
I haven't visited it a lot, but in the times that I have been there, it is absolutely beautiful. So nearly 50 years, any children, grandchildren in the picture? Yeah, I've got three kids, three children, I say kids. My oldest daughter just turned 45, and none of my kids are under 40, but then I have a son and a daughter. And from that, five grandkids, whom all but one are within 30 minutes of us.
So the family's close by, just super blessed, brother. So I am curious, and I'm intrigued by how you phrase that. I was a fan of Jesus, but not a follower until 14 years ago. So we do the math, you got married, you said when you were 18, right?
Yep. To your high school sweetheart, so you get married when you're 18, you've been married almost 50 years. So math is not my strong suit, but I'm guessing you, so that puts you in your late 60s. That's right, I was 53 when I made the decision to go all in, as we might say.
So 53, so for our listeners out there, because this fascinates me, right? Because you hear all the different statistics that the highest percentage is, I don't have it in front of me, but under 18 is the highest percentage of trying to win somebody to Christ. And of course as the older they get, the less likely they are to go all in, as you just phrased it, or to give their life to Christ. My dad was 46 when he, as he called it, grabbed the old rugged cross. I was 34. What was it, Duke, that happened at age 53 that prompted you to go, as you said, all in? Well, in my case, I had been raised in a secular family, good folks, you know, ex-Navy, corporate guy, lettuce family, they were married over 50 years, and all that.
So I grew up in a traditional, you know, handshake is a man's word, and you're yes be yes, you're no be no kind of guy, but never with a biblical foundation. Although I had been exposed to God and Jesus throughout the years, I was kind of like most guys I think at first, as I'm glad that works for you kind of thing, and hopefully hasn't been bamboozled into something, but my goal was to become a millionaire, and when I did reach that goal, then God decided that was the time to get my attention, so through a series of events of, I'm going to say, a less than honest partner, a company went down and I lost everything, at 53 years old I started over with nothing but 10 grand in one car, and I had given my life to Jesus when that came down, when that occurred. So one of those stories, so you reach the pinnacle of success one might say, and set a goal, achieved the goal, reached your goal of the million dollars, only to have, I'll say it this way, the rug pulled out from underneath you, and to go from what would seem like everything to essentially nothing, and it's at that point that God really grabs your attention. Well he was working on me, Akita, this event took a couple of years, and through that suffrage I'm going to say, I was doing I guess not much different than a lot of us do, is ask the question, why is this happening? And that begs the question of, okay, why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? I mean, I would question, if there's a God, my upbringing said I would be blessed if there was a God, and I wasn't feeling the blessing, brother, so that went on for a while wrestling with that, and I think God was, as we know, allowing that to occur, to get my attention, and I guess maybe have me even quander that, because we're fixers, brother.
So this was broken, I wanted it fixed, I knew I couldn't mend it quickly, so what do you do then? Do you succumb to the world to become an alcoholic? I mean, I was at that place, and thankfully for the, especially men that spoke into my life throughout the years, they planted good seeds, brother, and when it was time for that seed to be watered, then the Holy Spirit started doing the watering, and it completely changed the trajectory of my life and my alignment on my priorities. I mean, just God's perfect timing in that sense, right? It is. And all of that, actually, to say that when I did go all in, I'll tell you, I didn't know how to be a Christian, much less a Christian man.
Not really. I mean, I heard a lot of sermons, and some convicting, some encouraging, none of them made a whole bunch of sense, because of course I didn't know the Spirit, but I made an appointment, went and saw a senior pastor, and I sat down with him, and I said, so I'm all in, and he's like, hooray, praise God, he said, what can I do for you? And I said, well, how do you do this thing?
How do you actually be a Christian? And I got, at first, kind of the traditional answer that we all get. Church answer. Yeah, like church answer, right.
Ten church, join a small group, have a Bible reading plan, right? But this guy, Cliff, was a little bit different in that he asked me, who's discipling you? And I had been a master technician, I'd also been a certified financial planner, and Cliff got to know that, and he described that as discipleship, so he says, who's discipling you into the knowledge and relationship that you're to be building with Jesus Christ?
I'm like, nobody. Well, that also set me on a task in that for the last 20 years I've been a business analyst and a consultant, and I write business plans, so my brain, brother, went to, what am I supposed to do? How can I impact God's kingdom, I guess, in a worthy way?
Not that I can earn it, but we all want, I guess, I had always been an achiever, so how do I achieve this deal? And it brought me, brother, to seeking out men like you, and guys like Pastor Cliff, and another guy named Raul, that these were guys that I saw that were veterans, to a degree, to the, I guess, the spiritual battle and the walk. And so I went and asked them, how do you achieve this?
How long did it take you? What did you do? I mean, again, there's an old saying they say, brother, that if you steal a really good idea, they'll call you a thief. If you steal a lot of really good ideas, they say you're in research. So I went about researching, I guess, the guys that were living it out, and because I saw a lot of hypocrisy too, man. I was a fan of Jesus because of the feel-good stuff, but I didn't actually know that many men that I thought were living out a godly life. So my view was tainted, and I wanted to know, you know, what do we do?
How do we do it? And that's really what evolved into what you have there before you in the Field Training Manual to teach guys what that means and how to live it out. We're going to dive into that, and a couple thoughts that come to mind as you're speaking is the word genuine, the word true, you know, just being a true man of God, being a genuine man of God. You know, sometimes we'll hear the expression, hey, that guy's the real deal, right, when it comes to being a Christ follower.
And as opposed to somebody maybe just on the fringes as you're talking about, it sounds like, you know, for the longest time, you know, I would phrase it and say, Duke, that you were just kind of on the fringes until you went all in. A couple things that come to mind there for me in this whole journey myself, you know, I come to Christ, surrender my life to Christ, 17 October 1993. And I'm in pursuit of, you know, a deeper relationship with Him from that time, fast forward to March of 2006, and I go to this camp in South Texas called Quest, and it's there, Duke, that for the very first time for me. Here's a little bit of my backstory for you and for our listeners out there. I see a teaching by a guy by the name of Duncan Brandon on biblical manhood.
And so, you know, I'm all about manhood, right, I'm a man's man, I'm, you know, world champion pro wrestler, you know, right, big weightlifter, bodybuilder, all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, you know, when it comes to living a life, you know, with a biblical worldview, I was still trying to figure that whole part out. When I saw that teaching, man, it impacted me so much so that it got me interested in men's ministry, and now all these years later running my own camp, right, called Man Camp, and hopefully impacting other men's lives. And so I say all that to say, right, your story, my story, those out there listening, it is a journey, right? But you hit on one of the keys, I think, and that is seeking out others, I would say it this way, more experienced or more seasoned in their walk with Christ, you know, or at deeper levels of faith that we can learn from and glean from, right?
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Go to eyeassociates.com for more information. Would your company, business or you personally like to partner with me in supporting Koloff for Christ Ministries, the Man Up show and Man Up minutes, go to koloff.net and click the donate button. You can give monthly, annually or one time. God bless you for making a difference around the world. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. So you seeking that out is, is what's inspired this field training manual in front of me. And if I remember right, correct me if I'm wrong, Duke, um, you were sharing what you had experienced, I think with, with your own children. And somebody asked you like, well, well, where is that? And at that point it was like in your head and they're like, Duke, that don't need to be in your head, man.
That needs to be on paper. Do I remember the story right? Do I remember the story right?
It really was. It was that I had been discipled very intentionally in, I'm going to say, a unique way whereby I was able to answer the question of the how to of the go do. That is, the man camps and other things like that that are absolutely essential to our journey. And what we do get admirably, brother, is a encouragement to be that guy. The stats say men are failing. You know, you look at abortions, you look at marriages, you look at pornography, look at all this stuff. It's like, okay, men are a train wreck.
Go wear the T-shirt that says man up and go out there and be that guy. And I was like, yeah, how? How? How do you actually, oh, I know, attend church, be in a small group and have a Bible reading plan.
Well, if that was working, then how come the stats are so ugly? How come there's more guys declining than inclining into God's purpose for them? And really what I find, brother, is they don't know how. Men do not know how. Even Navigators, which is a 93-year-old ministry for discipleship, contracted with George Barna in 2015, and they summarized their findings as a discipleship that men need to be discipling men one-on-one, most effective method. And then the next question is, why aren't they? Why aren't more men? Because it was a minority, and the number one answer was, didn't know how. So I learned uniquely from a man, I'm going to say a model of how to actually live that out, right out of the Bible, that I'd seen pieces of, but this guy put it together in this simple, uncomplicated bottom line.
And brother, that was me. I just want to know the bottom line here, and I want to know what it is that I'm to do to glorify God, and how do I live that out when I see most guys failing at it? So that's why it's called a Field Training Manual. It's to be used in the field, discipling guys one-on-one, and having a track to run on, that allows them to understand how they claim victory, and how they live out glorifying God.
And apparently, I learned, to your point earlier, that this kind of material was sparse at best, and mine seemed to be, I say mine, the guy that taught me this model, seemed to be fairly unique, and it was immediately embraced by a number of pastors, and became a publication. That's pretty amazing. Okay, I got to tell you a quick side note. I'm chuckling to myself and my producer in the studio with me, Nick, here. You say, wear the t-shirt man up. I am literally, Duke, wearing a t-shirt today that says man up. Oh, I have one too. First Peter, but I'm wearing it. It's on me right now, but okay.
All right, so we got about 10 minutes left here. I want to dive a little deeper in this, get to the, I love what you said. I don't know if our listeners caught it, but I love what you said. The how-to of the go-do. Broaden that for our listeners for a moment.
What do you mean by that, the how-to of the go-do? Some of your listeners may have known of them, but you could Google them and find out. Huge men's ministry, millions of guys. They all assembled, for example, in Washington D.C. at the Washington Monument, there's like a couple of million guys there, I think was the report. I went and I looked at that, brother, and I looked at the messages that promise keepers had, and they had these nationally recognized men's leader speakers. I mean, they rocked it with how bad we're failing and what we're supposed to be doing, and that was this ultimate go-do. So what happened to promise keepers? That was 25 years ago.
They dissolved in early 2010. Okay, so what happened? Well, what they got was a lot of go-do, but the proof in carrying that out and having that movement become worldwide, no one showed them the how-to.
It was all the decorations, just go be that guy. It says it in the Bible to do it, but it may seem like we're ignorant in a way or dense, brother, but you can show me how to use a certain ratchet or wrench on something, but until I actually start to do it myself, I really don't really understand it, and that's what's missing in discipleship, is the one-on-one for guys. Well, in fact, yeah. In fact, I'm looking at the back cover of your manual. The Discipleship Guide is an outstanding resource and perfect template for the one-on-one discipleship as commanded by Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in Matthew 28, 16 through 20.
And so, Duke, do you, okay, so our listeners are like, okay, you've piqued my interest, and how do I get this manual, or what? I mean, do you travel to churches? Do you set churches up to do this on their own? In our last few minutes here, how does that work, that part of it?
Okay, a little of both. The guy that taught me this model to live it out, and he encouraged me to go and share it with other guys, so really, that was my only thing I really did in all my ministry, is I just discipled one guy a week. Okay. And I taught him how to become a disciple maker. I still, we still engage in all of the forms of discipleship, but, and I've just been doing that for years, until recently when I created the manual, the encouragement was, you need to go teach this to groups of men in churches. So now I've done that, I charge a tuition, and I go into the churches as like a subcontractor, and through about a six-week period, I teach guys how to use this on a one-on-one basis.
Okay? And then from there, I've done a couple of different men's assemblies, leadership groups, and I just got picked up by a Christian university here in the States that's going to use this curriculum as kind of a graduation tool, if you will, for their men in their fall semester when they're coming out of seminary. That's phenomenal. I know it says a 12-week curriculum, right? So I sit with you, for example, if I was in, in what brief time we have, here's how I do it. I invite a man to coffee, I learn kind of where he's at in his spiritual walk, if this guy's got a level of maturity that I think I could make him an offer to train him to be a disciple maker, then I do.
I've never been turned down, and every time guys say, no one's ever offered to do this, and then I do that with the intent to have them turn them out to do the same. And we just sit across from one another at the coffee shop or whatever, open up our manuals, and just go through the book, just step by step. It's as easy as one, two, three, as they say. Well, and again, I just love the how-to of the go-do, and if you're a pastor out there listening right now, or men's minister, men's pastor, men's minister, men's director, have a heart for men's ministry, and you want to learn more about the how-to of the go-do. So, Duke Crony, making disciples, disciple makers, field training manual. Duke, how do they find you?
How do they connect with you, or what do they do? There's a couple of ways. The easiest way guys do is through, actually, Facebook, because there's only one Duke Crony sitting on a horse with a black cowboy hat. But, my website is personalhorsepower.com, so folks can remember personalhorsepower.com, and there's a tab on that website, it's my business site, this is disciple maker, and that leads into all the material, a number of testimonial videos from individuals and pastors alike, and it's also a way for you to order the manual yourself.
Personalhorsepower.com. Oh, with a name like Duke, it had to have horsepower in there somewhere, because I'm also a car guy, brother, right? Well, and I sense a bit of a cowboy in you, too, Duke.
There was another famous Duke that comes to mind who did a lot of western movies back in the day. Yeah, yeah, that's who I was named after. Are you named after the Duke, John Wayne? I am.
I am, literally. I was born in the 50s, and the girls got together and said, let's name him Duke, and that's really how my name came about, and then I learned cowboy wisdom, like, don't ever drink downstream from the herd, don't squat with your spurs on, that kind of stuff, you know? Well, hey, quick little side story. So my dad and I are traveling through Iowa one time, and I see this sign, birth home of John Wayne, and I'm like, Dad, we got time, you want to go?
And he's like, let's do it. So I toured the home of John Wayne, so they're in a little town in Iowa, this little corner house that couldn't have been about 800 square feet max, right? And then one other quick side note, so I legally changed my name for wrestling Duke, and the judge, she says, hey, you can do an AKA, so you don't have to actually change your name, you can keep your name and do an AKA. She goes, similar to John Wayne in marrying whatever his birthday was, right? And I'm like, ma'am, as much as I appreciate that, not interested in that, but thank you. And so two little John Wayne Duke stories there.
Well, that's amazing, Duke, it really is. And man, I'm excited that you got this available, and we're going to be talking some more, and we're going to get the message out that you are making this available for men out there. We know, and all kidding aside, part of my challenge is this is the man up show. I do a man up conference, a man up intensive, I do a man camp, because as you and I know, we need godly men, godly husbands, godly fathers out there, okay? One minute, what do you want to say in our last minute here, Duke, to encourage or challenge men?
It would be, I guess, no different than what I thought myself, was like, how do I do this thing? I mean, I would go to the weekend retreats and stuff, and connect with guys, and we'd write our sins on the paper and throw them in the fire, and it was always so good, but it didn't seem to have any longevity. The world speaks to us so, so much, Keter, that it didn't take me but a few weeks, and I was back to a little bit of worldly thoughts and not so much, so there's an absence of men coming alongside other men. We are in a real spiritual battle, and we need partners in this battle to help us battle well and keep these guys out of triage and have a claiming victory. That's a good word, and what comes to mind is Proverbs 27, 17, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens the countenance of his friend. The other thing that comes to mind is a dear friend of mine, the retired General Jerry Boykin, who calls it a battle buddy, Duke.
He says every guy needs a battle buddy, somebody that we're accountable to, somebody that can ask us the hard questions and help us to fight and overcome temptations. So, Duke Crony, out in Colorado, and the how-to of the Go-Do, what men are saying about disciple makers, the disciple maker manual, one more time I want you to go to personalhorsepower.com and check out Duke's manual, and hey, maybe bring them to your community. Pastors, if you're listening out there, maybe you bring Duke into your community. Duke, thank you so much for your time today. You're welcome, brother. I appreciate your time as well and your heart for men's ministry. Well, and likewise, and for all of you out there, I hope you were encouraged and or introduced to something you were not familiar with today, the Great Commission, go out and make disciples of all the nations. Thank you for being so faithful and listening week in and week out, and go out today and live a God-filled, God-blessed day. This podcast is made possible by the grace of God and your faithful prayers, support, and generous gifts. May God bless you for your continual contributions. Go to colov.net and donate today. If you are enjoying the Man Up Show, would you help us spread the word? Tell your family, tell your friends, tell your neighbors to download, subscribe, and leave a comment. Hi, Nikita Koloff.
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