For Men's Groups & Church Leaders

WHAT IF THEY LEFT
THE ROOM
DIFFERENT.

Your men are not the problem. They are showing up. They are willing. What they are missing is a structure that makes the real conversation unavoidable — and a question worth answering honestly.

55→27%
A generation ago, most men had six or more close friends.
Today, barely one in four does.¹
1 in 4
Australian men say they would not seek help from anyone — not a friend, not a professional — for their mental health.²
Men without close friends are twice as likely to have thought about suicide in the past year.³

The man who never gets
examined doesn't get better.
He just gets older.

He keeps showing up. He shakes hands, prays, goes home. His wife notices the distance before he says a word. His kids are forming their picture of what a man is — from him. The unexamined patterns come with him every time he walks through the door.

The conversations that would have cracked something open never happen. Not because he isn't willing — because no one in the room ever asked the question with enough weight behind it.

80%
/
40%
Of men experiencing depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts — 80% saw their GP in the past year. Only 40% saw a mental health professional.⁴Men show up for the body. Not the soul.

Not a better session.
Better men.

These are not aspirational outcomes. They are what happens when a man is asked the right question, in a room of brothers, and is not allowed to deflect.

He goes home present
The man who names what he has been carrying — out loud, to other men — stops carrying it alone. He walks back through his front door lighter. His family notices before he does.
He becomes the father he intended to be
Unexamined men parent from an unexamined place. When a man confronts his avoidance, his distance, his patterns — week after week — it changes who he is at home. His children are the first to see it.
He stops avoiding the hard conversation
Most men know exactly what they need to face. They are waiting for someone to ask the right question with enough weight that walking away feels harder than answering. That is what the cards do.
Your group builds real trust
Shallow check-ins build shallow friendships. Men who answer hard questions together — honestly, week after week — build the kind of trust that shows up when things fall apart. That is brotherhood, not just a group.
He leads from character, not position
A man who has done the work — who has named his shame, his avoidance, his drift — leads from a different place. Not the title. The character. That is the kind of man families and teams actually follow.
Your group has a reason to keep showing up
Men stay in groups that move them forward. When the conversation has real stakes — when something is asked of them — they come back. Every new card is a new entry point into a man's real life.

"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another."

Proverbs 27:17

You've tried these.
They didn't stick.

The problem was never the men. It was never their willingness. It was the absence of a structure that made depth unavoidable.

Men's Retreats & Conferences
High impact. Short shelf life.
The retreat effect is real — and temporary. Men come back fired up, make commitments, mean every word. Six weeks later, the momentum is gone and nothing has changed at home. An event is not a rhythm. Formation requires repetition, not intensity.
Accountability Partners
Useful — but comfort creeps in.
Accountability partnerships start with good intentions and tend toward comfort over time. Without a structure that consistently reintroduces the hard question, most pairs settle into check-ins. The honest conversation stops happening after about three months.
Books & Podcasts
Worth doing. Still passive.
A man can listen to a hundred hours about being present and still go home distracted. Reading about the father wound does not heal it. Passive consumption is not formation — no matter how good the content is.
Check-in Circles
Surface-level by design.
Good intentions. Too often they stay in the shallows — how was your week, what are you grateful for. Not because men don't want to go deeper. Because nothing in the format demands it. Depth does not arrive by itself.

One card.
Thirty minutes.
A conversation that counts.

The Forge Deck gives your group a repeatable structure that works anywhere — before a game, after church, at someone's kitchen table. The format is always the same. That consistency is the point — because it is repetition, not novelty, that forms men.

01
Draw a card
One man draws from the deck and reads the word and definition aloud. The definition is not soft — it names what the word actually costs. The room gets quiet. That is the start.
02
Answer Q1 — for yourself
The first question is personal. Not what men in general should do — what does this word demand of you, in your actual life, right now? Every man answers for himself. No deflecting allowed.
03
Hold each other to Q2
The second question pushes further. The group engages. Someone says something he has never said out loud before. That moment — right there — is why the group exists.

Built on words
Scripture already owns.

The 52 words in The Forge Deck were not invented. They were found — in clinical research, in leadership literature, and in the Bible. Scripture has been naming these qualities and holding men to account for thousands of years. Every word in this deck has a biblical address.

COURAGE
Joshua 1:9 · Psalm 27:14 · 1 Corinthians 16:13
Not fearlessness — acting rightly despite it. The Bible does not ask men to stop feeling fear. It asks them to move anyway.
LEADERSHIP
Mark 10:43–45 · 1 Timothy 3 · Nehemiah 4
Servant-first and cost-bearing. Biblical leadership is not a title — it is what a man does when no one is watching and everything is at stake.
RESPONSIBILITY
Genesis 2–3 · Luke 12:48 · Galatians 6:5
The first thing God required of the first man. Abdication is not a modern problem — it is the oldest one in the book.
A note on the biblical foundation

Contact Right works in secular environments. But it was not built on secular assumptions. The conviction underneath this deck is that Scripture has always known what men most need to confront — and that the answers the world is still searching for have a source.

Every definition was written to be honest about what these words actually cost. Not inspirational. Not affirming. True — in the way Scripture is true: demanding, clarifying, and unavoidable.

For your men's group, that is not a problem to manage. It is the whole point.

Men aren't broken.
They're unformed.

Most men don't need another helpline. They need a rhythm. A reason to sit across from another man and say something real. And what's at stake is bigger than them.

Children & Fathers
School-aged children with good relationships with their fathers are less likely to experience depression and disruptive behaviour — and more likely to develop strong social skills and resilience.⁵
Formation, not hours logged
The largest UK birth cohort study found that what shaped children's outcomes most wasn't how much time fathers spent on childcare. It was how those fathers saw themselves as men, partners, and parents.⁶

The men in your group are not just working on themselves. Every hour they spend becoming more present, more honest, more formed — their families inherit the dividend. That is what The Forge is building toward.

What happens when
the right question gets asked.

"The first card we drew was SHAME. Three men in the room said something they had never told anyone — including their wives. We hadn't planned for that. But we needed it. The deck created the container that made it possible."

Pastor · Regional Church
Result: 3 men began counselling within 6 weeks

"My men are tradies, farmers, managers — blokes who would never call themselves the 'therapy type.' They drew the FATHER WOUND card in week four and the room went silent. Then it opened up. That card did in thirty minutes what I'd been trying to do for two years."

Small Group Pastor · Rural Church
Result: Group size doubled as men started inviting others

"We've tried a lot of resources. Most of them produce a good discussion once and then sit on a shelf. Contact Right is different — because the format repeats and the questions never let anyone off the hook. Eighteen months in, we're still going."

Men's Group Leader · Church of 200
Result: 18 months of consistent weekly sessions

"I've run men's groups for fifteen years. The hardest thing is always getting men to go first. Contact Right solves that — the card goes first, the question goes first, and the men follow. Every single time."

Men's Ministry Director · Multi-site Church
Result: Now running 4 groups simultaneously with the deck

Your men are worth
a harder conversation.

The Forge Deck is in pre-sale now. First print run. Order one for your group — or a set for every man in the room.

⚠ Founding-backer spots are limited
This is the first print run of The Forge Deck. We have reserved 100 founding-backer spots at the pre-sale price. When they are gone, the price increases at launch. Once the first run sells out, fulfilment moves to the next print run with no guaranteed timeline.
Sources
¹ Survey Center on American Life, American Enterprise Institute — American Perspectives Survey, 2021
² Ten to Men: Australian Longitudinal Study on Male Health — Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2023
³ AIFS, Dr Galina Daraganova — Depression, Suicidality and Loneliness in Australian Men
⁴ AIFS Mental Health Pathways / Better Health Victoria — Men and Mental Health Access
⁵ The Fatherhood Project / Children's Bureau — Fatherhood and Child Development Research
⁶ ALSPAC UK Birth Cohort Study (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children) — BMJ Open