What I'm Learning from Starting F3 in Nepal

• In the US, the primary guys that are attracted to and benefit the most from F3 are middle aged. Not all, but a lot of times they are going through a mid-life crisis and looking for something bigger than themselves. Sad clowns. In Nepal, it seems to be a bit different. Middle aged guys rarely exercise, or even have a desire to. So far, I’ve found that most of the guys who want to come are young guys in their late teens and twenties. This group of men need real faith and daily fellowship for several reasons:
  • • Unemployment is through the roof, and good jobs are nearly non-existent. Literally thousands leave each day to work in the middle east, 80% of all men in their 20’s move to another country to find work. Most never return.
    • A hopeless religion – Hinduism teaches them fatalism and reincarnation, neither of which offer real truth or hope.
    • An ineffective education system – they are taught rote learning, and no critical thinking skills for innovation and progress.
    • So without this, and without money for education, they are left to pursue things to fill the void – often drugs and alcohol.
    • They need community, and F3 has proven to be an excellent outlet for this.
• First, get to know the culture you are working in. In Nepal that’s going to be very different than say Paris.
• Develop culture first: You can’t just start with just anyone. In order to reach people, you have to have a culture. In order to have a culture, you have to have a Core group of dedicated men who show up, are passionate, and are committed to the vision. This takes LOTS OF TIME. It may take years. I’ve found that believers with strong Faith and a desire for Fellowship are a must to start with. If you don’t have that, develop that first. In the U.S., you can often come into a new city and find scores of these guys waiting in the shadows. That’s probably not the case in the third world or most other countries.
• Grow deep before you grow wide: It takes time to develop that Core group. You may be able to get big numbers quickly, but depth takes time.
• In fact, that may be the hardest part, developing the Core. It’s said that great leaders make great leaders. So really, it’s the “12 Disciples” phase. It took Jesus 3 years and He’s pretty amazing so how long is it going to take me?
• Third Cultures are by nature, different than our American Status Quo:  duh. be in tune to those difference. Timeliness is a major issue in Nepal. Just getting to the workout is hard, as only 1-2 of our guys have a bicycle or motorcyle. None have a car. The rest walk. Think about clothes and showering – they can’t just go home, jump in the warm shower, grab a clean change of clothes, and go out the door. They might not even own a change of clothes. Plus, they might not have decent tennis shoes to wear to the workout, or exercise clothes for that matter. We have lots of guys who wear their casual every day clothes, jeans and sweater, with casual shoes, because that’s all they own.
• The difficulty of the workouts: This one is very tricky. You want to make the workouts hard, because that’s one of the central tenants. But at the beginning, chances are almost no one will be ready for that, so they’ll be suffering, and that could turn them away before they get the chance to experience it. Just make sure and be gentle here, I wish I had been more gentle at the beginning. I’m working on that.
• Workout times and lengths: in Nepal, 5:15am simply wouldn’t be tenable. People don’t get out to work until’ 9 or 10am. Plus, almost none of the guys coming even have jobs or families. So they don’t need to do that early. We’ve found 6:30am to be a happy medium. Play around with time. Also, you might want to start with 30 minute workouts until’ the PAX is more fit. I started with one day a week (Saturday) and then waited until’ the demand was there and moved to 4 workouts/week.
• Language barrier: My goal is to do it all in Nepali, but we’ve had to use English words for certain things. They have a hard enough time remembering “pushup” in a foreign language, let alone “merkin”. they have no context for weird words in a foreign language. Be sensitive to that, and use native words where possible. We do our counts in Nepali.
• In the end, be willing to compromise where you need, but know where the “uncompromisable things” are. Like the mission and values.
• Get into Second and Third F as quickly as possible – this is the glue. When we moved to 4 days a week, we started a Bible study and English class after the workouts. We also started doing trash pickup on the campus. Then we moved into serving in other ways. We did a benefit concert for refugees. We started kids clubs in brick factories. FNG’s started coming and saying things like, “I’ve never seen a group of guys who care about each other like this.” After the earthquake, the guys were critical in digging through rubble, mobilizing food and supplies, and serving in various ways. If it’s not focused on serving one another, it loses its purpose and becomes just another workout.
• Let guys start leading as soon as possible: This isn’t supposed to be about one guy. It’s about men becoming servant leaders. Let them fail. And fail again. Be patient. It’s OK, the main thing is they are showing up and putting in effort.
• Feed fires that start from the PAX: For example, one of the guys in Kathmandu raised his hand during CoT and said, “why don’t we start picking up trash on the campus after our workouts?” We started doing it. And it is one of the things early on that really brought us together, where the guys saw the potential in living on mission together. They started saying, “We are the light of the world” so we made that our slogan. Let it happen organically, bring out what’s already there. Don’t try to superimpose something from another group or from America.
• Have Fun. Stick with it. Show up even when you’re discouraged and no one else shows up. Spread the passion, the guys will see it and eventually some of them will catch on. Relentlessly promote it. Get them to promote it. Tell your waiter, the guy next to you on the bus, whoever will listen. Promote it together at events and places where men congregate. Stick with it. Eventually someone else is going to catch the fire.

We have a long way to go in Kathmandu. The country has been through incredible setbacks. However, there’s a Core here who get it and are leading, serving one another. That’s a good start I think.