Well, my guest today is Matt Trayler and Matt is with CBMC, right? That right. That's a mouthful. It's the Christian Business Men's Connection. And Matt, welcome to the Covenant Eyes Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Oh, great. Well. Matt. Tell us a little bit just your background and how you ended up with this organization and what your role is. Yeah. Well, my background was in full time ministry in human needs organization, a Christian human needs organization. But I've moved over to a new part of the vineyard, if you will, to CBMC. I've been with CBMC for four years, starting off as the director of programs, so all our programs and tools that CBMC offers fell under me. And now I'm recently moved into marketing and communications with. Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Well, for those that may not be familiar with this organization, tell us a little bit about really what your mission is and what you do. Right. Well, CBMC began almost 100 years ago on the heels of the Great Depression, where men in the business community saw the need as they saw colleagues who were just distraught with, you know, the financial market in disarray. Some were committing suicide, and that just impacted these guys and especially guys, Christian men who were in leader roles of leadership who said, we've got to do something. And they began praying and holding prayer meetings and gospel evangelistic meetings on the street corner. Yeah. That took off and grew. And now, almost 100 years later, we are in over 36 states and around the world serving men in the marketplace who we want to reach men with the gospel, empower them with the tools and community to grow in their faith and deploy them back in to the workplace as incredible leaders who impact the lives of other men. Evangelist. Yeah. In the workplace. Well, Matt, I don't want to. I don't want to get too far off track, but I can really relate to to the work you do only because, you know, I spent the first 21 years of my life in business as a Christian, and I know when I was young and started out in that, I just, you know, I went along with a crowd. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to, you know, make a good impression. So I, you know, did all the things that everybody else did. And I knew it wasn't the right things to do. But I didn't have those mentors. I didn't have any other Christian men or women around me in the business to really help at first. But then eventually I did find a guy who was a Christian within our business, and we became friends. And that gave me that, that strength to really begin to say no, you know, push back a little bit. I'm a Christian. I don't want to do that. I'm not going to do that. But without that, I think so many men, especially young Christians who are in business, really don't have that, that, that maturity yet to, to, to really live out their life in, in business like that. And that's where you guys come in. Right. Well and particularly younger men and I guess any man, it's hard to figure out where faith intersects with your work. Yeah. And how do you live that out? But also the pressures of work, whether you're an entrepreneur or you're a leader in the workplace, there's a lot of pressure to perform. And so many guys tie their identity to their paycheck and their their title. Yeah. And it's easy to lose sight of your purpose. And we want to help guys understand their purpose, but also help them through the struggles as they as they work towards understanding their greater purpose, that their purpose is more than a paycheck or job title. They have a greater purpose and we want to help them achieve that. And you can't do that alone. You need men in your life, godly men, mentors, we call them Paul's, who are discipling you and mentoring you to help you grow in your faith. Yeah. And just not do it alone. Yeah, yeah. That's that's that's great. I know you both minister to the young professionals, but you also minister to the executives or the leaders, really? Two separate categories, different needs. Tell us a little bit about how you how you minister to those two different groups. Well, in our young professional community, it's helping them understand you need community. You can't live a life of isolation and also empowering them with the tools, but also connecting them with what we call them sages, wise business leaders who have the battle tested, battle tested, scars of life, who can pour into those guys, and then speaking to business leaders, guys who are more mature, some guys who are running multiple companies, they need they need their own personal board of directors, people who can come alongside of them and say, hey, I know what you're going through. This is what I dealt with. Let's work together. Let's toss around ideas. But also let me pray with you. Let me give let me encourage you as you try to live out your faith as a leader in the business world. And then we also reach out. We call again legacy guys, guys who are maybe selling their company or retiring. We want them to know that they have purpose. We've seen many guys who lose purpose because their identity was wrapped up in as a leader or CEO, and they're like, what do I do now? We don't want them to go off and drink and, you know, play golf. I mean, that's great. Yeah, there's only so much that you can do. They have such great wisdom that needs passing on to the next generation, and we want to connect them to the next generation and give them the tools and equip them to do that. That's wonderful. That is excellent. So you mentioned Paul. You know, what does what does being a Paul in the workplace look like? Well, one of the I would say the differentiators of CBMC is that we really encourage life on life discipleship. And we would say we call it a Paul Timothy relationship. So the Paul is the disciple. The man who is discipling the Timothy. And it doesn't have to be based on age. You know, a lot of times it does work out that way. But the Paul is discipling. In discipleship. We provide tools, a track for guys to run on. Obviously, the main thing is not the tool, it's the relationship that's formed and that Paul modeling what a godly man looks like and being vulnerable to share. Hey. These are where I these are these is where I fail. These are my struggles. I want you to be equipped to be able to push through those as well and know that you're not alone. But we want to provide the tools needed so that men can disciple another man. Some guys don't even know what that looks like. They think it's just a Bible study and that is part of it. But knowing what is it? What is that discipleship relationship look like, and how does that happen? And what what does it look like to challenge that Timothy to become a Paul? Yeah, to become a disciple maker themselves. Right now. That's wonderful. So tell us a little bit about some of the resources that you do have on hand to help, help these men. Well, we have what we call our programs, which are groups. Again, we have three, two peer advisory groups and a weekly Bible study that a man can can join. So our peer advisory groups are, first of all, young professionals for guys 45 and under. And it's a once a month meeting. It's usually about three hours where guys are part of a team up your group team called young while Young Professionals, and we bring in guys, business leaders to speak and connect with these guys to share. And for these guys to ask questions of those seasoned, action oriented, godly executive or sages, then we have Trusted Advisor Forums, which is a peer advisory group once a month for four hours where business owners and business leaders, CEOs can can join these and have again that personal board of advisors who can help them as they run their company. What does it look like to run a God honoring company? And so you have guys pouring into you there. And then we have what's called a weekly Bible study, I would call it. But it's more than a Bible study. It's guys getting together for an hour once a week where they hold each other accountable to what is evangelism. How am I sharing the gospel each week? Who am I praying for to share the gospel and guys who are encouraging one another? And then we offer, you know, we do do a little bit of Bible study in that, but it's once a week. But ultimately it's guys getting together in community. Yeah. In a like minded community. Yeah. The tools we offer, we offer we have a platform where we offer all our content for free. Our main tool, our gold standard tool and discipleship is Operation Timothy. It is a three book series, but you can go through it digitally. So if you go to our advancement platform, it's called CBMC Advanced.com That's where it's housed. You can log in for free and use the content. You can invite somebody who you want to disciple into it, and you all can go through it together, which is meant to do. We have becoming a spiritual reproducing, which is it's a small group study that helps people understand what is true discipleship look like. And then we have a relational evangelism small group study called Living Proof, where small groups, men and women can go through living proof adventure and understand what does relational events. How do I share my faith in a relational way? In a natural way? What does that look like? So we offer these tools to help, among other things, that people can take advantage of to help them grow in their faith and live out their faith. Yeah, well that's great. So you have all around the country and how does how does someone find a chapter that's local to them or as close as they can? That's a great question. The best place to go is to our website CBMC.com very easy to remember CBMC.com and when you go to our website you can look at where we're located. You can find teams in your area. You can also fill out our get started for maybe you want to become a Paul or Timothy. You can fill out the form and we'll begin getting you pointed in the right direction. Or if you want to join a team, you can do that as well. Yeah. Okay. That's wonderful. And I'm sure if somebody wanted to start up a chapter in an area that there isn't one around, how does that work? The same thing. They just go to our Get Started form. You can put that in the comments, and our leadership will reach out and begin talking with you about how. That unfolds. We would love for people if CBMC’s not active. Maybe there's a guy out there that may be a calling on their life to lead and impact, particularly the next generation. We want to help them get started with that. That's wonderful. That's great. Well, before we leave. Do you have like 1 or 2 just quick stories of some really powerful. Things you've seen that the guys have developed from. We just had a lady, a lady write us. She's in Hawaii. And she she wrote unsolicited, wrote a letter to us to thank us because her and her husband's marriage were falling apart. They she was ready to walk away. One of our members reached out to this man and invited him into a life and life discipleship relationship using our tool Operation Timothy. And over time, she saw the change in her husband and to the point where their marriage was restored. And it was because another man came alongside another man and said, hey, let's talk. Let's get together for coffee. Hey, let's do Operation Timothy together and let's just talk about what it is, because Operation Timothy again is that track, but it leads someone to a point and it allows them to make it allows them to enter into that transformation, life transformation. And that spilled over into his marriage. And she was writing to thank us to say if somebody didn't reach out to my husband, we wouldn't be married. Yeah. And we want to train guys to be able to do that naturally where they're. At, right? Right. Wow, this is such an important ministry. As we know, too many guys just don't have that connection. And they have nowhere to go, nowhere to share these things, but no one pouring into their lives. It's all about discipleship. We're discipling men to to be the men God's called us to be. And that's why this is so important, right? There are so many men, I would say, even men in ministry, men who are pastors, who feel alone in what they do. They have a wife, obviously, and they have people who are elders in their church or whatever, but they still feel alone. Yeah, I would encourage men, whether they're leading a ministry or leading in secular work, owning their own company. They need they need guys around you. We're going to pour into your life. And I want to encourage anybody listening to do that. Absolutely. And that ties in so much with what we do, right? The number one thing we see guys staying stuck in pornography is because they're not connected. They're isolated there alone there in shame and simple connection with guys who will come alongside that will lead them forward and help them come through this. That's what works. And and that's how God designed us, right. And so so yeah. God bless your ministry. Thank you for what you're doing. And any way we can help. We'd love to do that. So website is. Easily CBMC.com .com. so we'll put that in the show notes. So look it up. Check it out to our listeners. Thanks again for watching Covenant Eyes Podcast. Hope you can share this and like it. We'll see you next time. Thanks. Bye bye.