Our Story

How It Started

Four dads in Apex, North Carolina. Dan had the vision — a covenant group of fathers who would walk their sons through boyhood into manhood together. Steve brought the organization and the heart to hold it together. Kurt brought steady, thoughtful depth. Josh brought the spiritual foundation. Different backgrounds, different gifts, one shared conviction: we wanted to pursue God together and let that overflow into how we raised our sons.

That's the part people miss. The Guild wasn't a parenting program. It was a group of men walking in the Spirit together — and the fathering flowed out of that. Posture before performance. Hearts oriented toward God before hands busy with activities.

We didn't have a curriculum. We didn't have a plan. We had prayer, scripture, and the willingness to show up.

What Went Right

Weekend trips. Campfires. Hard conversations. Watching our sons become friends — real friends, the kind who show up for each other. Connor's wedding toast talked about how The Guild shaped him.

The Board Meetings

One of the best things we did was bring the wives in. We called them “board meetings” — the four couples would get together and the wives would share what they were seeing at home. Things we were missing. Things the boys wouldn't say to us but would say to their moms.

The wives brought insight we didn't have. They saw the blind spots. They pushed back when we were being too hard or too soft. They held us accountable to actually showing up — not just for the boys, but for our marriages. The Guild wasn't just a dad thing. The wives made it better.

Posture Over Performance

If there's one thing we'd want every dad to hear, it's this: The Guild was never about being a great dad. It was about pursuing God and walking in the Spirit — and letting that shape everything else. The fathering, the marriage, the friendships, the hard conversations with your sons — all of it flows from posture.

Not performance. Not checking boxes. Not having the right curriculum or the perfect campfire talk. Posture. Hearts surrendered to God, hands raised in dependence, willing to be led even when you don't know where it's going.

We prayed together. We read scripture together. We confessed our failures to each other. And when the boys saw their dads doing that — not perfectly, not impressively, just honestly — something took root in them that no program could have planted.

We Didn't Land Where We Aimed

Let's be honest: The Guild did not end up where we set out to go. Dan had a vision — 6 AM meetings, the boys reading together, a lifelong brotherhood that would carry them into adulthood. That didn't happen. Not the way we drew it up.

COVID wrecked the rhythm. High school pulled the boys in different directions. Some seasons we were just trying to keep our kids from making terrible decisions. Marriage was hard. Schedules were impossible. There were stretches where it felt like the whole thing was falling apart.

We all carried feelings of failure — constantly. Are we doing enough? Did we miss the window? Is this even working? That weight was real, and if you start a Guild, you'll feel it too. We want you to know that upfront.

The Dark Days

We're not going to share our boys' stories here — those are theirs to tell. But we will say this: every one of us walked through seasons where our sons went off the rails in ways that terrified us. And every one of those seasons nearly broke our marriages too.

The shame tells you to handle it privately. To put on a brave face at church. To isolate. That instinct will destroy you.

The Guild saved us in those seasons. Not because anyone had answers — nobody did. But because we had men who knew the truth and didn't judge. Men who prayed when we couldn't. Men who showed up at your door when they knew it was bad. If The Guild gave us nothing else, it gave us that. And it was enough.

But the Boys Still Talk About It

Here's the thing nobody tells you: the stuff that felt like failure at the time? The boys remember it differently. The silly things we did — the awkward campfire talks, the trips where everything went wrong, the meetings where we were clearly making it up as we went — those are the stories the boys still tell.

Connor described Steve at his wedding as “the biggest role model growing up” and said The Guild helped shape him into the man he is. Josh's son Tate now has breakfast with three guys every Sunday morning — he modeled what he saw. Connor started a men's group at college because he watched his dad do it.

We didn't arrive at the destination. But the journey — the messy, imperfect, sometimes embarrassing journey — that was the thing that mattered. The failures made the process, and the process made us. God redeems even the failures.

Where We Are Now

The boys are grown — or growing. Young moms at church started asking about father-son groups. Casey heard them at a meeting and told them about The Guild. They said, “You need to write a book.”

And we realized: the messy journey IS the story worth telling. Not a success story. Not a formula. A real story about four normal dads who tried, failed constantly, laughed about it, and watched God do something with it anyway.

So we're sharing it. Not as experts. As dads who showed up.