Conversation: Why the Generalist Category Mattered

"Several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counselors; they were totally good for nothing. We are however not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them."

— Native American Leader to Benjamin Franklin, 1759

Of all the responses I’ve received regarding the encounters and process through which God has fathered souls through Becoming a King over the past five years, none have been as impactful as the invitation to become a generalist.

In many ways, this big idea in masculine initiation is a prologue to a deeper question: How do we become honest about our relationship with fear, risk, and failure?

Becoming a generalist is the process of engaging in a maturing relationship with risk, and failure through the recovery of repairing our relationship with fear by doing and in time, mastering real things. It’s about becoming the kind of man who, more and more, can handle himself in any situation—whether it’s fixing a broken toilet or helping mend a broken heart.

It’s a process of identifying where we overreact and under react, what we avoid, and where we feel exposed; where we even hide behind our gifting, our competence, and our training, allowing precious and essential parts of our soul to remain uninitiated.

None of us becomes a generalist overnight. It’s a slow and steady process of healing our relationship with risk. It’s the practice of stepping onto our frontier instead of avoiding it. It’s learning, little by little, how to do real things in the real world.

Where are you on your journey of becoming a generalist?

Join me as we take a deeper cut at exploring what it means to become the kind of man who brings skill and harnessed strength to meet the world’s needs.

Every man has a place where he feels weak, incompetent, or intimidated. Perhaps that place of avoidance is actually the place of our greatest opportunity—for maturity, integration, and ultimately, peace.

If you dare to risk more and more, you’ll love this conversation—and this invitation.

It’s all been prologue. The best is yet to come.

For the Kingdom,

Morgan and Cherie