Session 11 Facilitator Guide

WHYZMEN · FACILITATOR GUIDE · SESSION 11

Mission & True North

Whose you are. What you do. What fits on the shirt.

CONFIDENTIAL · FACILITATOR USE ONLY · NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Monday, February 15, 2027 (Presidents’ Day) · 9:00–10:30 AM · New Community Church · Wise Men Still Seek, Knowing Their Why’s

Session Overview

Purpose

Session 11 is where the program turns from meaning to purpose — from comprehension of the road behind (Part One) to intention for the road ahead (§2.1). Burrow’s distinction is the frame: meaning looks backward, purpose looks forward, and the you in “your purpose” had to be answered first. Ten sessions answered it. This morning pulls one sentence out of the harvest, then hands the sentence to three other men before the man is allowed to decide it is true.

The session is deliberately not the place the mission gets finished. It is drafted here, heard on Clearness Monday (February 22), checked at Session 12 (March 1), and made final at Session 13 (March 8) when the Essential Few tells him what it declines. Say the three-week shape early and often; it is what lets a perfectionist draft at all.

Session outcomes

•Every man who tried his test action has said aloud what it found out; the men who did not have said why.

•Every man has all three rungs in pencil: a Commission sentence, a Contribution sentence, and three or four verbs — and has asked the Galatians question of the shirt once.

•Every man has watched the Clearness Room run honestly for fifteen minutes, caught at least one violation on the checklist, and heard the permission to call the rule.

•Every man has gathered one T-shirt reaction in the room, holds the Field Tests card, and has settled his triad’s order for Clearness Monday.

Timing spine · 90 minutes · post it beside the timer

Before Men Arrive

Re-entry is not recap. The men talk before they are taught, and this morning what they talk about is what the Session 8 test action found out (strongly suggested in Wilderness Week 3). Two slides of frame, then twelve minutes at the tables, then one slide that names why the mission question arrives at retirement.

The three weeks and the inventory (6 min, slides 2–3)

Read the left column of slide 3 only, slowly. The definitions are on the Participant Guide inventory page; do not teach them. Burrow’s line — the you in “your purpose” — is the reason the mission question waited ten sessions. Watch for the man who looks surprised at the length of the list; he arrived thinking the page was blank.

The test-action report (12 min, slide 4)

First the checklist from the foot of slide 4 — hands only, one item at a time, about a minute: triad met (one sentence) · “open to §2.0” My Next Chapter · “open to §1.4” My Faith Foundation · the test action, done / not yet. No commentary. You have already read the §2.0 and §1.4 pages the men emailed by February 14; note the not-yets (a man without §2.0 or §1.4 gets a word at the break; a triad that has not met must meet before Clearness Monday, the 22nd). Then the practice check-in: “Tell us one moment with the break practice — One call a week.” (Or Shoulder to shoulder, the practice for the week of Session 10.) One moment per man, no commentary. Then tables of four: every man answers three questions in order about his test action — what did you try · what surprised you · what did it make you want to do next. The third answer is the one to harvest; it feeds the verb bank in twenty minutes. A man who did not try it says so and why. One report-out per table, sixty-second warning. All of it stays inside the twelve minutes.

Goal vs. purpose (3 min, slide 5)

The frame for the morning, and the first slide to cut if you are behind. Agassi did not quit tennis; he re-purposed it — same activity, new why. The hill study is the program’s own Two Summits metaphor run in a lab: for purpose-writers the hill was as steep and cost less. Land one line — “a purpose is the organizer of your goals; it tells you which one to pick up next” — and say why the Charter writes §2.1 before §3.1. Frankl only if the room is quiet.

The drive has a name (3 min, slide 6)

Slide 5 has just separated a goal from a purpose. This slide answers the question that leaves in the room: if the pull toward purpose isn’t ambition, what is it? Name Erikson once, give the two words, one line of evidence, and land on Psalm 71:18. Have the men hold up the Seven Ways to Coast card from their Session 10 envelope: stagnation is the seven ways in one sentence. Do not teach the eight stages. Do not say “psychosocial.” The framework is yours; the pull is theirs. Watch for the man who hears “next generation” and thinks grandchildren only — Erikson’s word was wide: a craft handed to an apprentice, a church nursery, a younger man at work. Say so if you see it. The three minutes come from the next three blocks: one each from Where a mission comes from, Bolles, and the verb bank.

Where a mission comes from (2 min, slide 7)

Buechner’s two circles and Leider’s arithmetic are the same claim in two pictures; the men took every inventory on the slide in Sessions 6–8. Ask the room the question and wait: “Which circle can you name — your gladness, or the hunger you keep noticing?” Most men can name one and go blank on the other. The blank one is what the Clearness Room is for; say so once. Then one line for Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle (the italic line at the foot of the slide): your What flows from your Why — the Ten Domain Why’s, for the men who wrote them in the break, are the Why, and the mission is the Why put to work. Do not draw or teach the circles.

Three rungs (5 min, slide 8)

Read the three rungs in order and say plainly that most men start on rung 3 because it is the fun one, which is why so many mission statements are slogans. Rung 1 is the only rung that settles whose you are; the grammar is passive on purpose. Rung 2 is the working sentence and the only one specific enough to be held accountable to. Rung 3 is compression and comes last.

Demonstrate the So-That Ladder live with one volunteer: take his rung-2 draft or his Contribution Hypothesis and keep asking “so that what?” until he hits a floor (“so that they’re happier” — will not bear ten years) or a Person. Do not rescue him from the silence. The Gunpoint Test is Jones’s: one sentence, a twelve-year-old understands it, recitable under pressure — a mission you cannot produce when frightened is a document you own, not a mission you have.

Bolles (1 min, slide 9)

For the skeptic. Richard Bolles (1927–2017) was ordained in the Episcopal Church and wrote Parachute while working in campus ministry; How to Find Your Mission in Life (1991) is the mission chapter as a standalone book. The point is the order — God, world, talent — and that the man who taught America how to find a job put them in that order. One line, then move.

The Galatians Test (4 min, slide 10)

Then read your own — the shirt unchanged, the rung-2 sentence, and the rung-1 sentence — and say which rung fixed it. One fix, five times: when a man fails, do not send him back to his verbs; send him to rung 1. If he can write “I have been sent to ___” and mean it, the shirt will pass without a word changing. If he cannot, no rewording will help, and that is the conversation to have — in the Clearness Room, not here. Cloudy is a permitted answer (Romans 8:1).

Your three or four verbs (8 min, slide 11)

Say “draft, not deliverable” before they start or the perfectionists freeze. Eight minutes. Run of show: 90 seconds circling on instinct, narrow to three or four, 3 minutes drafting, 2 minutes reading to the man beside him. Call every switch. Men who drafted in the fall revise; men who did not draft cold from the bank.

Close by reading one or two sentences aloud to the room with permission. Hearing another man’s sentence is what makes a man revise his own.

Rung 1 in pencil, and the second screen (4 min, slide 12)

Two minutes solo on “I have been sent to ___,” then the Galatians question asked once of the shirt, silently. Do not collect answers. Then the second screen — “would your triad know, from this sentence alone, what to ask you about next Tuesday?” — which is the guard against pious abstraction. Rung 2 goes in pencil on the guide page if there is time; if not, it is Clearness Monday work. Hand off: “The sentence you have is what you bring to the chair.”

The top pocket: True North (3 min, slide 13)

The only slide carried from the Pack set, and now the place True North is set. Values went in the top pocket at Basecamp; True North goes in beside them this morning. Do not cut it. The extra minute comes out of rung 2, which is optional in the room. SAY: “Buford says choose one thing, or your second half repeats the first. We say it a little differently: set one bearing. True North is one short line, the direction you want everything else to bend toward. It is not the only thing in your life. It is the bearing you check the others against.” Then the distinction, once: the mission (rung 3, the T-shirt) is what you do, in verbs; True North is what you are oriented toward, a word or a phrase. Read two or three of the variants from the guide page, no more. One minute solo, in pencil, in §2.1. Nobody reads it aloud this morning; it goes to the chair on Clearness Monday with the draft. Do not preach subtraction here — the Pack Test, the forty-pound rule and Mark/David/Tom are Session 13.

Watch-points

The man who writes “Jesus.” Honor it; it is true. Then the second screen, gently: would your triad know what to ask you about next Tuesday? “Following Jesus, wherever that leads this season” is a bearing; “Jesus” alone is the ground under every bearing. Either is allowed in pencil.

The man who writes a hobby. Do not correct him. Joy can point north (“to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever”). Ask once: does it order the rest of your week, and does it send you toward others? Fishing that takes a grandson to the river passes; fishing alone every morning is delight, and it belongs in the Rule.

The man who writes a plan. “Seek and plan for the most fulfillment” is a method, and the mission already does that work. Point him to a noun or a short phrase: presence, joy, faithfulness, the next generation.

The man who cannot choose. Unfinished is allowed until Session 13. He brings the blank to the chair.

This is the morning’s center of gravity and the reason Session 10 taught listening on something small. Twelve minutes of teaching in four slides, then fifteen minutes of the real thing with the program lead in the chair, then five minutes of debrief and three of permission. The men leave able to run it without you on the twenty-second. That is the whole test of this movement.

Why the room forbids advice (3 min, slide 14)

Scripture supplies the warrant; Burrow supplies the psychology; Palmer stays on the leader card. Read Job’s friends slowly — seven silent days, then the advising, then the rebuke in 42:7; several of these men were raised on it and the seven days are the entire discipline. The 307/183/3 count is Martin Copenhaver, Jesus Is the Question (2014); cite if asked. Proverbs 20:5 the men know from Session 8. Burrow: purpose cannot be crowdsourced, which is exactly why advice fails and honest questions do not.

The covenant (2 min, slide 15 — leave it up through the demo)

Read all five lines yourself this morning; on the twenty-second the triad’s timekeeper reads them. The restraint is not politeness; it is what makes clarity possible. Psalm 139:13 is the reframe that gives the practice its external authority — the One drawing the soul out is God, not the circle.

The protocol and the questions (6 min, slides 16–17)

Walk the seven steps once, top to bottom; the Clearness Room Guide and the T3 card have them with times. Emphasize step 3 — the thirty seconds nobody fills — and step 5, where mirroring is the man’s own words. On slide 17 read two of the seven questions and point at the T3 card; then the one rule (“an honest question is one you do not already know the answer to”) and the two traps. The Stanier floor at the bottom is for the man who freezes; the Great Listener Card (E1) from Session 4 is in his pocket.

The demonstration (15 min, slide 18)

Debrief (5 min, slide 18, lower half)

Three questions, in order, and no more than five minutes. Observers: what did you catch? Name it without shame — “I heard advice wearing a question mark at about minute nine” is exactly right. Committee: where did the fixing reflex fire in you, whether or not it got out? Focus man: what changed in the sentence, and what did you hear yourself say? Then stop; do not let the debrief become a discussion of the program lead’s mission.

Any man may call the rule (2 min, slide 19)

Is it a mission yet? (1 min, slide 20)

Show, do not teach. This is the March 1 opener. The only point this morning is that a finish line exists and it is three weeks away: both halves nod, or it isn’t finished — and unfinished is allowed until Session 13. Cut to a glance if running long.

Field Test 1, the T-shirt test — and the first reaction now (4 min, slide 21)

Hand out the card. Read Test 1; it is the only one due before Clearness Monday. Say plainly that Tests 2 and 3 are not homework now — Session 12 asks for one conversation or one door, reported at Session 13 (March 8). Then the line at the bottom of the slide, and do it in the room, before anyone can decide not to. You won’t be reporting to me. Your two brothers will ask you one plain question on the twenty-second: what did they say back? That’s the whole job of a brother, and every man here is qualified for it today.

He leaves having done one. The difference between “do five this week” and “do four more this week” is the difference between a homework line and a mastery experience. Then name the sliding, kindly:

Then hand out the Opportunity Map and say one thing about it. Thirty seconds; do not teach the bridge this morning. The mission is still draft r1, and a man who starts choosing projects now will bend his sentence to fit one he likes. The bridge is taught at Session 13, with the Bridge worksheet in the room.

Where confidence comes from (90 sec, slide 22)

Ninety seconds, after the tests are assigned, never before — it says why we are asking, not psychology for its own sake. Read the four verbs down the left column, then one line: “Confidence is not something I can talk you into. It is something you collect, and the strongest kind comes from doing a small version of the thing.” James 1:22 is the whole of Bandura in fourteen words.

Clearness Monday (90 sec, slide 23)

Forty-five seconds for the order; the guide has a line for it. The “longer hour” line on the slide is the door to a full committee evening for a man with a question bigger than a sentence — do not advertise it harder than that.

This Week’s Reading (1 min, slide 24)

Point, don’t teach. Name the one recommended reading and say where it lives (binder / shared folder): the Clearness Room Guide — covenant and checklist, adapted from Parker Palmer — the same handout they held for the demo. Mention Going Deeper once, lightly — optional, never assigned. Slide 24 now has three cards: Required; Books (Jones, The Path; Buechner, Wishful Thinking); and Shorter Readings, the four WhyzMen pages that help a man cultivate his mission: Where a Mission Comes From (12 min), Big P, Little p (10), The Meaning Audit (10, the reference behind the Session 8 audit) and Burrow’s Cultivating Purpose (10). If a man asks where to start, point him to Big P, Little p before rung 2 settles. The rest of the shelf (Bolles, Guinness, Burnett & Evans) stays in the Readings Ledger; Grant on mentoring moves to a later session.

Practice of the Week (1–2 min, slide 25)

Read the practice: Honest, open questions. Name its skill and section: “It is section 2, Ask, in your Toolkit — the card is the menu, the Toolkit is the kitchen.” Then one minute, in pairs, right now: Ask the man beside you one honest, open question about his mission draft, one you do not know the answer to. Then swap. Out of time? Each man names the one person he will try it with this week. The tracker is weekly, not daily: “Tried it this week ☐” and one moment line on the card. Rooted in Parker Palmer’s Clearness Committee: the Clearness Room rule, taken home for Clearness Monday. The questions are on the T3 card.

Opening check-in, Session 12 (March 1): the men bring one moment with “Honest, open questions.” Clearness Monday will give most of them one. Session 12 also asks, in one line, whether My Next Chapter still matches the mission.

This week and next (30 sec, slide 26)

Point at it; do not read it. One slide carries every item from today to Session 12 on March 1, with honest minutes, and the Participant Guide homework page carries the same list. Before Clearness Monday — the Clearness Room Guide, recommended (10), §2.1 draft r1 on the Mission Prep Sheet to both brothers by Thursday, February 18 (30), their two sheets read (10), the T-shirt test with reactions on the card, one done today (20), True North in pencil in §2.1 if it did not come in the room (5) — about 75 minutes. Clearness Monday, February 22, 9:00–10:30, the triad’s own room (90), then §2.1 draft r2 marked Clear or Cloudy (20). Practice: Honest, open questions (2 · Ask; card T3). Bring lists for the 22nd and March 1; optional items apart. Say the total plainly — about 3 hours over the two weeks, a milestone, half of it the Clearness Room itself. Field Tests 2 and 3 are no longer S11 homework: Session 12 assigns one conversation or one door.

Benediction (2 min, slide 27)

Isaiah 6:8, once. Then the closing line — “three weeks ago you learned to listen to a man about something small; this morning you watched a room listen to one man about the largest thing he owns; on the twenty-second you will do it for your brothers, and they for you” — and prayer: gratitude for what was heard in the chair, petition for five conversations each, blessing on the rooms on the twenty-second. The two-question self-check is on the last guide page; ask them to answer it on the way out.

The Facilitator’s Kitchen

Frameworks below the waterline — not for the room.

Why the mission is drafted here and finished three weeks later

Bandura’s four sources of self-efficacy, in descending strength: mastery experiences, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, physiological state. The design assembles all four across three weeks and reverses the order — settle the body first (the covenant, the silence, Cloudy allowed), then the witnesses (the room hears him), then the model (your draft in the chair), then send him out for the one thing no room can give, a mastery experience with a stranger. A deck that tried to convince a man his mission was right would be using the weakest source. Bandura is cited in the Session 2 guide (Social Learning Theory, 1977); the four sources are from Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (1997).

Why True North and not “the One Thing”

Buford’s question in Halftime — what is in the box? — was written for driven executives who needed to stop doing six things. Taken literally it asks a man to put one thing in the top pocket to the exclusion of all else, and it collapses two different answers: the ground (for a Christian, Christ, who is not one item among many but the one carrying the pack) and the channel (what gets the best of you this season). The program already has the channel: the mission (§2.1), the two values (§1.2) and, at Session 13, three priority domains.

True North keeps what Buford was right about — a second half without a bearing repeats the first — and drops the exclusion. It fits the compass language the men already have (My Compass, §1.2; the Values Compass, Session 7). A bearing does not forbid the path down to the river; it says which way is home. The Westminster Shorter Catechism carries the theology the men will ask about: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” Delight can point north.

Decided October 23, 2026. “The One Thing” is retired as a Charter line and a session title; Buford’s sentence stays on slide 13 because it is the right question with a narrower answer.

Why the Room and not the Committee

Two Clearness designs exist in the WhyzMen folder. The Palmer committee (one focus man, four or five members, 75–90 minutes) is the real thing and cannot be run for a cohort in a Monday morning. The Room (Facilitator Card: triads, 25–30 minutes a man) fits a triad meeting exactly, which is why Clearness Monday exists. The Committee set is the satellite kit — for the man who asks for a longer hour, and for a standing room the church could offer any man facing a decision. Palmer’s practice needs no Inner Light; James 1:19, Proverbs 15:22 and Psalm 139:13 carry it. His name stays on leader materials; the practice and the Scripture go to the men. The two exceptions are where the deck itself names him to the men: the reading list (the Clearness Room Guide is “adapted from Parker Palmer”) and the Practice of the Week slide.

Why the demo uses the program lead’s real draft

The Galatians explainer’s last example is the program lead’s own shirt, and it failed — rung 1 had never been written. Reading that in the chair does three things: it is Bandura’s vicarious source; it makes “Cloudy” a permitted answer by example rather than by rule; and it teaches the room that the chair is not a performance, which is the single thing Clearness Monday depends on. A facilitator who reads a finished mission will get finished-sounding missions on the twenty-second, and none of them will be true.

Burrow, and how much of him to use

Five things from the Hidden Brain episode carry this morning: goal vs. purpose (Agassi); the hill study; “purpose cannot be crowdsourced” (the warrant for no advice); the three pathways — proactive, reactive, social learning — as the answer to “I still don’t know my purpose”; and the two-question self-check. The summary is in the Reader’s Companion as a Going Deeper summary; the episode is assignable. GripTape — the non-expert champion who only asks “what did you do this week?” — is the triad job description and belongs in the triad’s own guide, not this morning.

Sourcing notes

•Laurie Beth Jones, The Path (1996) — the verb formula, Gunpoint Test, twelve-year-old test.

•Richard Bolles, How to Find Your Mission in Life (1991) — the three parts in order.

•Buechner, Wishful Thinking (1973); Leider, The Power of Purpose (1997); Buford, Halftime (1994).

•Erikson, Childhood and Society (1950), stage seven — both quotations on slide 6; “I am what survives of me,” Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968). Vaillant, Aging Well (2002) — say “among the strongest predictors,” not a percentage. McAdams, The Redemptive Self (2006). Erikson was not writing from a Christian frame: he describes the drive, Scripture supplies the object.

•Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness (2004) and the Center for Courage & Renewal clearness protocol — leader card; named to the men only on the reading and Practice of the Week slides.

•Copenhaver, Jesus Is the Question (2014) — the 307/183/3 count.

•Burrow, Hidden Brain “Cultivating Purpose” (2021); Grant, WorkLife “Three Big Myths of Mentoring”; Bandura (1977, 1997).

The Watch-Points

Post-Session — Same Day

•Text the cohort once from your own number before evening. One sentence: “Five people, your verbs, word for word. Prep Sheet to both brothers by Thursday the 18th.”

•Write down every man’s rung-1 attempt as you heard it, or that he had none. You will need it for Session 12’s opener and for any man who asks for a longer hour.

•Confirm every triad’s Clearness Monday room with church staff and send each triad its room number with the Prep Sheet reminder.

•Note the watch-point men. Contact within 48 hours anyone whose test action or verb bank turned up something heavy.

•Decide the remote man’s Clearness Monday exception and tell him.

•Send the Participant Guide, the deck and both cards electronically the same day, with “Thursday Feb 18 — Prep Sheet to both brothers” in the subject line.

Appendix A — Scripture

Appendix B — If You Are Running Late

Appendix C — Recovery Prompts

If the So-That Ladder volunteer stalls

•“Say the sentence again, and this time finish it with a person’s name.”

•“Who is worse off if you never do this?”

If a man cannot write rung 1

•“Start with who you are not sent to. Sometimes the field is easier to see from its edges.”

•“Take the sixth row of your Board — what the body named. Who needs that, specifically?”

If the demo committee goes silent

•Timekeeper, quietly: “There is no rush. When a question comes, ask it.” Then wait. Thirty seconds of silence in a demo is not a failure; it is the lesson.

WhyzMen · Rewire Retirement · Session 11 Facilitator Guide r12 · Confidential

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.