About
This started as a handful of men around a fire, and it was never meant to become anything. We were friends who had gotten tired of talking about our lives in generalities. So we did something uncomfortable. We each wrote down where we actually were, what we actually wanted, and what we were going to do about it. Then we agreed to ask each other about it every week, out loud, whether or not the work had been done.
It changed things. Marriages got better. Debt got paid off. Weight came off. Some men changed careers. Others finally started something they had been describing for years without ever beginning. None of that happened because the plan was clever. It happened because a man could not quietly let something slide when six other men were going to ask him about it on Thursday.
Somewhere along the way it stopped being ours. Men outside the circle started asking whether they could run one of their own. That is what this organization is for. To hand it over, with enough structure that it survives being run by men who were not there at the beginning, and enough honesty that it is still worth sitting in.
We are a Christian organization. What follows is what we hold in common. It is deliberately broad, because we serve alongside churches across many traditions, and we do not ask a man to leave his church to sit in our circle.
We believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God and the final authority for faith and life. We believe in one God, eternally existing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He lived a sinless life, died on the cross for our sins, rose from the dead, and is coming again. We believe salvation is a gift of God, received by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and never earned by anything a man achieves. We believe the Holy Spirit lives in every believer and gives him the power to actually change. We believe the local church is God’s design for His people.
And we believe every man is made in the image of God, and that his life, his years, his family, and his work are entrusted to him by God to steward rather than to waste.
That last conviction is why this program exists.
A man who has been given one life, and told he may choose what to do with it, is accountable for that choice. Setting a vision is not a business exercise here. It is an act of stewardship. Writing goals is how a man stops drifting through something he was given and never asked for. Being measured every week is how intention survives contact with a hard year. And being held to his word by other men is how the Church has always worked, because no man was built to carry his life alone.
We are not a replacement for the local church. We exist to serve it.
Thou Mayest is governed by a board of directors who are passionate about making the most of the life God has given us. Each passionate in their own right, they bring a diverse array of skills and a shared commitment to giving others the opportunity to change their lives.
Matt started this fifteen years ago with John Pate. Two men, a fire, and a set of questions neither of them could answer alone. Over fifteen years they ran it, broke it, and rebuilt it until what was left was a method a stranger could carry. He built this organization so the thing that changed his life would not stay in one circle of friends in Florida.
Doctorate in business administration. Career in strategy. Published author. None of it is why this works.
Al keeps the program honest to Scripture, and makes sure a program about a man’s goals never quietly turns into self-improvement wearing a cross. He brings more than a decade of work with men.
Doctor of Divinity. Pastor, speaker, and published author.
John was in the circle from the first night. Fifteen years later he is still in it, which is the only credential that matters in a program built on men who keep showing up. He brings financial oversight and governance discipline, and hard experience in what it takes to hand a proven thing to people who were not there when it started.
M.B.A. Fortune 100. Data expertise.
Sarah is building and will lead the women’s track, designed by women rather than adapted from the men’s version. She also brings the two disciplines this cannot scale without: insurance and child safety. A method handed to churches and run with young people has to be safe before it is anything else, and that is the standard she holds it to.
M.B.A. Fifteen years with a Fortune 500 company. Mother of two.
Thou Mayest Incorporated is a Florida nonprofit corporation and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.