Featured Story: Bob King
“If you fully surrender for one year, you never know what’s going to happen.”
Transparency is a word that comes up often in conversation with Strong27™ mentor Bob King. Transparency with his wife, friends, and with his protege. This quest for transparency has helped Bob tear down walls that stood for decades.
Bob can still picture his dad sitting at the kitchen table reading his Bible, every morning. It’s a memory forever engrained. He grew up surrounded by godly influences. A foundation that led him to Christ at a very young age. That picture of what a godly man and leader looks like has helped shape Bob to be that for his own son.
Growing up in Friendswood, Texas, not far from the rough neighborhoods of South Houston, Bob saw it all. From drugs to drive-by shootings. An environment that often leads young men down the wrong path. But Bob had a mentor, in his dad, guiding him down the right path.
After school Bob found himself in Lancaster, PA in pursuit of a girl. Bob and Jill would soon marry and geared up for the next stage of life, a family. What they hadn’t planned for was how hard starting a family would be. Bob and Jill struggled through six long years of infertility. Instead of talking through the anger and letting people in, Bob allowed it to fester and built up walls to everyone and anyone.
It was through this difficult season they found a church to call home. At Victory Church Bob’s relationship with God began to flourish and things started changing. The door that was shut for Bob and Jill to have a baby, God opened through the form of adoption.
During his second year at Victory Church Bob heard about Men of Iron. It was something he knew in his heart he desperately needed. Now in his sixth year through the Strong27™ mentorship program Bob serves as the Strong27™ Director for his church. Not only participating but also overseeing all the men going through the program. Bob describes Men of Iron as a “Band of brothers, men in the church who will lock arms together.”
“Without having some type of mentoring, like Strong27™, I wouldn’t have been open to engaging with my neighbors. When you sit across the table from another man you are forced to break down walls and build relationships.”
Today Bob is not afraid to talk about his struggles, past and present. Through the Strong27™ program Bob has found an avenue to share and be transparent. An avenue to form lasting friendships. The Strong27™ program has given Bob the strength to lead his wife, to lead his son, and to lead in his church and community.