AFR Men’s Summit Speaker Series — Speaker #8 of 8 Summit: The Power of Asking for Help — Creating the American Family Renaissance Date: September 14, 2026 · Online, join from anywhere Meet the full lineup: americanfamilyrenaissance.org/summit/speakers Reserve your seat for this No Cost Event: AmericanFamilyRenaissance.org/summit/#register
I’ve spent seven posts telling you about seven remarkable men.
This one is harder to write, because it’s about me. And the honest truth is that I don’t want to write a paragraph about my accomplishments. What I want to do is tell you why I built this thing, what it has cost me, and what I believe is at stake.
So let me just say it simply.
I have poured my heart and soul into the mission of God, Family, and Country because I watched those values start slipping away, not attacked so much as quietly abandoned. Not taught to our sons. Not modeled in our homes. Not defended anywhere it counted. And in their place, we handed men a substitute: chase the money, chase the recognition, chase whatever the culture is applauding in this moment.
I’ve watched good men run that race for thirty years and arrive at fifty with a title, a balance, and a hollow spot they can’t name. Because those things were never going to fill it. They were never designed to.
That’s not a marketing observation. That’s what I hear from men in the coaching chair, week after week, once they finally stop performing and tell me the truth.
American Family Renaissance exists because I refuse to watch it keep happening.
What I’m Speaking On
I’m closing the summit with the keynote the whole day is named after:
The Power of Asking for Help.
It actually started as a chapter I wrote in Jim Britt’s collaborative book, Cracking the Rich Code, Volume 11. That’s where I first put these words on paper—and where the idea got out of my head and into a form other men could read. Everything since has grown out of that chapter, and it all rests on the same foundation as True Man True Ways: A Roadmap of Discovery to the Masculine Heart, and on something I’ve watched play out in men’s lives more times than I can count.
Here’s the message in one sentence: real strength begins the moment a man becomes honest enough to ask for help, surrender his pride, and step fully into the life God is calling him to lead.
Not after he’s fixed himself. Not after he’s got his act together enough to be presentable. Right there, in the mess, at the moment he says the words out loud.
Most men have it exactly backward. We think asking is what you do when you’ve run out of strength. It’s actually where strength starts.
The Problem I’m Trying to Solve
There are two versions of this problem, and they’re the same problem at different scales.
The first is personal. A man gets isolated. Not dramatically, gradually. He stops calling his friends because he’s busy. He stops telling his wife the hard stuff because he doesn’t want to worry her. He stops praying about anything but emergencies. And one day he’s carrying his entire life alone and calling that maturity.
Then something cracks. And he has no one, and no practice at asking, and no idea how to start.
The second is cultural. Multiply that man by ten million, and you get the country we’re living in.
Because here’s what happens when men go silent and drift: the home goes unled. Kids grow up without watching a man pray, apologize, keep a hard promise, or stand for something unpopular. A generation inherits nothing to imitate. And a nation is only ever one generation of unformed men away from losing what it took centuries to build.
We didn’t lose our footing because of one election or one policy. We lost it in ten thousand living rooms where nobody was teaching anything because the man in the house was too exhausted, too distracted, or too ashamed to lead or was flat-out never taught how to do it himself.
That’s the honest diagnosis. And I’ve never once believed the fix comes from Washington, D.C.
Why God, Family, Country — In That Order
The principles this country was built on aren’t complicated. Faith. Personal responsibility. Service to your neighbor. Governing yourself so that you don’t have to be governed by force. Character practiced in private, which is the only place it’s ever actually formed.
Those principles didn’t come from institutions. They came from households. They were passed man to man, parent to child, at dinner tables and in workshops and on the walk home from church. The nation was downstream the whole time.
Which is exactly why our order is God, Family, Country, and why it never changes:
Build the Man. Strengthen the Family. Restore the Nation.
You cannot skip a step. A country cannot be restored by men who haven’t been restored. A family cannot be led by a man who doesn’t know who he is. And a man cannot know who he is until he knows Whose he is.
That’s why our framework is Know God. Know Yourself. Live Fully. Identity is not something you generate through achievement. It’s something you receive. Every man chasing money, fame, and recognition is trying to earn something that was already available to him as a gift, and that’s why the chase never satisfies. You cannot achieve your way to an identity that comes only through surrender.
I’m not asking anybody to be nostalgic. I don’t want the 1950s back. I want men who can be trusted with their own households, and I believe that if we get enough of those, everything else follows.
Why Asking for Help Is the Doorway to All of It
Here’s why the summit is named what it is, and not something about greatness, legacy, or high performance.
Asking for help is the first act of a restored man. It’s the smallest possible door, and everything else is on the other side of it.
Think about what a man has to do to ask. He has to admit he doesn’t have it handled. He has to surrender the image he’s been maintaining. He has to let another person see him accurately. He has to trust that he won’t be despised for it.
That’s pride, isolation, image management, and fear- the four things wrecking most men- all confronted in a single sentence: I need help.
And I’d point out that this isn’t a modern self-improvement idea. It’s the oldest pattern in Scripture. Grace only ever moves toward the man who admits he needs it. The whole Gospel runs on that direction of travel. Bob Tiede counted 339 questions Jesus asked—the One who needed nothing led almost entirely by asking. Bob Beaudine will tell you about a second chair that never empties. Vince Miller will tell you what brotherhood rebuilds. They’re all describing the same door.
How I Know This Works: This Summit Is the Proof
I could argue this. Instead, let me show you.
Every part of this summit exists because I asked somebody for help.
The message you’ll hear on September 14 started as that chapter in Cracking the Rich Code, Volume 11, the bestselling series created by Jim Britt. While researching it, I got curious about how many questions Jesus asked, looked it up, and found that Bob Tiede had already written the book. Two of our eight speakers are from one chapter.
I then went to Scott Schilling and asked for help building the keynote. That’s all I wanted. One talk. Scott’s involvement turned the talk into a summit and the summit into American Family Renaissance, the organization that now carries this mission, with True Man Life Coaching as the engine underneath it. Then Scott introduced me to Chris Widener. And Scott introduced me to Bob Beaudine. One man’s yes produced three of the eight sessions on this schedule.
Vince Miller came to me through an introduction that happened for one reason: I was asking for help, and part of the answer that came back was a connection to him. Tom Ziglar carries the God-Family-Country order his father built a fifty-year legacy on, and he said yes to a stage far smaller than the ones he’s used to.
Look at what that adds up to. I did not have the network, the reputation, or the platform to assemble this lineup. I had a message and a willingness to ask. Everything you see on that schedule is what asking for help built.
If you want to know whether the message works, don’t take my word for it. Look at the roster.
What I’m Actually Asking of You
I’m not going to close the day with a motivational send-off. Here’s what I’m going to ask instead.
Ask one person for help this week. One. Not a vague “we should catch up.” A real ask about a real thing you’ve been carrying alone.
That’s the whole assignment. Because I’ve watched what happens next hundreds of times: the shame he expected doesn’t come. The other man leans in. And something that had been stuck for years starts moving within a week.
That’s how a man gets rebuilt. That’s how a family gets a leader back. That’s how a nation gets restored — not by a movement, but by a few million men who stopped pretending they were fine.
Why You Should Be in the Room
If you’ve done everything right and still feel hollow, this day was built for you.
If you’re leading a family and running on fumes and can’t say so, this day was built for you.
If your kids are watching you and you’re not sure what they’re learning, this day was built for you.
If you’re successful and quietly wondering whether this is all there is, you’re the man I wrote the book for.
Eight speakers. One day. No cost. Scott Schilling, Chris Widener, Tom Ziglar, Jim Britt, Vince Miller, Bob Tiede, Bob Beaudine, and I’ll close it out.
You will not get another day like this for free, with men of this caliber, aimed this precisely at what you’re actually carrying.
The Details
The Power of Asking for Help — Creating the American Family Renaissance. Eight world-class speakers. One transformational day. Built for men who are done drifting and ready to lead.
September 14, 2026 · Online · Join from anywhere
Reserve your seat now → Meet all eight speakers →
Seats are limited. And I’ll say the obvious thing: registering for a summit about asking for help is asking for help. Start there.
Build the Man. Strengthen the Family. Restore the Nation.
About the Author
Mike Van Pelt (MVP) is the Founder of American Family Renaissance and True Man Life Coaching — a movement dedicated to restoring the foundation of God, Family, and Country by rebuilding the heart of the man. He is the author of True Man True Ways: A Roadmap of Discovery to the Masculine Heart, host of the True Man Podcast with 250+ episodes, and creator of the Master Class The 9 Marks of a Restored Man. Through coaching, speaking, and brotherhood, Mike helps Christian men break isolation, reclaim their God-given identity, and lead their families with faith, character, and conviction.
Know God. Know Yourself. Live Fully.