Book Preview: This book lifts a long-ignored burden off the shoulders of many young Black men who enter ministry without a reliable father—absent physically, taken by death, or present only in form while emotionally unavailable. That deep, often unspoken “father-hunger” shapes their calling: it pulls them toward older men for guidance, affirmation, and belonging, even as those relationships can be misunderstood or—from time to time—manipulated. The result is a subtle dynamic that reshapes careers, congregational leadership, and church culture. With compassion and clarity, the author shows how these hidden hungers create tensions in Black church leadership—tensions that are at once visible in organizational life and lodged beneath its surface.
