Since 2006:
- Over 500 Brothers Engaged
- Over 300 Miles of Trail Built
OUR PURPOSE.
The Battle for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful
Real men need grit and challenge. Wilderness Outreach provides the grit and challenge. God made us that way in the Original Solitude out of dirt and water. Have you forgotten? Are you ready to get out of the doldrums, out of the warm and cozy effeminate embrace of the culture of soft and plenty? Are you ready for a tent, sleeping bag, frosty mornings, hot black coffee, hard work and prayer? Are you worried that you don’t have what it takes? That’s ok. Every man in the secret of his heart wonders the same.
Join us and discover that you do have the heart and DNA for the grit and challenge of manhood. Become a Wilderness Outreach Brother.
That’s who we are. We are men, we are bold, we are sinners, but we are men of God.
Our purpose is to discover manhood and then provide the optimum environment for its formation.
THE HUNT FOR MANHOOD.
It is often said that men are providers and protectors. But why do we say that? What is the evidence that proves it true?
At the heart of Catholicism, Christianity, and Judeo-Christianity is the knowledge that Faith and Reason, Scripture and science, are complementary and not at odds with one another.
Wilderness Outreach starts with the science of manhood and then shows how it supports and helps define Biblical Manhood. All men, by virtue of how they are made and what they are made of are called to be Leaders, Explorers, Builders, Defenders, Providers, Fathers, and Brothers.
THE FORMATION OF MEN.
We have lost the optimum environment for the formation of men and must re-build it.
That environment must be intentional, and it must be one that challenges a man physically, intellectually, and spiritually. That optimum environment is one that integrates the masculine disciplines of Worship, Work, Asceticism, Leadership, and Brotherhood.
MEN MADE FOR DISCOVERY, BUILDING, AND BATTLE.
Discovering the structure of God’s created universe, then creating and building with that knowledge so that we can rebuild the structure of Christian community in the new Apostolic age.
Men must be the leaders in the defense against the attack of evil and as Hilaire Belloc stated “The modern attack will not tolerate us. It will attempt to destroy us. Nor can we tolerate it. We must attempt to destroy it as being the fully equipped and ardent enemy of the Truth by which men live. The duel is to the death!”
This is the essence of our fight. It is the essence of our battle for the Good, the True and the Beautiful.
John Bradford is the founder of Wilderness Outreach. He is married to Laura and is a member of St Mary's of the Assumption in Lancaster, Ohio. John has a bachelor’s degree in physics and an MBA from Ohio University.
John was born into a construction family where he learned how to work and think like a man under the tutelage of his father, uncles, cousins and other construction craftsmen. This early experience set him on a course of construction entrepreneurship that eventually led he and Laura to build a good construction company with the help of many good men. He is a student of organizational behavior and leadership, in particular where it applies to Catholicism, formation of men, and masculine spirituality.
"I believe that our Church, families, children, men and women are under attack by the world (culture), flesh (self) and the devil. Men in particular have opted out from their responsibility of living lives of conviction, purity, integrity, duty and honor and need to be challenged to re-engage in a Christ centered life of action. I believe that one the most important works of the New Evangelization is building a system of masculine formation that helps men understand what they are as a male creature, and what they are called to be and do as men. Men need to understand how the world is attacking manhood and fatherhood and respond by going on the counterattack. We need to actively defend our families and Church from the corruption of the secular culture."
Laura and John owned and operated a commercial construction company prior to the formation of Wilderness Outreach. Through her encouragement and sacrifice and the grace that flows from their sacrament of marriage, Wilderness Outreach continues on its adventure into the discovery of manhood, and the formation of men.
