— About · Nº 04
We’re two men who got tired of losing.
One of us came home from prison and addiction. The other came up in the streets, fighting the same drugs from a different angle. Both of us lost the same way for years — quietly, by inches, against the same eight enemies. So we named them, and we’re hunting them down with anyone who’s willing.
“If you’re walking and no one is following you, you’re just taking a walk — not walking.”
— the line that started Messy Discipleship
Nate Tibbs & Adrian De La Cruz · Wylie, TX
— Founders · Nº 04a
The men in the room.
We’re not pastors. We’re not credentialed. We’re two ordinary men who lost the same fights most men lose, and decided to stop. Here’s where we’re coming from.
Nate Tibbs
Founder · Wylie, TX
Nate did time. Came home to addiction. Got clean, built a life worth something, and then watched it start to come apart the same quiet way it had before. He didn't have names for what was hunting him until he found the desert fathers and their list of eight thoughts every man wakes up to.
He started Messy Discipleship because he was tired of watching brothers lose the same fights he'd already lost — without the map he now had. He writes slogans the way other men keep journals. The right line at the right moment can carry a man through a Tuesday in a way nothing else does.
What he fights: vainglory in his work, sloth in his prayer, and the slow assumption that he's the one carrying it.
Adrian De La Cruz
Co-partner · Wylie, TX
Adrian came up in the streets. Drugs found him there. He fought his way out the way men fight their way out of anything: one decision at a time, mostly alone, mostly in the dark. He knows the cost of losing because he paid it in full.
He's the co-partner Nate trusts to call out the blind spots, the second voice in the room when the Hunt is in session, and the brother who reminds us that the war is internal and the work is together.
(Full bio pending — Adrian's voice, not ours, will land in this column.)
— Why MD exists · Nº 04b
The mission, said plainly.
We built this because we were losing. Not dramatically — slowly, by inches, in the middle of ordinary days. The kind of losing that doesn’t make a story anyone wants to hear. Both of us knew it was the same thing showing up in different uniforms.
The desert fathers gave us a map. Eight recurring thoughts they called logismoi— the intrusions that run men without their knowledge. A monk named Evagrius wrote them down in the fourth century. A generation later, John Cassian carried the list west. We pulled it back out because the eight have not changed, and neither have the men they hunt.
This is not a debate. We’re not interested in your background or what room you came up in. We’re interested in one thing: do you want to stop losing? If you do, we have a room, a map, and ten Wednesday nights.
We teach in plain language. We don’t shame men for where they’ve been — we’ve been there. What we insist on is honesty about what’s actually hunting you, not the version you’d tell from a pulpit.
That’s why this exists.
“We’ve been down. We know what it costs to stay down. This is what we built when we decided to stop.”— the working posture
— Where We Meet · Nº 04c
One small room in Wylie.
A note on our hosts
We meet at Church of God, Wylie. We are not them, and they are not us. They are hosts; we are grateful. The Hunt is a Messy Discipleship initiative — for questions about the room, ask us.
Wylie
— Apply · Nº 03
Twelve men. One Hunt.
Applications open. Hunting Party 01 launches when twelve are vetted — not on a calendar. We’re looking for men who already know they need to fight, and would rather fight together than alone.
“Live a life by design, not by default.”