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In his 23-year career with the U.S. Secret Service, Chuck Brewster guarded numerous political candidate and public officials, including the President of the United States. As one of the special agents guarding the hospital room where a wounded Ronald Reagan stayed after the 1981 assassination attempt by John W. Hinckley, Brewster was prepared to lay down his life should another attack come.

Brewster retired from the Secret Service in 1998, when he became the National Director of HonorBound: Men of Promise within a conservative denomination. Brewster believes Christians should apply the same principles for daily living as federal agents learned to protect dignitaries.

“Agents must have a commitment to be team players, they’re under authority, and they perform their duties to the point of death,” he says. “In the Christian walk, God equips us with the tools we need. We just have to surrender. Everyone is able. But not all Christians are willing to give total commitment the way agents I worked with did in the line of duty.”

It took Brewster a long time to grasp this parallel and to learn about God’s plan for his life. He did not have a good image of fatherhood while growing up in Pensacola, Florida. His own father had died in a car crash when Brewster was only three years old. His mother remarried when Brewster was 11, but his stepfather was an alcoholic who was verbally abusive. “I didn’t know how to become a godly father because I never had a role model,” Brewster says.

But he did have a reassuring mother, who took him to church. Yet, the going to church did little to change Brewster’s outlook on life. Straight out of high school he joined the Air Force. After that he graduated from Florida State University with a degree in social welfare and criminology. He met his wife, Rhonda, while working for the police department in Birmingham, Alabama in 1972.

In 1974, an aunt of Brewster’s wife invited him to her church in Birmingham. A young quarterback of the Birmingham Americans, Denny Duron, spoke a message that opened Brewster's heart as he received Christ as Savior. “I realized I had been doing church, but I hadn’t been walking with God,” he recalls. That same year, the Secret Service hired Brewster and the family moved to Washington, D.C.

Brewster rose quickly to the presidential detail and soon began a nomadic lifestyle, traveling 80 percent of the time. For a new Christian this meant little time to be discipled in a local congregation. Although enthusiastic about his newfound faith, Brewster had no grounding.

“The only time I would be in church would be when Jimmy Carter was teaching Sunday School,” Brewster recalls. “I was too lazy to study for myself. I kept trying to find that ‘perfect’ church like the one where I had been born again but I couldn’t. I should have kept my eyes on God and quit looking back.”

Brewster soon became preoccupied with his career to the point of letting his wife raise their two young children, Chad and Lanie. “I was not the spiritual head of my home,” Brewster recalls. “I was never there.”

The attempted assassination of Reagan taught Brewster lessons that later would strengthen his spiritual walk. He noted, for example, that Secret service agent Timothy McCarthy instinctively took a bullet to protect the chief executive, just as he had been trained to do. Christians, too, should predetermine to follow Jesus at all costs, Brewster believes. “If we put the Gospel inside instead of garbage, the Gospel would come out in high-stress situations,” Brewster says.

Brewster continued to handle huge responsibilities, including being a bodyguard for Vice Presidents George Bush and Dan Quayle and doing the coordinating of security at the summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984. The next year he learned an important lesson about godly living—in Las Vegas of all places. There, pastor Gary Morefield, who remains Brewster’s best friend, mentored him. Brewster realized that his priorities had been out of whack. Morefield helped teach Brewster that work can get in the way of a man’s relationship with God, and that fathers express their love for God by stepping up and being the spiritual leader for their families.

In his last decade with the Secret Service Brewster proclaimed Christ in the workplace by the lifestyle he led. He finished his career as special agent in charge of Seattle field office, with responsibilities of overseeing five northwestern states.

Brewster realized hecould have been taken out of this world at any moment. Today, after leading HonorBound for seven years, Brewster has founded a new ministry, "Champions of Honor, which is a focused ministry to men. He wants to make help men discover and develop their Biblical masculinity to ensure men avoid the same mistakes he made. Building men of honor into champions that will reveal the Father's heart to a fatherless generation.

With more and more young adults coming out of broken homes, Brewster knows many men had upbringings similar to his. “A lot of men are thrust into the role of husband, father, or Christian man without the benefit of a good role model in their upbringing,” he says. “The male image in the home was either nonexistent or, due to the drive to provide, there was an absence of leadership.”

Brewster has heard numerous excuses from men unwilling to become serious in a relationship with God. Men will use their families as an excuse for not spending time with God. "They tell me about spending ‘quality time’ with their family but they watch TV while their children play a video game.”

Men ages 18 to 30 are particularly vulnerable to losing zeal for the Lord as they marry and embark on a career, Brewster believes. “Younger men often get out of balance trying to juggle work, family, and God,” he says.

Brewster especially is concerned about men who travel frequently. “If you travel with a coworker, try to make that person your accountability partner,” he advises. “If you are alone, get a cellular phone and call your wife all the time. Know your weaknesses and avoid situations where the enemy can exploit them.”

Although retired from his important job of guarding the lives of government leaders, Brewster believes his current told of guarding the hearts of Christian men is no less vital. “The government was very good to me, but God has been even better,” Brewster says. “I’ve gone from serving President's to serving the King—from ‘in the line of fire’ to in the line of holy fire.”