Forge Des Moines
Forge was born in Des Moines in January 2024. Since its founding, it has grown rapidly and become a movement transforming the lives of hundreds of men. Des Moines remains the beating heart of FORGE—the birthplace where this mission first took root, grew, and began changing families across the nation.
Sam Halligan
Des Moines City Director
Forge is proud to introduce Sam Halligan as the Director of Forge Des Moines. A Des Moines native, lifelong Catholic, devoted husband and father, Sam brings a deep pastoral heart to his role leading the city that launched the FORGE movement.
What draws Sam to the mission of Forge is simple but profound: the power of one man, when transformed by Christ, to change everything in his sphere of influence. When a man is awakened to his vocation, when he stands as the spiritual and moral leader his family desperately needs, the ripple effects cascade through generations. A man fully alive in Christ doesn’t just change his own family tree—he becomes a model, a mentor, and a catalyst for the men around him.
Sam’s faith matured through a decade of missionary work, where he served across Ohio and Minnesota. During those years, he witnessed firsthand the transformative power of an intentional Catholic community and men living out their faith. Sam’s background includes over a decade of experience as speaker, leader, fundraiser and ministry.
Sam is married to his wife Whitney and is a devoted father to his four children. Beyond his work with Forge, Sam co-hosts the Modern Man podcast and writes the Iron & Oak Substack, both exploring what it means to be a Catholic man in our time.
Sam lives in West Des Moines, is a parishioner at St. Francis of Assisi parish and wants to make the greatest impact he can through his life which he believes lies within setting the heart of men on-fire for Jesus Christ.
The Forge Movement
At FORGE, we fight for the family. Our fight does not involve a physical war. Instead, FORGE fights for the minds and the hearts of men.
Nevertheless, just like physical warfare, there is one principle of warfare that has become utterly clear: men who fight alone lose. Men who fight
together have a chance of winning. Our enemy’s strategy is to isolate, fragment, and destroy.
Our strategy is to unite, build virtue, and grow a movement. Welcome to the movement.
FORGE began in response to a problem, a problem that we understand as one of the most
lethal threats of our age: the corrosion of family-based Christian society in the face of an anti-family, anti-Christian, sexually confused, and oftentimes pagan culture. As we fight for the family, we recognize the uniquely leveraged role of men. Thus, taking men as its central,
strategic focus, FORGE champions the flourishing of the family, and, through the beauty of that flourishing, evangelizes the world.
Why the family? And why men?
Let’s start with the family. Pope Saint John Paul II prophetically said that “As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live.” (Homily in Perth, Australia – 1986) At FORGE, we are convinced that the state of the family stands as a pivotal hinge on which the whole of society turns. Thus, one of the best ways to improve the state of the entire society (and the Church) is to improve the state of the family.
“Why men?” For decades leading up to the founding of FORGE, groups like the National Fatherhood Initiative have decried the rise in American fatherlessness. The absence of a father positively correlates with poverty, prison, drug use, joblessness, educational failure, obesity,
teen pregnancy, and much more (www.fatherhood.org). Fatherlessness is bad in society, but it’s worse for the Church. The gravity of the Church’s man problem is highlighted by two interrelated phenomena. First, churches have been drained of men. In 2016, PEW Research reported that “An average American congregation is roughly 61% female and 39% male,” and that statistic is substantially higher for almost all religious programming including small groups, service work,
and religious education. Second, outwardly religious fathers positively correlate with faith transmission; that is, by the odds, kids are more likely to follow the faith patterns of their father than their mother.
The absence of an involved father brings about a negative spiral (both naturally and spiritually), but of course, the inverse is also true. A more involved father correlates with educational, professional, and psychological flourishing. And study after study has shown that children of faith-filled fathers are far more likely to become faith-filled adults. For these reasons, FORGE has made a strategic decision to emphasize men, all men, both single and married. We fight for single men because they are powerful allies, play a unique role in their communities, and might
be exceptional fathers in the future. We fight for married men as they stand at the very center of the FORGE movement, a movement that seeks to heal the family through the father.
How Does It Work?
The strategy of a local FORGE chapter is to create a “net”; that is, a network of men that
“catches” men for the gospel and supports those who have already received the gospel. The most fundamental unit of the Forge network is a small group. That said, Forge also actively encourages intergenerational mentorship; that is, mentorship of men in a younger generation by men in older generations. In this way, relationships are at the core of FORGE’s missional
strategy.
The expressed goal of a local Forge network is to build men, marriages, and families who are “TAO”; that is, Thriving, Apostolic, and Orthodox. By thriving, Forge refers to families who flourish in their natural human capacities. First and foremost, FORGE seeks to build flourishing human beings. By apostolic, Forge refers to families who love their Catholic faith and are actively involved with the evangelization of their local community. By orthodox, Forge refers to families who are obedient to the Church’s teachings without any exceptions. To be clear, Forge men are convicted that the Catholic Church is more than a fallible human institution. Though many Catholics have committed horrific sins, the teaching authority of the Church does not err.
When speaking officially on matters of faith or morals, the Church’s teaching authority is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit does not make mistakes. In the words of GK Chesterton, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church is a “truth-telling thing.” The “TAO” is the master metric through which FORGE measures everything that it does.
Now, you might ask, what about everything else that FORGE does? What about FORGE courses, men’s nights, retreats, and conferences? Once again, everything that FORGE does exists to advance the FORGE movement. At FORGE, we have found that large events are powerful tools to build identity, provide critical formation, cultivate momentum, and inspire new members. Further, for those who have attended FORGE events, you’ll notice that event programming always includes ample space for organic social interaction. In this way, every large FORGE event exists to serve what might be called “small” interpersonal relationships. The large
serves the small. As for curriculum and content, they also exist for the movement. We have found that high-quality content is essential to educate and empower those affiliated with the movement. For this reason, FORGE puts a very high premium on professional-grade content and large-group experiences, but the defining feature of such experiences is their ability to contribute to the FORGE movement.
