The Name

It means Christ-Honoring Outdoor Super-Natural Warriors.  There is no “E” in CHOSN; we did not spell it wrongly, though we do assume each warrior who completes the course is truly “chosen” by God for some greater purpose.  However, the way we spell it, each letter in the acrostic title means something important:

Christ-Honoring — this is what a graduate of BASIC should desire for his life to be, and this is clearly the ultimate goal of the training process.

Outdoor — the training is always set outdoors in natural areas where modern men seldom find time to go “try and survive,” but outdoors is where men have traditionally spent most of their time and have often learned the greatest lessons about life throughout history.

Super-Natural — Jesus taught, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”  He must spiritually regenerate and empower men to be what they are called by Him to be, above and beyond what comes naturally to any of us.

Warriors — Early recipients of our CW-style Men’s BASIC training have gone on to be true warriors in the Christian citizenship and family-leadership role, first and foremost.  Also, some have become spiritual warriors as vocational ministers or missionaries.  And some are real warriors actively serving in, or retired from, various branches of the US military.

The Mission

The stated mission of CHOSN Warriors, Inc. is to help fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) by guiding men and boys toward spiritual maturity as they learn and pass along the knowledge and skills of outdoor living.

The History and Inception

Those “skills of outdoor living” we teach are heavily weighted in the direction of ancient Native American life and lore because these are dying skill sets in many quarters.  Other training methods that promote American Indian-like survival knowledge are seldom balanced by an orthodox Christian worldview.  That was the big incentive for CHOSN Warriors to do something new.

Yet it was not new at all.  CHOSN Warrior methods and philosophy are just keying off what outdoorsmen like my father, the late Russell E. Getty (1910-2004) had done for me, the corporate founder, Mark Getty.

The style of warrior training used by my dad and his Native American friends to train their boys involved taking a little brave in a strategic progression from the playground, to the hunting ground, to the battleground.  From that pattern, I developed a curriculum strategy that spans various seasons and years and works with small groups in outdoor settings to help make spiritual and wilderness survivors out of modern “greenhorns,” whether men or boys.

So, we took an approach used successfully for thousands of years which usually had no formal organization.  CHOSN Warriors just made a training track that is transferrable and organized, so as to hopefully do faster what responsible dads have so often done by being with their own boys outdoors a lot, until the next generation could repeat that hands-on process.

In CHOSN Warrior training, we still have those old informal elements:  a small group of young men being mentored in wild settings by more knowledgeable men.  But we are unique in adding informal Bible discussions to the old survival skill training and mentoring.

We find it ideal for just two dads to train a few of their own boys all the way through the BASIC course, just like my brother and I experienced without any course title.

So now, we have a proven track for relatively untrained men to become qualified quickly, allowing average men to disciple others through the CHOSN Courses.  Yet, “quickly” is a relative term.  To some people, our courses seem painfully slow.  But in order to just begin to teach the number of lost skills men need to learn these days, it takes some time to get a man ready for any real outdoor living.  A lot of it has to be taught and learned “hands-on.”  Books and videos are useful, but they are no substitute for “live-action.”  And boys today need much more actual reality to counter the virtual reality that increasingly tends to engulf them.

It should not be surprising to any Bible student that a major part of God’s training regimen for His most famous and courageous Biblical figures was often an extended time alone in the wilderness.  Jesus himself was extremely accustomed to living and traveling primitively outdoors, alone or with small groups.  The spiritual dimension of the CW training comes from my own extended time like that, and also from my upbringing under godly parents, along with formal education in forest biology, and decades of experience in Christian work and raising a family.  I know that Scripture is the final authority for learning and teaching truth about Nature and about God, and that works especially well in “old-time reality” settings.

We hope our trainees have more confidence to explore wild places (having learned to properly prepare for them) than most people.  They should also have better ability to not panic if caught by accident in such places.  And to go where one can be overwhelmed by the creative beauty and power of God is a special reward unknown indoors or in the concrete jungles most people have to accept.

The organization of CHOSN Warriors began offering outdoor classes in South Carolina in 2011 after some testing for years on both boys and men in multiple states.  It has been a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity since 2013.

By Mark Getty “Thunder Quill,” CEO.  CHOSN Warriors, Inc.