How Dads Build A Kingdom Family Culture That Lasts for Generations
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Video 1: [00:00:00] The ideal week is not perfection that you're going to achieve. It's a compass that gives you direction. It's not a destination. So we want to begin to figure out how to move in this direction. . Hey friends, welcome to the 1000 Houses podcast where we encourage and equip households to make disciples in and through the home. Every [00:01:00] episode you'll hear interviews, teachings, and conversations around what it looks like to turn your home into a hub for mission, community, and discipleship. If you'd like to learn more about what entering into a season of coaching might look like for you and your household, visit 1kh.
org for more info. Let's jump into today's episode.
All right, guys, we're in the homestretch excited to get going. We're gonna talk about family culture, how to build a family culture. As I mentioned, you guys, so if you're like, okay, I love this idea. I would love to build a multi generational team on mission. I need tools. We gave you, uh, the first tool, like how to be a family coach, changing your mindset, thinking about I'm coaching a whole team.
And that's the first step that that team needs a mission. That team needs. Some values, some pillars. So we talked about how important it is so that you can direct your team towards some things that your family really accomplishes things for the kingdom of God begins to [00:02:00] look increasingly like the way that God wants it to look.
Now, I'd probably say the number one. Thing that people say about family is I'm too busy. How many of you guys are feeling like this? That's a huge problem in my family. I'm, we are overwhelmed. There's too much going on. Too many plates are spinning. Oftentimes our lives look kind of like this or calendars.
We're just like trying to stay ahead of it. Nothing's repeating. Just craziness is going on. And so we are, and we're trying to like, what is going to actually save us from this? Is there going to be some app that's going to come out? Is Elon Musk going to invent some technology that's going to finally save us to help us order our lives properly?
Maybe AI will, you know, eventually save us. I'm here to tell you guys, there is a technology that has been invented that is designed to bring your family into order. That's designed to create the right numbers of trade offs so that you can properly lead your family and make. Traction and get success.
It's an amazing technology and you [00:03:00] all need to learn to master it and it'll change your family forever. This technology is called the week. And a lot of us don't understand that this is a technology invented by God. The idea of a seven day week. Did you know that, that in creation we have the reality that it says in Genesis 1 14, let the lights be in the dome of the sky to divide the day from the night.
Let there be for signs and days and. Seasons and years, but we're taught that God created the week for us to balance our lives He says that in the Ten Commandments you have six days to labor and all do all your work but the seventh day is a Shabbat a Sabbath for in six days Adonai made heaven and earth and Sea and everything in them, but on the seventh day he rested Now, the reason why I call it a technology is because it does not exist in nature, right?
The day, 24 hour day, is, it exists because that, it takes 24 hours for the [00:04:00] Earth to rotate on its axis, right? The year exists because it takes 365 days for the Earth to orbit the sun. The month exists because it takes roughly 30 days for the moon to wax and wane, right? Where in the world does seven day week come from?
You know, it doesn't exist, doesn't exist in nature at all. And because of that, there have been amazing attempts to try to subvert the seven day week. So probably one of the most famous examples was during the French revolution. They were like, we're going to reinvent everything. In fact, who cares about this seven days?
We're going to have a, we're going to have a 10 day week, get more productivity out of our people. So the French tried to install a 10 day week into their country. It was an absolute disaster. People got sick, productivity plummeted. And before you know it, they're back to seven days. Oh, now we're back into a rhythm.
Similar after Stalin took over. The communist said, we don't want this seven day week. We're going to have five day weeks. Everybody's going to be on a different week. This is going to help rip the, there's a [00:05:00] whole crazy reasons why the Soviets tried to do a five day week. Anyway, they attempted it. Five day week, productivity plummeted.
People got sick back to seven days and they're like, we're atheists. We don't know how this happened, but we have to stick with a seven day thing. We don't know where it came from, but we have in the word of God from the very first page, God created the seven day rhythm into creation itself. And in the 10 commandments, he said, I created, I did it this way.
So that you, it would be a pattern for you. This is a technology I'm giving you. And it forces a certain number of trade offs. This is, this is how we begin. So I'm going to talk to you guys about how to steward and maximize this technology of the week. So one of the things that's really bizarre about human beings is there are two different lifestyles that will create burnout in your life.
One is if every day is exactly the same. If you guys seen the movie Groundhog day, that just terrifying. Right? Every single day is the same. You eventually kind of go crazy if every day is the same. But [00:06:00] you know what else also will drive somebody crazy? Is if every single day is different. You know, every day you don't know what's happening, you wake up in the morning, it's a completely unique day.
People go crazy after a while. If they live in, they can't predict anything. And so what kind of creatures are we? Where we go crazy if every day is the same and we go crazy if every day is different. We're a weird creature. So we're creatures designed to live in a certain rhythm. And that rhythm is the seven day rhythm.
So do you know your ideal week? This is really important. And the reason why I'm going to talk about this to fathers specifically is because you hear people all the time say things like, as a father, you need to be the spiritual leader of your home. And I always kind of got confused exactly about what that meant.
Does that mean that I'm like leading a Bible study once a week? Does that mean, I just don't know what, I don't know what that looks like. I can't, I have a hard time even imagining what you're saying when you're saying, and so I'm going to give you guys a very specific [00:07:00] definition that's rooted to a tool.
I think leading your home, the, if you want to take leadership in your family, it is your ability to lead your family into a designed week, making, making an ideal week and beginning to lead your family successively through steps to begin to live your live this week. And you're going to do this, Very badly at first, right?
This is something that you have to be very careful about idealism at this point. The ideal week is not, is not perfection that you're going to achieve. It's a compass that gives you direction. It's not a destination. So we want to begin to figure out how to move in this direction. And the reason why we have to talk about these things as well is because, you know, Jesus said, you know, yes, said Jesus, what sorrow awaits your experts in religious law for you crush people with unbearable religious demands.
And you never lift a finger to ease the burden. Oftentimes what happens when we don't deal with the trade offs that time actually demands. We put [00:08:00] burdens on each other, and this can be really hard. And this is what just made Jesus so angry with the Pharisees. And I read about this in a, in a article in a Christian magazine about the typical father.
And it said, a week in the life of the typical father. It says, on Sunday morning they go to church, and at church they hear about how important it is to spend time with God. And it's like, oh, I forgot I need to spend time with God in the morning. And so we decided, okay. I'm going to get up in the morning, spend time with God.
Then he goes back to church on Sunday night. He hears about how important it is to serve the poor. He's like, Oh, I forgot I need to serve the poor. So then he starts to, you know, figure out how that week they're going to serve the poor. And then on Monday morning, he's driving to his work and he's hearing this sermon about how important it is to pray.
He's like, Oh, I forgot I need to pray. And then on Tuesday morning, he's driving to work again. He turned on Christian radio and he heard, so this goes on and on all week. And this poor dad is trying so hard to be faithful to all the things. Um, and it's all just one off. Uh, activities that he's designing and leading his family into that, that can never last and aren't sustained sustainable because he doesn't understand the importance of the [00:09:00] centrality of this technology of the week.
You have to decide if something's essential for your life, you have to design it into your week. This is, this is part of how you live into your mission, live into your pillars, live into all the things. And if you have constructed a week and somebody's got a great idea for you to do something that's really important, but it is going to, it's going to clash with something you believe is more important than as a father, you need to make the hard choice.
to decide we're going to hold to this one right now. That's a great idea, but we can't do that. We don't have the time. We need to live into our seven day week. We have to constrain our life by the, the fact that time is not endless. This is very, very important. There was a, a guy who was once teaching about the importance of living into seven days, and after his talk, this young woman walks up to him and says, Man, I, I love that your talk.
I, I read your book. It was really helpful. Um, I, too, am an author. Um, and I've been, you know, really excited to begin to write books. And he's like, Oh, you're an author. That's amazing. Uh, like, what [00:10:00] did you write today? And she said, Well, I haven't written anything today. But he's like, Oh, you haven't written anything today.
What did you write yesterday? Well, I didn't write anything yesterday. How about the day before that? The day before that? That? That? That? No? Nothing? Seven days? You're not an author. An author writes in seven days. And you know, I'm sure she was very offended. Um, but we, we don't like this constraint, this reality, that time actually, we, we don't have an infinite amount of time.
And so you have to decide what identities, what missions, what things actually matter to you. And and they really don't become critical to your family, to your leadership, to what God's designed to do until you, you install them into your week, into that ideal week, and then start to live into that.
Constraints of time, so that's a critical way to think about how we do this. Now, part of the reason why this is so difficult for us in particular in the West is because we actually have a, we have a view of time that's hyper linear, okay? So in the West, we think about time like a [00:11:00] line. Beginning, middle, end.
That's the way life works. We tell stories that are very linear. Girl grows up in Ohio. She moves to New York. She finds herself. End of story. Like, linear. There's no full circle coming back to her family and restoring what was. Where she came from. We like linear stories. We're hyper progressive in the way that we think about life.
And this creates this obsession with doing, doing new things. We will sacrifice weeks in the pursuit of some giant goal. You see this with, you know, kids that are in college. They are living for the day they graduate, and so they're just burning through weeks because they're looking for that one thing. Or a father who just can't wait to, wow.
Video 2: I'll, I'll do this when we go on vacation, like I'll spend time with my son, you know, in six months when I finally have a time off and then we're going to spend such quality time together when we're on the beach. That is the wrong, that is a Western way of looking at time. That's dangerous. Like, that's not, [00:12:00] you are stewarding weeks primarily.
You need to design your life and what's important in your life, your fatherhood around the constraints of seven days. So this is the way that Western people think and we have to get over this. Now in the East, they have the opposite problem. Um, There's a, there's a tradition. If you look at traditionally in the east now, a lot of Eastern countries have gone Western, but traditionally in the east, if you're talking to somebody, they're, they're like, life is a circle.
Seasons come and seasons go. And my life is just like my father and my grandfather. It's just the same. We're just going through the same motions. And this is crazy. This life of passivity, the reason why a lot of the discoveries were made in the West was because we didn't have this circular view of time.
We thought, no, no, you can actually make progress. You don't. You're not stuck in a circle. But cultures that are stuck in a circle can think about time in this way and they're hyper, like, fixated on not something that's progressing, but something that's repeating. So there's a balance between these perspectives and I think the Hebraic mind in the Bible looks more like this.
It's a spiral. I think this is a better way to [00:13:00] think about life. There are things we're being, but there is progress to life. We can, we can make progress, but the primarily thing, the primary thing we are stewarding are repeating rhythms. Right? We see that woven into the very fabric of creation itself.
This is what we're primarily stewarding. Now, when you decide to prioritize rhythms or what repeats over these one time giant events, one of the things that happens is you start to shift the way you think about priorities. All of a sudden, when I come home from work and we are going to have time together as a family, what does a Tuesday look like?
Tuesday is really important. You know why? You got a lot of Tuesdays coming. So you need to know how to steward a Tuesday evening. You know, Wednesday morning is important. Why? They're gonna keep coming. One Wednesday after another. Every one of us is stewarding about 4, 000 weeks. It's not an infinite number.
It's finite. The sand is, but it's a lot. We got a lot of reps, but we don't have an infinite number of reps. We got 4, 000 reps to get to 80 years [00:14:00] old. And so we gotta be careful how we steward, what repeats, but we have to, if you wanna make progress, you've got to focus on this. You have to think about what is it that is, that is, that is going to repeat.
And this creates these identity trade offs, like the poor lady in the story, who realized she couldn't be everything. I know someday you want to be a basketball star, a rock star, whatever, like, these identities, sometimes you have them and they're just like, A lot of what's happening in our culture is we lift up these very unusual identities.
And again, one of the things I find so comforting is that Abraham just wanted to be a father. Just call me Father Abraham. Abraham was much more powerful than most of the kings of his day. Did you know that? I mean, there's a story in the book of Genesis where there were four kings who were kidnapped, and Abraham just grabbed his household and recaptured all of them and conquered five kings in the process.
Abraham was an incredibly powerful man. He had a lot of resources, he had an amazing household, but he was a father first. He saw himself as a [00:15:00] father. And so part of what you want to do is start with that identity and say, okay, as a father, I've got this thing called the week, I want to lead my family, and I want to design the elements of our week.
And so, me and my wife are constantly studying, like, our weekly rhythm. Some people look at this and are like, Ah, that's just too much detail. Fine. Like, fine. Figure out what works for you and your family, but it's really important that you design your lifestyle around a family rhythm. This is the way we do it is we constantly go through this process of time blocking, improve, repeat, time blocking, improve, repeat, repeat.
So we'll say, okay, you know, this is what we're doing on Tuesday nights is a teaching night for our family. Um, so that worked really well. Wednesday nights are a media night. That's the night where we just chill as a family because we host stuff on Tuesday night. We host stuff on Thursday night. I don't want to host anybody on Wednesday night.
Wednesday night is just for my family. Friday night is our epic family meal. We'll talk about that a little bit later. My dad talked about Saturday night game night. That's when I also go on on my date night. So I'm stewarding each of these blocks. Does that make sense? Blocks of time. [00:16:00] And so some of you, if you've, you know, if you're really busy right now, there, there might not be a ton of blocks that you have to steward.
You might have some on the weekend. What does a Saturday look like in your household? What's a Sunday look like in your household? What's a Friday night look like in your household? And so you start to have a vision for these things. And one of the things that's really difficult about this is that the fathers are the bottom.
I don't know if you guys know this. We're at the bottom of the pecking order of who gets to decide what to do with time in our culture. We're the bottom. In other words, if your son is going out for a sport and your son is in risk of not graduating and he's meeting with his teacher and the teacher's like, Hey, yeah, well, you can't miss this class.
You can't miss these tests. If your son were to go to his coach and say, Hey, coach, look, I've got problems. Um, I may not graduate. My teacher saying I need to, you know, your coach is gonna understand that your coach is gonna work with you. Your coach is gonna say, Okay, if your teacher is saying, Because teachers go a little bit higher on the, on the, on the, on the, uh, hierarchy.
Now, if the, if he [00:17:00] comes and says, Hey, uh, coach, my youth pastor is starting this really cool thing on Tuesday nights. I need to be at your coach can be a little bit less friendly. Um, cause you know, we all know the youth pastor falls a little bit lower in the totem pole than teacher or coach, but man, imagine if you go to your coach and say, Hey coach, my dad has an amazing idea for what we're gonna do on Tuesday nights, and so I can't make it to practice.
Yeah, no coach is going to like, you know, your coach is like, that's, that's nice. I'm, I'm much higher on the totem pole than, than your dad. Um, and that's, that's reality. You guys, we don't think that we can lead our families. This is step one. If you don't think you can lead your family, then of course you're not going to actually design the rhythm of your family.
You're going to feel like, of course, I got to ask, I got to ask the teacher for permission and the coach for permission. You know, I got to ask my wife for permission. And then we got to go and talk to the pastor and ask for permission. And as you've asked everyone for permission, there's nothing left to steward, you know, and this is, you got to start with what, what has God called my family to be?
I'm the leader. I'm the, you guys are at the top of the totem pole. What [00:18:00] you want to do matters the most. How do you want to lead your family? What is your vision? So you got to understand that's, that's the way God, God made that decision. He wants you to be the father and he wants you to be that person.
One of the ways that sometimes when I lose confidence and I think maybe I, you know, I've got to negotiate with all these people and maybe I don't really know how to leave my family. I don't really have the authority. Um, we have this, this area in Ohio called Amish country. And I used to hate going there because it looked like quilts and very, you know, all these lady things, crafty, whatever.
Anyway, so my wife and I would go there, and then I started looking at these, these dads, just like, these huge teams of horses and all these kids. And so this just happened last week, my wife and I went to Amish country again, because I just can't get enough. I just sit there and stare at these guys. I'm like, like, if he can do that, like, look at the rhythm he's living.
Did you know that the average Amish family? Eats three meals a day with their kids three meals a day and they actually designed their rhythm around that idea They said we will only live a [00:19:00] lifestyle that allows us to eat 21 meals a week with our kids. That's crazy I do not eat 21 meals a day with my week with my kids Um, but, but sometimes I like to look at the Amish and it reminds me, we live in a free country and everything my family is doing is my decision.
I decided we're going to go to that school. I decided we're going to live in this house. I decided all those things. I've abdicated responsibility to all of these different elements. That was my choice. And, and so I, you know, look at this Amish guy. He's made different decisions and it's completely crazy, but it's amazing that, that, that, that even exists.
So this is part of where you need to get confidence as a father. That is your job to craft this in partnership with your wife. Like what, what is our family? We have, um, you could use different tools to really live into your week. This is, uh, the family plan calendar that we sell. Um, we, you know, you can, we, I use spreadsheets and, um, This is like for younger families, especially if you want to just have a giant page on which you can like design your week.
Um, so grab a tool that works for you and, uh, and then begin to craft this [00:20:00] week. Now, when people hear this, I always hear, um, a set of objections. The first one I always hear is this, I'm not a schedule person. I'm sure some of you have already thought that you looked at that crazy schedule of all those time blocks.
And you're like, that just sounds like it. It's like, I can't do that. Like I I'm not that kind of person. That's for schedule people. So how do we overcome this objection? Well, this is the way I think about it. You guys imagine if you were coaching a team and you were to go to your team and say, Hey guys, um, we're gonna win the championships.
It's going to be amazing. I can't wait to coach you guys. Um, I just need to know one thing about me personally. I'm not a schedule person. Um, so I don't really like to calendars. All this stuff is, you know, not really my personality. So I don't know when we're going to practice or, you You know exactly when the games are gonna happen, but we're gonna do amazing as a team.
Um, I don't know of any coach that's ever said that to his team. Um, and so what that says to me is that schedules are not a personal thing. They're a team thing. If you're going to lead a team, guess what? Your [00:21:00] team needs to know the plan and the plan needs to be on the calendar and the calendar is a seven day calendar.
And so you need to start to design your week in that way. So that's, that's one second one I've already talked about our schedule. We've abdicated and it's being ruled over by others. Another one that I hear from a lot of moms is they freak out a little bit and say, well, is this going to turn our family into some kind of efficiency machine?
Like a lot of us think that our homes are built for non productivity, right? Um, and so this is a place where we go to get away from all these schedules and away from productivity and away from task lists and all this stuff. And again, you guys, that's a decision that you have to decide. Like, what do you think a home is for?
I personally think when I read Genesis one, that God decided it. That when he had a job to, to accomplish, it was a massive job. He says to his first family, I need you to take the Garden of Eden, and I need you to expand it across the entire earth. Like, I need you to, to start having kids and start to expand it.
That was his decision. Like, if we had a mission that big, if somebody were to come to you and say, Hey, there's a huge mission that needs to be accomplished. [00:22:00] Today, what we would say is, you know what? He needs To accomplish that mission, we need to start a business or we need to start a nonprofit. That's what's going to start.
That's what's going to accomplish that. When God had a massive multi generational mission to accomplish, guess what he thought? You know what that needs? That needs a family. We don't think that way anymore. And so because of that, because we don't think families are for productivity, we, we, we recoil at this, but this is a very strange sort of cultural thing that we've done.
And so one of the things that's really amazing about family is that when you start to. Accomplish things through your family instead of your family turning into an efficiency machine You're bringing into the world of efficiency into the world of productivity things like love things like belonging Like it's a mate the part of why when you think about how inefficient it was for God to decide To accomplish a mission through a family like that.
That was that was his decision. And I think the reason was he wanted all of those. He wanted you to live out the most important [00:23:00] productive elements of your life through your family relationships as a son, as a daughter, as a father, as a mother. So I think we have to be really careful with kind of where we've taken this.
So a few quick tips.
Video 3: How do you craft a family week? Well, one of the first things I think is important is to try things and just whatever works, repeat. So sometimes you're like, okay, I'm going to like exert tons of things over this seven days. Well, but you don't really know what happens when, you know, that hits reality. No, no plan survives contact with the enemy, right?
And so you need to try things. And so like what my dad was saying about game night with Papa, which has become this epic Saturday night thing that happens in our house. Like, that actually was just a one time experiment that worked, right? So, we were going off on date nights, and I was like, our kids were just kind of wasting their time on Saturday nights, I didn't like it.
So I asked my dad, I said, Hey, we're gonna go off on a date night, would you mind playing a game with the kids? And so, we came home, and the kids were laughing, and my dad was like, enjoying it. Everybody was thriving, and I'm like, Oh! [00:24:00] Let's just like do that every week. Like that, that's all it takes. Try things.
And when something works, do it every week, um, start to start to create the calendar around things at work. Another thing that a lot of dads don't know that they have permission to do is to make your rhythm enjoyable for you. One of the things I love about having kids is I can indoctrinate my children in the things that I love, and I love the Lord of the Rings.
And so what do I do with my kids? My kids love Lord of the Rings. Why? Because one winter I said to my kids, kids, we're going to go on an adventure. We're going to read this book. It's incredible. Call it. And it's, we're going to go to really dangerous places together. And so I need you guys to, to make some, some Hobbit food, and then we're going to get around a fire and I'm going to read to you this story.
Do you think my kids love Lord of the Rings? Yes, they do. And they started dressing up like hobbits and they've never gotten over. He's if, if you saw Jackson's a ring he has on his, Chain, yeah, like this is how that happens. So [00:25:00] what do you love like don't make your family something you hate make your family something You love you love basketball.
You love golf You love movies. You, what do you love? Like design that into your rhythm and do it with your kids and do it young enough. So they don't know the difference. They don't know to hate it. Um, you know, and then you add like, you add things like sugar treats and like, and whatever, and then your kids are like, this is the coolest.
And my dad is so amazing. I just happen to love everything. My dad loves that's by design. Okay. Schedule one on ones. So one of the things that we learned to do as a family is you, you lose these heart connections. And so every single week. My wife, she's got this crazy superpower. I don't know how she does it, but even though there's seven members of our family, now we've got two in laws and grandchild.
She somehow knows the state of the relationships between every single member of our family. Like she could give it to you on a scale of one to 10. She could tell you who's, who's like a little disconnected right now. Who's really, who's really jiving with each other. And so she takes that [00:26:00] superpower and every week she just assigns one on ones, even for family members that are like in different States.
Like she's like, yeah, give this person a call this week. What? Yes. Like we're going to stay connected as a family. And that starts with you establishing a one on one relationship with every member of your family. So every week, my wife asked the question, Who, which person in the family is Jeremy most disconnected from?
And then she assigns me a one on one. And then I spend one on one time with that family member. It's been an absolute life change. Again, a vehicle maybe doesn't work for you. I don't know what your values are. We really, really value connection. But I'm bad at that. I can lose connection really easily with my family.
And so, these one on ones have been super, super helpful. Okay, so that's, that's, uh, the second tool I want to give you guys. So tool one is team, right? Tool two is time. Does that make sense? So, I want you guys to take a minute. I don't have a spot on your, your, uh, your journal for this. So, so find an empty spot on your journal.
You got notes on the first page. I want you to [00:27:00] think of just one thing. I'd love for you to think of one rhythm that you would install into your family's seven day week. Okay? That you think would be a nutrient that your family might be missing right now. Is your family not having enough fun? Is your family not being productive?
Do you need to create a family meeting? Um, is there one rhythm? You don't want to install too many rhythms at once. But man, start to live into this seven day week. And you really want to do this certainly in partnership with your wife. She will know a lot and see a lot that you don't see. But what you want to do is start to craft and you be the leader of we're going to do this thing.
I'm going to show up first and show up later. With the most energy. So if you're going to lead a new rhythm, you're not the one being dragged along. You're the one leading the charge. This is how you lead your family into that week. And over time, you start to live into your ideal week. I probably live my ideal week 70 80%.
And that's about as high as I think it's healthy to go like crazy things happen in my life, and I have to say [00:28:00] we're not doing that tonight. Um, I mean, this is our Sabbath. We keep a Sabbath like very consistently. But here I am talking to all you guys, and I don't find this restful at all. Um, so, but this is really valuable, and I'm happy to violate, you know, my ideal week for you guys.
But my my ideal week is really awesome. Like I love my week, but it took me years. to figure out how to lead my family into that week. So, take a few minutes, um, I'm gonna invite Jackson and, and my dad up here to, to share a couple things about, uh, rhythm, what, what's your favorite rhythm, anything you want to share about rhythm?
Living into the rhythm. Um, and then we're going to do our last tool. Uh, that's going to come up here in a second. So as you guys are, uh, come up with at least one rhythm that you think would be helpful to start leading your family into, um, I wanted to just ask my dad and Jackson, did I talk about any, anything on, in terms of our family's rhythm?
What's been meaningful to you?
Yeah. I mean, [00:29:00] Shabbats are incredible. I, uh, until I, uh, was, was that where you just said, Oh, sorry. Shabbats are. Our Friday night meal. So that's the, uh. The Sabbath dinner. So we, we have our Sabbath day on Saturday and we have a meal Friday night to sort of usher that in. So, uh, I didn't realize that a lot of people actually, until I started like leaving the house and moving to different states and stuff, people don't really.
know, uh, their personal off switch. They don't know how to rest. Um, it's actually really difficult for a lot of people to understand what that is. Cause it's like, is that as rest just being lazy? Is it just me feeling like crap for a day? Cause I'm feeling lazy, you know? So it's like, I don't, so a lot of people are, um, don't feel restored after a day of rest.
I think in America, our culture is super go, go, go sacrifice your Saturday for work. Like, um, and most, uh, A punishment for a typical corporate job is to take away your [00:30:00] overtime, you know, privileges. So it's like, um, So it's like, I think that, yeah, a lot of people are like, why would I want to just be at home and just like, you know, sleep or like what?
So I don't know. I think, uh, one of the things I enjoy most about my family is from a very young age, I learned what brings me rest. And that makes my, the, the following week, it makes me more able to be productive, connect with the Lord. I think, uh, me and the Lord need a reset a little bit every week, just like my relationships with everybody else.
So, um, yeah, I think that's probably my favorite rhythm. Awesome. I'll be dead. Jeremy's going to talk in more detail about the Sabbath meal. Just to tell you where I was coming from, from the outside, I'm a graduate of a Bible college, a couple seminaries, learned about Jewish culture, the festivals, historically, right?
But do we practice them today? Well, it just didn't ever occur to me, and I had seen it happen. And so, Jeremy and April began to invite Janet and me to Friday night meals. [00:31:00] Oh, that's cool, that's great, we connect with the family, and he said, well actually this is, this is the beginning of our Shabbat. What's that?
See, I didn't know it either. Oh, okay, I know it historically, now this is actually going to happen. So after a couple of these experiences, my wife said, Do you think Germany and April are becoming Jewish? I mean, I mean, what is this all about? Anyway, long story short, it's one of the highlights of our week.
Absolutely. We connect with the entire family, we share the meal, and we, afterwards we just kind of hang out, and Pick a ball or whatever and it's uh, it is, it is a wonderful family connection. So it may seem awkward at first, but some people, we just, we just encourage you call it a family meal. All the families get in together on Friday night.
And eventually it may morph into actually Shabbat, a Sabbath day. Awesome. Yeah, I was just, I was just going to say one of the things, uh, for me [00:32:00] is I also didn't really know how to handle burnout, um, uh, when I started working. And so, uh, I was just like, why am I getting, you know, like, it's, it's so hard to just
And so, uh, but in the, in the scriptures, it actually talks about, um, the, that, uh, like when God created the seventh day, um, or when he created, uh, man, he actually created them and then the seventh day was, it was, he rested. So the first day that human beings experienced was a Shabbat. And then they started working.
And from then on. The, uh, environment that I feel like a Christian, like live someone under the protection of the Lord is we actually work from rest. Uh, we don't rest from work. So it's like, it's not just like we, you know, take the load off. It's like, this is where I go to get restored so that I can work more, you know, I think that, uh, that was something that helped me a lot too.
And yeah, we were figuring that out. Very cool. Thank you guys for sharing. Excellent.
All right, so we've talked about team. That's the first one. [00:33:00] That's a tool that will transform your family into a team, obviously, if you become a coach and you have a mission. Then we talked about time, and that'll help you create a family that is cohesive as a team and aim you at your mission as you live out those pillars, live out that mission.
Bye. Um, but how do you create a multigenerational family? Like what is it that causes a family to go multigenerational? And if I can give you guys one tool, there's a tool that I'm going to give you now that if you do choose to begin to practice this as a family, I don't think you'll be able to stop your family from becoming multigenerational.
It's that powerful. Um, so I want to walk you through how this works. Now the first thing to understand about this is, I don't know if you guys have ever had a situation where you're like, You're in your Bible reading plan. You're trying to read through the Bible. You're like, okay, I just need something from the Lord, a new fresh word.
And you open up to that week's, or that day's, um, portion, and you run into a genealogy. How many of you guys ever had that experience? Like, [00:34:00] you slam into a genealogy, like, what do I do with this? Do I read it? Like, do I ignore it? Do I skip it? Like, why is this in the Bible? Like, obviously, if I were the Holy Spirit, And I wouldn't have left this in and, and, and so that's a, that's a real challenge.
And so I would encourage you guys to consider something, and that is if you run into a part of the Bible that you wouldn't have left in the Bible, that you would have edited out, you have one of two choices. One choice is to say, I know better than God about what should be in the Bible. And I think we subtly think that, okay?
And the other one is maybe, maybe there's something that God cares about that I don't care about. Like, and God apparently cares a lot about genealogies, because there's a ton of these in the Bible. They're everywhere. And, and so, I think God cares about multigenerational family. He, He wants, imagine having the experience of being able to trace your family line in the Bible all the way back to Abraham.
God wanted every single Jewish family to have that, that [00:35:00] ability. And so He tells, He, He has them create genealogy after genealogy and puts it in the Word of God. So we need to figure out how do we begin to live into this value that apparently God has that we really struggle with. We really don't relate to.
And so I think that it starts very simply with this tool. If you create a tool like this, it will, it will really transform your life. And it really starts by asking this question. What is the good life? And so philosophers have said for For centuries that you could reverse engineer anyone's philosophy.
If you knew how they thought about the good life, if you understood what, what they were aiming at as the good life. And, and I was really confused about this. I remember when I graduated from high school.
Video 4: I was at my graduation party, and in the middle of my graduation party, some man came up to me, I don't remember, he might have been an uncle or a cousin or something, but, uh, or a friend, but somebody, some man I remember coming up to me with a very vivid memory of what he said. He pulled me to one side and said, Hey, Jeremy, Jeremy, what you're about to experience when you go to college, [00:36:00] it's gonna be the best years of your life.
Enjoy it. And I was like, whoa, like, I'm about to go into the best years of my life? And this is, this is very common belief. In our culture, we believe that at times in your life when you have the least responsibility, when you have the most freedom to indulge your impulses, that is the good life. That's what we believe is a culture.
And so if you were to chart the good life in our culture, you're like, it peaks at like 24 when you have that, you know, and then all of a sudden it's like, ah, then you die, right? That's incredibly depressing. So is that, is that, is that really what, is that the Bible? Does the Bible answer this question?
Does the Bible have a place where it describes the good life? And I'm here to tell you guys, it actually does. That's the reason why Psalm 128 exists. Listen to this. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His [00:37:00] ways. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. You shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you see your children's children.
Shalom to Israel. So, what do we see as the description of the good life? It's a grandfather and a grandmother at a table table. with their descendants all around the table. Life doesn't get any better than that in this earth. Like, that experience. Now, we have that experience in our culture, a little bit, on Thanksgiving.
And it's always a joke, because people are so miserable often about, like, the one time a year that they have to [00:38:00] be around their extended family members. And, you know, it's tough, because when you're only doing this once a year, it is hard. You're so out of practice. You don't know each other. And so in the Jewish culture where they do practice this on a weekly basis, it's amazing to see what happens.
And the whole story of the Bible is like this, right? The story ends at a family table, right? If you read all the way to Revelation 19, this is what God wants as a father. He cannot wait for the wedding supper of the Lamb when we're all sitting there, His children, around His table. Do you guys remember how Jesus Spent the last night before the crucifixion, he goes to a table.
And what does he say at that table? I so longed to have this meal with you. That that's the experience of fathering these disciples into the kingdom of God and just wanting to experience a meal with them at a table. Like this is the good life. It's important for you guys for that to be like, we're aiming at that.
And so every single week, like I can't tell you the incredible experience it is to sit around a table with my [00:39:00] family. And get to experience this every single week. It is, it is, it is the joy. It's always the pinnacle of my week. Like Jackson said, like, it's very easy. If you ask any of my kids, what's your favorite part of the week?
They will tell you, like, Oh my gosh, Friday night, Shabbat dinner. You know, that is like, we are all just like having this experience and it's together. And at that table, everyone is their family identity. Everyone is a son or a daughter, a father or a mother. Uh, so you, you experience your family ness. When do you experience your family ness?
And guys, this is very different than the, kind of the weekday meal that a lot of people talk about, which I think is really important. But usually when our culture talks about that, what you're doing is you're like getting together on a weekday and everybody's like quickly eating and, you know, trying to catch up real quick before, poof, you're all gone to do your separate things.
Like, that's not what this is. This is like, you have nowhere better to go. Like, we are here to just enjoy each other and experience it. So we, we have been discipled into this practice By Jewish families, you know, we lived in Jerusalem and it's so crazy when the Shabbat sirens [00:40:00] go off in Jerusalem and just Everyone is at their parents house.
Like at that day, you'll watch, you know, everyone's like it's like a beehive Everybody's like getting food and running around and you know even people in their 20s and 30s are all driving to their parents house and then all of a sudden the siren goes and just Silence, and if you listen really carefully, the only thing you could hear is is the sound of a father chanting blessings over his sons, the mother over the daughters.
Like, that's incredible. Where did they get this idea? Psalm 128. Guess what? It's in our Bible. You know, we can have that too. Like my dad said, I know, I know a lot of people when they look at this, they're like, are we allowed to do that? Is that a cultural appropriation? And I'm like, guys, everything about Christianity is cultural appropriation.
Like we appropriated everything from the Jewish people. We were reading their Bible. We're using everything else. We were we're worshiping their Messiah. Like, like, please be careful not to be too, like, worried about that. Um, and say, well, I'm going to draw the line right here. And I don't think you have to, by the way.
We live in this side of the cross. Like, no one's going to be more holy in the Kingdom of God because they practice the Sabbath. [00:41:00] I'm just telling you guys, there are amazing tools in the Bible that maybe we should think about using, because they're just working really, really well. For, for other families.
And so you might have a unique way of crafting a family meal, like on a Sunday afternoon after church, you can create and craft this experience. Then do that like, like please, whatever works for your family, whatever culturally is, is good for your family. You want to lean into that, but, but we need to, we need to work on this.
Like, this is such a powerful tool. We need to really consider how, how to craft it. So I want to talk through some steps. If you guys are interested in crafting one of these meals, What, what are some of the steps that might really work for this? Okay. So first of all, you got to make it enjoyable. You got to make it sustainable and you got to make it meaningful.
Okay. Enjoyable step one. Um, the father proclaims the good news. So part of what you want to do is, is you want to have a, like a concept of, of table leadership. When you are, um, when you are actually in front of your, have you [00:42:00] ever had an experience where you're all sitting around a table and all of a sudden, you The grandfather stands up and says, I want, I have something I want to say to you guys.
Like that's this moment, craft that moment for yourself. I have a friend who calls it the Fezziwig speech because in the Christmas carol, there's this moment, you know, where Fezziwig's like, you know, with the, uh, it's the Dickens poem where, or the story where, um, Scrooge is there and he's like a young apprentice and, you know, they're just having the time of their life and Fezziwig's like, it's been a good year, you know, and he's like giving a speech.
I experienced this in Jerusalem recently that just in a way that blew my mind. So. We take a group to Jerusalem every year, um, and, uh, just to experience in Israel, we do a tour, but part of the tour is we're always trying to give people experiences of family that they're not familiar with in the West. So we always go to an Orthodox Jewish family's house for Shabbat.
So anyway, we go to this guy's house, he's probably 35 years old, and we all get there, and at his table was like, we had 30 Americans, and then there was, um, people from his street, his neighbors were [00:43:00] there, his sister was there with her whole family, his mother in law was, I mean, there was tons of family members there, and then like the 30 of us.
And we're like, How is this going to work? Like, this sounds like a disaster anyway. So we all get in this giant, we're all one table. Like, imagine this table just goes on for days throughout this one table. And, you know, and so he's sitting at the top of his table is 35 year old guy. And he's just like, he's leading this table time.
That's just amazing. He's like, do you guys have a song? Why don't you sing for us a song? We'll sing for you a song. So we were singing, they were saying it was like one of the most amazing moments. He was just talking about meaning and the blessing. And we all, we all like walked out of his house. Like, what was that?
Like, I've never in my life seen somebody more skilled at leading a table. But this is a part of what it means to be a father. You get to lead a table. And the only way that this 35 year old guy had that kind of talent was he clearly comes from a multi generational family. Like, he did not, he saw his grandfather.
You do this and his father and now, you know, his young age, he was able to to handle, you know, 45 50 [00:44:00] people at a table and just craft and experience. It was amazing. So anyway, I'm constantly trying to figure out how to do this. So part of what we do in our family is at the beginning of the meal. I always want to tell the, you know, tell the gospel in some way.
And so we just what Jackson just said. One of the one of the ways I explain the gospel is that when Adam was first created, he first experienced rest. And so what we want to do in the middle of, like, all the busyness of our lives is we want to, we want to just experience rest. We didn't earn this, like, we, we, it was granted to us.
Another way that we proclaim the gospel is, what did Jesus say on the cross when he said, It is finished? What did he mean? Like, he did all the work that really needed to be done. Yeah, my inbox is not empty yet. You know, but it is finished. And this is the one time my soul gets to enter into rest, regardless of how much work I left undone, the real work that ever needed to be done was already done by Jesus.
And right now my soul can enter into rest. I wonder how so many people burn out and some people are experiencing, you know, so much sin in their [00:45:00] life because they're trying to medicate the fact that they don't know how to bring their soul into rest. Well, that's something a father can do not only for himself, but for his entire family every single week.
And so we want to experience that. Uh, one of the things in the Jewish culture is the mother lights the candle. I really like this tradition because the candle reminds us that we're in a season or time period of rest. And oftentimes they say the mother lights it because she's going to have the hardest time resting in her own house, you know, on a Shabbat.
And so you have the mother lighting the candle. And so, and then we, we do these blessings and I wrote, you know, some of the ones that we have here. If you guys are interested in seeing kind of our pattern. Um, we have, you know, various blessings here, page 22, um, usually the oldest member of the family, the father, the grandfather, the great grandfather now in our case, my dad will put his hands on his son, his grandson, sons, his great grandson and say, May the Lord make you like Ephraim and Manasseh and give you the faith of Abraham, the heart of David and the righteousness of Christ as you build our family from generation to generation.
And then we have a blessing [00:46:00] that the mother says, May the Lord make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah. And give you the heart of Ruth, the faith of Mary, and the righteousness of Christ as you build our family from generation to generation. We want our kids to experience the multi generational family ness, um, that God has made the family.
And so that's really the meaning we're trying to instill into this tradition. And then we also want to have, add fun and family stories. And so sometimes I'll have my dad like, Um, you know, calm. My mom come with like different stories from the past. Hey, the kids are just entering into a new school year.
What was entering into new school year like for you guys? Hey, it's election season. What are some of the elections that you remember from the past? You know, how did that impact our family? You know, we just had my dad's a veteran. Um, you know, we talk about Veterans Day. You know, let's, let's, you know, get into what are the family stories.
We had this crazy event that occurred. So we were doing Shabbat dinner with, with both my parents and my wife's parents. And so it was Veterans Day. And so typically I would send out a, you know, a reminder text and say, Hey, it's Veterans Day. Please join us. [00:47:00] Well, um, this particular veterans day, you know, my dad came with some stories to tell, and then my father in law walked in with a box like, Oh, that's interesting.
So he comes in with this box and undoes this box. And so after dinner, we all get into the living room and he's like, I got some stories to tell you guys. So he pulls out of this box, various like models of satellites and rockets. And, and he says, so during the cold war in the late sixties, uh, I was, uh, in charge of, uh, satellite surveillance and reallocating satellites.
And everything I did during that season just became declassified this month. So I'm going to share with you for the first time what I did during all those years. And so we just turn off, turn on every recording device we have, and he starts unpacking for hours what he did. My dad didn't get a chance to share anything that, that time.
We got more Veterans Day coming. But what's crazy is, uh, two weeks later, he dropped dead suddenly. And so we had that moment with him because we crafted [00:48:00] this, this meal, um, where he could, he could have that experience of passing on. And there was such a precious. Memory for for us. And so my question for you guys is, do you?
Is this something you would like to create for your family? Like, what does it look like for your family culture? This is this is so critical. I know even when you hear Friday night, people often terms like Friday night. That's a really busy night. Everyone's doing different things. Like when my kids were had seasons where they were in public school.
I remember my daughter Kelsey, you know, it was a big football game every Friday night at the high school, and she would bring her friends of Shabbat, you know, for our experience. Um, and she, she was like, I, she always would say, I would rather be here than anywhere else. Um, and so it was oftentimes like a decision that our kids were making.
And a lot of this has to do with how enjoyable can you make the experience? And you want to start really simple, guys. Like this might sound like it is getting really epic, like probably our typical Shabbat dinner. We have like 15 to 20 people at our, at our table. And that's very sustainable for us now.
We [00:49:00] could not have done that at earlier stages as a family. Like we, we had to hit the easy button. We were trying to figure out how to, like, do we use just disposable plates? Do we just get some Chipotle and bring it home? Like whatever you need to do to make it. But we started with some really simple ways to like set it apart, which is like, we, we got into the sparkling grape juice.
So we bought like a case of sparkling.
Video 5: Grape juice and said, Hey guys, and our kids only had a lot of drink water during the week. So it's like every Shabbat, we're gonna have a bottle of sparkling grape juice. Our kids were like, you know, so we, we at first had a hard time remembering even to do this meal. And our kids were like, are we doing Shabbat?
We want sparkling grape juice. So if you're worried about sustaining this, uh, if you have young kids, this adds some tradition that they would love. at the center of it, and they'll remind you to do it. Um, then you'll make sure that you can sustain it and repeat it. But over time, the goal is so And my, my goal when we first started this Shabbat dinner was I really wanted for my kids I'm looking at, like, my 5 year old and 7 year [00:50:00] old, and I'm looking at their eyes, and I'm like, I want them to enjoy this moment, this meal so much that when they get married and start having kids, They can't imagine not coming to this meal.
This is how we, our fill strategy and subdue strategy is working. This meal has really made that possible. Because of course, you know, my, I think my kids, and you know, Jackson can speak to this, but they're able to bring, imagine their own children getting to be at the table with their great grandfather, who's telling stories.
Their grandfather, who, who, you know, is more excited to see them and, anyone else in their whole life. Um, like that, that identity formation that is created around that table is, is so powerful that you're going to cause this family to To ripple into the generations and that that's what I want to give you guys a tool that's that strong And it does take years of honing this tool of the table if you're not used to it At first I [00:51:00] was very incredibly awkward even like doing some kind of spiritual rhythm at the table I was youth pastor for a number of years and you put me in front of 100 screaming middle school kids and i'm Feeling great.
I can do it. I can handle it, but you put me in front of my family Like in the, in a house, I'm like, I feel kind of awkward. I don't know really how this works. I don't, you know, it took me a long time to get over that. You know, I had to talk to my wife and say, could you please encourage me? Cause I, I'm very, I feel very awkward, like trying to, trying to live out these spiritual rhythms in the home.
It just, I'm not used to it. So, so I had to learn, it took, took me a long time, uh, to get comfortable. And, but now it's, it's, it's more natural. And for Jackson, it's going to be really easy for him to imagine what that moment could be like when he starts. to lead a table in his home. So, all right, I would love to, um, bring, uh, my dad and Jackson back up here.
Um, we're, we're, uh, going to start a Q and a, I'd love to hear anything that is, that this is stirring up for you guys, [00:52:00] um, in the actual workshop. And I'll give you guys maybe, um, while we get ready for the Q and a, just a couple of minutes to, Um, to consider is there, is there anything you want to do for your family meal?
So we have on pages 19, 20, 21, 22. All these things are, um, just ideas. I've shared a lot of them already in, in my talk, but there's a little note section here on page 24, and I'd love for you guys to take a minute and jot down any ideas that you have. Um, ideas might be like when, you know, when would you do this?
You know, is it a Sunday afternoon dinner? Is it a Saturday night dinner? Is it a Friday night dinner? Is it a Tuesday night? I don't know. But, again, remember the Amish. Your choice. Decide what kind of family you want to build. Um, so if you want to, you want to initiate a meal, You're gonna, you're gonna have a fight on your hands, I know.
There's gonna be everyone else, everyone's gonna tell you no. You're gonna have to remind them, I'm the father. We're doing this meal, and I'm gonna make it awesome. Just give me some, give me some time. Um, so when are you gonna do it? When are you gonna [00:53:00] initiate a meal? How are you gonna lead your family into it?
Is there any traditions that you want to establish? Is there a kind of food culture you want? Or, to make it easy, like, how are you gonna make this easy on you, or your wife? How are you gonna make this sustainable? So, just take a minute or two, jot down anything that kind of came to mind. Like, if you were to craft Your family meal, what would it look like?
Where would you have it? When would you have it? What would you do? Just try to answer a couple of those questions and then we'll be doing some Q& A before we're done here. Um, yeah, things, especially if you feel like there's anything that might stop you, um, from initiating a tradition or starting a practice of coaching your family or crafting a family rhythms over your week or creating one of these family rhythms.
Um, multi generational family meals or other questions you have about the big idea, but we'd love just to be helpful. Um, so yeah, what are some questions that are still lingering that would be helpful to address? Love to, love to hear. Got a couple of, uh, [00:54:00] yeah. Yeah. This is a, a good idea. You know, it's about time moments and stuff, but the thing is, my question is, is to y'all is, do you make the kids turn off their cell phone?
Do they bring the cell phones to the, to these moments or what? Yes. Definitely. Yeah. Keep all technology away from this, this table. Yeah. It's, if there's any kind of technology addiction that is taking distracting, we got to pull that stuff away. And because we're trying to enter, we're trying to enter into a portal.
You try to take a cell phone away from these kids nowadays and they're going to want to try and fight you. It's tough. Yes.
So one of the challenges that I have, I'm actually going to have dinner with my dad today. He's 83 years old. One of the challenges that I find with my dad is he's a very accomplished man. But [00:55:00] those accomplishments are coupled with some pretty intense situations that he had to deal with. societal, societal situations.
So he doesn't talk that often about those, those accomplishments. I mean, I had to find out about his accomplishments through other family members and things of that nature, loves his family. Um, but how, how can I pull some of those things out of him? Um, and it may be perspective in terms of how he delivers that, but, but it opens up.
Yeah. That he's compartmentalized. If that makes sense. Totally. Makes sense. Uh, and so it becomes a challenge, but there's so much that's there, he's 83 years old, right? So when I see, you know, the dynamic that's sitting up there, I'm like, wow, that could, that could definitely be a part, but because of historical events and societal [00:56:00] issues, it becomes burdensome.
If that makes sense. Yeah. You have, uh, children and grandchildren? Yeah. Children, not grandchildren. Not yet. Well, he does. He does. Yeah, okay. Great, great. All right. Yeah, I think that one of the things Jeremy said earlier is we have family stories to pass down. Experiences that will be lost unless they're shared and, and, uh, there's a rich heritage there, a legacy.
So if, I don't know if you can encourage him from that standpoint that, that are the things that you can share that your family really needs to hear before they're gone forever. And so maybe just pick one or two that maybe aren't as difficult and then build up to those, once he gets comfortable with that, he may be able to share more painful stories.
Yeah, I was, I was gonna say one of the, one of the, I think, tragedies that, uh, I see a lot of older people, older [00:57:00] people kind of going through is they, they really think they're, Like they're they're useless like we don't have a place anymore So they're so they try to check themselves into a home or they try to stay as independent Independent for as long as possible like I'm still driving I still have my friends when it's like way past time for them to turn to their license like they're just they're trying so hard to like Stay relevant, but stay out of your way, you know, because I'm done.
Like my, my life is done, but in a multigenerational, and that's true for the springboard for individual success. Like me, like one thing in that animation after, you know, the, the parents released the kids and they started becoming successful, they get out of the way, like the parents are gone, you know, and they're like, we're going to do everything we can for the rest of our lives to not be a burden to you.
Don't feel like you have to support us. You know, and I think that, um, in a multigenerational Vision like that. The opposite is true. It's an honor to be able to, to make your parent, like my parents relevant to my kids, you know, to, you know, bridge that generational gap. [00:58:00] I always tell my mom, you know, you change my diapers, I'll change yours.
When it's time to come, you know, and it's like, that's, that's actually how I think. Like part of what I. What I'm trying to design in my lifestyle is to be able to accommodate them when they're old and Give them a wonderful life, you know and I think that's uh, and they're there their stories and their relevance will never be lost and when they have when you have um, Grandchildren actually asking, you know, the grandparents like what like just out of like super curiosity They're kind of like, you know, I didn't realize that I was I mattered anymore, but I don't know.
So I think that's uh, It's, it's a tragedy, but I think that the, uh, the younger generation really pulling relevance and like, just like pouring honor to, uh, out onto the, onto that generation might get, might get them to loosen up, but I think that that is, uh, yeah, something that we're definitely encouraging.
Yeah, if you, um, like a tip that for us, where we try to start with this is at the meal, We wanted to, first of all, somehow physically show that we're showing honor to that [00:59:00] generation. So we gave them the best seat. I even like started thinking about like, what are the foods my dad and mom really like to eat?
Like, we're going to, we're going to honor you. Then we had to talk to the kids about, Hey, if, if grandma and grandpa start talking, you need to listen. Like it's like, do not like we're, this is a meal where we're trying to honor them. And the last thing is then I would send a prompt in advance so that, you know, my, my mom or dad would have time.
about what they did want to share. If they wanted, if they wanted to work through something to say, okay, I do, I think it is time to share this or no, I just going to, so the prompts could be like related, like I said, to the time of year, it could be to a topic. Um, and so you want to start, you know, with training wheels, something that's easier.
And then, so if they're feeling honored, they can see the impact it's having on their grandchildren that starts to open up. So I would start small and pretty gentle and then, and see where he's willing to take it. It's a great question. Thank you. Got a question. We have a lot of different [01:00:00] generations in the room. How would you go about recommending either? You talked about casting vision downstream. Yeah. Um, and then, but there's also vision that comes from upstream as well.
Yes. How do you go about a recommend like younger families wanting to get their career. Yeah. You know, parents involved with this, and then how do you go about casting vision downstream to get, you know, your kids and things like that involved as well. How do you kind of reconcile both? Yeah, I'll explain the framework and then I'd love for you both to kind of how you, how you have experienced this.
So in an ideal situation, the way to think about generations is that you can, you honor upstream, you invite horizontally. and you cast vision down. It's difficult to cast vision upstream because it can make your father feel like, you know, like you are somehow [01:01:00] now, um, he's under you, right? And so if he invites you to do that, that's one thing, but you have to be careful that the primary relationship is, is, is one of honor.
Um, we're commanded to honor our father and mother, not to lead our father and mother. Um, it's, it's interesting. One of the things that says in first Timothy five is do not rebuke an older man. But treat them with gentleness like you would a father. And we, we do a lot of, I mean, as we have seen in our culture, there's a lot of people rebuking fathers and mothers.
Uh, in our culture, we're expressly committed not to do that. And I, I would say, say it is more like we're released from having to feel like we're responsible to do that. I think what we're responsible to do is, is to honor upstream. Um, and that can look different depending on what is going on in your particular family, but don't feel that feel like you have to get your parents to follow your vision, um, honor them and see what they do.
If they choose to do that, awesome. Um, and then horizontally with brothers [01:02:00] and sisters, you can invite them, invite other extended family members in. Um, it's hard for them sometimes.
Video 6: When they haven't maybe been in a culture where a lot of leadership and a lot of team ness was happening around the family. So you want to be gentle with brothers and sisters as well. Man, if you've got a brother or sister or brother in law or somebody who wants to really join forces, great. Um, that's the invitation.
But downstream, if your kids are younger and you have a longer term vision for where our family's going, then I think you can be a little bit more clear about what that vision is. Now, the older your kids are, the more careful you have to be about that. Because if you've trained your kids to think like an individual Now they're 24, like fulfilling your vision to try to build their life in a very independent way.
And then all of a sudden they hear a vision from you. They're like, Whoa, Dad, what just happened? I thought I was, I was doing what I was supposed to. Um, that can be really painful for a son or daughter to suddenly hear from their dad. So we want to be really gentle, but if your kids are young, like I said, part of what we were doing was we were crafting rhythms when my kids were like three, four, five years old, that we [01:03:00] could, that was, that we're setting a vision for their future.
If you have older kids, then I would say that the first step, and often times what people try to do with adult children or teenage children, is if you're going to change all of a sudden the vision to a team from the springboard or nest, then often the best way to approach that is to begin by repenting.
Um, and just say, hey, and repentance isn't some weird shameful thing in the gospel. It's, it's actually a exciting thing because it means, I've discovered some new thing, some new truth from the Lord, from the scriptures. And now I've changed my mind. And I don't have to feel ashamed. Jesus covers my sin. I just want to like be clear with you.
I raised you a certain way. I no longer believe that. I do want to go this new direction. But because I've raised you to really move in another direction, I would love for you to just consider this vision. And be very gentle with their journey, because that's going to be tough for them to like absorb and try to understand.
And the last thing I'll say too, is if you try to [01:04:00] unfold a upstream generation into a rhythm that your parents didn't initiate, it can feel to them, like you're leading them just by, cause you're trying something new and their first reaction is oftentimes, Hey, what was wrong with the way I raised you?
You know, um, and that's a really, I think you have to have a lot of grace for that because that's an understandable reaction, everything Jackson does differently. I was, I asked myself the question, like, did I do something wrong? Wow, he's doing something really cool with his wife now. I'm like, I didn't do that with my wife.
Um, was there something wrong with the way I treated my wife? You know, like, so, and I think part of the reason why there's that edge is because part of what God designed was He wants, He designed fathers to put their DNA into their sons, not the other way around. And so, that's why it's threatening. It's something natural about why it's threatening.
And so you have to be really gentle with this. And so if your dad does have a vision, like, then you want to try to honor that vision if you [01:05:00] can. Um, if you feel like you, you, there's a way to do that, uh, because it's supposed to flow that way. But sometimes it's just really toxic and there's no way to unfold that.
And so you either have to invite them or, you know, there's, there's not going to be that connection. Um, but this is, you know, guys, multi generational family is complicated. It's very emotional, very deep. God designed it that way because he wants us to inhabit these incredibly meaningful relationships.
That are in family, but that cuts both ways. Um, if it's incredibly meaningful, it's also incredibly painful. So we have to just be really aware of that, that challenge. But I'm curious how you guys would respond to that. Like how you experienced that as an upstream generation. Let me just give you one word, humility.
And
if you start defensive, then you're not going to let it in. But if you want, if you want to be a lifelong learner, which wife and I have declared, we want to be continually thirst for. information, for new [01:06:00] ideas, for new input, and it put us in a position to hear him and to observe, uh, objectively. As I said, sure, we ask the questions, that's fine.
But ultimately, you can be convinced if you're not like this, but like this. Please, please help us understand. And then, you'll experience things that if you had been defensive, you never would have. So, the grandfathers out there, I'd really encourage you. You're a good listener, and pray to God, this is something I need to receive and participate in.
Yeah, I mean, for, for the downstream generation, I would say, uh, I take it upon myself, you know, to sort of think of each generation should be an upgrade. Um, I think that uh, a lot of immigrants think this way. so Um, you know, there are like one, like one immigrant farmer. So one guy living in Nigeria can work his butt off all [01:07:00] day just to get his kid to America.
And that kid gets to college and everything and then can invite them overseas. And now they're relaxing a little bit. And then that kid's kid grows up and because, and through the, through the, through the Wealth that they lived in in the comfort they lived in from their father who you know went to college and everything like that are Now able to accomplish more so on and so forth So I think that uh, it is important to sort of think about like I I want my son to outgrow me I want him to be smarter than me.
I want him to be stronger than me I want him to be more wealthy than me more powerful. I want that to like I want to do more godly than me um, and then and then taking the same heart posture as Papa to live a life of humility so that if he does have, you know, something that's, that I missed, you know, that I can follow, you know, along with where the generations are headed.
So, yeah. That's really good. Yeah. That that basic principle, you want your ceiling to be your kids floor is really freeing [01:08:00] because you do not compare yourself to other families that have other stories. Like, you don't know where they started. They might have started on third base and you, you, they're acting like they hit a home run.
Um, some people start in a much more difficult position. And so one way to think about progress, if you believe in multi generational family, is you're trying to level up your family, um, generationally. And that's good enough. Like, you compare your, yourself to your family line, not to another family. And part of what that means is that if your father came from a really tough family, And he was a tough father and made a lot of mistakes, but you, you would say it's a huge upgrade from what he lived with.
Please honor that. Like that, that, that was his job and he did it. And he did the most important thing as a father that he could have done. He made his ceiling, your floor, and he deserves honor for that. Even though he, I'm sure it made a lot of other mistakes. One last thing on that, on that note. The, uh, I got reminded of the verse where every child is like an arrow.
So, [01:09:00] um, one image that I had recently was, um, Mike Tyson's coach was very old when he was teaching Mike Tyson. He would just stand there behind him and. You know, this guy is not boxing. If they, you know, in a fight who would win, you know, but, um, but Mike Tyson would be nothing without his coaching. He created a brand new kind of fighter, uh, that the world had never seen before in the heavyweight division.
And it was like, and it was just from him, like standing back and. He had studied boxing his entire life. So there's a way that as a, as a father, you might not be the boxer, but you might, it's, it's weird. You actually can like some, sometimes teach somebody a skill that you don't have. Um, and I think that that's a, so, and that's why I think of, that's what the Bible says.
The kids are an arrow. Like they can make an impact in the world. Even if you're just an archer, you know, if you're the one holding the bow, you just have to be able to point them in a direction and send them off. So that's something that was and, uh, any closing remarks, anything you want to share with them in part? [01:10:00] Yeah. I was wondering, dad, would you mind giving us a blessing for everyone here?
God, you are great. You are the one that invented the family and what an invention it is. An institution that's changing the world. It may not seem like it right now, but in the end, you're going to win. And we went with you. So as men, we, we want to man up and do the things that you're leading us to do.
Take the next step. Do the thing that you know, God is leading you to do, do it with all your might, not halfheartedly, but give it all you've got because our families deserve that. So we, we bless every one of these families. God, just spread your blessing abroad, speak to each father and, um, We just thank you for this opportunity at this church to be, uh, exposed to these [01:11:00] truths.
And we want to apply them and do the things you're calling us to do. We praise you in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Praise God.
Well, friends, thanks for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to learn more about a thousand houses or discover what a season of coaching might look like for you and your household, visit 1kh. org. We'll see you for the next [01:12:00] episode.
