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Jim Burns

Jim Burns is the President of HomeWord and the Executive Director of the HomeWord Center for Youth and Family at Azusa Pacific University. Jim speaks to thousands of people around the world each year. He has close to 2 million resources in print in 30 languages. He primarily writes and speaks on the values of HomeWord which are:

• Strong Marriages
• Confident Parents
• Empowered Kids
• Healthy Leaders.

Jim and his wife, Cathy, live in Southern California and have three grown daughters, Christy, Rebecca, and Heidi; two sons-in-law, Steve and Matt; and two grandchildren, James and Charlotte.

Conversation Notes

• 1:00 - DA Foundations
• 1:50 - 10-Day Mom Awesome Challenge - https://dadawesome.org/momawesome
• 2:42 - Jim Burns intro - 45 yrs investing in leaders. HomeWord
• 5:00 - Home Word is the largest parenting ministry in the US. “Strong marriages, confident parents, empowered kids, healthy leaders.”
• 6:20 - Doing Life with Your Adult Children - unsolicited advice is taken as criticism.
• 8:52 - “Three good things” - On a birthday, say three good things about the person.
• 9:45 - “Relationships can’t all be super serious, sometimes they need to be serious fun.”
• 11:45 - Intentional changes he has made as a dad
• 12:58 - Being the transitional generation - you either recover or repeat patterns
• 13:51 - having an affair with his job
• 19:49 - “Some of the greatest mentors I’ve ever had are people I’ve never met”
• 21:00  - But if we parent too much on circumstance and chance and we don’t take a step back and be intentional about it, dads are really intentional when it comes to work, but at home they're just like ok so what are we going to do today. And I’m saying to dads lead, but don’t lead in a weird way, lead by being intentional. And so you be the person who is most fun, you be their greatest cheerleader, but at the same time don’t be letting your wife do all the discipline and you try to be Disney Land dad because you don’t know what to do, or you want to be liked, or your too tired because you had a hard day at work….
• 24:05 - “I’m still to this day not a confident parent, but I look back  and go wow, some of those decisions we made were good decisions.” - comparison with working out.
• 24:48 - Having intentionality around sexuality.
• 26:12 - “The more positive, values centered sex education kids receive at home, the less promiscuous they will be and actually the less confused.”
• 29:05 - “When a dad is intentional with his daughter, with his time, not about sex, the questions will come easier.”
• 33:58 - Two areas he would have nudged himself to put more focus when the kids were little: Engage them more spiritually, and appreciate the moments with them.  “Kids are leaving the church, but there is a 300% better chance that kids will stay in the church if they have faith conversations in the home.”
• 36:25 - Be intentional about finding mentors - start finding time with people who you respect. 

Video Interview: https://youtu.be/MCc_sovSJ0g

Links:

• HomeWord
• Jim's Blog on Marriage and Family
• Jim's books: Amazon