Six months ago, Vince Miller became a first-time grandfather. He joins today's episode to share personal insights around multigenerational thinking, assuming the role of patriarch, and the power of being physically, mentally, and emotionally available to your kids.

Key Takeaways

• You can be given a title—like father or grandfather—without assuming the role.
• Proverbs is predominantly about a father passing on wisdom to a son.
• A 30-second conversation can change the trajectory of someone's life.
• Fathers need to be present, available, and engaged.

Vince Miller

Vince Miller is a passionate speaker, prolific author, and dedicated mentor to men. As the founder of Resolute, he exists to disciple and develop men to lead. Vince has three grown children and one grandchild.

Key Quotes

• 16:15 - "I went from a dad who really didn't want to spend time with me to a dad who did want to spend time with me. And he happened to be a Christian and who imparted basic, basic things to me that I needed as a young man and basic lessons like how to treat women, how to eat a meal, how to be polite, how to confront difficulty. And the very, very important things like who is Jesus? What has He done for you? How to have a relationship with Him."
• 29:31 - "I've also learned a valuable lesson, just about presence. Just about being there when they need you, and that means not being somewhere else. It means not being somewhere else. It means you're physically not somewhere else and that your mind is not somewhere else. I think sometimes for dads, that's a hard mechanism to turn off in our minds because there's plenty of dads who are present but not available. But we need to be both present and available at the same time and engaged."

Links from Today's Conversation

• Send a Voice Message to DadAwesome
• Manhood, Courage & Adventure (episode 031 w/ Vince Miller)
• Resolute
• Essential Elements: Forging Godly Men by Vince Miller
• The Vince Miller Show

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• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team
• Receive weekly encouragement by texting "dad" to 651-370-8618

Being a dad doesn't stop when your kids grow up. As Reverend Elmo Winters shares in this episode, your kids constantly watch what you do, so the example you set will shape their future. Tune in to hear an important conversation about intentionality, racial reconciliation, and kingdom-focused living.

Key Takeaways

• Set a good example for your kids by walking out what you talk about.
• Everyone needs someone in their life to call out and draw out what they can't see in themselves.
• Be open-minded, quick to listen, and slow to speak—regardless of another person's race or culture.
• Most fathers around the world want the same thing: to provide, to give advice, to be respected, and to be a good leader.
• Never put ministry or the church above your family.

Elmo Winters

Reverend Elmo Winters, MBA, has served in ministry for over 43 years, including his current role as Executive Director of the KINGDOM Group International, Inc. He travels the world, training and speaking to churches, ministries, and men's groups on unity and reconciliation issues. Reverend Winters is married to Therese Winters. They have three sons, two daughters, and nine grandchildren.

Key Quotes

• 17:44 - "I've learned to be quick, quick, quick to listen and slow to speak. Regardless of who you are encountering, regardless of what culture they're from, I believe we can learn from others. We can learn a lot from other people. I love cultures. I love different people. It's important that when we speak that we need to understand that our words have power. The Word of God says that we have in our tongue the power of life and death. So when we speak before young men, ladies in our families, your daughters, you ought to be speaking life, speaking positively. Let them see that."

Links from Today's Conversation

• Send a Voice Message to DadAwesome
• Kingdom Group International, Inc.
• Growing by Going: A New Approach to Being an Effective Witness by Elmo Winters
• Building the Bridge Podcast

Connect with dadAWESOME

• Make a Donation to dadAWESOME
• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team
• Receive weekly encouragement by texting "dad" to 651-370-8618

As a licensed professional counselor and dad of three, Chris Bruno is acutely aware of how childhood trauma can impact your fatherhood approach. In this conversation, Chris describes the importance of processing your experiences with others, finding healing from the past, and becoming deeply rooted in brotherhood as you raise your kids.

Key Takeaways

• You became the man you are today because of the guidance or lack thereof from the men who came before you.
• Exploring your own story means confronting the areas you've walled off within yourself and processing your experiences with others.
• We are the best fathers when we have brothers alongside us.
• Trauma continues to pass through generations until someone has the courage to feel it.

Chris Bruno

Chris Bruno is an author, licensed professional counselor, founder of ReStory, and CEO of Restoration Project. He is passionate about the intersection of transformation and adventure. Chris and his wife, Beth, have three young adult children.

Key Quotes

• "We are the best father when we have our best brothers with us. We need those guys. Those are guys in my life and we need our brothers. And also we need someone else who's on the outside who's got some training, is a professional in some ways to come along side to create a safe space for a child to unfold."
• "We are heaps of undigested experience. When you have indigestion, there's something unwell about your body. So if there's undigested experience, there's something unwell about your soul and we need someone to come alongside us and to be with us and partner with us and talk through those things with us to digest the experience so that in that moment, we can make meaning in a way that won't be a traumatic meaning. It won't be one of those collapsed vows or walled off moments in life."

Links from Today's Conversation

• Man Maker Project: A Father's Guide to Initiating His Son to Manhood by Chris Bruno
• Sage: A Man's Guide Into His Second Passage by Chris Bruno
• Brotherhood Primer: A Man's Guide To Turning Buddies Into Brothers by Chris Bruno
• Restoration Project
• ReStory Counseling
• Chris Bruno's TEDx Talk: ReStory: How to Live Your Truest Story
• Send a Voice Message to DadAwesome

Connect with dadAWESOME

• Make a Donation to dadAWESOME
• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team
• Receive weekly encouragement by texting "dad" to 651-370-8618

There's only so much growth you can experience in your normal rhythms of life. That's why Jeff Ford has pushed his limits to the extreme by summiting the tallest free-standing mountain in the world—three times! In this episode, he shares the powerful faith and fatherhood lessons that he's learned from doing such physically challenging things with other men.

Key Takeaways

• How your children view God is directly dependent upon how they view you. Therefore, reflect His image today.
• Doing hard things physically is analogous to the Christian faith because you must count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds.
• Create drive-by phrases—quick, pithy reminders of your family's values.
• Don't wait until a Mount Kilimanjaro experience to find your brotherhood.

Jeff Ford

Jeff Ford serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Man Up and Go, a global non-profit organization that mobilizes men to fight for the fatherless as Jesus commands. He also serves in several advisory and advocacy positions and has summited Mount Kilimanjaro three times. Jeff and his wife, Liza, live in Florida with their two children.

Key Quotes

• 10:05 - "How your children view God is directly dependent upon how they view you, therefore reflect His image today. I know that my kids are looking at me and their view of God is going to be shaped by the father that they had on earth. Their Heavenly Father, they're going to hear that language in church. How we reflect Jesus, God the Father to our kids is going to have an impact on their view of God, and I believe their sentence of Him."
• 22:34 - "This is an opportunity for growth and nothing changed except our mind. Nothing change except for our outlook. And you think we are so caught up in this materialistic world and that we judge things based on what we can see, taste, touch, smell. And yet the Bible says that our battles against, not that stuff, it's against invisible powers of which is the mind. The mind is an invisible thing that somehow integrates with the physical thing called a brain, but comes out in this ethereal, invisible, and that is what actually drives your decisions, is your mind."

Links from Today's Conversation

• Man Up
• Man Up Trips
• Patros

Connect with dadAWESOME

• Make a Donation to dadAWESOME
• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team
• Receive weekly encouragement by texting "dad" to 651-370-8618

Mic flip! Listen as Jeff Zaugg sits down with Kent Evans and Lawson Brown on the Father on Purpose Podcast to discuss his own parenting journey. He shares fresh ideas to help you live an awesome dad life, invest time with your kids, and model joy, faith, and wonder.

Key Takeaways

• You're not being DadAwesome if you're just pursuing the heart of your wife and kids; being DadAwesome requires brotherhood.
• Never wait until you think you've "arrived" before you take the initiative to lead.
• Help your kids remember God's provision by prompting them with this phrase: "Look at what God did."
• There's no better way to spend your time as a dad than by intentionally connecting with your kids.
• If you're a discouraged father, it's time to throw off weight from the past, receive God's love, and walk in your sonship.

Jeff Zaugg

Jeff Zaugg is the founder of DadAwesome and Fathers for the Fatherless, two ministries that resource and rally dads through engaging podcasts and 100-mile bike rides. Jeff and his wife, Michelle, have been married for eighteen years and are parents to four daughters.

Key Quotes

• 23:25 - "We say at DadAwesome, you are not being DadAwesome, if you're just pursuing the heart of your wife and your kids. If it's just about you in the home front, you actually have missed half the mission because it's all shortsighted. If you don't have brothers, if you don't have a few other guys that are after this mission together, you will not make it the distance. You will not be able to hold that arm, hold that strength. It's the only way to be DadAwesome is to do it in brotherhood."
• 33:36 - "If we think about the longevity of investment of time, we only have this limited amount of time with our kids before they leave the house. It's tiny, fractional moments versus deep, rich opportunity when they're on the home front. Dads, [spending intentional time with our kids] is just the easiest and best investment with compounding interest than we can ever imagine."

Links from Today's Conversation

• Manhood Journey
• Anger-Free Dad
• Father on Purpose Podcast
• The Forge Movie

Connect with dadAWESOME

• Make a Donation to dadAWESOME
• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team
• Receive weekly encouragement by texting "dad" to 651-370-8618

What does it mean to go beyond shallow community and find real brotherhood? In this episode, Steve Sargent describes how God turned every part of his story—even the messiest parts—into a beautiful symphony. From overcoming addiction to learning to live authentically, Steve shares powerful wisdom for all dads, no matter your past.

Key Takeaways

• Avoid getting stuck in a shallow community; don't be afraid to get deep.
• Life stories without trauma and chaos are just as significant and victorious as stories with those elements.
• If you want an authentic relationship with your kids, you have to pull back the veil and share your story with them.
• Foxhole Symphony means that God is making something beautiful out of your mess—mud, bullets, and shrapnel included.

Steve Sargent

As a pure adrenaline junkie, facilitator, speaker, and entrepreneur, Steve Sargent spent most of his life chasing the next high, even in ministry roles. As such, God has shown him how to use this gift and calling to help people and organizations become the best version of themselves. Steve and his wife, Christina, have two children.

Key Quotes

• 5:14 - "These guys [from the 12 step program] loved on me. They showed me and modeled authentic community. They discipled me. They gave me a job. They said, here's some work. Here are the stipulations, you're going to a 12 step meeting every day. You're coming to a Bible study every night, church twice on Sunday. And that was the beginning. That was the beginning when I got to understand what God intended with community and discipleship. And I've just been on fire for it and hungry for it ever since."
• 34:46 - "It's God making beautiful music out of our mess. That's the symphony. There's men coming together in the foxhole. There's shrapnel, there's bullets flying, there's mud, it's messy, it's dirty, it's scary. There's all this adrenaline and emotion and we've got each other's backs and God just makes something beautiful out of it. He takes it all and wraps it up and there's just this beautiful symphony that results from the offering, the willingness and the offering to offer that mess to God. He'll use it all, but we've got to offer it to Him. Otherwise it's just our mess that we hold on to in isolation, in darkness, just gripping on to it. But when we offer it to the Lord, He makes beauty from ashes."

Links from Today's Conversation

• Foxhole Symphony Podcast
• Sage: A Man's Guide Into His Second Passage by Chris Bruno
• Marked Men For Christ
• Apply to join the Fall 2024 DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort: Email [email protected] to learn more

Connect with dadAWESOME

• Make a Donation to dadAWESOME
• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team
• Receive weekly encouragement by texting "dad" to 651-370-8618

Jim Barnard is known as The Suffering Guy. In this heartfelt episode, Jim shares the pivotal moments of his life story, including countless crises and miracles he's experienced along the way. His story offers hope for others walking through challenging times, and he'll encourage you to look to the source of all comfort as you try to make sense of reality.

Key Takeaways

• The gap between reality and what we hope for is full of disappointment, dissatisfaction, and distress.
• You're never alone in your suffering; the God of Comfort is always with you.
• Your story is your greatest gift because it helps others know that their hard stories can become ones of flourishing, too.
• God isn't going to send you in a new direction empty-handed.

Jim Barnard

Jim Barnard is a pastor and the founder of tiller coaching. He offers coaching without barriers to those who are suffering the reality of the expectation gap. Jim has encountered suffering firsthand as he has navigated his wife's rare chronic illness, but he continues to pursue joy and celebration as his story unfolds.

Key Quotes

• 3:27 - "As we'll get into my story, there's just been a lot of suffering, a lot of what I call expectation gaps. You know, we all have hopes and expectations for career, for marriage, for parenting, for life. And often reality comes in underneath that. And that gap between reality and what we hope for is full of disappointment and dissatisfaction and distress. And I hate that. Like I've experienced copious amounts of, you know, expectation gaps. And every single time I'm stuck in the gap, there's an invitation to take myself too seriously, you know, like, woe is me, this is awful. I hate it. Like I'm I want to cope, you know, whatever. And I just I love Richard Foster's book, The Celebration of Discipline. Like that has been kind of a cornerstone book in my life. Where he says at the end that celebration is the thing that can save us from taking ourselves too seriously. [00:04:32][64.9]

• 33:41 - "[My story] is the story that God's given me and I've got to use it. I hope people listening to this are reflecting about their own story. I hear so many people say, I don't have that good of a story or I don't like my story. I don't want to share it. I don't think it's optional, honestly. Authenticity is required of the Christian walk, so in using my story I've been able to help people. "

Links from Today's Conversation

• Tiller Coaching
• The suffering guy. by Jim Barnard
• MADE ALIVE by Jim Barnard
• The Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
• Hope Heals
• Apply to join the Fall 2024 DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort: Email [email protected] to learn more

Connect with dadAWESOME

• Make a Donation to dadAWESOME
• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team
• Receive weekly encouragement by texting "dad" to 651-370-8618

What does it mean to stay nimble as a father? In today's episode, Corey Peters offers his perspective and will push you to break out of your comfort zone to make a difference for your community. Plus, you'll discover one simple question that can transform your relationship with your kids.

Key Takeaways

• Ask your kids, "What kind of dad do you want me to be?"
• Celebrate a lot; coach a little.
• Listen to God's nudge to move beyond your own comfort and bring comfort to others.
• Basketballs are a love language spoken by all children.
• A simple way to get started is to go to a gas station in a rough area and just pray.

Corey Peters

Corey Peters is a coach, teacher, and father of two living in Iowa. He is passionate about helping to build better men who step up for their wives, children, and community in the name of Jesus. Corey and his wife, Michelle, have been married for 25 years.

Key Quotes

• 34:27 - "You've got to know that you're forgiven and that Jesus is a loving Father, that loves you at your worst and that He's there for your worst and He's picking you up, not kicking you out."
• 35:48 - So, loving the wife, I would say is the first. Just being real. Telling your kids you don't know. Being truthful with them. Try not to mold them into something they aren't. Trying to push your image to who they are, but trying to pull out what God says they are. Coach them up. Love them up."

Links from Today's Conversation

• Apply to join the Fall 2024 DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort: Email [email protected] to learn more
• Somebody Died For You
• DA+3 Group Guides (2024 Summer Series)
• 333 | Betting on Yourself, Relearning How to Parent, and Doing Hard Things (Bryan Byrd: Part 1)
• 334 | Heroic Consistency, Getting Hungry for God, and Being a Safe Container for Grief (Bryan Byrd: Part 2)

Connect with dadAWESOME

• Make a Donation to dadAWESOME
• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team
• Receive weekly encouragement by texting "dad" to 651-370-8618

With a background in the aerospace industry, Santosh Swamidass can list plenty of ways that fatherhood is just like rocket science. In this conversation, Santosh illustrates the importance of launching your kids with the right targets in mind. With tools and systems shared in this episode, you can raise your kids to love Christ, discover their purpose, and impact the world around them.

Key Takeaways

• The trajectory you set for your kids before they launch has a lifelong effect and, if you do it well, an eternal impact.
• Find force multipliers like tools, guides, and systems to help your kids grow spiritually with less effort and better results.
• To avoid forgetting 90% of what you learn each week, you just need a few short bursts of repetition to retain more of what matters.
• Each week as a family, memorize one verse, pray for others two times, have three spiritual conversations of substance, and read the Bible four times.
• Commit to a steady drip infusion of wisdom through your kid's childhood so it can have a compounding effect.

Santosh Swamidass

Santosh Swamidass is a pastor, architect of Project Based Discipleship, and Founder of the Launching Ground and Launch Network. He spent 10 years working in the aerospace industry and has over 25 years of ministry experience. Santosh and his wife, Christy, are enjoying the adventure and learnings of discipling their 7 kids.

Key Quotes

• 13:51 - "Jesus' references this even as the greatest commandment and what we see right after that in Deuteronomy, it's not the priests. It's not the the temple. It's not the tabernacle. It doesn't talk about what we would consider the church and the pastors. It talks about the parents and the home. This is what we're talking about, family discipleship."
• 32:57 - "We have a short period of time that will have an effect for the lifetime of our children. The reality is, if we do it well, it has an effect on eternity. In all the things that I invest my life in, there are there are very few that are going to last beyond my lifetime. My children, by the grace of God and their legacy is one of those things, and how they pass their faith on is going to be a lot of it derived from how we as fathers actually pour into our kids. And we know the statistics that the number one indicator for a child's faith in their future, it's actually the father's."

Links from Today's Conversation

• Apply to join the Fall 2024 DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort: Email [email protected] to learn more
• Live near Dallas, Texas? Join us for the upcoming Fathers for the Fatherless Spartan Obstacle Course on August 19-20, 2024.
• Launching Ground
• Family Discipleship Subscription

Connect with dadAWESOME

• Make a Donation to dadAWESOME
• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team
• Receive weekly encouragement by texting "dad" to 651-370-8618

Every father needs the right tools to raise his kids well, and Kent Evans likes to use the analogy of a Swiss Army Knife. His main blades include asking thoughtful questions, seeking wisdom from others, and staying rooted in God's Word. Tune in now to discover why anger isn't an effective parenting strategy—and what you should do instead.

Key Takeaways

• Be curious and seek wisdom from the men you know.
• Your boys need to hear you acknowledge your weaknesses and imperfections.
• Don't connect your apology to your child's behavior.
• You don't need to have a sex talk with your son; you need to have an 8-10 year conversation.
• As dads, most of our anger is not righteous anger.

Kent Evans

Kent Evans is the Executive Director and co-founder of Manhood Journey, a ministry that helps dads become disciple-makers. He's a Christian speaker and author of three books. Kent and his wife, April, have been married for 29 years and have five sons.

Key Quotes

• 24:36 - "Odds are, the vast majority of things that make you angry are unbiblical, unwise, and unproductive. Let's go explore those together and see what God's Word has to say about it. Because for me, I have discovered over time that there there is a way to look at life through a far less angry lens and to be able to call my anger out when it happens in a way that's more healthy, albeit sometimes more painful. And I just hope I can get some dads to join me on that that journey. Because frankly, we hear from dads all the time who say their number one struggle is anger."
• 32:51 - "Let all, not some, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Anger is not to be managed. It is not to be controlled per se, although we should have control over our mouth and our spirit. Anger is to be put away. As we look at it, it's a very challenging topic because our culture and our modern era and our access to news that doesn't matter. Proverbs 16, whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he who rules his spirit, then he who takes a city. Do you have governance over your spirit? Can you rule your spirit? Can I rule my spirit or does my spirit rule me? And we just find anger lurking in the shadows so often, almost every day."

Links from Today's Conversation

• Apply to join the Fall 2024 DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort: Email [email protected] to learn more
• Manhood Journey
• Timothy Keller Books
• The Anger Free Dad Course
• Father on Purpose Podcast
• Kent Evans Books

Connect with dadAWESOME

• Make a Donation to dadAWESOME
• Join the dadAWESOME Prayer Team
• Receive weekly encouragement by texting "dad" to 651-370-8618