In our final episode of the season, we explore what it means to build a legacy that extends far beyond our own lifetime. Legacy is more than money. It’s the wisdom, faith, values, and way of life we pass on to future generations. We discuss why legacy isn’t something we think about later; it’s being shaped right now through the work we do and the lives we live.

Together, we wrestle with questions like: What are you building? Are you pursuing something bigger than yourself…something you may never see finished? We talk about building with hope instead of anxiety, embracing humility about what we cannot accomplish alone, and recognizing that the most meaningful work is always passed on through others.

We also ask a challenging question: What does it feel like to live with you while you’re building your dreams? Our families may never remember the metrics, goals, or bottom lines, but they will remember our presence, our character, and the memories we create together. As two imperfect fathers still trying to figure it out ourselves, we reflect on the tension between work, calling, and family, and close with a prayer that God would help us build lives that leave a lasting legacy.

Intentional Fatherhood Retreat: November 12-14, 2026 in Austin, TX

Scripture Mentioned: Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Psalm 78:4, Proverbs 13:22, Acts 13:36, Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 + Ecclesiastes 9:7-9

Books Mentioned: A Time to Build by Yuval Levin, To Change the World by James Davison Hunter + Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien

Submit Questions: Send a voice recording to [email protected], mentioning your name and where you’re from.

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This week, we explore the importance of being an amateur, and doing things simply because you love them. In a culture that pushes us to monetize every skill and maximize every minute, many men have lost touch with hobbies that exist purely for joy. But God created us not only to work, but also to create, play, and enjoy the gifts He has given us.

We discuss the barriers that keep us from embracing this part of life, including the pressure to turn hobbies into side hustles and a world that values consumption more than creativity. Whether it's woodworking, cooking, camping, golf, music, or working on cars, these pursuits can provide the kind of rest, fulfillment, and connection that passive, mind-numbing entertainment often cannot.

We also talk about how hobbies can deepen our relationship with God, build community, and create meaningful memories with our children. As C.S. Lewis said, “Joy is the serious business of heaven.” This episode is an invitation to reclaim the things that make you come alive, not because they're productive, profitable, or practical, but because they remind you of who God created you to be.

This Week’s Action Steps:

1. Reclaim one “useless” thing that you simply enjoy doing.
2. Schedule play like it’s a responsibility.
3. Invite your kids into it.

Intentional Fatherhood Retreat: November 12-14, 2026 in Austin, TX

Scripture Mentioned: Ecclesiastes 2:24, 1 Timothy 6:17, 2 Chronicles 9 + Genesis 2:9

Books Mentioned: The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon

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In this pivotal episode of the season, we explore the relationship between family and work, challenging the common idea of “work-life balance.” Rather than seeing work and family as competing priorities, we discuss how they are meant to be integrated and ordered rightly. The real question isn’t how to fit your family into your work, but what your work is ultimately for in light of your family.

We answer common questions many fathers have about setting healthy work boundaries, staying present with your family after a long day, sharing the responsibilities of the home, and teaching your children the value of work. From establishing rhythms of rest to embracing the “second race” of family life after work, we discuss how fathers can faithfully serve both their vocation and their household.

We also explore the importance of inviting children into meaningful work through chores, household responsibilities, and even opportunities to observe or participate in your work when appropriate. Family and work are not opposed to one another; they are deeply intertwined. And while fatherhood can often leave you tired and stretched thin, that reality is often part of the calling. The days are long, the years are short, and the work of raising children is some of the most important work you'll ever do.

Intentional Fatherhood Retreat: November 12-14, 2026 in Austin, TX

Scripture Mentioned: 1 Timothy 5:8 + Philippians 2:5-8

Submit Questions: Send a voice recording to [email protected], mentioning your name and where you’re from.

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Many fathers carry a deep sense of responsibility to provide, achieve, and work hard, yet often wonder how their faith should shape both their work and their family life. In this episode, we explore the spiritual disciplines that surround and inform the life of work: before you leave for work, while you're at work, and when you return home.

We discuss the hidden life of a father and why spiritual formation matters when much of your most important work goes unseen. Drawing from poetry, teachings, and our own lived experience, we examine how spiritual disciplines reorder our loves, expose what is driving us, create space for God to interrupt our patterns, and quietly shape the kind of fathers we are becoming.

Key Disciplines of Fathers (Which Also Apply to the Workplace):

1. Presence.
2. Blessing.
3. Repair.
4. Attention.
5. Slowing down.
6. Play.
7. Emotional awareness.
8. Saying no.

We also talk about the transformative impact of prayer, Scripture, fasting, Sabbath, and generosity, as well as two practical rhythms for the workday: making prayer part of your work rhythm and making rest and reflection part of your work rhythm. Along the way, we explore why Sabbath is designed to help us work from rest rather than simply recover from exhaustion, and why our limits are a feature of God’s design, not a flaw.

This episode is not a call to legalism or adding more to your to-do list. It is an invitation to start somewhere. Spiritual disciplines are a gift that help us live, work, and lead our families from a place of being deeply loved by our Father.

Intentional Fatherhood Retreat: November 12-14, 2026 in Austin, TX

Scripture Mentioned: Mark 1:9-11 + Matthew 11:30

Previous Episode Mentioned: S1E3 - Habits, Rhythms, and Spiritual Disciplines for Intentional Fatherhood (YouTube, Spotify + Apple Podcasts)

Poem Mentioned: Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

Submit Questions: Send a voice recording to [email protected], mentioning your name and where you’re from.

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This week, we dive into leadership and why it matters for every man. Most people think of leadership as something reserved for business owners, managers, or people with authority, but the reality is that we're all leading somewhere. As fathers and husbands, the way we show up influences the people around us and shapes the culture of our homes, workplaces, and communities.

In this conversation, we unpack what healthy leadership actually looks like and why so many leaders get it wrong. We explore why leadership is less about competency and more about character, why servant leadership creates healthy cultures, and how many of the same qualities that make someone a good leader also make them a good father.

We also discuss some of the common reasons people struggle in leadership, including insecurity, performance-based identity, a need for control, and the tendency to avoid hard conversations. Along the way, we talk about the responsibility leaders have to bring calm in moments of chaos, make difficult decisions when necessary, communicate clearly, and put the needs of others ahead of their own.

Ultimately, we look to Jesus as the model for healthy leadership. By paying attention to how He lived, served, spoke, and led in the Gospels, we find a perfect example of leadership rooted in humility, courage, conviction, and care for others. Whether at home, at work, or in the community, His example challenges us to lead in a way that helps others flourish.

7 Practices of a Healthy Leader:

1. Practice daily self-leadership by managing yourself well before leading others.
2. Clarify and repeat the vision consistently so people know where they are headed.
3. Have hard conversations early, addressing issues with both kindness and honesty.
4. Create healthy feedback loops and invite others to speak openly.
5. Serve in unseen ways, looking for opportunities to put others first.
6. Filter complaints wisely, discerning which concerns need action and which do not.
7. Be available and present with the people you lead, investing time in relationships.

Intentional Fatherhood Retreat: November 12-14, 2026 in Austin, TX

Scripture Mentioned: Proverbs 29:18 + Proverbs 11:10

Previous Episode Mentioned: S3E3: The Dangerous Lie About Calling and Success (YouTube, Spotify + Apple Podcasts)

Submit Questions: Send a voice recording to [email protected], mentioning your name and where you’re from.

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In this episode, we continue our conversation on stewardship by looking at one of our most valuable and limited resources: time. Time is the currency of our purpose, and stewarding it well means finding the balance between laziness and anxiety. While some of us need to embrace greater ambition and intentionality, others need to embrace the gift of limitation. Rest, sleep, Sabbath, and slower rhythms are not flaws in our design, they are part of it.

Drawing from Ephesians 5:15-16, we discuss what it means to “redeem the time.” The goal is not perfect productivity but faithful stewardship. You may not have enough time to do everything you want to do, but you do have enough time to do the things God is calling you to do. Wisdom helps us release unrealistic expectations, trust God with the future, and use our days with greater purpose.

We also explore the importance of using mornings and evenings well, building life-giving rituals, and developing habits that shape a sustainable rhythm of life. Because in the end, we redeem time not to become more productive, but to become the people God has called us to be.

Practical ways to steward your time:

1. Structure important blocks of your day.
2. Track where your time goes.
3. Put your phone out of sight when working.
4. Sit with difficult problems instead of escaping them.
5. Write by hand to improve focus and clarity.
6. Create intentional phone settings for work, home, and Sabbath.

Intentional Fatherhood Retreat: November 12-14, 2026 in Austin, TX

Scripture Mentioned: Ephesians 5:15-16, Psalm 90:12 + Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Book Mentioned: The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Submit Questions: Send a voice recording to [email protected], mentioning your name and where you’re from.

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This week, we talk about money, work, providing, and vocation through the lens of biblical stewardship. Stewardship is the faithful management of what belongs to God, and Scripture reminds us that our money, time, relationships, influence, families, and opportunities are ultimately His, not ours. Jesus speaks often about greed and warns against living with an ownership mindset instead of a steward’s heart.

We explore what it looks like to faithfully steward not only finances, but also our wives, children, organizations, and responsibilities. Seeing ourselves as stewards kills entitlement and reshapes how we use our resources for the good of our families, neighbors, churches, and communities. The conversation also highlights the importance of simplicity and generosity, which means living with intentional limits instead of unnecessary excess, while cultivating a lifestyle of open-handed giving with our money, time, and energy.

We also discuss practical ways to build habits and structures around generosity, including the idea of capping your lifestyle while leaving your generosity uncapped. Rather than drifting financially, families should decide ahead of time what “enough” looks like and create a plan for giving radically and intentionally.

Practical Steps:

• As you anticipate or plan for an increase in finances, discuss with your spouse what your capped lifestyle looks like.
• Create a plan for generosity, including specific categories, the timing, how much, etc.

3 Questions to Ask Yourself:

1. What have you been given?
2. What does faithfulness look like in those areas?
3. What needs to change in how you’re handling it?

Intentional Fatherhood Retreat: November 12-14, 2026 in Austin, TX

Scripture Mentioned: 1 Timothy 6:10, Luke 12:13-21, Luke 12:48, 1 Corinthians 4:2, Matthew 6:19-24 + Matthew 6:1-8

Submit Questions: Send a voice recording to [email protected], mentioning your name and where you’re from.

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This episode wraps up our conversation on the spiritual foundation of work before we move into the practical side of vocation and calling. We explore the tension between ambition and idolatry, and how we were created to pursue meaningful things, yet how easily ambition can become self-centered. Together, we discuss how Scripture reframes ambition as something good when it’s rooted in humility, service, and faithfulness rather than ego, pride, or status.

Justin reflects on how his understanding of “making it” was shaped by watching his father’s success and notoriety, while Brook shares how parenting a child with special needs has reshaped his view of ambition, rhythms, and career expectations. We also talk through the things that often hold us back from healthy ambition: fear, comfort, distraction, comparison, exhaustion, financial pressure, and the lies we believe about ourselves.

Ultimately, we ask what it looks like to pursue success with integrity and a focus on spiritual formation, remembering that the goal is not selfish ambition, but courage, humility, and faithfulness.

Practices:

1. Be honest with trusted friends about your ambition.
2. Be honest with trusted friends about your idols.
3. Be honest with trusted friends about the audacious dream(s) you’re afraid to say out loud.

Intentional Fatherhood Retreat: November 12-14, 2026 in Austin, TX

Scripture Mentioned: Philippians 2:3-9, John 8:44, Proverbs 11:10, 2 Corinthians 10:5 + Romans 12:2

Books Mentioned: Godly Ambition by Ruslan KD, Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller, Generous Justice by Timothy Keller, Kingdom Calling by Amy Sherman + On the Road with Saint Augustine by James K. A. Smith

Submit Questions: Send a voice recording to [email protected], mentioning your name and where you’re from.

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In this episode, we continue our season on work and vocation by tackling one of the most misunderstood words in the Christian life: calling. The thesis is simple but disruptive: you don’t find your calling, you form it. So much of our cultural imagination around vocation runs on what we call the “lightning bolt myth,” the idea that one day clarity will strike, you’ll know exactly what you’re made to do, and the path forward will appear. But that’s not how calling actually works, and waiting for the zap keeps a lot of men stuck living someone else’s life.

We lean on a line from Dallas Willard that reframes the whole conversation: “Your job is not your calling; your calling is to become a certain kind of person.” Before vocation is ever a profession, it’s a formation, becoming the kind of person who, like Peter on the water, says, “Lord, if you’re there, call me to yourself.” From that foundation, the question shifts from what am I supposed to do? to who am I becoming, and where is God already at work in my story? Justin shares his own “calling moment” around writing, fatherhood, and being a missionary in China, and how each of those took years, sometimes a decade, to actually take shape. Brook walks through his unexpected path into ministry and Intentional, and how saying yes to something unglamorous turned out to be the doorway into the work he was made for.

Along the way, we talk about the danger of succeeding at the wrong life, the way ambition can quietly turn into idolatry, and Carl Jung’s warning that until we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our lives and we’ll call it fate. We borrow a helpful framework from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ Designing Your Life, the overlap of what you enjoy, what you’re good at, and what the world needs, and we name that talent and even enjoyment are more formable than we tend to think. Calling is iterated, not discovered.

We close with one of the most powerful practices we’ve shared on the podcast, Richard Foster’s prayer of relinquishment. It’s the practice of burying your hopes, dreams, and the version of yourself you’ve been chasing, and praying, Lord, resurrect whatever is from you, and let whatever needs to stay dead, stay dead. For many of us, that’s the doorway into actually forming a calling we couldn’t have planned. This conversation is a setup for next week, where we’ll dig into the question this whole episode raises: how do we have ambition without idolatry?

Practices:

• Pray the prayer of relinquishment: bury your hopes, dreams, and ambitions, and ask God to resurrect what is from Him and let whatever needs to stay dead, stay dead.
• Revisit last week’s exercise and add a third circle: write down three things that give you life, three needs you see in the world, and three things you’re genuinely talented at, then look for where all three overlap.
• Identify a repeated pattern in your life or family of origin around work and calling, and ask: where did this start, and is it still shaping me?

Intentional Fatherhood Retreat: November 12-14, 2026 in Austin, TX

Scripture Mentioned: Matthew 14:22-33, Ephesians 2:8-10, Romans 8:28 + Exodus 2-3

Books Mentioned: Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans + Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard Foster

Submit Questions: Send a voice recording to [email protected], mentioning your name and where you’re from.

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Justin Whitmel Earley: Website + Instagram

We’re BACK with season 3, diving into work and vocation in fatherhood. We start by laying a foundation with a biblical theology of work, because work isn’t just a necessary part of life, it’s something God designed. From the very beginning, God was at work, and He invites us to join Him in it, which means our everyday jobs carry far more spiritual significance than we often realize.

It’s easy to divide life into “sacred” and “secular” categories, but Scripture pushes back on that idea. Your work doesn’t have to be in ministry or a nonprofit to have eternal purpose; whether you’re earning money or raising it, both can be God-ordained. The real question isn’t how “spiritual” your job appears, but whether you’re doing it for God or simply to make something of yourself.

At its core, all work is service. We were made to serve, and every role is an opportunity to meet real needs in the world. The Hebrew word “avodah” captures this well, bringing together the ideas of work, service, and worship, and reminding us that in God’s design these aren’t separate but are meant to be fully integrated.

As Frederick Buechner wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Discovering that intersection takes time, but it’s where meaningful, outward-focused work begins.

Practices:

1. Write the story of your work through the lens of creation, the fall, redemption, and consummation.
2. Write down three things that give you life and three needs you see in the world, then look for where they overlap.

Intentional Fatherhood Retreat: November 12-14, 2026 in Austin, TX

Scripture Mentioned: Genesis 1:27-28, Genesis 2:15, Revelation 21:1-2, 1 Corinthians 7:17, Exodus 8:1 + Joshua 24:15

Books Mentioned: Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright, The Romance of the Word by Robert Farrar Capon, Garden City by John Mark Comer + The Sacredness of Secular Work by Jordan Raynor

Submit Questions: Send a voice recording to [email protected], mentioning your name and where you’re from.

Intentional Fatherhood Website

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Intentional: Website + Instagram

Justin Whitmel Earley: Website + Instagram