What makes me a better dad? I love to refer to this as understanding as “what stirs my affections”. I always begin this question with: “What stirs my affections for God?” - Why? Because those things in turn stir my affections for life, for my wife, for my kids, for work, for being me at a higher level. With understanding the things that stir me also comes the understanding of the things that don’t. It’s just as important for me to do the things that do stir me as it is to not do the things that don’t .

More than one person has asked me, “Why did you get out of ministry”? That’s a fairly deep question and takes some effort to answer. (Click here if you want to listen to a recent podcast I was on discussing this). - So to answer this more in depth I wrote a blog - Why I Got Out Of Ministry: and then came back and did a podcast based on that blog... 

Reading and interrupting myself just to add a little more flare... Because it's always more fun to make fun of yourself while you try to read your own writing than just reading it :-)...

Continuing the series: The Perfect Church - We Tell People About Jesus Every Time We Get The Chance

Wrapping up Part 2 of Lazy Churches Suck. The whole point I'm getting at today is the fact that we as churches too often don't focus on the most important things. We tend to neglect to do the basic things we are supposed to do as pastors - share the gospel and follow up with people really really well. Like, we should be better at that than anyone else, and most of the time we aren't. 

There was a point a few years ago when I looked at Riane and I said, “I don’t feel like parents anymore. I feel like we’re just grown ups that yell a lot.” I think I had just wrapped up another great teaching moment with my daughter when the only way to help her hear and understand what I wanted to communicate was to turn the amp to 11. (If you missed that movie, then you should be ashamed of yourself). Life is stressful. We work a lot. Our kids are really busy like all the time. We are in non-stop go mode…just like everyone else. Life seems to be speeding up. The problem is, it also feels like our kids continue to age even faster. When we moved back from Austin, Tanner was a 4th grader and now Dax is as old as she when we got here. It’s crazy to think we only have another 5 years left with her at home, and we are more than halfway thru the kid years with both of them. I desperately want use the moments we have left for making memories and laughing as much as we can.

One of my favorite quotes that is original to me is: “If you have to say it out loud it’s not true…” I’m leading with that to make an acknowledgement about my next statements.

Yes - that’s a L-slap. (If you don’t know the term, don’t look it up because it’s not a real term).

Wait? Did you just tell us that we all suck and try to smooth it over with a joke? - Yes.

Here’s what I’m getting at - I don’t think that pastors and churches are actually lazy. I think those guys work really hard. I’ve been one of those guys working really hard, but I also think that a lot of times we work really hard at the wrong things.

So what do I mean by lazy? Let me ask you this:

Travis Stephens - an executive pastor in a small town in Tennessee, specializes in helping churches understand how to reach more people in small towns and navigate the differences in the culture in more rural areas joins me in discussing the currents state or the church, our culture, and what we as believers should be doing about it. 

I am convinced that the mind of a teenage girl is the most complex thing in the world that no one other than Jesus understands. I’m also convinced that my teenage girl does not understand it herself. I don’t know how many times I’ve sent her to her room for begin rude and disrespectful to her mother only to have her return 5 minutes later to apologize and she is sent back again for the same thing she is apologizing for and somehow repeating the offense in the middle of the apology. There are days when I think she is going to laugh, cry and punch someone all at the same time - and the kicker is: NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. It’s just a normal day, everyone is fine except the world seems to be ending in someone’s mind, I just don’t know why.

You can find more podcast episodes on raising kids at https://www.thedadsguidetoparenting.com. 

Sharing some of mine and Riane's experiences in our 17+ years of marriage as well as from our time dating and trying to figure out how in the world to do this thing together...