 My name is David and it's an honor to be with you. Thank you so much for joining this seminar. I'm going to talk a lot and talk quickly because I got a lot of content I want to try to bring to you. But thank you for coming to this session. I'm a pastor's kid, grew up in a pastor's family, and then I spent 16 years as a pastor in Colorado on staff at a church and then planted a church. Radiant church in Kansas City have a wife and four kids and my goal in this session is to talk to you about making disciples of your children. And so my goal is there's so many things under the banner family that you could go after. We could go after marriage, we could talk about creating a culture, all kinds of different ways we could come at this. But my goal is to really help you be intentional with your family. And so I'm going to pray in just a moment and then I'm going to tell a couple stories and then I'm going to give you some Bible. And then I'm going to give you seven habits in disciplining your family. All right. So that's kind of the macro picture of where we're going to go. Father, we love you. And I thank you, Lord Jesus, for each of these pastors and leaders. And God, I thank you for their children and their marriages. And I thank you for this season. God, each one of us, whatever season, whether it's adult children, teenage children, elementary or even babies, even those Lord Jesus that are looking at kids in the future. I ask, Lord, that each one of these kids would walk with you all their days. Holy spirit, I pray that you would strengthen each of these parents as we navigate these waters of parenting and leading the local church and raising our family at the same time. And I pray that not one of their children would be lost. I pray, Lord Jesus, that you would give them strategic ideas and plans and ways. Lord, to lead their children to Jesus. And God, I just pray when they feel discouraged, when they're dealing with the internet and friends and not enough money and people leaving the church and awful things said about them, that their children here, and just the whole process of trying to pastor and parent at the same time, I pray that you would bless them and strengthen them. I pray, Lord Jesus, that you would prosper them in Jesus' name. Amen. So my father is 75 and during COVID in November, he went into the hospital. And at first, we just thought that it was going to be kind of a challenging COVID like somebody else and then come out. But after 26 days of being in the COVID unit, he was progressively getting worse and worse over the course of that time. And when he went in, my wife actually, her name's Renata, and she said, David, I feel like we're supposed to jump on Zoom and pray with your dad tonight. And at that time, we mobilize some of my dad's friends. My dad's been 50 years in ministry. And so we mobilize some of my dad's friends. And so you had kind of my family, some of the people from our church, and then some of my dad's 70-ish, you know, year old friends. And we started just to pray with my dad. He's on his phone. He's in the COVID unit. And we're just praying for him and not knowing the severity of it. But then night two, we invited my, I'm a triplet. So if you don't know what that is, it's the equivalent of being born in a litter. But my parents are the shock of their lives in 1976 where they had triplets. They were aiming for one kid, accidentally had three, we call it sovereign. And there's David Dana, Deborah, four years later, my brother, Dan. My mom's name is Debbie, my dad's name is Hal. And, but we mobilized my family and we all started to pray and believe for dad. And so he would hold his phone isolated in the COVID unit. And the news got progressively worse. We had little wins where the doctors would give us a little bit of good news. And then, but we began to just experience the doctors giving us worse and worse and worse news. So much so that the doctors who knew that my dad was life giving, smiling, talking to them about Jesus in the hospital in Kansas City, that's where I live. My dad would tell them that we were believing for a miracle. And the doctors who loved him because of his kindness, but thought that he was living a little bit clueless as to reality said, your family is living in a state of denial. And told him that there was a 99.9% chance that he wouldn't live. And so he was looking at his options of, should he go on the ventilator? Should he go into comfort care? And having those conversations was Zoom over Zoom with us about what to do. And my dad would talk about believing in faith that he would go home. And the doctor said to him, Mr. Perkins, the only way that you will go home is if we build a hospital around your house. And told him about, you're living on these 60 liters of oxygen. It's not going to happen. And my dad had COVID plus pneumonia, plus pulmonary embolism, plus aards. And he said, your lungs will not recover. And so I'm dealing with this. And then I've got these face times with my dad where I just sit there. I said, my prayer journal just says face times with dad. And thought that it might be my last conversations with my dad. And on day 26, they took him to comfort care. He chose comfort care over the ventilator. And he had been in isolation for 26 days. And they decided to let my mom come to the hospital. They weren't allowing people into the hospital on December 10th to come see him before he passed away. And she went into the hospital, walked into the room, sat down, or hugged him, sat down, talked to him, prayed with him. And the doctor came in and took his oxygen levels and turned his oxygen level from 65 down to 50, down to 40, down to 30, down to 20, down to 10. And that day the doctor came in and said, Mr. Perkins, I can't explain what happened. And he said, I believe in a God who's a healer. And that person said, you've experienced the doctor, not a nurse, not a nurse practitioner. The doctor said, this is a miracle. I've never seen anything like it. We have it on, we have it actually in audio. And we created a documentary. If you search Radiant Church, God of Miracles, my sisters, my triplet sisters, my brother and I, we told the story with my parents of God healing my dad. And then the doctor said, I don't, I know that this is what you believe about God doing a miracle. And she said, I'm not sure about faith, she said, but you must be one with the universe, because this is impossible. And to my dad, of course, took that moment to say, well, let me tell you who made the universe, you know. And so I'm still living in it. I actually can't stop telling that story because, you know, my dad, how do you get to that? Like, how do you get to the point where you're 75 years old and 26 nights, and I'm not exaggerating a night, 26 nights, four kids, we're triplets, we're all 44, and my brother Dan's 39, all have great Christian spouses, all of us. And I don't say this, I'm only in this moment where I'm talking about discipling your family. And I say this not to brag on family, but I do want to brag on my dad, because how do you get to the point where you're 75, and you have all four kids and their spouses and grandkids sitting in living rooms, canceling everything every night in order to just pray and cry out in intercession for healing for Poppy. How do you get that? What kind of legacy is that? How do you go there? Well, my dad, when he found out that he was gonna, that he have triplets, he began to pray, and he was a young pastor at that time, living in New Jersey, and he had been studying the way that Jesus discipled, and so he was looking at the way that Jesus asked his disciples questions, and he was looking at the way that Jesus was conversational and relational, and he was looking at just even the specific questions that Jesus would ask Peter. So you find moments where Jesus is saying things like, who do you say that I am? Peter, do you love me? Do you believe in what I'm saying? Just questions where Jesus is trying to get these top tier guys, meaning top tier, relationally. I'm not saying that the fishermen and the tax collectors are the most influential of the day. I'm saying that relationally, they're the ones that he's decided to invest in, and the ones that are closest to him, he's intentional with. And so the way that Jesus did ministry was to really pour his life into the one, John, the three, Peter, James, and John, and then the 12. And so my dad locked in with what I wanna do is David, Dana, and Deborah, and Dan are my Peter, James, John, and Andrew. He just tried to have three, but accidentally had four. You know what I mean? Try to intentionally disciple. And I just tell you that story because I wanna invite you, not necessarily to embrace the methods that my dad embraced, but to embrace the intentionality. Every time you start giving people specific methods and push back and say, well, one size doesn't fit all. And I agree with that. That's awesome. What I've experienced now, I've started in ministry at 18, I'm 44 now, is I've just watched that there's so many that just don't necessarily have a strategy or a plan. Just kind of leave it up to sovereignty and just say, we hope it all works out. And I wanna invite you to care enough to create a plan. And I'm gonna give you Renata in my plan. It's not just like my parents' plan, Helen Debbie. But I wanna invite you to just have a plan. I wanna invite you to just go after intentionally discipling your kids. There's a whole lot of sessions on marriage. This is not that one. I'll do that one. I'm actually this Sunday sitting with my wife, we're talking about marriage and family on Mother's Day. That's a whole other thing. Today, I am focusing in on you as a parent, discipling your kids. Because I want, in my life, I wanna end up where my dad ended up. And by the way, he was at church yesterday, both services, front row, cheering me on. And he's doing great. He's healthy. He is a great athlete in college. He's not quite the athlete he was post-COVID at 75, but he is alive. And that sounds like, so I'm just thanking God for that. So here's, I'm gonna give you just some little bit of Bible now, and then we'll go after some habits. And then I'll let you Q&A if we can get there. So first idea is this, prioritize your family as your first church. As your first church. So I love that you're pastoring a church. I love that you're leading a church. I think that's awesome. Or associate kids, youth, worship, whatever you're doing. But your first priority is your family. Your family's your first church. I was 16, high school, had a mullet, living in Oklahoma City. And my sisters were like, as triplets went to a public high school, 2,500 kids. And my sisters were cool. Like my sisters had all the dudes after them. They were just cool. I was struggling a little bit. I had braces, mullet. Girls didn't like me like they like my sisters. My sisters to be like, I'm the tallest of the triplets. If you're a girl, no problem to be 5'5". You a dude, it's rough. And so we look alike. But anyway, so we had this girl that I liked when I was 16. She was about a head taller than me. And my dad used to systematically take each one of us out. So I'm gonna get to this, but one of the things that he decided to do was to take each one of us out, starting when we were 5. So when we reached kindergarten age. So he took my mom, Debbie, out on Monday. And every Monday was Debbie Day. And then he took me out every Tuesday, Dana every Wednesday, Deborah every Thursday, Dan every Friday. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So by the time I was 16, I had 11 years of Tuesday night was my night. And it was usually when I was really little, it was 30 minutes and we'd play basketball to get together or something. Or when I was, I mean, before I could play basketball, it was just sitting over ice cream. Then it was kind of change over the course of time as I got older. But on a Tuesday night when I was 16, I just had a powerful moment that really embodies this concept. My dad worked in a church government form where he reported to the church board. And the church board would have meetings where ultimately my dad reported to them his job was contingent upon if they wanted to keep him hired. And so I don't know what kind of church government you got, but that's the kind that my dad had. And so my dad on a Tuesday night, we're sitting at a Benigans in Northwest Oklahoma City. And I'm sitting there drinking a Coke. And I am crying. I know that's embarrassing to say, lost some man points when I tell you that. Lost man points when I told you that I had a mullet. But if you can't grow a beard, you grow a mullet. Anyway, and so I'm sitting there and I'm just balling and telling my dad the story about how I like this girl sitting like me back. It's a big deal. You know, high school is dramatic. And my dad's just listening. My dad's real soft-smoking. It's real soft-spoken, real quiet. He's just asking these questions. Gets up. I've been going for about 45 minutes. He walks over to a pay phone. Yeah, 1992, different era. And comes back and he says, all right, David, we've got the rest of the night. And I said, what about your board meeting? And he said, I canceled the board meeting. I said, dad, you can't cancel your board meeting. That's your church. That's your job. And he looked at me and he just not dramatic, like loud, obnoxious, big voice to dad. My dad is soft-spoken. He was a math teacher before he was a pastor. Very articulate, very precise, speaks very quietly. And he said, son, you're my first church. That's what I want you to get. You're my first church. So I got a lot. I got, we got, we got, we got churches. We got a lead. We got buildings. We got a buy. We got elders. We got a, we got prayer means we got to do. We got sermons. We got a write. We got videos. We got to figure out zoom and web streaming. We got a lot we got to do. But in the midst of all that you got going on, best mark you can make on your kids is you're my first church. And so I want to invite you to schedule first what matters most. Put Jesus number one and then figure out a strategy for your family. My mom was a speech and drama queen, you know, in college. And then she had the shock of her life when she spent 81 hours in labor delivering triplets. And she didn't know she's going to have triplets. So she had a boy, Dave and me, and then my sister Dana, she went into labor not knowing that she had three in there. And the doctor said to her 1976 said, Hey, Debbie, will you buy me a hot fudge Sunday if there's another baby coming today? And she didn't understand what he was talking about. She's like what? He's like, Debbie, get ready, you're having three. So my mom went into some shock. My dad started groaning and crying that day. And I said, Dad, why are you crying? He said, I thought about three kids hitting college at the same day. And just thought my life is over. She tells the story about when the triplets, the three of us, when we were like about three, she'd given the last really four years because three were three years old, plus the pregnancy of triplets was a long run. And all the ministry ambitions she had as a conference speaker. And she had wanted to go pursue some of that. She was stirring soup when she felt like the Holy Spirit spoke to her and said, Debbie, if you'll invest in discipling these kids, they'll go places, but you never go. Crazy part is all four of our kids turn out to be these crazy preachers. My brother's here. He's a preacher. My sister Dana is a preacher. My sister Deborah is a preacher. We're all preachers. But my mom, just like my dad, he's so weepy, man. Geez. Just embraced. All right, we're going to be intentional. And I want to invite you just to think through what does it look like. Who's my Peter, James and John? You got three little tri- you got three. You got two kids, three kids, five kids. You got seven. You got one, whatever you got. You probably don't have more than 12. And I just want to invite you just to think about specifically those being, you're discipling them. So it's Jesus discipling you, but then you're making it. And that's the lens I want to come out with. We could go family and go lots of different ways. We could go Old Testament. We could look at lots of different angles, but even taking some of the ways that Jesus specifically focused in on his disciples. So for me, my dream is to make my kids my first church. And so I'm looking at that means that my first church is not my overseers. My, it's not my trustees. It's not the pastors, my associate pastors on my team. It's not my small group. I love all those people. It's not my prayer meetings. And it, but here's my, here's my first church. It's, it's my, it's my family and, and, and forming my life, my minutes and my dollars to meet that reality. So that it's Renata who, we've been married 21 years. It's my son Dawson who is 16, 511, and a half dark hair, dark eyes. Looks just like his dad. Not really. Olivia, she's 15. Last Sunday, she just preached her first sermon in kids. He wants to be a preacher. 16 year old son. He last year. Okay. This is fun. Last year, my son comes to me and he says, Hey dad, I got invited to go speak in another city, but I'm not sure if I'm old enough to accept speaking engagements. But they said that they would pay for two flights. Will you be my plus one? That's a good day. When you're 16 year old is like, because my 16 year old leading prayer meetings every day, five days a week, Monday through Friday, just crying out to God. I don't tell you that to brag. I tell you that because I want you to believe that the stuff I'm giving you is multi-generational. I want you to get this that I was a crazy prayer meeting guy when I was in high school. And I thought maybe I was just this revivalist that God had sovereignly plucked out. But you know what? The more I look back is when I'm nine years old, my dad's asking questions. So David quietly, what do you think Jesus thinks? So David, what could you, what do you think God could do at that high school? David, how does God work? So this is how you feel because those people are making fun of you or there's people rejecting you. How do you think you can make a difference in their lives? So I thought I had all these ideas about, hey man, we'll get a classroom and we'll cry out for revival and pray for kids. And it turns out my dad was helping me love my enemies when I was in seventh grade. Turns out systematically seeding ideas, thoughts, just coaching, just making sure it's called discipleship. We're always waiting for the big sovereign move. Oh, some experience. The family that has the kid that's beaten up my kid, God sovereignly moved them to another city. And we want stuff like that. Let me tell you, all that is dreamy and nice. But here's how you get to actually not having the circumstance control how your kids turn out. But just you walking with Jesus, and then you're just gently walking, talking, helping them think, helping them think. So my kids right now are, by the grace of God, right now they're thriving. By the grace of God, God's doing amazing things. 16, 15, 13, 11, we in the thick of it, baby. Because this is a generation where I don't know. Right now I'm not sure how my son has so many 16-year-old girls chasing him down. I didn't ever struggle with that. So I'm like trying to figure it out. But it's a dental alliance out there right now, right? So my way of chasing or helping is not like rules, law in this family. Here's how I'm leading my kids right now. All right, Doss, we've been going out together. Liv, we've been hanging out together one on one since you were five. And it's their free will choices making decisions because it's connected to, it's connected their relationship with Jesus. You tracking with me? We together? I'm not sure we're there yet. We'll get there. But that's number one, is just to make this plan my priority as my family. Second idea is speak life. Speak life like the Heavenly Father. When we look at the way that the Father speaks with the Son, the baptism event, Matthew 3, I think it helps us see how the Father fathered. So what is the Heavenly Father like? First person in the training to the second person in the training. How does the Father lead Jesus? Just look at this. As soon as Jesus was baptized, Matthew 3, 16, he went up out of the water. At that moment, heaven was opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and a lighting on himself and a voice from heaven said, this is my son whom I love with whom I'm well pleased. I just want you to see three phrases. This is my son, acceptance. So speaking to your kids, hey, you're mine. I love you so much. You're all right. Let's put some pictures of the family on the wall. This is a safe place. You're accepted. This is my son. You my boy. That's my girl. I mean, and zero to five right in there. You're just, I mean, you are training. You are making sure you're getting as much affection, acceptance as you can get in those years. Little tiny kids. You're mine. You belong. I mean, just that concept. This is our family. That you're my daughter. You're my son. And then whom I love, that's affirmation. This acceptance. Sorry, then affection whom I love. I love you. I believe in you. I enjoy you. I love this is my son whom I love. And then this phrase with whom I'm well pleased, looking for the actual things that they do to actually give approval on. So what are the little things or big things that they're actually doing so that we can go accepted, affection, affirmation. You're my son. You're my daughter whom I love. I'm so that that last one. I'm so proud of you. Looking at every single. It's so funny. I'm just saying this. I know this is probably going to end up on YouTube. So it was a little embarrassing. My son overhears this. But my son, when he was about nine, he started saying back to me. Dad, I'm so proud of you. Well, how did he get that? He just heard it so much that he just like took it on himself. He's going to be proud of his 35 year old dad. Did something right? You know, like. And so I'm just inviting. You know, I realize I'm being vulnerable. I realized when I tell you about some of our wins, you got the risk of me thinking that I'm cocky and arrogant. I'm I'm intentionally being vulnerable and telling you some of the wins. And I'll tell you some of the losses. So that we can we can help each other, not because I need a moment to tell you that I'm doing a good job because I'm telling you, I'm not thinking I'm doing a good job. I am in the dog fight. I'm in the battle of a lifetime. I got the culture coming after my kids and I care about them. Like I really like I don't really care about it. I mean, I care about we're not in my kids. Really like I don't care about much else. You know, like I'm going to do the best I can to raise a praying church and let's do let's reach our city and let's do global evangelism. At the end of the day, though, my first church, I'm going to lay my life down right there. So I just want to invite you to think that way. Acceptance. This is my son family pictures. Like you belong here. Family song. We write songs. My mom did it. So I did it, you know, when they were little, we started saying, take me out with my family. Take me out with my friends. We'll sing together and laugh and play. It's going to be a super fun day because it's Dawson Perkins, the leader, Olivia, Faith, the princess, Adeline Grace is a movie star. Justice is growling in the back of the car because he was one. And it's mommy passing out Chick-fil-A, daddy screaming, hip-a-ray. Let's all start by praising King Jesus, giving us this day. Hooray. Then we sing that in the car. Here's the why. Here's the why. What you belong. All your names are in the song. You're a part of this family. You belong picture on the wall. Your name's in the song. We're all together. You belong. You're accepted. You belong. I had what's one pastor came up to me co-alike and said, hey, we've never met. I follow you on Instagram. He goes, I really get one thing from your Instagram account. You're a little nervous when you hear something like that. Like, oh, dear God, what could this be? And he said, you're really proud of your kids. And I said, I cried. You can imagine. You know, I just thought, that's right. Yeah, I am. Yeah, that's what I got. Second one. Who my love? Man, say it. Spray it. Sign language it. Emoji it. Say it every day. Renata and I, one of the ways that we did this, just practical, is we just went. So we write songs. You know, that's just one. But we got quite a few. And we put things up on their beds, over their beds that just have a picture. So it's a picture of Renata and Olivia with a verse. Prayed over her when she was little. Here's a prophetic verse. Put it on the wall. So now my son, all four of them, all four of our kids, have these pictures. I mean, Dawson turns 17 in two days. He's a hair under six feet tall. He's more manly than I am. He's got chest hair. I mean, he's like a dude's dude. And he's got this picture of me, him. He's a baby, prophetic verse. I delight in you. You're my boy. I love you. I want you to just think, what are the ways? Paul's always, I see Paul always giving acceptance, affection, and affirmation, even in the way that he writes letters. So I'm saying, first of all, father to the son. But I just see Paul, even when he's looking in, when you read through the epistles, you can find him always giving shout outs, giving, even like affirmation. You can't give enough verbal affirmation. You can't, you just can't, you can't hug him enough. You can't shout him out enough. I mean, honestly, I woke up this morning. I'm driving here from downtown KZU. And I just, I'm just, first thing, call them. They're all sitting around a table, eating breakfast together. And just, and I'm just, what's up? I love you. Let's pray together. And I know when I tell this, people think, man, you guys are so Pollyanna. I can't believe, you know, all right. That's fine. Here's, here's the thing. I've gotten pretty bold on this. Like there was a season in my 20s, where I was like, you know, preaching prayer meetings, and I was real kind of sweet on it. But in my 30s, when I'd seen God do moves of God over the course of 20 years since junior high, because I started doing these prayer meetings when I was in junior high, I got pretty bold believing that prayer actually matters and that I've just seen God do enough, see it enough in the scriptures, that I'm going to just be kind of bold. And I just got to warn you, like right now, I'm starting to not be quite as sweet. Hey, hey, hey. I'm not saying this is how you should do it, I'm starting to kind of be like, no, I just watched my dad go through, I mean, 26 days in a COVID unit, and I watched his kids rise up, like intercessors and crowd to God and fast and pray. And I saw a healing and I'm just a little bit bold, like, hey, we got to fight for these kids. We got to fight for our families. And there is a way. I'm not saying it's the only way, but I'm saying there is a way. I'm saying we don't have to just punt and say, well, the devil's been working harder on my family than yours and I'm going to give up. Oh, no, I'm just saying have a strategy, have a plan. All right. So just say that. So affection, acceptance, affection and affirmation. And I'll just give you this. My dad loves to tell the story about his dad. So I'm telling you about my dad taking me out one on one. Now I do that with my kids, but you know, his dad did that with him. His dad had a shock. My dad was born in Butte, Montana. And they had my dad when they were in their 40s. So he was a whoops baby. And my dad had sisters. And then this years later, they had this little boy. But my granddad is born in 1905. He, he enjoyed my dad. And not even with the biblical worldview, just with being a guy that was general manager at a grocery store started taking out my dad one on one. And my dad tells the stories of his dad taking him out one on one in that solo time, just listening, talking. For him, he tells the story about going to Dairy Queen and going to the airport and watching the planes take off. That's, and I just want to invite you to this. I just want you to know, I do see, if you look at your parents, you look at even your situation, it's easy to have a reason why, man, we got a broken thing in my past. This sounds kind of dreamy, David. Well, let it start with you. Let, let you, you, you, you go after your kids, let your grandkids tell the stories about what you did with your parent, with, with their parents. You know, like my, I just want to invite you just to get, just to get this vision. I just feel like I just hang out with pastors all the time and they're just now sitting with a pastor last week and he's crying. I mean, guy pastors, I mean, this guy, thousands. And I mean, it is a big, it is a monster church. And I'm, I'm sitting there talking to him and we're just working on his kids. And he's just, and he's in tears. He just says, I'd give anything to run this back. I'd give anything if I could have these kids after God. So I'm looking at some of you and you guys got young faces. And I'm just want to invite you just to think. Let's, we got one shot. In my fifties and sixties, I'll still be a pastor, right? I'll still be pastor and radiant church in Kansas City. But my babies will be grown up. I got one shot. I ain't going to mess it up. I just want that in you, you know, I got one shot. I got 18, 19, 20 years with them. I'm going to work on this. I had one pastor say to this to me. He said, David, you talk about raising family. Sounds like a part-time job. I said, oh, it's not part-time. It's full-time. I got two full-time jobs. I pastor my family, I pastor my church. That's it. Someone said, yeah, in order to be healthy, you need a hobby. I said, I do have a hobby. Dawson live, Adeline and Just. Right now that looks like Dawson loves revival. Saturday night, this last Saturday night. I, we have a 5 a.m. wake up call to do a load in for our portable church. And this last Saturday night, I see a light on and it's after midnight and I walk in and I go, Dawson, what are you doing? You got to go to bed. You're getting up in four and a half hours. He's like, Dad, just one more chapter. Just one more chapter. I'm like, no, what are you reading anyway? Holds up Reese Howells Intercessor. You know what he's reading before that? Leonard Ravenhill. Why revival, Terry's. David, you got lucky. I don't know, maybe. Kind of feel like the people that pray see the most coincidences. I kind of feel like the people that are intentional see God work. I'm not saying, I know, I know, I say this. I got a lot of you thinking, man, this guy's cocky. I'm not cocky. I'm desperate. I just want to be real. I want to give you more than principles. I want to, I want to grind it in so that you walk out of here. Like, I really think there's some merit to what that guy was saying. So, but my dad tells a story of his dad loving him. His dad, my dad grew up in a small church in Montana. When he was eight years old, he took his marbles to church. And he collected marbles. Like we've come a long way. When I think about my eight year olds with iPhones, my dad, all he had was marbles. Slanted floors, wooden floor, wood altars at the front. And in the middle of the sermon, my dad dropped. He was trying to look at them in the hymnal. And he dropped the marbles. And they went, hit the ground, interrupted the preacher. The marbles rolled all the way down to the front. Then it hit the altar at the front. Super stern, like super tall preacher leans over the pulpit. He's like five eight. And he's like leaning. Oh, I'm just kidding. Sorry. He's like, it's tall to me. Oh, to be five eight. Jesus, I still believe you can heal my dad. You can grow me taller. Three inches, baby. Anyway, and preacher stops the sermon, stares at my dad. Back in those days, they had an organist on the stage. The whole time in the sermon, she stopped. She stares at my dad. The whole, I mean, literally the whole thing stops. And my dad says he just like eight years old, just kind of slumped down. And looked up and could feel this hand. My grandpa, my granddad, who was five four, baby. He's like, I got an inch on him. Next generation to go on the next level. Anyway, hand right there on my eight year old dad with his eyes straight ahead at the preacher. And my dad tells the story about the moment that he felt like his dad loved him when no one else did. There's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You got these moments. For me, that was 16 mullet rejected by girls. You got these moments. And you want to be the one that shows affection, acceptance, affirmation when they're feeling rejected. And so I want to invite you just to think, okay, center of that target is, I'm going to show that. I'm going to have that kind of relationship. The last idea, and then we'll go, then we'll go a little more practical, is fight for their hearts. Fight for the hearts of your kids. I was wearing a family bike ride. And my daughter, Addy, starts singing the song. She starts singing, take me to church. You know, I'm like, what are you singing? She's like, dad, this would be a great, get a picture of six of us riding a bike. She starts singing the song. She goes, dad, this would be a great new series for you at church. It's a great song. Take me to church. And I'm like, huh, okay. So I go Google. Yeah, take me to church. And you know, I realized, there, he's not talking about church in that song. And I realized cultures after my kids, somebody's can make disciples of my kids. It'll either be me or somebody else. I say, Adalyn, where'd you hear that song? Oh, yes, I heard it in the mall. I heard it in the coffee shops. So you'll either make disciples of your kids or somebody else will. They're friends, the internet, TikTok, everybody's coming after them. So you're making the choice on if you're gonna, if you're gonna have a strategy, if you're gonna have a plan. And I think of most parents, and when I look at most of them, they're not, when I look at what I was telling about Jesus, and Jesus being relational with his disciples, most of my buddies are authoritarian with their kids. Like they're, they just, they got a lot of rules. My house, my roof, you're gonna live here, you're gonna do it this way. And that, you can, you can, you can lead your kids all right when they're young that way, when they're really little. But you'll probably start to lose them when they're in high school, maybe junior high. I'm not a big fan. I've got some buddies that have been passive. And you know, I'm 44 right now, so I'm watching some of, even my friends have, I'm at the age where some of my friends, kids are graduating from high school. By passive, I mean some fathers that I just see that they're, that they, the mentality that I see is, I'm so busy, my job requires so much, the bills, the taxes, the yard, maybe even some hobbies. I'm just gonna be a little bit passive. I'll just, and the language is never, I'm gonna be a passive father. The language is, I'm just gonna trust God. But in my view, I feel like I've watched that be a little bit, I've watched the kids not necessarily respect their father the same way as someone who's intentional, because it just seems like they're just hanging out. And my invitation to you would be, as a mother or a father, would be to be a relational. So you can maintain authority and you can trust God, but have a strategy, have a plan. And that's my win for you, my goal. And I'm gonna give you seven ideas on things that we do. This is not what my parents did, this is what we do. And I'll just let you run with it, decide if you like it or not. Number one is daily time alone with Jesus. That's our goal. If my kids know God, I win. If my kids walk with Jesus, I'm not convincing them to not engage in premarital sex. They've already decided that. If they're walking with Jesus, I'm not looking at them telling them how much they can be on Instagram and who not to DM. You get a lot when you get your kid just in love with Jesus. And so most people are going after behavior. Big win is to go up to their heart. Go up to their heart, where's their affection? You start figuring that out when they're four. Start figuring that out when they're five, six. All four of my kids, massively different. So the play that I'm running with Doss is different than the play I'm running with Liv. Different than the play I'm running with Adlin and different than the play I'm running with Just. But I'm running a play on all of them. I'm studying them, I'm getting a PhD in Just right now. He's 11, he's different than Doss. Addy's different than Liv. Liv is quiet like her mom. And I thought she was going to be a little bit of an introvert. Turns out she wasn't an introvert in elementary, but she ain't an introvert no more. She's 15, she's ready to take over the world. Renata and I left town last week and we realized after we were gone, every report we got, my parents were watching the kids, every report we got back, we were like, Liv made that choice. Liv's running the house. She's a leader. It's really easy for us when it comes to parenting. Just sit back. Here's the center of the target, their relationship with Jesus. So I'm frugal. I don't let my kids put cheese on their burgers because I'm not paying that extra dollar for cheese. Well, I'm frugal. But I just bought my daughter a $60 prayer journal. Liv got the nicest prayer journal. You have a style, you know? Why? Because I'll pay any price for that. I'll pay any price. So you in it, what youth conference you want to go to, girl? What Bible you want. Sometimes I'll take my kids on our Sabbath and I'll just say, you can go spend as much as you want in that Christian bookstore, helping your relationship with Jesus. Highlighters, pens, Bibles. Let's go. So my kids think that I am the most frugal person when it comes to food and clothes. But they're like, he's crazy when it comes to resources. Why? Center my target. I don't give a rip about their clothes. I don't care if they're eating. I mean, Renata cares about what they eat. But I, window into my soul. Here's the number one. So what we do is we invite a, when they were when they were little kids, I mean, so my kids, because they're closer together, each story, you got to figure out how it works for you with your kids at different ages. We started working on their time alone with God. What does it look like? And so by him journals, by him Bibles, and then for us, we had a time where they spent time with Jesus. We homeschool. We didn't homeschool because we are afraid of the big bad world. We homeschooled because we want to be intentional about them having enough time with God. I just, I just look at, I got, I got 18 years of formation. And so I'm not scared. I went to public school. I was a youth pastor for 16 years ish. My brother says I was half partial youth pastor. But anyway, I think I was. And I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of the big bad school. But I got this little window of time. So that enabled them to be with Jesus. That enabled them to have these long extended time alone God. So big win for us is spending time alone with Jesus. I got a lot there. I could, I'll tell you what I teach them. I taught my kids to do five things in the prayer journal. There's, I want to invite you to have a way. You don't have to do it my way. One of the ways that the way that I teach my kids is the way that my dad taught me. So I teach my kids to start off writing out praise to God. And that's who is God. Thanksgiving. God, thank you for my family. Thank you for my church. Thank you for this house. We worked at the mega church. Thank you for the mega church. Now it's God. Thank you for the trailers. Portables awesome, you know. Thank you. Whatever has breath. I'm going to thank God. Confession. God, here's where I miss the mark. Here's where I need you. Then scripture. I just invited me to read some scripture and then to look at the future the next 24 hours. Vision. Here we go on. Where are we going? God, what do you call me to do the next 24 hours? Now we're not an eye. We've we've leaned into that heavy in some seasons. We've pulled back in some seasons. We're not trying to have it be a legalistic plan. Some people say, hey, if you have a plan it's just legalism. We'd say no, we think it's love. We just want to help our kids have a way. I'm amazed how many parents say, hey, go have that divo. And they just buy somebody else's divo. Somebody else's journal. They haven't taught their kids how to connect and really know God and walk with Jesus. I want to invite my kids to have a real dialogue with God. Or they spend time with them. They know them. They walk with them. They've got conversation. So when we have conversations we're talking about what God's saying. It's not just the circumstance. It's what God is doing in their heart. So number one, that's our win. Time alone with Jesus. And really if you can get that even in their psyche when they're zero to five, that's big. You've got control right then. Five to twelve, you're training. Ages five to twelve, that's your training season. Let's get them ready. Because then 12 to 19, they got a lot of free will in those ages. That's when you just stay close. That's when you're like, I'm in the coaching phase. So you're in the control phase, zero to five. You're in the training phase, five to 12. These are just guesstimates. But this is what I see. 12 to 19, I'm still coached. I'm still trained. But it's friendship because you're helping the thing. Second thing we do is daily meals. Now when I say this, I'm going to say daily and know that when I say daily, it's not 100 percent. I'm here today. I'm not there. But I would say it's 75 percent. All right. So we try to have one meal together. Some of you go, that's impossible in my world. Just catch the spirit of a strategy and you put a strategy that works together for you. This is what we're not and I put together. Here's the goal for our daily meals. Just dialogue. So we have a lot about Jesus. Daily meal, this is our moment. We just try to listen and try to not dominate the conversation. Our family meals are our kids. Laughing, telling stories. And our four kids are best friends. I know right now I can feel it. All this guy thinks he's the big no. I'm just, I am telling you this because I'm, I'm, I'm just, I spent last week with one of my best friends talking about his kids. And I'm just, I just believe it. I just watched my mom and dad do it. I just believe this. So we have this great. We do have fun. Sometimes we can't have dinner together because we have so many night activities. So we bump it up at it. We figured out we will do lunch or breakfast. We'll figure out a way to have a meal together. And the goal of the meal is relationship. It's not where I'm teaching them the Bible. The goal is where we're just being together. Third, we do daily tribal Bible. I made that up. We are on sabbatical 2008. And I was trying to get my kids to spend time in Bible study. This is the word didn't work. So we just did, I started calling Bible study, tribal Bible. I started giving out, I took them to, on our vacation, went to the grocery store. They all picked out their favorite candy. And I literally tricked them into studying the Bible. You get a question right, you get an M&M. You get a question right, you get a Snickers. You get a question right, you get Reese's Pieces. Right. And I got my kids addicted to sugar and Jesus at the same time. We're having conversations about about the scriptures and working on it. My goal right there is just trying to help them to get. So we do, we do a, we do a 25 to 30 minute tribal Bible. When I say this, this, we don't do it on Sundays. We don't have every day, but we get a lot of days. So you aim at, you aim at nothing. You're going to get nothing. But you aim at 100 percent. For us, we don't even try Sundays. Sundays is our day. We play it all on the field for church. But we hit these other days. All right. And this is the big one for us, but number four. So number one, they're time, your kids time alone with Jesus. And again, it's not about the time that you want the relationship with Jesus. That's the big one. The daily meal. You do the habit. You create habits. You form habits and then your habits form you. It's not about the habit, but the habit of the daily meal helps the relationship with the family. The tribal Bible helps the word of God be a part of our conversation and the word of God in our kids. And it helps me know what's going on in their lives. Because they got a lot more going on than I know. They're connected to the entire plan. Our kids are on online school. So I said it's home school. That's not a good word. Home or online school. You know what that means? DMing people in Europe. That means my kids are connected to the globe. Right. So I, so it's my, it's my opportunity to stay close. What's going on? Where are we at? What are we believing? What are we thinking? And help them get a biblical worldview. So fourth one is weekly special time. So with my sons, I call it dude time. My daughters call it special time. Or dates. Renata calls it special time for all four. Both Renata and I intentionally take our kids out one on one every week. And that's to me, to me that's the habit that has been so special and unique. Because that one on one time, depending on how many kids you have, it's different. That one on one time is prized by my children. Like my kids, honestly my kids don't ask for things. They don't like, hey dad, I need more clothes. They will say, hey dad, what are we going to do for our special time? Can't wait for special time. Dad, can't wait. So and for us, for Renata and I, it's either a walk or what we have found is we get in the car and we just have a budget. We used to have a budget. Now we bought the Panera subscription. That helps. It's like Panera for me and you get a treat. So for years, I would do this talk and I would say, hey, I do like two bucks for you and I drink a water. Not no more. Now, two bucks for you and I get a decaf of Panera and we sit and we talk. But that Panera, that, you know when Jesus, Matthew 16, when he's sitting around the lake and when they came to Caesarea Philippi, he's sitting around the fire. He's talking to his disciples. Panera, that's our fire. That's our, that's our little place. Let's talk. Or the Sea of Galilee, or Jesus always talking to Peter on the shores. Do you love me? Do you love me? So often asking questions. That's my Sea of Galilee. That's the shores for me. Panera, hey, Adeline, what's going on? She's 13. She's blonde. It's going to be a long run for me the next five years. Right? I mean, she's a, she's a gorgeous little girl. And I'm right now in the thick of what's going on in your heart. Let's be together. Let's talk. So those special times, if I can go back and give testimony, that's what changed my life. When I told you the story at the beginning about my dad at Benegins, that, I could give you more stories and I have lots of them and I do tell them, but those one-on-one times was where the disciple maker Jesus used his disciple maker Hal to make a disciple out of David. So my dad made a disciple that's making disciples. So now my son Dawson and my dad Hal are best buddies and they're talking the same talk. You want to know why? Because my dad put it in me. I put it in my boy and my boy's quoting back to me the things I used to hear from my dad when I was 16. And it doesn't all work out perfectly. And yeah, there's a little theological nuances and I'm not the exact same person. Doctrinally, I might be a little bit different than my dad, but relationally 100% all in, baby. It's all in. Let's know Jesus and walk with him. And so I just think it's multi-generational. I wouldn't invite you just to think what could it look like? So I told you that story about Debbie on Monday, David on Tuesday, Dana on Wednesday, Deborah on Thursday and Dan on Friday. And so for me in my season, we've moved around. My church and my kids schedules change. So that's one thing that isn't as left-brained systematic. And my kids' days have fluctuated. We've changed them up. Every semester, we have to go back and kind of reframe, but we've got a plan. Renata spends time one-on-one. And there are things, one of the things that I didn't have it with my mom when I was growing up, this kind of one-on-one, but Renata has it with each one of our kids and the kind of relationship that Renata has with our sons is unreal just because their whole lives, one-on-one, talking, engaging. So special times is number four. Number five habit is we do weekly Sabbath. So for us, that's Friday. Our kids do all their schooling Monday through Thursday. Friday is we pray and play. That's the way we say it. The book that helped us in 2008 was by Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God. And the rest of God, and so we do two things, pray and play. For us, I don't know what you, this is how we do it. We have found the idea of Sabbath is that you live from a place of rest. So you're looking forward to Sabbath and you're living from Sabbath. So you live in a rested place rather than a weary place. So for us, Sabbath has been, like my kids when they were little, they would say the word Sabbath. It's like their favorite word because we would, for us, we let them get up late. We take our Bibles and journals and highlighters and we go to a coffee shop. Honestly, this is a place where I told you this is where I'll spend. So we go to, I mean, like a hipster coffee shop. I buy my girls a $5 latte for real and then let them sit there with their $3 croissant because they're sitting there with their journal open, their Bible open, and for the first hour, they're just spending time with God. Then we come back together. We talk, we talk about what the Lord's doing in our hearts, how our weeks have been, what we're thinking as we go into this next week, what's big, what's big going on with our family, with our church. And then you know what you're doing? You're asking questions. You're not commanding. You're just saying, hey, Liv, have you ever thought about teaching in kids? Hey, Adeline, how do you think that relationship is playing out in your life? Think that's a godly friendship? What do you guys think? Oh, Ad, we think, hey, Justice, love the way that you serve here. Have you ever thought about being a part of a small group? Hey, Justice, what do you think about if you get the idea? And then we just play. So we do two hours at a coffee shop, and then honestly, I want my family to be the place where they think of this fun. Right now, my kids, I'm just telling you, right now, I had one of my kids turn down prom to go hang out with our family. That's a good day. That just happened this spring. Why? I'm just committed. I don't spend money on a lot of things. We got a pretty regular house. We got some old-school cars. But we got some nice journals. We spent time with God. They got some nice stuff. They get you some great food, and then we play hard. I took my kids, and on Sabbath, I'll drop a dime. Because why? Man, our family is more fun than those friends. So they don't think of my family as legalistic, boring, polyanna, frustrating, annoying. No, they're like, if anybody likes to play, it's dad. And this is a fun place to be. So we pray and play on Sabbath. Honestly, if you can get that, change our lives. Sixth, Saturday night communion. We take communion with our kids every Saturday night. And just say, at our church, we call the volunteers the dream team. But our kids help plant the church. They drove from Colorado on I-70 to go plant the church. And so we call them the supreme team. So we tell them that we have a supreme team meeting every Saturday night. We pray for the church, and then we're going to go on mission on Sunday. We take communion, and they lead the communion now. I let it their whole lives, but now I don't lead it. We pass it off. One kid opens in prayer. One kid does the scriptures. One kid passes out the elements. And then one kid leads the song. And then they just kind of rotate. And so communion is led by the kids or not. And I just sit there. That's pretty quick. But it helps all of them get on mission for Sunday. Oh, yeah. This is why we do this. We planted this church together. This is our church. All right, guys. This is not mom and dad's church. This is our church. You the supreme team. Live. You're going to take a risk in preaching kids. Addy. Oh, you see. It's in, you're with me. Seventh one is this. It's date night. And then for us, working date. Here's what that is. We're not an eye. We do our date night on Sunday night. And for us, that's putting our marriage first. And that's just your typical date night where it's all about our relationship. And then we do a working date night. Or sorry, a working date on Wednesday afternoon where we, that's where we go through business. What we found was on, as I don't know how many of you are senior pastors, or we found ourselves just working on the church or working on our family the whole time on our date night. And so we decided to create two dates. So we bring our iPhones, iCal, and we'd spend an hour a week where we talk about budgets, who we want to hire, all the, and for one hour a week, it's all that. So that then on our actual date night, we can just look at each other and say, baby, I love you, 21 years. Let's keep going. Let's make it another 30. Let me pray for you. Father, I thank you, Lord Jesus, for each of these pastors or families. And I pray, Lord Jesus, that each kid would be a disciple. Holy Spirit, I pray that you would help them. Lord, I pray for strength. Every house a house of prayer. Every house full of disciples. I pray, Lord Jesus, that in these precious years they have with their kids, or that you would give them the strength to be the fathers, mothers, disciple makers that you've called them to be. Bless them. Bless these kids. I love you. Jesus' name in men. Thanks for coming.