Erick Goss on leading kids toward a Jesus connection

Show Transcripts:

Intro: Welcome to the Father on Purpose Podcast, featuring author and ministry leader, Kent Evans, and business executive and military veteran, Lawson Brown. This is a show for you, dad. You want to be a godly and intentional father. Unfortunately, you’ve turned to these two knuckleheads for help. Let us know how that works out for you. Before we begin, remember this, you are not a father on accident, so go be a father on purpose. Please welcome your hosts, Kent and Lawson.

Kent Evans: Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Father on Purpose Podcast with Ken Evans and Lawson Brown. As Lawson and I do every so often, we give you a gift, and the gift is we’re not going to be talking the whole time. You’re welcome in advance for that gift. Today, we are honored to be joined by my new friend, the CEO and co-founder of Minno, Erick Goss. Erick, thanks for joining us today, buddy.

Erick Goss: Kent, awesome to be here. Can’t wait.

Kent Evans: What we’re going to talk about today is going to be a range of things, but a couple things that would help you guys get to know Erick just a bit. Erick and I met for the first time about a month ago in the lovely city of Nashville, Tennessee. What we talked about was Minno, as well as fatherhood and family challenges and all that kind of stuff. Erick, as we get started, tell us a little bit about you and your family and kind of where life finds you these days.

Erick Goss: Yeah. Kent, it was awesome to meet. We were at the NRB convention, National Religious Broadcasters, and the things that I remembered about that conversation, which I loved about it was parents in scripture. I was like, this is my guy. I was super excited about that. Just a little background on myself, I started my career, I went to college at the Naval Academy, studied computer science, was a helicopter pilot in the Navy, and then was at the Pentagon as a spokesperson working on the Navy News Desk, left the Navy, went to business school, and then had a chance to work for Amazon six months after it went public.

At the time, it was just books, music, video. I don’t know if most people could even remember back that far, but there were about 300 people at corporate. I was there for seven years. When I left, there were about 3,500 people at corporate. I think the last tally, there’s 30,000 people in Downtown Seattle now. It was a great experience. This current CEO, Andy Jassy, I actually worked for for two years.

A lot of the folks that worked at Amazon and they’re running the big tech companies I actually worked alongside. It was really, really a special time to be at the company and just great people. I then left Amazon and was a chief marketing officer for E-commerce company here in the Nashville market. And then my co-founder, Dan Raines, he and I were in a faith and culture book group and he approached me and said, “Hey, would you be interested in doing some media projects for Christian families?”

And so we worked on a couple of film projects and then he had a literary agency and one of his clients was Phil Vischer, who created Veggie Tales. And Phil had this idea for a DVD series called Buck Denver Asks What’s in the Bible. And so it was 13 DVDs, each one hour long, that take people through the Bible Genesis to Revelation. And I was just blown away by that.

And so that led me up to thinking through how could we serve families digitally and sort of parallel that spiritual biography. I grew up in kind of a nominal Christian family, got involved in Navigators at the Naval academy, and really learned a lot about discipleship. And then from that point was really involved with different churches throughout my career, but had a chance to plan a church in Seattle and then also help plan a church here in Nashville.

And the one thing I recognized was parents had a real hard time helping their kids understand what does it mean to follow Jesus? And so as I started working with Dan and then working with Phil and what’s in the Bible, I recognize, “Man, this is an awesome opportunity strategically, because the church loses about two thirds of its kids when they go off to college. And if we could retain all those kids, this would be the greatest church growth strategy ever.”

Kent Evans: That’s a great point.

Erick Goss: I thought, “We’re going to get a massive church grow strategy here through children’s entertainment.” And when I was at Amazon, I worked on a lot of the early digital strategy. I launched the first ebook business there, the first print on demand business and recognized there was an opportunity to create a digital platform for Christian families. And that led us to create a platform called Jelly Telly, which then later became Minno. And so I’ve been working in Christian children’s media for basically the last decade and Minno was kind of the culmination of all that work.

Kent Evans: So over the last 20 or 30 years, when have you found time to sleep?

Erick Goss: Well, John 15 says, “The father’s the vine dresser. He produces the fruit.”

Kent Evans: Right, right, right. Well, what’s interesting you say the church growth strategy, one of the gentlemen who helps us produce this podcast, Hunter and I, we’ve talked about his marketing business and we’ve often talked about the best growth strategy in business. Step one, keep your current customers.

Erick Goss: Yes. Yes.

Kent Evans: Keep those. Step two, add some new ones. The math works out pretty bad if you’re constantly filling a bucket with empty holes in the bottom.

Erick Goss: Absolutely.

Kent Evans: So that’s fantastic that you’ve done that and that God’s kind of led you through this both analytical and writing and business career, plus a lot of work in the E-com space and marketing space. I think you also teach at Vanderbilt or have taught at Vanderbilt in their E-com marketing departments? Tell us a little bit about your family?

Erick Goss: I’ve been married 26 years. My wife and I met when I was in the Navy and we have three daughters, 13, 15, and 17. And so I’m right in the heart of teenage girls and my eldest is 17, a junior. So we’re about to start the college visit experience. And so I was just commenting to someone the other day, because you managing, growing, raising teenagers can be really challenging. And what I recognize is I really like my kids. I love them, clearly, but I really like them. I like hanging out with them and I feel like that’s such a privilege. That’s probably the joys in my life right now.

Kent Evans: Lawson’s had two daughters. Lawson can relate to you.

Lawson Brown: Yeah. Girl dad power.

Erick Goss: Girl dad power.

Lawson Brown: You got that right. Girls are great to have and they’ll take care of us when we get really old, Erick. So we’re covered.

Erick Goss: That’s why I got to treat them well.

Lawson Brown: I know, right? Yeah. So I’m trying to do the math backtracking 17 year old is your oldest. Where in the career journey did children, this is a twofold question, where did children come into the picture and how did you then adjust, because you had had some great success at that point and it’s one thing to manage your career and how much time you spent on spend on work.

And then when kids come along, something we talk about often on the podcast and get feedback from other dads about is how do you balance, how do you balance so that you’re not just the fantastic guy that everybody loves working with and a super success at work and then really struggle at home.

So if you could just kind of weave in when your family got going and then how did you personally manage finding ways to achieve balance?

Erick Goss: Yeah. So that’s a great question and I feel like I’m someone who’s been on a journey when I think about that. So, the first thing was a struggle. My wife and I dealt with five years of infertility. And so we weren’t really sure we were going to be able to have kids. So we had kids, and now I’m going to date myself, but we had kids in our mid 30s and it was primarily because we just couldn’t have kids. And so two of our children are through IVF. One of them is natural.

And so when you go through that experience, having that first, child’s a big deal. And anyone who’s gone through infertility, I was just sharing this with a friend the other day, hope is a four letter word. It’s kind of like, you don’t want to get your hope up because you’re so depressed and disappointed. And so it was a big deal when we had the first child. When we had Greta, my oldest, it was really disorienting to me because I wouldn’t say I came from a great family. I recognize that I am massively ill-equipped and prepared for this.

And I often joke, I had a good friend who said, “Our family puts fun in the word dysfunctional.” I said, “That’s interesting because my family puts dis in the word dysfunctional.”

Kent Evans: Wait a minute, Erick. I thought you were coming on today as a fatherhood expert who was going to teach us? What in the world?

Erick Goss: What’s encouraging is if good things can happen for me, there’s hope for anyone. My whole life, I was type A, driven, I graduated with honors from the Naval academy. And so I would say being a dad, and also for someone like myself who’s so productivity oriented and so intense, the idea of just sitting around with a toddler playing there’s part of that’s really enjoyable. But honestly there’s part of it that’s really challenging and that’s what’s hard with young children is they don’t give you a lot of feedback.

And so it can be really challenging for guys who are, wired the way I was wired. And I look back on those days and I actually probably have regrets. I know I have regrets. I wish I had invested more time and had more time having fun with my kids. And yet at the same time, there was always a sense of balance. One of the things that… I’m one of those guys that’s like, “We’re going to plan to be spontaneous.”

Lawson Brown: Yeah.

Erick Goss: What I recognize kind of early as a dad is I got to have rhythms in my life. I’ve got to have habits and process. And so even when I run my company, I always say our company culture is based on the meetings, processes, conversations that we have and the way we have those conversations. And this is where work has been super valuable to me because I recognize as I build culture at work, I need to build culture at home.

And so what does culture look like at home? Well, culture is what are the habits of our family? What are the institutions? What are the behaviors that we reward? What are the behaviors that we punish? That’s what creates culture. And so for me, when kids were younger, it was more of like, “Okay, I’ve got to develop a habit. I may not play with my kids every night, but I want to put them to bed. I want to have a dinner. I want to be able to do some fun things with them on the weekend.”

And so I also think it’s really important as we think about what does God want for us? And again, this is me looking at that period where I think I probably was not a great dad, but I don’t think I was a bad dad either. I just think I could have done better. But I think about Ephesians 2:10 where basically God says he’s given us good works to do. And I often tell entrepreneurs, who are usually in a lot of stress, raising capital, trying to build their business, trying to manage a marriage, trying to manage a family. It says that he’s given us good works to do before time. And so the question is, are we listening to him and learning what those good works are that we can do them that day?

And God wants us to have good days. God wants us to enjoy life. He wants us to have good days if we’re not having a good day, then often for me, it’s a check, “Okay, I’m not hearing from the Father. I need to kind of check in.” And so I would say, as a dad of teenagers, I’ve learned a couple of things. And I feel like I’m a much better dad today than I was a dad of younger girls.

But it’s because of all those mistakes that I made with young kids that I think actually helped me get my dad game on as they’ve gotten older.

Kent Evans: Erick, elaborate a little bit on that. What are one or two things that you do today better than maybe you did five or 10 years ago as a dad?

Erick Goss: Yeah. So the first thing I’ve learned is rhythm and habits. Life’s challenging. There are always going to be demands on your time. And what I recognized is I have to set up weekly habits for me to connect with my girls. And so the first is we set up a habit of weekly movie night and we’ve been doing this for over a decade where it’s pizza and movie, every Friday we try a different pizza joint or someone gets to pick their pizza, their movie.

And what’s been great about that is, I remember, we’re watching Finding Nemo when they’re young and doing pizza and movie when they’re really young. But now my girls actually look forward to pizza and movie night. We’ll watch a series together, a television series, or we’ll watch a movie that’s come out. And what it’s done is there’s actually anticipation of us being together on Friday night and celebrating the end of the week.

The other thing that was really important to me was I was working with an executive coach at work and he said, “You don’t manage a team. You manage a group of individuals that’s called a team and you don’t have a relationship with a team. You have a relationship with a group of individuals that’s called a team.”

Lawson Brown: That’s super cool.

Erick Goss: And what I recognize is, “Oh my gosh, I always talk about my daughters, the way I talk about my team. I have to spend time with my daughters.” And what I recognized is I actually spend more one-on-one time with my executives than I do with my kids in regards to face-to-face time. Because so much of family life is side to side. You’re managing sports, activities, extracurricular, school, but you don’t actually, unless you’re intentional about it, you don’t get a lot of face to face time of like, “How are you enjoying life? Who are your friends? What are you guys talking about? What are your lows for the week? What are your highs for the week?”

And so when they were younger, sometimes those conversations are more challenged because what does it mean for me to have an hour long conversation with a seven year old? A lot of that could just be I take activity books out and we would do little activity books and American Girls at the time had a daddy daughter book and a mommy daughter book. And you would go out and you’d interview each other on kind of your life. Like, “What were the high points of your life, dad?” And then I’d like, “What are the high points of your life, Greta, Lane, Gabby?”

That ritual has really been helpful. Now what happens is teens is, this was advice that I got from a children’s pastor. He said, “When kids are young, they need physical help. When they become adolescents, they need emotional help.”

Kent Evans: Wow.

Erick Goss: And so what that helped me is recognizing, and again, this is a guy who, because I’ve gone through a lot of trials and tribulations dealt with my own struggles, with anxiety and depression at times, self talk is a thing that can really get us upside down. What a lot of parents don’t recognize is when your children are making this transition from late elementary school to early adolescents self-awareness kicks in. And science and research tells us that 70 to 80% of the messages that we communicate to ourselves are negative.

And we have kids who are basically coming into self-awareness and they don’t understand why they’re so self critical all of a sudden. It’s almost as if they’re wobbling a little bit.

Lawson Brown: They’re negative, Erick?

Erick Goss: Negative.

Kent Evans: Wow. That’s amazing.

Lawson Brown: Does that include questioning of yourself in a critical manner or?

Erick Goss: Absolutely.

Lawson Brown: Define negative? That’s interesting.

Erick Goss: So if you think about negative self talk, I think about some of the work that Brené Brown has done around shame and vulnerability. Some people may be familiar with Brené Brown, but it’s like, “I’m not good enough.” Or, “How could you?” We live in a highly competitive culture. And so kids are comparing themselves to other kids all the time, recognizing they’re not this or not that. They don’t think about that when they’re seven and eight year olds, when they’re seven and eight year olds, they’re… The awesome thing between six and 11 they’re in zoned, they’re immersed in their world. And it’s awesome experience because everything is really interesting and they’re not really self critical, but what happens when they go into adolescence is they start learning how to be self critical.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, totally.

Kent Evans: Wow.

Erick Goss: And they start developing that inner dialogue. I remember talking to my eldest daughter about the, because I could tell she was struggling. And I said, “Do you have this new voice inside that’s really critical?” And she’s like, “Yeah. How’d you know?”

Kent Evans: Wow.

Erick Goss: I was like, “I got one too.”

Lawson Brown: Yeah. You’re like, “Hey, we all do you. Unfortunately you’re in the club now.”

Kent Evans: I have that same voice, because a minute ago, when you said it’s like, “How do you have an hour long conversation with a seven year old? I know that’s what Lawson thinks about me every week we record this podcast.

Lawson Brown: That’s why it only goes 30 minutes sometimes. Hey Erick, when you were talking about rhythm and habits, I want to come back to that. You went in a direction that I haven’t thought of that way before, but in such an unpredictable world, when there are some rituals or some things that can become in your family, just something that is expected, they know that every, whatever, Friday night is pizza movie night.

That doesn’t sound like a big thing on its surface but beneath that is this expectation, this predictability, maybe some even stability that I think they could feel, depending on their age, but that they can feel like, “I know what’s going to happen on certain topics or times in my family.” And do you feel like that in some ways can kind of help in this noisy, always on world where it’s just kids are being bombarded with information and opportunities, that somehow you’re bringing some stability to their life through that rhythm and habit?

Erick Goss: Absolutely. The most important ritual is the one that you take for granted, having dinner together. And so one of the rituals that became really important in our family for our kids going through late elementary and adolescence was having dinner together. And then everyone gets to share their high for the day and they’re low for the day. And what was interesting is our girls started looking forward to that because they recognize they’ll get emotional support if they have a low. And then it’s their opportunity to tell everyone in the family when they had something good happen to them.

If you look at social science, and again, this is where the Bible supports… Social science and the Bible supportive of one another, because they’re both about human beings. And what we know about social science is it is incredibly important to be connected to other people.

If you want to drive someone crazy, put them in isolation. And so what kids need to know is that you are there for them. And it’s whenever go through a hard time, we need to know two things, “I’m with you and we’re going to make it.” You need to know those two things.

What these rituals do is they basically reinforce this fact of, “I’m here with you, we’re going to be together, and we’re going to make it.” And granted, we typically are doing it in non stressful times, but when stressful times happen and you’ve got that predictability there’s reliability there. There’s a sense of your anxiety level can fall.

As human beings we were not created for the level of anxiety and stress that we deal with in everyday lives. And so what happens is we’re coping all the time, because again, being in technology, I’ve had to think a lot about, or I’ve tried to think about the theology and philosophy of technology, and if you think about life in the garden, there wasn’t all this stuff. There was a sense of a much simpler kind of pace of life. And there’s social science that says we can only maintain relationships with about 150 people within our society right now we’re always being stretched in that area. Or we feel bad when we are not staying connected.

And so our kids are growing up in that culture. And so I think having the rituals and the predictability builds trust. That connectivity is so important, especially because I think for most of us, there’s this very risky time, I think, when kids go from late elementary school into junior high, that is the opportunity for you to lose connectivity with your child. And I felt that because that’s where friend groups become really important. And it’s not that I’m trying to get in the way of their friend groups, but what I’m wanting to make sure is that their connection to me is as strong as the connection that they’re making with their friend group.

Lawson Brown: Yeah.

Kent Evans: Oh, man. Wow.

Erick Goss: And I think that’s really, really important because the way… I’ve heard this described as a swimming pool that ultimately kids spend the first kind of 10 years of their life on the side of the pool. And then as they get older, they’re going out into the pool. But the kids that can go out in the pool the easiest are the ones that know the side of the pool’s there. And so for us as parents, we’re the side of the pool.

And so they know they can always come back and check in with us if they get out and they’re having hard time swimming in the pool. That’s one reason as parents it’s like, “Oh, I just had this great moment with my teenage daughter. She’s gone. Where’d she go?” Well, guess what? She caught her breath at the side of the pool and she’s back swimming again.

Kent Evans: Man, what a great metaphor. I’ve never heard the side of the pool metaphor before. Lawson, why didn’t you think of that?

Lawson Brown: I’m not smart like this guy. Erick is the boss.

Kent Evans: He’s the boss.

Erick Goss: I just say I failed a lot more than most people.

Kent Evans: Fail faster, right?

Erick Goss: Yeah.

Kent Evans: For the dad listening to this show today, I want to make sure a couple things don’t go un mentioned. One is you need dad to go to gominno.com. You need to go to their website at Minno, that’s gominno.com, G-O-M-I-N-N-O.com And check out both the onscreen resources and the offscreen resources. By that I mean onscreen, there’s tons of video content for you to engage with your family. Even things like five minute family devotionals, which I may ask you to talk about here in a minute, Erick. You can snag a free seven day trial anytime. And then there’s some offscreen resources like life guides that deal with things like tech and emotions and how to read the Bible.

So you guys are building this kind of digital empire, Erick, of things that will enable and animate families, give us resources to pour into our kids, can you talk a little bit about Minno? What you guys have to offer, not so much a commercial for the offering, as much as you can connect dots that a lot of guys can’t connect because you have this wide angle lens on parenting and motherhood and fatherhood because of the role that you’re in today.

So just take us a little bit toward Minno and let’s talk about how we can use some of the resources your company provides to be a more engaged father?

Erick Goss: Yeah. So one of the reasons I started Minno was the power of media and stories for the purpose of teaching and helping kids and parents to understand the gospel, the good news. And what I find is most parents, they’re no ill willed or ill intentioned parents, parents always have the best of intentions.

There’s a sense of me as a dad, I want to be a good dad, but it’s difficult for me. There are conversations I want to have that I don’t know where to start to have those conversations and media shows can be a great place, be a great catalyst for those conversations. And I always say Minno is at its best when we’re a catalyst for conversations that parents want to have with their kids or kids want to have with their parents.

And so parents have a couple of challenges. The first is they want to protect their kids from media, with bad messages or inappropriate media for the kids. And that’s why Minno’s ad free and it’s a protected environment. We have a checklist that has more than 50 points that you have to get past that checklist to even get on our platform. And part of that is I want Minno to be an emotional spa day for parents.

So when their kids are on Minno it’s like, “Ah, I can relax.” The second thing is we want Minno, we’ve solved the discoverability problem, so it used to be back in the day, you’d go into a Christian bookstore and you go to the DVD aisle and you see all these great children shows, well, Christian retails really dead from a brick and mortar standpoint. And so it’s really hard for Christian families to discover great Christian shows. And so that’s one of the other problems we solve is basically we’ve curated what we believe to be the best in Christian children’s media and to support.

And then on that platform, we have shows for kids to watch, but we also have different types of shows like five minute family devotion, which can help parents, and this is based on my experience as a dad, where for a parent, how do I have a devotion? Where should I start? I’ve read a children’s Bible to my child. Now they want more, I don’t know, what do I do? And so what we’ve done is used our video library to create these short devotionals to help families have those conversations and to basically have devotions at home.

We also do church at home. And so we’ve basically created a church at home program for families who, during the pandemic, couldn’t make it to church. Really hard for churches to do awesome children’s programming when they don’t have those type of resources. We have the most expensive resources on the face of the planet for Christian children in the way of media and being able to stream. And so we’ve gone ahead and curated and tried to make that available for families.

So that’s really on within our Minno kids platform, we also have a children’s Bible for families at home and that’s been developed where there each story there’s a family connect. One of the things that’s really important to me, I think about life as a product manager, which is that I’ve got a user and we’re creating a product that product needs to solve a problem for the user. And then that product is at its best when it creates this wow moment for the user to go, “Oh, this is just exactly what I’m looking for.”

And so that’s what we’re really trying to accomplish for Christian families because Christian families, while there’s a lot of publishing and there’s a lot of Christian products in the marketplace, there are not a lot of people thinking, “How do we design a product for a Christian parent and for a Christian kid that causes them to go, wow, this is perfect. This is just what I was looking for?”

Lawson Brown: Well, there sure are plenty of effort out there that is the opposite of what you’re doing. So first, man, way to go, I’m so proud and appreciative that there is someone like you and your team that is doing something like this. How do you create the material? And have you relied on your own family, your insights, personally as a father, has that helped lean into what you guys create because kind of drawing on your own life?

Erick Goss: Yeah. Well, the example I give is from my own life, which is, “Guys, we got to make this simple.” So mom’s at home, dad’s running late, there’s a grease fire. Dad had a bad day at work. You’re about to sit down to do dinner. And the last thing in the home, people are thinking, “Let’s connect our kids to Jesus.”

Kent Evans: I feel like Erick has my house bugged. I’m not cool with this at all. I’m very uncomfortable right now.

Lawson Brown: Yeah. You know what though? All that means is that for the dads out there that feel like they’re struggling with things like that alone, you are not. We are all in this same thing together.

Kent Evans: That’s for sure.

Erick Goss: As I say, if you’re human, you got problems.

Kent Evans: Right, man. No kidding.

Erick Goss: So what I really wanted to do is create a company where you could just press play. And that’s not to say that we’re trying to dumb down the Bible or make walking with Jesus any easier. But what we’re really trying to do is help God’s word get in the lives of people in an easier way where they don’t have to work so hard.

And for me it required hard work. One of the features we have on the site is actually probably evidence of one of my biggest dad fails, which was outside of exhibiting the need for forgiveness to my children. My next big dad fail was family devotions, which is, we need to do family devotions because we’re a Christian family and we’re going to do this. It was we’re on the long March, dad is taking us on the long March and we’re going to do family devotions and it’s like, “We need to do this.”

And I’d have a children’s Bible and a prayer book. And then I’d like queue up. I’m like, “Man, I’m just not good at keeping their attention. We got this video. So why don’t I just queue up this section of this video? I know this section of this video is funny and they’ll really like it.” And as I sat there, I’m like, “Why am I doing all this work?” It almost took 20, 30 minutes to prep to do a 15 minute family devotion to keep the kids attention.

I’m just like, “Why don’t we create a format on the website that basically appreciates how complex it is to think about a Bible verse, a prayer, and a teachable moment?” And so our team has built, I think close to probably 155 minute family devotions for families in different areas of heroes of the old Testament, the life of Jesus for the purpose of making it simple.

Because again, there’s a sense that because of median technology, parents are instantly in a situation where they’re competing with a entertainment industry that’s spending four to $5 billion a year to keep your kids attention. And so when you are in your home and you’re like, “Let’s read the Bible.” For a seven or eight year old, who’s being exposed to Pixar or Disney or just any kind of high production value, there’s a sense the Bible’s boring. And the Bible is not boring. The Bible is about the human experience and how God meets us in that experience.

And so the key is what do we do to help kids understand that awesomeness? That it means that God enters into their world to meet them where they’re at. And I think the most powerful way to do that is through great media.

Kent Evans: Hey dad, sometimes you need weekly encouragement on your father journey. That’s why we built a community of men that are basically the Navy Seals of godly fatherhood. They are all located at fatheronpurpose.org. That’s fatheronpurpose.org.

Now that is a monthly subscription of just 11 measly US dollars. And when you join that community, you will get action items that are brief and biblical and you can put into play right away. Every week we release a dad mission video that is a short Divo based on the Bible with a action item mission at the end, super practical. And plus, as a bonus, when you dive in, you get digital courses, eBooks, all kinds of other resources, not to mention you’re connected with dozens of other godly dads who are walking through the same issues you’re walking through. And that community is very rich and vibrant. Come check it out today at fatheronpurpose.org. That’s father on purpose dot O-R-G.

Man, Erick, I want to take a moment and tee up a subject that I want you… It’s going to be like a tee-ball I’m going to toss it to you and you’re going to smash it out of the park. I just kind of think I know what you’re going to say, but I’m eager to hear your actual words.

One of the things that I’ve found with my own boys, their age is 22 down to seven. So we still have three in the home and two out in college. One of the things I’ve found with them is that when I tell them stories from my past, those stories go somewhere special in their brain. It’s a different place and it’s no big mystery, right? Jesus taught through stories. Every good movie’s a story. The power of story isn’t revolutionary. We all kind of know it. At least we’re being fed it every week and every month, for sure. We all dive into these stories. So that’s kind of part one.

Part two of this sort of softball question for you is can’t dads and moms share stories from their own day, their own week, their own experience, and find that those engage their children? What’s the power here of story that we can use to engage our children in meaningful conversation? Because I think some dads think of family devotionals as being, I remember back when I started Bible study, I had a strong concordance. I had a vines, I had all these books. I literally carried around with a roller bag to do my first preset Bible studies 30 years ago. And I thought, “My goodness, I got to know Greek? I got to know all this?”

Can you demystify the family devotional for dads listening to this podcast? And can you share with them how powerful and valuable their own personal stories can be in sharing some of that?

Erick Goss: Yeah, Ken I’m laughing because I knew I was in trouble when the kids looked at the Bible and they said, “What is that?” And I said, “It’s Hebrew.”

Kent Evans: We’re in trouble.

Erick Goss: So I am often fond of saying that the second best Bible that a child will read is your life as a parent. So the second best Bible in most kids’ lives are going to be their parents because kids are going to watch and see what is your faith like? We have a very sort of teaching school oriented perspective on faith. And that is that if we fill kids heads with the right facts, everything’s going to be okay. That is not how Jesus lived.

Jesus took 12 guys with him for three years and said, “Live with me.” And so what happens is parents, we feel like we have to have a certain level of knowledge or a certain level of understanding to be able to be effective. And guess what? God knows where you’re at and he’s going to meet you there. And he’s going to make you an awesome dad for those kids.

And so we have to trust in the Holy Spirit. One of my favorite verses in John 2, in 1 John 2, and it basically says, “You should trust in the anointing that’s been given to you. You don’t need anyone to teach you. Trust in that anointing.” Now I’m not saying that we don’t need teachers, but what I’m saying is we can be overly reliant on other people, not trusting in the Holy Spirit’s ability to teach a scripture ourselves.

And so for mom and dad, I think it’s important for them to recognize, “I am God’s means to communicating these kids.” And so guess what? It’s not me doing the work. It’s God working through me. And then the other component that I think that you’re saying is so powerful is we often feel like we have to make sure that we’re living up to something for our kids. When in reality, we need to come down to where they’re at.

I’ll be very candid here and honest about a situation that was really powerful. So for anyone who’s got teenage girls, they’re dealing with gender identity and sexual orientation issues.

Kent Evans: Sure. Yeah.

Erick Goss: Flat out. And part of the challenge with this is they’re dealing with it in a situation where their hormones haven’t kicked in fully, they’re being asked questions of, how do you identify? When they’re not even interested in sex. And what I recognized was I was as a teenage boy, I hit puberty late, and I remember I felt so self-conscious because I was around basically young men, as a 13, 14 year old and still being a boy. And I thought about, and I said, “If I was growing up in this environment, I would’ve questioned what I would’ve like am I gay? Am I heterosexual?”

I would have those questions because of the pressure, the pressure being put on. And so, and my daughter, I could tell she was struggling with these issues. And I told her, I said, “If I were you growing up, I would’ve really struggled because the media messages that you have around you are so powerful. And in many ways it was a lot easier for me to grow up as a teenager than it is for you. Because no one’s forcing me to choose a side or to pick something when I’m not ready.”

Kent Evans: Right.

Erick Goss: And that’s what’s happening is someone’s asking you to choose a side. And I said, “You know what? You need to know a couple things. I love you no matter what. God loves you no matter what. And I’m here for you to figure all this stuff out and work through it with you.” And she, and this is my daughter who I love her to death. She’s like, “You know what? I decided, I just didn’t need to make a decision right now. And so I told my friends, I’m going to figure this out in my 20s.”

Kent Evans: Buzz off. I’ll get back to you later. Oh, that’s fantastic.

Erick Goss: But the other thing that she, that was important for me to communicate is, “God will meet you in this and help you sort it.” And again, I think probably one of the best insights, I think this was a win for me as a dad, was recognizing this sort of break.

So toddler up to late elementary school, it’s about physical development, physical growth. Teenager to 20s is about emotional growth, emotional development. And so what a lot of parents struggle with, because I observed this, is up until adolescents kids basically have your faith. They basically have your faith. They’re going to church with you. They’re doing the activities you take them to. But when they become a teenager, they can develop a split life because of this self-awareness that we were talking about earlier which is, “I know that to be rewarded by my parents, I have to do these activities, but mentally and emotionally, I’m going to go this other direction where my friends are hanging out.”

And so what I recognize is I should really treat my kids like they’re unbelievers. I should really treat them… Because what that does is it gives them the freedom to doubt. And what that means is they’re not going to live a split life with me. They’re going to bring their whole self because I’m not expecting them to actually be faithful.

Kent Evans: You make me think of something, Erick. When my, currently 20 year old son, Jeremy was about, I don’t know, 15, he came to me and he goes, “Dad, I realize I only pretty much believe in the Bible because you and mom do.” He goes, “And that’s really not good enough for me.” And I said, “Man, what a great point.” And I said, “Do you want to explore and learn for yourself?” He goes, “Yeah, absolutely.” And I said, “Great.”

So I gave him a book by a local pastor here in Louisville, guy named Greg Gilbert, pretty well known pastor who writes a lot. And it’s the book called, Why Trust the Bible? And I think it’s a very accessible, Greg’s brilliant, he’s an Ivy league educated pastor. He could write above people’s heads if he wanted, that would be an option for him, but he chose to write a book that anyone can access.

But the point in sharing that whole story is I couldn’t have been happier that my son had honest doubts and was willing to go look for answers. It’s one thing to be cynical and go, “Yeah, I don’t believe this crap.” And they just kind of dial out and they become cynics that aren’t willing to learn. That’s a whole different animal. But if you have a child who’s coming to you and saying, “Hey, I’m really uncertain about this thing.”

Sometimes as dads, you are a pilot, we hit the panic button and we eject out of the plane because we think it’s going down. The plane isn’t going down. You have a child who’s confiding in you that they’re searching. Let them search. God is sovereign, man. He’s got this. But we call our kids, our kids all the time. They’re not our kids. They’re God’s kids. We get to steward them for 18 years or so. And he has got them completely.

And I’m playing back these tapes of when Jeremy, my son, was in that middle teen year. And then he went and read that book and then wouldn’t you know it? We had Greg Gilbert come and speak at our men’s conference. He got to meet the author of the book, which was a highlight moment for me, just for fun. But that’s sort of stuff where our kids are questioning things, I think sometimes dads freak out and they panic.

“You think you’re going to go vote?” And they fill in a political party. They panic if their kid is thinking anything different than they would want them to think. But anyhow, thank you for reminding me of that story because as dads we’ve got to trust God in that process.

Erick Goss: Well, Kent, because there are a couple of things that I want to mention. One is a resource, but the other is, there’s a question that’s being asked that’s not being spoken, which is, can I trust you with my truth?

Kent Evans: Oh wow man. Good word.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, that’s powerful.

Erick Goss: And so when they say, “I’m not sure I believe in God.” Or, “I’m not sure I believe in your political party.” Or, “I’m not sure I believe in this issue.” Your response to them gets to let them know whether you can actually handle what they’re dealing with. And if you respond negatively, they’re going to recognize, “I have to live a split life, the life that I need to live to get affirmation from my dad and be in relationship with him and then who I really am.”

And what I really want is when my child’s in front of me, I want her to be who she really is. The second thing is I’ll give her a great resource, which is, I was like, “Okay, if I act like my kids aren’t Christians, what would I do?” Well, the first thing I thought about is Alpha Course.

Kent Evans: Oh, yeah. Love that.

Erick Goss: And Alpha has rolled out a youth course and it was so good, my girls wanted to watch it a second time. And it was transformational because what happened was they recognized, “Oh you mean it’s okay to have doubt?” And Alpha’s so good because they hit all the important issues of suffering, the Bible, all this stuff. And as I would say, the last person you want teaching your teenagers is you.

Kent Evans: Wait a minute, Erick, do you mean me personally?

Erick Goss: Yeah. We all need to go look in the mirror. And so, because the challenge is teenagers are learning to individuate, basically kind of break that parent child, and so they need to feel comfortable. And so I am a huge believer when parenting through the teen years having third party resource, because it’s easy for the child to doubt the resource, harder for them to doubt you.

Kent Evans: Man, along those lines, we’ve talked to dads all the time. In fact, we had a guy listen to this podcast, reach out to me directly. And he has teenage child and his oldest was maybe, I don’t know, 13 or 14. And then he goes down from there and has three or four more. And I was talking to him on the phone and he said, “My 14 year old won’t listen to me and this kind of thing.” And I said, “Well, let me ask you a question,” I said, “is this your oldest child?”

And he said, “Yes.” I said, “So this is your first teenage child?” He said, “Yes.” And I said, “What’s your youngest child?” And he said, “Seven or eight.” And I said, “Awesome. Let me tell you something. That’s going to really help you. You’re still telling your seven or eight year old statements and they’re going to listen to you because they have to, if you try to use that same exact approach for the next five years with your 13 year old, you will not like where you end up.”

And I said, “I want you to pivot to smart questions. I want you to pivot to smart questions.” I’ve asked my boys, Erick, so many times when they’ll be fighting with each other at 14 and 16 and 12 and all that, I’ll just go, “Hey guys, can we take a pause for a second?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” And I go, “Could one of you tell me what kind of relationship you’d like to have with your brother when you’re 27?” And everybody stops. And they’re looking at me like I got two heads and then we have a conversation about let’s fast forward 10 years, because this is going to lead to that.

And so I have not done it perfectly, but I’ve learned that with my older kids, I have to ask questions. If I am going to teach them anything, it’s probably going to be through intentional Trojan horse type discovery where I go in with a question, lead them to a place where I want them to go anyway, but they discover it on their own. I can’t just shove it at them like I do when I’ve got a seven year old right now and I go, “Get out of the basement.” And he gets out of the basement.

But if my 17 were down here, or my 18 year old, I’d probably say, “Hey man, can you go upstairs?” It’s just different tone. And you find they’re much warmer to that than they are a bunch of didactic kind of statements.

Erick Goss: Well, and there are a couple things at that camp that I love, Daystar Counseling Center, which is a Christian counseling center working with kids and teens here, David Thomas and Sissy Goff called that backdoor parenting. They said, “When you’re parenting teenagers, you never want to go through the front door.”

Kent Evans: Oh that’s great.

Erick Goss: But the other component, and this has been really helpful for me from a framework, is stop thinking about I’m raising kids and start thinking about the fact I’m raising adults, because what you’re talking about, which I think is so important is what does it mean for my children to understand what it means to own adulthood? And so I’ve talked to with my wife about this, because one of the things with teenagers nagging to do chores around the house and that kind of stuff, I’m like, “This is sort of like managing dysfunctional executives.” And so I get tired telling them what to do all the time.

Kent Evans: Take notes, Lawson.

Lawson Brown: Yeah. You better not let your company know you’re doing this podcast.

Erick Goss: The best thing is to sit down with a group of executives and say, “How are we going to solve this problem together?” And so with teenagers, what I found is they know there’s a problem. They just don’t want to be told, like you’re saying what to do like a seven year old. But if you give them an opportunity to vote, they’ll take you up on that and they’ll own the problem.

I think a lot of that is about what does it mean to help them to start becoming adults? Because the other thing that’s so important about what you said with your son, Kent, is you’re modeling to him. What does it mean to be a great adult? So what he’s going to do is when he has that problem come up in his life, he’s not going to lead with dictating, but he’s going to lead with asking the question and that’s going to be transformational because Stephen Covey and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People had this phrase of, “A lot of our relationships are transactional. How can we move them to transformational?”

And I think about that a lot of like, “What does it mean for me to have a transformational conversation?” I use this dictum with my team all the time and I say it for any mom or dad, who’s out there, is you’re only one conversation away from a new reality. If you do not like your current situation, oftentimes the question is what conversation do you need to have to change it? And ask the Lord to give you wisdom for that conversation.

Lawson Brown: Wow, Erick, man, this is really rich. I’m super grateful that you joined us. I always picture when we’re doing these, I picture the dad out there who came across this podcast somehow, he’s out there listening, driving, or jogging or whatever may be going on. And the reason they found this podcast is because they’ve been asking themselves a question of how do I do this better? How do I be a better more godly father.

And so just want to tell you the two or three things that have really struck me that I’m taking myself is the family culture, the building of some predictable habits. I love the way you said our kids, just like, we need to hear two thing, “I am with you and you will make it through this.” It’s also by the way, what God tells us, in our own lives. And then about being authentic, sharing some of your own struggles.

And just the fact that we’ve talked a bit before on here just among ourselves and then other guests too, that you just can’t underestimate. It’s very difficult to be a kid nowadays. And for them to know that we appreciate that this world is hard to maneuver and that we don’t have all the answers, I think what you said about them asking themselves, maybe they won’t verbalize it to you specifically, but, “Can I trust you with my truth?”

That’s something that I need to write down and have writing on my desk. So I guess, circle back all the way around to where I’m leading is, the dad’s listening are searching for resources. And they’re wondering, how did you come upon all this? And what other things have you found helpful in your own life? What other resources, how has your own father affected your parenting? How has your wife affected your parenting style? Your dad ship? Maybe other dads have affected you in some way?

Talk about, with the person in mind who is driving or listening, doing whatever it is, they’re yard work or jogging. Talk about how your father, your wife, other dads have affected the way that your perspective, your lens, on fatherhood has come to be?

Erick Goss: Hmm. Yeah. It’s interesting. So I answered that question in kind of two different ways, because the first is just talking to other people, but the other is reading other people, which means books. And so some of the best wisdom is from dads who are 10 years older than you are, who recognize they’ve blown it, because no dad does it perfectly. The best lessons and the best advice are the hard won lessons and advice. And I find when I talk to dads that are about 10 years older than me, I get a treasure trove of really great information.

The second thing I’d encourage you to do is talk to anyone who has been in family ministry or children’s ministry in their 40s, 50s, or 60s, because what’s happened is they’ve been in it long enough that they’ve seen the product of a lot of different approaches and they’ve developed a point of view on what works. Those are the type of people who’ve had the greatest impact on me and talk to me about what parents get wrong and what parents get right.

And I think it’s so important to recognize, as a parent, every day you wake up, you’re doing it for the first time in your life with a child who’s doing that day for the first time in their life.

Lawson Brown: Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. Yep.

Kent Evans: Yeah.

Erick Goss: Kent, what you said is really important is guess what? John Townsend, I did a small group, a video, with John Townsend, and he said, “Look, every day your child is a new person. If you’re not changing your parenting game, you’re going to lose.” And so in the same way that we think about coaching and, “Okay, I’ve got to move from a running game to a spread offense,” for parenting it’s the same thing. And you’ve got to recognize, because there are a couple things that are really important for me, one is I am the parent of Greta. I am the dad of Lane. I am the dad of Gabby. I have to have a different parenting strategy with all three of them because they’re different people.

Lawson Brown: Absolutely.

Erick Goss: Often time we think we’re a Christian parent and I’ve just got to treat them all the same. And I think from a resource standpoint, talking to parents that are… And that’s why I say 10 years older, I had a chance to have a woman in her 60s, a grandma, actually teach my Bible study when I was in flight school. And she said, “Erick, the worst thing you can do is a Bible study with your friends because all it turns into is share your own ignorance.”

Lawson Brown: Oh, that’s hilarious.

Erick Goss: And she actually said, “It’s an SYOI Bible study. And I was like, “What’s that?” And she’s like, “A share your own ignorance Bible study.”

Lawson Brown: Yes. That’s so true. Oh my gosh. That’s so true.

Kent Evans: Oh, that’s fantastic.

Erick Goss: I’ve also found with parents who are 10 years older is they’re far enough away from it, they can be honest with themselves. Because I think for all of us there’s a sense that we… It’s hard to be honest when you mess up. As you’re talking Lawson, the one thing I just wanted to throw out there, because I think so many dads and moms live with shame. And the two verses that jump out are Romans 8:1 that, “There’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ, Jesus.” And then Paul in Philippians 4 says, “I strive to look forward to the high calling of Christ. I do not look behind me.”

And I think what’s important is we are parents, we have a tendency to be weighed down by yesterday. And one of my mentors always says, “God’s economy is now hoard. Come on.”

Lawson Brown: Yeah.

Kent Evans: Wow. That’s awesome.

Erick Goss: And I think, guess what? You may have been a bad dad yesterday or not the dad you wanted to be, you can be the good dad today.

Lawson Brown: Yeah. And God is the expert in comeback stories and redemption stories. So just because a mess up happened, he’s going to get you through it. He’s going to turn it around.

Erick Goss: Resurrection is his game plan.

Kent Evans: Resurrection is the game plan. Erick, I want you to spend the last couple minutes just encouraging a dad who’s listening to this show. There’s some dad who’s listened and we hear this a lot, we’ve surveyed thousands of dads and cataloged a lot of responses to their feedback and dads feel like they’re failing.

Generally speaking, a lot of the dads, especially dads in church, they feel like they are failing. And they tell us that in both unspoken and spoken ways, but they feel like they don’t have enough time or enough expertise or enough money or enough spiritual training or whatever.

And I want you to spend a minute just to encourage that dad as we land today’s plane. And then I want to make sure dads, you know when we’re all done head over to gominno.com, G-O-M-I-N-N-O.com and check out the resources that Erick and his team have brought to us. Thanks so much, Erick, for joining us. You get the final word.

Erick Goss: Yeah. So for dads who are struggling and wondering kind of what, the way I would say is what’s the next best step? So based on where I am, what’s the next best step? The first thing I would say is it’s a conversation and that first conversations with Jesus and asking God, “What needs to happen? What do I need to do?” And connect with God because the Holy Spirits where we derive all our power as Christians.

And so if you’re parenting, if you’re trying, and this happens to so many people, when we try to be Christians without a reliance on the Holy Spirit, you are set up to fail. And my spiritual mentor, one of his favorite questions is, “Erick, where’s the Holy Spirit?” “Oh, he’s in me.” “Well, what’s he up to?” And for many of us, we don’t really recognize that the Holy Spirit’s there and he’s up to something.

So I think it’s get connected with the Holy Spirit, get connected with God, because we need to be abiding with Jesus. And again, that’s as simple as just saying, “You know what? Lord speak to me in getting the word.” It’s pretty simple.

The second thing that I would encourage folks to do is talk to your kids, ask them, “What am I doing well? What do you really enjoy doing with me? And where are you disappointed?” Now I would say, make sure you’re emotionally stable because guess what? Your kids, they’re experts on you and they’re going to tell you some things where they’re disappointed that you’re going to likely be defensive or feel hurt, but recognize that hurt and that defensiveness that you feel, you’ve got to put that off to the side because they’re giving you the game plan on what it means to be a great dad in their lives.

And it’s important to have a conversation with each one of your children, because what it means to be a great dad for each one of your kids is going to be a little different.

Lawson Brown: Yeah. Right on.

Kent Evans: Man.

Erick Goss: And you need to recognize that. The other conversation you need to have is with your wife.

Kent Evans: Now, Erick, you’ve gone too far. You’ve gone too far now. Now you’re getting crazy. Now you’re just getting crazy.

Erick Goss: All I’m saying is talk to people. This has been something that’s really come to me kind of later in life is if you do a study on unity in the Bible, what you recognize is God hates conflict and he hates unforgiveness. And the biggest issue that most of us are going to have in our family is bitterness and unforgiveness.

Either that’s in the relationship that we have with our spouse or with our kids. And so one of the reasons those conversations are so important to have is because unforgiveness and bitterness is a block to the Holy Spirit. Depending on how old your kids are, you may have bitterness and unforgiveness towards your teenage kids. And what I encourage is to work through that and trust that the Lord will work through it. But our spouses are our number one teammate in raising those kids. And they often are going to have a really good perspective.

And again, for dads, it’s really hard because if anyone is an expert on you, it’s your spouse. If you ask them to be really honest with you, and I actually got this from a pastor who basically said, “I do a performance review with each of my kids at the end of the year on how I’m doing.” And I was like, “Whew.”

And I’m like, “You know what? That’s a good practice.” Because my kids are actually experts at helping me understand what it means to be their dad. And so I think that’s a great place to start.

Kent Evans: My wife is an amazing godly woman. We’ll celebrate our 27th wedding anniversary in about 48 hours from the time of recording this episode. And man, she has absolutely been one of the best sources of personal and spiritual growth in my life on planet earth. And to your point, because a, she’s in the word she’s growing, she’s connected to God. Secondly, I know she’s being honest with me. Thirdly, she sees me all the time. She sees every good and bad thing about me. And fourthly, she’s become really good at picking her spots, where maybe early in our marriage, it was plenty of feedback, maybe more than I needed, but now she’s gotten to this…

Lawson Brown: She also wants you to win.

Kent Evans: Well, yeah, for sure. For a while thought I was playing a gotcha game where she could kind of catch me, but not anymore. We’ve gotten to this place where I know, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” Scripture tells us. And I know that’s true. And I’m glad you kind of landed us there, Erick, because I know a lot of dads who they want to be better dads and what might be standing in the way between here and becoming the next godly dad version 2.0 that you want to be dad, is just an ounce of feedback.

You may just need an ounce, not 10 pounds, although you might get it, but you may need an ounce of feedback to help you. And I think about, I’ve told my boys this, and we’ll kind of end here, even though Erick, for real, I could talk to you all afternoon. Been very rich, very enlivening. I tell my boys all the time, “Do you think Tom Brady still watches game film? Do you think Steph Curry still watches game film.” And I think the answer is yes, they’re going to the Hall of Fame.

These are absolute pros who quite frankly, could coast for the rest of their career and still do great and go to the Hall of Fame. However, the best professionals on earth still watch their own game film. And so dad, I hope what Erick has shared with you about getting feedback from your children or feedback from your spouse, you’ll take that to heart because watching your own game film through the eyes of your kids or your spouse can be super, super beneficial if you’ll let it be.

Erick, Lawson and I have been texting privately back and forth and we’re both going, “This has been a blast. When can we have this guy back on the show? This has been great.”

Lawson Brown: You’re so good, Erick. Thank you very much.

Kent Evans: And this is awesome. Because most of the time Lawson doesn’t even pay attention. He’s not even listening. So today has been shocking. No, I’m just kidding.

Erick Goss: Kent, can I just share one last thing because I think so this is the other thing I think of a lot of parents, dad struggle with, I struggle with it is, “I don’t have time to be a dad. I don’t have time to have a devotion in the morning.” And I’m always struck at John 15:1 and two where Jesus basically says, “If you don’t abide in me, you’re not going to create any fruit. But those who do abide in me, the father’s going to prune.” Which basically means he’s going to take things out of your life to be able to fill it with more blessing and more good stuff.

Just a quick story, I love playing adult soccer. Love it. So it’s one way I stay fit and I just love being out with the guys. It’s one of the few times I get to hang out with testosterone. And so I kept getting injured and I brought it to the Lord and the Lord said, “I want you to stop playing soccer because I want you to spend more time with your girls.” And I was like, “Oh man.”

And my spiritual mentor said that if you go, “Oh man, that means you have a problem.” Because you should always have a point of view of when the Father tells you something it’s to your delight. And I recognize, I got to change my point of view on this. And I would say that stop playing adult soccer for me and pruning, pulling back, has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my family because of the time I’ve spent with my girls.

The second issue is we all think that we’ve got to be productive. And what I would challenge you is are you more productive than the Lord? Because you should be putting your faith in the Lord’s productivity in your life, not your productivity. And so I just encourage people. God wants you to have rich relationships with your kids and with your wife. And he wants you to have joy and gladness at home. Trust him for that, act out in faith in that, and my hunch is you’ll be surprised at the blessing that shows up at. All that stuff you’re worried about, God’s going to solve for you.

Lawson Brown: Love it.

Kent Evans: I’ll make you a deal, Erick. What we’re going to do is I’m going to take that phrase, “I don’t have time to be a dad.” And then we’re going to start the next podcast with that phrase because man, if you want to get me up on a soapbox, let’s have that conversation.

Wow. This has been so rich and I know dads have been blessed by it. Erick, thanks a ton for your time. You’ve made a huge investment in thousands and thousands of dads by virtue of this podcast. And we are so grateful to have you on today’s show. Thanks a lot, buddy.

Erick Goss: Hey, thanks so much. I love what you guys do.

Kent Evans: Hey dad, thank you for listening to today’s show. If you found this episode helpful, remember you can get all the content and show notes at manhoodjourney.org/podcast. And if you really liked it, please consider doing three things. Number one, share this podcast with someone. You can hit the share button in your app, wherever you listen to podcast or just call a person up and tell them to listen in. Number two, subscribe to this podcast so you get episodes automatically. That helps us as well to help dads find the show. You can do that through your favorite listening app, whatever that is. And finally review this podcast, leave us a review, good or bad, wherever you listen. Those reviews also help other dads find the show. You can always learn more about what we’re up to at manhoodjourney.org or fatheronpurpose.org. We will see you next week.

Outro: You’ve been dozing off to the Father on Purpose podcast, featuring Kent Evans and Lawson Brown. Now wake up, head over to fatheronpurpose.org. For more tools that can help you be a godly, intentional, and not completely horrible dad. Remember you are not a father on accident. So go be a father on purpose.