You know, I've realized I'm kind of picky when it comes to Bible translations. Yeah, you are, because you're the guy that underlines half the page and then argues with the footnotes. And I'm a good arguer. But, you know, I care about two things, faithfulness to the original text and just being able to read it without feeling like I'm reading a dictionary. Which is why we're grateful for the support of the Christian Standard Bible.
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after we shared the news and then there were tears. And just the discernment to be silent in the moment and thinking about all the times where Jesus was in a pressure cooker situation and he remained silent. And we can be like Jesus sometimes in those moments to just let the moment be. And let God work through the other people in the room, including our own kids who are early in their process of trusting Christ. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most.
I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.
Well, we have the new president of family life back with us in this. He's not that new now. He's nine months in. Yeah, but he has never been with us on Family Life today. First time ever.
Luke and Christina Mittendorf. And if you've ever had a big change happen or maybe a big decision that you've had. If you haven't, you're going to have one. But I think this episode is going to be really helpful just to help you think: how do I make this decision and discern God's voice? Yeah.
When you got married, you came right on staff? We did. We were on staff with the campus ministry, the small school in Minnesota for three years. And then God called us to athletes in action for the last 12 years at the University of Minnesota, which is our alma mater. And we were living the dream.
We thought we would live in Minneapolis our whole life. We had family in town. Friends in town, our kids were thriving. We loved everything. Yeah, it's where we went to school.
It's where I proposed to her. It's where our kids were born. It's where we saw many people. come to Christ and students and Neighbors in our home. And then we got a call.
And then the phone rings.
So, what happened? You know, you get a call and what? We got a call from someone who had nominated us for this open position in a ministry called Family Life. And initially, I kind of chuckled under my breath as I heard this person sharing: you know, this is why we could see you being a great fit. The ministry you guys are leading with students who have graduated and who are now newly married.
They're having kids. This is just a part of who you are, even though you've been serving with a different ministry. You should really consider. Interviewing, and I was sort of chuckling because of what Christina said. We're so happy, we're content.
And we don't want this. And yet, over time, God really started to shift our hearts and reveal: I've been preparing you for this all along.
Okay. You just need to trust me. And it wasn't even that we didn't want it, it was also we just kind of felt like. Us? Like we have not written a book on parenting.
We don't have kids out of the house and grown and we're looking back at life with wisdom to share. Like we are in the trenches of marriage and parenthood. Surely you want someone older and more experienced than us. And we kept saying that throughout the process and they're like, what we want is you. And we said, all we have to offer is we can come alongside people and say, you're struggling, me too.
Let's look at Jesus and walk towards him together. That's what we have to offer and bring. And apparently that's what family life wants in this season. And we can do that. We can do that.
So, Christina, when Luke comes to you and you're so satisfied with your life, like everything's going great. And he says this. What are you thinking? I thought this isn't going to go anywhere. Like, this is just out of that field that we thought those moments where you're like, I think I need to pay attention to this, because this is not the story we're writing for our life, but.
Maybe this is God. I don't know.
So we will pray. We will commit to praying about this. And as we, I mean, it wasn't a fast process. This was months of prayer and God loosening that tight control I had on our family lives in Minneapolis. We go to this school.
We do life with these people. And God just started to open our hands to. But what if there's more? What if I have more for you and your story? And we began to see that our trajectory really was pointing us towards this family ministry.
That though we were working day in and day out with college athletes, those athletes graduate and they get married and they have kids. And we've done it long enough that we've seen that happen a couple of times through. And Luke would officiate those weddings. We would do the premarital counseling. They would come back and say, Okay, I've got toddlers and babies and I'm pulling my hair out.
What do I do? I'm like, I only have a few years ahead of you, but I'll give you what I can. And so we started to see how our ministry really was. Family-centric and we've always believed really strongly in doing ministry out of our home and having our kids be a part of that and bringing the athletes to our house, not just going to them on campus, but integrating those two worlds. And so we just started to see, okay, this might not be as far-fetched as we initially thought.
We didn't know many people who serve full-time with family life on staff, but we had a number of really positive moments with the ministry as we were married. We've been to two weekend term members that really were impactful in our marriage as we started to have kids. Those were really important moments for us. We've read through a number of the resources in our married life: the resources about biblical manhood, resources about marriage, and even family life today has been meaningful to us. I remember being in the car driving around our first year of marriage and listening to Family Life Today on the radio for you as well when you drive to Bible studies.
So there's moments along the way where, as we look back, We can tell God had been preparing us and giving us what we need, but certainly in a place and a posture of we need him more than ever. We're fully dependent on you, Jesus, for this next step. And we trust you now. How did you get to the place where you were sure of this call? Because this is.
God's call for us. Because our listeners are like, How do I know God's will? I guide, how do I make a decision and know this is what God wanted? That was what we were saying. We asked a lot of people.
I feel like we had months of information and wisdom and input and prayer. And yet, we were, it's just like to make that jump and cross that line. It's like for us, the cost was so high, right? This wasn't like take the role and stay where you are. This was take the role and uproot your entire life and kids and move to this new place.
And so we were really slow to make that decision. And in the end, we went to our pastor and basically said what you just said: like, how do I discern God's voice? Here's all the information. We kind of verbally violate dozens, hundreds of students over the years to do that same question because they're thinking about career. Yeah.
Do I end my sport? All these things. We've led Bible studies on that, but it's different when you're in it. Like, how do you? We do this again.
This is really big. And of course, he didn't have, you know, a prescriptive answer necessarily, but what he did say was: through the Bible, we see when God calls people, there is a clear external call and an internal call. The external call, in your case, seems to be very clear. All the signs are pointing towards this is where you're going, but we are trying to now discern the internal call. Is God actually asking Luke and Christina to say yes to this?
And he shared part of his own story in a moment where he was discerning a decision. And God said to him in a moment of prayer, What if you could have more of me if you said yes to this thing that he did not want to say yes to you in his flesh? And when he said those words, I felt something shift in me internally of when my perspective is not. My comfort, my home, my friends, my family, all these things that are good. Like, those are good desires that God wants to satisfy.
But as a believer, more than that, I need to want Jesus. And if more of Jesus is promised when I get out of my comfort in that mushy middle place and I have to depend on him because. We don't yet have friends here. We don't know what school our kids will go to. We don't know where we're going to live in this new city.
All these things that are question marks, that's where we need God, where we are dependent on Him. When I framed it that way, it was like. The answer was just obvious all of a sudden. It was like, this is more of God.
Okay, that's what we'll step into. Was the same for you, Luke? It took me a little bit of time after that conversation. And I think it was the next week when we had been offered the role.
So that there were some signs towards the external call, and then it came. And I just took some time in solitude, fasting, prayer. It wasn't long, but even just a day focused towards Lord, what are what are you saying? And it what for me, what happened was connecting with more of God. And seeing that he's been leading us in this direction.
And to go the other way is disobedient to him. And I still had a choice, he gave me the choice to make. But I'm choosing him. I'm choosing his call and the unknowns of what that might mean in the next year. Yeah, you know, in some ways, I, you know, I'm listening to your story and I think the, you know, Peter and the boat, the disciples in the boat.
You know, I I don't know if you've ever read John Ortburke's book, If You Wanna Walk on Water, You Gotta Get Out of the Boat. That was a. A book that changed me because it's like so often the mushy middle's the boat. It's comfortable. I feel you got to take that step.
So that's the step you took. You know, and I love what John said in the book. He says, you know, there's boat potatoes and there's water walkers. You know, are you a boat potato? Meaning, I'm going to hold on to my boat because it's comfortable and I know what the salary is and I know what the 401k is and I know what my future looks like and my kids will be okay in this school and this man.
And it's like, no, Jesus is over here. And he's saying, come. And it's scary. And you've just done that. How are you feeling?
There are days where it is the exhilarating, like, oh, we're following Jesus. I know that in my gut for sure. And then there are days where I lose sight of that and you feel that you're down and now I'm treading water because my eyes are not on Jesus. They're on all that is still not where I want it to be nine months in or all that's still unsure or looking back on what was and what we don't have.
So it's Up and down. It's been up and down. Honestly, we were in an airport with our kids just a few days ago, flying back to Orlando. and our gate, you know, the sign said Orlando. The gate next to us said Minneapolis.
Wow. And one of our kids kind of whispered in my ear, I want to get on that plane. To Minneapolis. Really? I don't want to go.
And honestly, part of me felt like I kind of agree with you because that's the bushy middle. That's the comfort zone. We have family there. We know what it'll look like. And it was the obedient path isn't a one-time thing.
It's the daily moments. It's that moment to say, and I acknowledge with her, I do feel that too. I would like to get on that plane, but we're going to go together and I'm going to be here with you. We're going to be together as a family. God has good things for us.
I would say. Probably the top three things that has changed our marriage the most is when we have led a small group, not just being in a small group, like that's amazing. But when we have led a small group, our marriage changed more than anything else. I mean, when anytime you have couples in your home or you're in their home talking about marriage, your marriage is going to get better. And, you know, the thing we always want, if we're thinking, I'm going to have couples in, I want to help them is I need help.
helping them.
So guess what? That's what we're about. Family Life has tools to help you lead a small group. We call it our small group kits and our workbooks. They are plug and play and they are on sale right now, 25% off through the end of the month.
And you can go to familylifetoday.com and get any one of the studies that you'd like to lead. And again, it's plug and play. We'll help you change the world. And who would have thought that being on mission together is one of the things that makes our marriages better? You know who thought of that?
God thought of that. It just happens. It's the gospel.
Okay. Again, FamilyLifetoday.com. Take us back to the conversation with your kids because I know that as listeners with kids. Maybe you feel this call and your kids are like, what? How did you serve that up and how did you talk about it with them?
I had very little experience as a kid thinking about moving or having those type of conversations with my family. We've had that as a couple processing decisions, but Christina actually had firsthand experience from when she had to move as a kid that she reflected back on. Right between the age of our kids currently when my parents said we're moving from Washington State to Wisconsin, which might as well have been another country to me. I didn't know where it was on a map. It seems like a different country.
I just knew cows were there and I didn't want anything to do with that. And so that was honestly, that was a traumatic move for me. I was entering middle school. I was so angry for a really long time and angry at my mom and dad, angry at the circumstances. I believed in my sixth grade mind that if I was miserable and angry enough, my parents would change their mind.
They'd be like, oh, we're so sorry.
Sorry, redo. We'll go back. That didn't happen. And so I, when this came about, and our kids are this age, I just had this moment with God: what are you asking me to do? Like, there's no way with my story that I would do that to my children.
And they are that, like, just all it was too much. It's all like too much to handle. And yet, God walked me through that and helped me see. Because of that, I've actually equipped you to parent them through this moment where you experienced deep pain. And I didn't yet know the Lord at that age.
And I've equipped you with what you need to do this a different way. And so we let our kids in on the process.
Somewhat early on, they knew this was happening. They knew he was flying to interviews. They knew if when he would make it to the next round, it was an open conversation we had with them because we didn't want to spring it on them. And yet, I don't think they believed that this was ever going to happen.
So the moment we sat them down was. It was really hard. What did it sound like? Actually it was pretty silent. After we shared the news and then there were tears.
And just The discernment to be silent in the moment and thinking about all the times where Jesus was in a pressure cooker situation and he remained silent. And we can be like Jesus sometimes in those moments to just let the moment be and let God work through the other people in the room, including our own kids who are early in their process of trusting Christ. But we knew this was a decision God had led us to. We're going as a family, but God will have something uniquely for each of our kids. And it may not be in the same timeline.
This is a daily walking it out of obedience. I think the temptation as parents is to. To fix it, right? Or to be like, we're going to be okay. God has us, like to say those platitudes and kind of put a band-aid on it.
And instead, we tried to be really intentional to give them space to feel whatever they were feeling and even to let them see, I feel that too. We are making the decision to say yes to what God is asking us to do. And at the same time, The cost is really high, and I don't like that. And so we wept with them. And not just in that moment, in the months to come, as the waves of grief hit, as we experience the lasts of things.
And it has continued in our move as we've grieved what we don't yet have here that we had there. And it still comes in waves. But to let them see those emotions are not. mean that we're disconnected from God. It actually God meets us in that and he walks with us and he can handle that.
He can handle our pain, our anger, our fear that that's okay. It's given us an opportunity to keep our eyes open in the months after we move for how is God going to show up here? We don't know. Like for kids, it's who are my friends going to be when I move? Who am I going to hang out with in the neighborhood or who is going to be on my sports teams?
And there was a moment in those first couple of weeks where we had put our kids in some camps. Right when we moved, we were unpacking boxes and they got to try to meet some kids at these camps where they didn't initially know anyone. But the next week, the first time we checked out a church, Orlando, we opened the car doors. The first noise we heard was. Brooks and that's our son's name.
And there was a boy. who he had met at that camp, who was calling out his name. And certainly that was a special moment for him that we talked about later. But it was almost as if the Lord was calling out to us, saying, I'm here. I've got you.
It's going to be okay.
So there are. The Lord ministers to us through our kids in these processes too. Debbie, what great wisdom. You've just shared for parents listening, like how to process a hard. Move decision with your kids is you can't control them.
You can't tell them how they should respond. You let them respond and be there. Be what they need. If they need a hug, you're hugging. You know, can you imagine if they came over to hug you and you turned away?
Some parents do that. It's like, no, they need a hug, hug. And guess what? They're turning away and they're mad at you. Let them be.
Let them have that time. Where do you go? I think as parents, I'm just going to say this personally: my kids can become my idol. Oh, yeah. Where I'm making all the decisions of my life theologically, based on what they will feel about it.
But I'm going to tell you, I want my kids sometimes to be in the mushy middle to not feel pain. Just be happy. Just be happy. I want you to be happy. I think that's just a part of who we are as parents, but it's not the best place for them to be.
I want them to be clinging to Jesus just like I am, but it's easy for me to do than to watch them struggle is one of my hardest things. And so for you guys to be obedient to God. What an example to your kids. Like, mom and dad don't even necessarily. At times, feel really happy about this and yet they just want to follow.
I mean, Christina, when you look back on your move as a middle school girl, now do you look at it like, yes, definitely like seeing all that God did provide. But yeah, it doesn't take away that it was hard in the moment. Luke just said to our daughter the other night, hard isn't bad. It's just hard. It's just hard.
And sometimes we think anything hard is bad and it means I shouldn't do it. But that's not true. Hard can just be hard. And God calls us to do hard things often. Often.
Okay, so you're sitting here nine months in. Talk about what you think. Is the future. Yeah, your hopes and dreams. Yeah, you're dreaming about family life.
You know, where are we headed? For those of you who are familiar with family life, What an incredible history. Yeah. Some people have said, Do you know the size of the shoes you're stepping into? And maybe they haven't seen me in person yet.
We're 14. They're speaking to, of course, we've had incredible staff and leadership in Family Life, speakers and authors and creators of content and conferences. And Family Life is a global ministry reaching people all over the world. And here are Luke and Christina. I'm a Midwest boy stepping into this global organization.
And it has been tempting sometimes to think more about who I think others might want me to be instead of who I know God's calling me to be. And a unique part of us in this stage of life is We are Family with kids at home. We are younger leaders. And that's not accidental. By the Lord.
It's actually intentional.
So I'm as I'm Months into the role now, I'm starting to integrate that more into decision making and conversations about where we're headed. That God has prepared us for this moment as we're dependent on Him. And we have a perspective about the next generation of families that need the gospel just as much, if not more, than the previous generation. There's families and marriages we've ministered to over the years. We can bring those experiences into this role and say, hey, What about this new resource we might create?
Or how might we create a new experience? Or what about taking families on missions trips all over the world, just like we've gotten to do?
So we're bringing that in, and we're learning so much through staff who have served here, through our partners who give and pray for the ministry. And even just a few weeks ago, getting to meet some volunteers that help lead events like the weekend to remember. These are dedicated people who have full-time jobs and they give of their weekends so that more marriages would trust in Christ and grow in oneness and then be equipped to impact more people.
So that's what gets us excited is we've had lots of moments and years really of seeing flourishing marriages and flourishing families. We've felt that. It's not always easy. We don't feel that every day. But we know what it does feel like to flourish with the Lord, with each other, and with others.
That's our dream and our vision for more marriages and families in the US and around the world. I really love that we had Luke and Christina Mittendorf, the new president of Family Life, with us today. You're listening to Family Life Today. I'm Dave Wilson. And before we're done today, let me just say this.
We meet a ton of couples who say Family Life helped them when they needed it the most. And that's what being a Family Life Partner is all about, helping others find that same encouragement and tools that you found right here. And we'd love for you to join us.
So click the donate button at familylifetoday.com and become a partner today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported ministry of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most. Yeah.
