Family:Team Us

So Dave, you were the chaplain for the Detroit Lions for over 30 years. How many head coaches did you go through? Well, when you lose football games and you don't win seasons, you get new head coaches.

So I went through, I think, 12. Okay, so based on that, how important is it to have a head coach that can really lead the team well? Oh, I mean, it's critical. In fact, I saw it happen so many times, I could tell you when the coach lost the locker room.

And sure enough, when the season ended, he was fired, they got a new guy, and it lasted two or three years. And again, I saw that 12 different times. And so we're bringing this up. Yeah, so what's that have to do with family? 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 or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. As we think of ourselves as parents, as moms and dads, do you think that we are the coaches of our team? Yeah, we're the head coaches. We really are, and we can lose a family too, you know, if we don't do it well. And so I know we're not the only ones that think that.

We have Jefferson Becky in the studio today. Welcome back to Family Life Today. Thank you.

It's fun to be back. Yeah, and you know, your new book, Take Back Your Family, you talk quite a bit about this. And I know many people know you because you wrote originally the book Jesus Over Religion, which became a New York Times bestseller. We read it. Everybody's read it.

You know, Jefferson, what's it like to have the whole world read your book? It's weird, especially when you're 22 years old. That's how old you were.

And then none have done as good as that one, so that's even double as weird. It's all downhill from here. Well, this one, Take Back Your Family, obviously now you're writing as a husband, as a dad. You've got three kids. You've got one of them in the studio with us. Yeah, Kinsley's back there.

She can't hear you because she's got her headphones on and she's Netflixing. She's been great to have with us though. It's fun. I always try to bring one kid on a special trip when I'm working and it's fun. So you're speaking, you're an author, but you're super passionate about families. What we talked about last episode, some of the bigger vision stuff, but I think what you guys are, I loved where you led on this next one with coaches and teams. So that's one of our core things we care about. We believe that God designed families to be strong teams, right? Teams that can actually go on mission for him in his world to do the garden mandate of reigning and ruling and subduing and all of these things in the model that Jesus teaches us, by the way, which isn't just like with overt power, but actually sacrifice, love, et cetera, just in the same way that Jesus reigns and rules. Okay, back up one second, because we did hit it a little bit in a previous session about reigning and ruling, but give us a 30,000 foot, two minute maybe, and I know it's hard to do this, but give us a picture of God's design for the family.

What do you mean by that? So when you go back to Genesis, where we get all these original concepts of creation, of sin, of sexuality, of family, of marriage, all these different types of things, you see, yeah, that God's original design for family was to be like, he created something to bring his reflection, divine goodness. That's what it means to be an image bearer, essentially, too, by the way. And his goodness and his blessing out into the world. And he didn't create robots. He didn't create a board of directors. He created a male and a female, right? Which is very interesting. Yeah, he didn't create businesses to do that. No, exactly.

Which they can, but that's not, that wasn't his kind of, you know, step one or intent one. And what he did is he created a family. Like, that was his first idea.

God was like, how do I want to bring my goodness and blessing into the world? I'm going to create, you know, it's the long phrase we use, but a multi-generational family team on mission. And all of those phrases, multi-generational, comes from the be fruitful and multiply. Like, you can't do this project unless you have a bunch of kids, and those kids have to have a bunch of kids. And then team, right? Multi-generational family teams.

Teams celebrate differences. So I was just speaking at a young adult thing a couple days ago. You know, one of my points was the Western concept of dating, you want a clone, right? You want someone who looks like you, talks like you, and acts like you because it doesn't hurt. It doesn't stretch you.

It's not difficult, right? But a team is the exact opposite. A team you actually wish to have people who are not like you, right?

I need someone who can fill in the gaps that I can't. They're playing different positions. Exactly.

100 percent. I mean, obviously, you know, I walk around an NFL locker room and everybody looks different. You got linebacker, you got quarterback, exactly.

Big guys, little guys, fast guys, slow guys, yeah. So that they can be a really good team. Right. And so then that's the team part. And then on mission would be, you know, God says to go be fruitful and multiply, make beauty out of chaos, you know what I mean?

Reign and rules, you know, subdue, all those different types of things. And so that's the original blueprint for family. Now, obviously, it's also not a coincidence that the first place that Satan wanted to enter was in a family, in a marriage. The very first place he attacked and the very first place that the curse fell was through a marriage and a family.

So that drama has been playing out ever since. I do believe God has a vision for strong family teams. And two, by the way, I think a lot of us, we hear that and we think, oh, it must be the two parents and the two kids and a, you know, and a nice dog or whatever. And it's like, to me, the thing that's strong and powerful about the family team concept is it's actually not the Western nuclear family concept. To be a team just means to be a team. So some teams are going to have one coach. Some teams are going to have two coaches. Some teams are going to have a huge team. Some teams are going to have a very small team. Some teams are going to go through difficulty.

Some teams are going to have trades. I don't know what, you know what I mean? Like all these different types of things. And I actually like the analogy because it lets everyone fit. Do you know what I mean? When I think the nuclear ideal, this picture we have of getting the two parents, two kids and a dog, a lot of parents on the families feel weighed down by shame with that because they're like, I can't be that or I don't look like that or I've lost my chance or whatever. When this concept of, again, a team and a family team, everyone fits. And even on top of that, single people fit, right? So the other day, someone was saying like, oh, you talk all about, you know, all this family stuff. Well, what about a single people? I'm like, well, in this model, do you have a last name?

They said yes. Then you're on a family team because like we don't define it again by this 1950s leave it to Beaver honey, I'm home thing. The scriptural model is like links in a chain.

So it's a web and you are connected to a web, whether you're single, whether you're married, et cetera. So now I'm getting on tangents and rants, but that's essentially what I would talk about and what kind of that gets to. Yeah. And when you start talking about that, one of the first thoughts I had was that helps me or any husband, any mom, dad realize our role is significant to God's plan. Yeah.

A hundred percent. It's like, oh, I just thought we're just this little, no, no, no. God designed the family to have a major impact. You say multi-generational mission to be outward focused to impact the world.

Yeah. The analogy I use in the book, which I think is helpful for some people, and of course, like analogies and metaphors, it breaks down at some point. So don't, don't poke it too hard is the way I say it is I think God created parents to be coaches. A lot of times in the West, we default to babysitters, right?

So you think about the values in there, right? So a babysitter is very successful and you will pay them lots of money if they can do one, pretty much one thing. Keep your kids safe and alive, keep your kids safe and alive. Okay. And fed and entertained are maybe like two and three.

Okay. Now no one would put any of those values under a coach's job description, right? I need to keep this player entertained, right?

And fed and like safe. Well, sure you need to keep them safe, but that certainly isn't the reason people coach. Now it's almost the opposite, right? I would even say sometimes coaches are trying to stretch players to a borderline, if not unsafe, but do you know what I mean? Just like a nudging of like the way I put it in the book is like I had coaches growing up because I played baseball my whole life of like they believed in me more than I did. So they had a vision of me that was farther than I could ever even picture. And so they would push me there because they knew, like not because they didn't like me or didn't want me to be safe, but actually they had a better, bigger vision for me.

And then, and then once you finally reach that, it's this crazy epiphany of like, oh, this box gets checked in your brain. It's like, oh man, they, they knew that they saw that they took me there and I didn't agree with it six months ago. That's what it means again to be a coach. So coaches are primarily about future when babysitters are more about safety, coaches are primarily about the mission. Coaches are saying like, here's, we have a practice schedule. Here's our, here's what games look like. Here's where the championship is. Those, by the way, are all very great metaphors for a family. What is your championship? What's your mission?

What do practices look like? What's the point of you guys existing? But it's again, a babysitter has none of that. Another analogy too I don't like in the West is when we call families the nest. I mean like kids are flying the nest or we're empty nesters, whatever.

That's a horrible analogy for family, right? Little birds start to grow up, they feed them a little bit. Again, they keep them entertained. And then what do they do?

They essentially kind of kick them off the ledge and say, well, figure it out. And they never come back to the nest. Yeah, they never come back. Exactly. They never come back and some of them die because they fall off and they can't fly. But that's just like a horrible analogy for the family, right?

I think it should be more like, yes, you should go out. But again, it's this reigning and ruling and stewarding to then also then kind of create a web, this multigenerational web of impact, of mission, of all these different types of things. And I use a bunch of examples in the book of families who are doing this well. It's difficult and it takes like decades. That's the thing, too, I try to tell people.

This is not like, do this wisdom and your life will be better in five minutes. It's like I use the Rothschild example, I think, in the book, but it actually got cut. So it's not in there. But the Rothschilds are one of the most wealthiest families in human history. Their legacy money. But it all started basically of them getting into banking around the 17 and 1800s. Now, the dad was lower to middle class his entire life. Basically, he was kind of like a pauper in the King's family and he was like a bookkeeper, but never like scraping by his whole life. But he had a vision from when he was young. And it's written that like our son, we will be a banking dynasty and we will have children and banks all across the world. And it's like everyone laughed at him because it never looked like that.

Right. It's just this again, he's just this lower, lower socioeconomic class, kind of like grinding it away. And for like 20, 30 years, that was his vision. And then he has all these kids and he's starting to train them. Still no fruit, no fruit, no fruit.

And then he basically dies and still barely any fruit. And then within a couple more years after his death, he had five children. He had way more children. Five of them specifically went to five different regions of the entire world. They basically beat all the companies to being the first regional bank. It was because all banks were local until then. They were the first people to be global, like the first global bank, even before companies. And it was this family. And that's what his dad did. He was like, hey, we have a lot of players on this team. And so here's a strategic play. The strategic play is you go on this continent, you go on this continent, you go on this continent, and you guys will be able to communicate because you guys like each other and love each other.

You're going to be able to trade and do all these different types of things. And then that literally that one generation in, they were the wealthiest. They impacted almost every single war.

They were the loan and the books for almost every single war for about 100 years. It's a crazy story. Right. It was a father with a vision that I'm very particular in saying this to a father of the vision that barely saw any fruit even while he was alive. But because his vision was bigger than him. So I just wish more families had longer, bigger visions, visions that outlast them, that should be passed when they die.

And I think it's a cool metaphor. Like, what if we did that spiritually? Right. What if we were spiritually trying to create these dynasties of like mission and love for the Lord? We all want that. We all long for it.

We just don't know how to do it. And you have something called your scouting report. Yeah.

The Bethke scouting report. Well, yeah, this is just a fun little tool. So, again, you can lean into the team stuff so far because it's like such a perfect metaphor. Right. There's only really two genres of our marketplace that do teams very well. And the family doesn't, like we talked about last episode, because we've been turned consumer oriented since the Industrial Revolution. But there's still two places that do it really well, and it's business and it's sports. Either of those, if you're consumer oriented, you die. The team will go under.

The business will go under. It's like you have to be mission focused or else it won't work. And so, yeah, so I use a lot of sports analogies. And one that I did there is I realized when I was playing college baseball, we always filled out these things called scouting reports on the other team. Where it was like, you know, this person throws this many miles per hour. He has a good slider.

He tends to do this in these pressure situations, et cetera. It's just like really knowing the other person. So, I thought that was a fun thing to do for our own team. And so, it's a fun little way to encourage families where I just say, hey, can you fill out a scouting report on your kids?

And we have it on our site, familyteams.com. But it's like, what do they love? What do they not love? What are maybe some proclivities of like sin or what do you feel like the lie is they're most tempted? Like that's a big one I think parents need to know is with that kid, what is the false narrative and lie at a macro level that they are most susceptible to? I think every kid has like one or two.

Absolutely. You know, that just like this lie creeps in their head, gets in their brain, and Satan uses it. And so, what's the truth to that lie? And you can go on, you know, what do they like, what they don't like, et cetera. Like the whole family comes alive when you start writing that stuff down and communicating it. You know who else needs that?

It's parents. Yes. Because I'm thinking of a husband who feels like I'm not a good member of the team. Yeah. I don't have what it takes. Yep. My background is so messed up. Totally. I'm so flawed. I'm so wounded.

I have nothing. He needs a wife that'll tell him how great he is. So yeah, for a spouse to say, here's what you're adding to the team. Totally. You may not see it, but I see it. And I see the kids like totally attached to you. Well, let's talk about this.

You've got, you know, championship teams, great teams, have great coaches who understand the roles of their players. Yeah. And you've been talking about, okay, understanding your family members, scouting for it. Yep.

What about a family that is blended? Yeah. You know, and so we got Ron Deal joining us. Yes. And this is, he's the president of Family Life blended. That's all Ron thinks about.

Yes. He's a gift to the world to blend. So I know he's listening to this conversation going, okay, it's a little different when you have one of your head coaches die. And so Ron, welcome to Family Life. And let's talk about what this means for a blended family. Hey, it's good to be back with you guys again.

Yeah, I appreciate you invited me in. This is a, it's a really important and interesting conversation for us to have because there are lots of people who have family structures that are wide and vary. Single parent families, blended families, adoptive families, multi-generational families living under one household. You know, I think one of the important things that I'm hearing embedded in what Jefferson's saying, and I hope I don't get this wrong.

So feel free to correct me if I am. But something I've been talking about for years is that, you know, sometimes we get so focused on structure that the message we inadvertently give to people who don't look like that nuclear family of the 50s and 60s is that somehow you're messed up and wrong and bad because you don't have this structure, two parents, 2.2 kids living in the home. What I hear embedded in what you're saying is the qualities and attributes that are functional, that make up health are things that are true of every family structure. I mean, I think that's biblically very important for us to stop and think about. All the things that Jesus talks about that we need to do and who we need to be as people has nothing to do with the structure of your home.

It has to do with who you are, how you live, and how you invite other people in to that process besides you. And when you're talking about a family team, think about a team that is highly functional. People know their roles. People play their part. They do what they do. They're getting better at their role and their place in the home. It doesn't really matter whether you have 40 players on the team or 30 players on the football team with a bunch of people sitting on the sideline.

What matters is that people are doing their part. Mm-hmm. Bron, what happens, though, when you're blending a family and you now have these new stepkids and you're excited about your new team, but your stepkids are thinking, I don't want to be a part of this team because I was on a team before that I'm still wanting to be on that old team. Mm-hmm. But you and Mom wrecked it. Yeah.

There's definitely difficulties trying to get to definitions of relationships. Thinking back to the Detroit Lions, every time you got a new head coach, somebody was bound to say, you know, I still like the old coach. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Yeah. But then there's somebody else on the team going, no, no, no, we need some fresh perspective. This person is going to be great. Well, okay, so we have some people that are loyal to the head coach and some people that are not. The head coach is trying to find his way.

He's trying to navigate in. You know, as you guys were talking, I was thinking, you know, step parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, they're sort of like assistant coaches. Mm-hmm. There's still a dad out there. There's still a mom out there somewhere.

Yeah, such a great metaphor for it. But now somebody else is stepping in and coming alongside, not replacing, not firing, not moving that other person out of the child's heart, but now I'm an additional person. And I think if a step parent came in with that mentality, that would be an advantage because they would be thinking, I'm here to assist. Yeah, you'd welcome it. Exactly.

I'm here to come alongside. I'm here to just help teach you something that you don't already know. But I'm not trying to be the head coach. And so it's that diplomatic, wise approach that allows for the relationship to develop and for adult and child to begin to figure one another out.

And over time, those relationships are going to grow and evolve. Yeah, and I think, you know, as you're talking, Ron, in a blended family and even in a not blended family, you have that assistant head coaches arguing, disagreeing. I'll never forget one year, you won't believe this. We started out in Detroit 6-0. Nobody in the room can believe this. We were 6-0. That's what we wouldn't believe right there. You won some games.

You can look it up. I think it was 2007. We were 6-0.

Don't you believe this? We won a game. I think we're on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Like, look at the Detroit Lions. Nobody knows this on the outside. Because it just imploded. There was an implosion with the coaches.

Yes, and that kills everything. It wasn't the players. We had an offensive line coach say, we're not running the ball enough. The offensive coordinator said, we're winning ball games, blah, blah, blah. Guess what we ended up? 7-9.

Wow. 6-0. We won one more game.

We lost all these games. That can happen in a family. 100 percent.

Right? Talk about that a little bit. Because if you're saying a family is like a team, it's got to be a winning team.

How do we keep from imploding? That's a good question. I don't know if I could answer that.

It would be for all of you guys with more age and more wisdom. The only thing that shot to my head when Ron was talking, you guys were talking, is, yeah, I love the team metaphor here because it's endless. It's endless on how valuable you can extract. It's one-to-one. It really is one-to-one. It's what's valuable for a team here with communication, with learning roles, and even what you talked about on the bad side with coaches disagreeing, and it breeds conflict and toxicity. But one little tip that I would say, too, that I think is helpful is there's actually a lot of research to back this with sports teams. It's actually real, not just metaphor, where basically the better the head coach and a captain's relationship is, the better the entire team is and the more successful they are.

That's another little side nugget, too, that I talk about, too. Basically, as the oldest goes, everyone goes, generally, or at least you have a very uphill battle if the oldest goes and you want to bring everyone back in. I think sometimes we think coach, and so we think command or whatever, when really it's about capturing the heart. It's about capturing the relationship. You know those relationships you've seen on sports teams where the coach and the captain almost have a best friend feel, even though it's a mentor, mentee. There's a connection there. So I just really tell parents, encourage, lean into that as much as possible into capturing the oldest heart. It's crazy how it's a little bit of almost an incredible strategy. Let's talk practicality. How do we do this?

If our family has just been going with the culture, we're just flying, we're going fast, we feel like everybody's going a different direction, what are the practical steps we can take to bring our family back in? I played sports my whole life. For me, I remember one toxic team I was on where there was division, no one was feeling it, whatever. The coach just pushed a hard eject button. I can't remember exactly what he did, but it was basically just like, everything stops and we're going to solve this. We're not going to try to keep going. We're not going to try to just let this bleed out. I think we even went on some retreat.

I think families, I wish they earlier, earlier in the journey would be like all hands on deck. Put the brakes on. All hands on deck, the relational part needs to be solved.

Hit the pause button. I just think that's huge. Ron, what would you say? I like that.

What I would just add is, going back to Ann's question, when things are hard, you go to the head coach. That's sort of the ultimate, let's all get on our knees, let's all get humble about who we are. The change is going to start with me. Sometimes it's easy to say, well, we got these people over here and these groups over here.

These players are not doing their part. It always starts with me. I always do my gut check. I look in the mirror. I go to the Lord.

I say, who am I supposed to be? And I go to work on that. That's where it starts. Now, I think if you get a bunch of coaches and players who do that, all of a sudden it's a softer environment to look at each other and go, now we got to deal with what's hard between us and forgiveness gets more easy. Mercy just sort of shows up over the situation. So there's always that humbling down process that starts the change in the right direction. It doesn't mean it's easy at that point, but at least we're moving in the right direction. That's good.

That's a good word. I'm thinking this, and again, you can take the analogy way too far, but let's do it because we're doing the sports analogy. I've often watched, even when I played, but especially in the NFL watching Detroit Lions, there would be times where the players would call players only meeting and it's when everything's falling apart. We're losing, losing, losing. We need to get the coaches out of the room. We need to talk.

And I remember one year, my son was a Detroit Lion. He's playing on the team and they had a players only meeting and all of us that aren't allowed in there are thinking, what'd they talk about? So I had a son in there, psycho Cody, what'd you guys talk about?

And he goes, dad, it was the worst meeting ever. Nobody led. Nobody stood up. It was sort of like, what do you guys want to say? Nobody really said anything. It was a waste of time. But here's the thing.

Tell me if I'm right or wrong. When the coaches called a meeting, like you were saying Jefferson, things need to happen. There's a pause button. We say, we need to get on our knees. We need to do this. Something great happened when the coach was a part of it and said, okay, maybe I'm missing something, but there's something wrong in this team. Let's talk. The coach, and of course we're talking, the parents are a part of the meeting and they're willing to be, like Ron said, be humble enough to say, are we doing something wrong? Are we leading in the wrong direction?

Let's talk. That's when something great can happen in the family. Am I right? So the parents are a part of that players only meeting, kids only meeting. But I love what you said, Ron, but the parents have gone before the father first and they've asked for his wisdom, his direction and the Holy Spirit to lead us.

And they lead the family there. Yeah. That's a great thing.

I was going to say, yeah, when, when parents lead in repentance, I think it's so powerful and that it's compelling. That's like the best word for it. Yeah. My final thought would be there might need to be a meeting tonight in some homes.

Yeah, totally. I mean, in a sense, there's gotta be a listener saying, we're at a crisis point and nobody's doing anything. And if I'm the head coach or we're the head coaches, it's a time for a come to Jesus time for me and for us, and it could change the trajectory and the legacy of the family. And in our family community too, that we have, we've, we've seen that. And one thing we tell people is if there is a lot of tension or anxiety or whatever on this, like call a team meeting, right? Like that. But also set a ground rule of like, nothing is off limits, like set that, set that tone of like, you get one, if you say this tomorrow, you're grounded, but like you just, you gotta, I think sometimes when they're, when it's at that place, if you're not letting the full honesty bear, if you're not letting the full, you know, and if you're a parent, I think just preparing your heart beforehand and just like, just take it, just listen, just take it.

Because most of us parents know if you're prepared for that mental state, you can take it. It's just not when your reactionary, you don't let it breathe, let them say what they want to say. And I think it can be really compelling. We used to call that the last 2%. In other words, we'd have a meeting, everybody say everything, and then right before you close the door, you go, is there a last 2% you held back? And usually there is, like I was totally honest, but not completely.

And that last 2% often got you to a place you were never going to get. Listening to Dave and Ann Wilson talk with Jefferson Bethke about healthy family communication, I'm thinking about how our families really are the home team. And when we get together, we need to have huddles and we need to have locker room meetings. And sometimes we need to just get heart to heart with one another. We need to keep the lines of communication open, but we need to recognize in the midst of all of this, that we're on the same team. We're supporting one another. We love one another. We're for one another. We've got each other's back in that environment where everybody feels secure and safe.

There can be real strength and real health and real hope. Jefferson Bethke has written a book that addresses that very issue and helps families build a strong home team. It's called Take Back Your Family. It's a book we've got in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can go online to order your copy of the book, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the title of the book is Take Back Your Family by Jefferson Bethke. Order online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today, ask for your copy of the book, Take Back Your Family by Jefferson Bethke. We recognize here at Family Life that it's hard for families to keep the home team strong.

There are a lot of factors working against us in this culture that are trying to push us apart rather than bring us together. Your family has probably experienced some significant challenges in the last year. And at Family Life, we're here to help. We're here to provide practical, biblical help and hope for whatever the challenges you're facing in your family are. I want to say thank you to those of you who are not just listeners to Family Life today, but those of you who are the shareholders, the supporters of this ministry. You're the investors who make this ministry possible for yourself and for others in your community and all around the world. Thank you for your investment in the ministry of Family Life. The month of December is a significant month for us here. What happens over the next few weeks will determine what ministry we're able to do in 2022 and beyond.

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You can donate online at familylifetoday.com or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to make a year in donation. When you do, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of Dane Ortlund's new devotional from the book of Psalms called In the Lord I Take Refuge, 150 devotions from Psalms. That book is our gift to you as a way of saying thank you for your ongoing support of this ministry. We are grateful for you and look forward to hearing from you here at year end. And we hope you can join us again tomorrow when we're going to talk about how important it is for families to have a family mission and how important it is for families to recognize they have a common enemy.

Everybody in the family, there's an enemy who wants to take you out. Jefferson Bethke is here again tomorrow. We hope you can be here as well. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.