"One Kid At A Time"

This is Sam from the Mask on Journey Podcast, and our goal with the podcast has helped you to try to find your way in this difficult world. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. We're still here and we're still encouraged by his words as you will hear this interview I did, this special interview I did with Big Stu on his life, his testimony, and his passion for mentoring and discipling and changing the life of a young person, one kid at a time.

This is a sit-down exclusive Truth Talk Live interview and we're so glad that you all are with us. Did you know that Big Stu has been a part of one of the biggest Christian radio empires in the history of the world? Did you know that Big Stu has a background with moonshine with bootlegging? Did you know? Even as I'm introducing him, he's trying to nix the program. Did you know?

You're ruining my life. Did you know that Big Stu has some pretty rough kids, one of which is interviewing him right now? Did you know that Big Stu is not only my father, but the founder of an incredible, incredible ministry called One Kid at a Time?

He had such a time raising kids in his own house, rearing a family, and had such wild ADD and all these problems with these children in his own home that he decided to start a mentoring program to help everyone with these great principles. Since I failed visibly. So welcome to Truth Talk Live Big Stu. It's good to have you in the house with us today. Good to be here. This is an exciting time. What an introduction.

Well it's a great time and we're going to talk to you about a lot of things, a lot of things that are on your heart. Let's start from the beginning, which is sometimes can be dangerous to do, but let's do it anyway. Tell us where you got your start. You were born in what year? Well I was born in 1936. It was a good year. It was the word, it was the name Roosevelt. Roosevelt, Depression, a lot of things happened there. What was it about your humble beginnings?

Can you talk about that a little bit and what was going on? I was born in Patrick County, Virginia and chiefly because I wanted to be near my mother. All right.

Very good motivation. And you were born in a family, basically a farm, in a farm. A little tobacco farm there in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Ararat, Virginia, Patrick County. And I was named for the most famous person ever to come out of Patrick County, Virginia. In case you can't, you'll never guess his name.

Oh man. Walt Stewart. He worked in the, he was employed by the Confederacy in the Civil War.

How about that? Jeb Stewart. Ah, you got it. And there's actually a town in Patrick County called Stewart, Virginia, is that right?

Yeah, that's right. You got a monument to him and he was, I was born right up the road from where he was born. Well it's great to have you on Truth Talk Live. You fill in a lot for me and you do a great job. Trying to help the ratings, do all I can. The emails, if we just followed the listeners' choice then I would leave and you would just begin the whole thing, full time.

Not a bad idea. We try to censor those. And here we have you just talking about your life and what God is doing in your life, what he's done in your life. You had an interesting entree into broadcasting. Before we go there, tell us about what it was like growing up on the farm. What this existence, you know, a dad who was talented, a musician, a mom who was just an uncompromising Christian. Loved the Lord. Loved the Lord. My earliest memories, my dad reading the Bible before it opened the fireplace.

Reading the herbal story of the Bible and he didn't have a lot of education but he could read the herbal story of the Bible with me sitting on his knee. It seemed like the Bible was omnipresent in our home. And I used to think, boy, this is too much. If I ever get out of here, it's not going to be like this in my home.

We're going to be a little different. And you know what, I married your mother, Nancy, and she memorizes scripture, whole books of the Bible. And we get into an argument and she usually answers me with a Bible verse and end of argument.

Sharper than a church's sword. So that which I feared came upon me. But it was a blessing, okay, and I thank God for her. But you weren't always excited about the things of God until a short little lady showed up in the community and your parents actually helped pay for her and helped build a church.

What was that about? You know, in our community, my dad, his family had some alcohol problems. In fact, alcohol flowed rather freely. They had a big churn of it. It was, well, they called it moonshine whiskey. Anyway, it was corn liquor actually.

And so they had a churn full of it with a dipper there and they drank freely of it. My grandmother was a midwife and that was the only sedative they had. She was something of a doctor and her father had been a doctor.

And so that was the only sedative they had in pulling teeth, you used alcoholic beverage liquor to kill the pain a little bit. Anyway, it was an interesting background. This lady showed up. She was a retired school teacher from Waco, Texas named Susie Sleeper. She started having little cottage prayer meetings in our community. That led to starting a church which she named Unity Presbyterian Church.

It was one mile, exactly one mile down the dirt road from my house. And we walked there every Sunday morning and no lights. We didn't have electricity back then.

We didn't get that until about 41 or something like that, 42. So she was a blessing and founded the church. My grandfather donated the land for the church and then my father built it. He was a carpenter along with his brother.

Across the road, Route 614, my grandfather donated the land for a cemetery. But I didn't particularly want to get involved with that. I basically was involved with church because number one, I had to and number two, I was afraid of going to hell. It was a great, big motivation in my life. Had a Baptist preacher blow through your little Presbyterian church one time. And he scared the dickens out of me. And I went forward and prayed to receive Christ the best I knew how. And God was – and then I got away from the Lord in high school. I didn't want to be associated with the folks at the church. I was a little ashamed of them.

In fact, my folks, I was ashamed to my dishonor, I say that, but until I realized what gems they were later on. And Billy Graham came to the Greensboro Fairgrounds. And my brother, who had a radio station in Mount Airy, got a load of people up. And I was among them and we drove down to the Greensboro Fairgrounds.

I believe it was 1953 in the early spring, cold winter, under the big tent at the fairgrounds. A lot of people around who still remember that. And I went forward there and rededicated my life. Can you talk about your family? You had your mom. You had your dad. Harry.

Harry. And – Wonderful, wonderful guy. And my mother, Lula, was a wonderful woman.

And they loved the Lord. And through the influence of Susie Sleeper, she later went back to Texas. And then one day we – an obituary came. Someone sent us an obituary. She had passed away and had told about her work in the rural area of southwest Virginia. So here you are in a hard home.

You're in a, you know, farming home, no electricity, no running water. And a little lady, not even five feet tall, shows up and changes the destiny of this whole Epperson crowd. Big influence on her.

Yeah, absolutely. How many brothers and sisters did you have? Who were they? I had three brothers, Roy and Arnold or Harry Jr. and Ralph. And then two sisters, Lucy and Mary. I was the baby by seven years. And I was regarded as the underprivileged child by all my brothers and sisters.

And they all helped me enormously. It has its advantages of being the youngest baby, the runt. My older brother Ralph gave us all nicknames and he called me runt. And later on when he saw it, I was going to grow fairly tall. He called me Peter Rabbit.

Peter Rabbit. Yeah. That's right. And so he – and he was a real pioneer for your family. Yes, he was. He was someone that really got – Once they get into radio broadcasting and got a little radio and put the windmill on top of our house and when the windmill would go round and round and charge the battery and we still have that old radio at that old house up there. And he left the farm one day to go to college. Went off to John Brown University. This was a big event and there were some – he almost didn't want to go back to college. And what was it?

What was that little event, that little moment? Well, my dad said to him, listen – he came home and he said, I don't want to go to college anymore. I'm homesick.

I want to stay here and work on the farm. And my dad said, okay, we've got some grubbing we need to do in a new ground, which meant digging up stumps. And so they went over and they worked about three hours and my brother had an epiphany. He said, you know, I think I want to go back to college. And so he went back and did well.

He graduated at the top of his class. He came home and built a little radio station in our house and then built WPAQ in Mount Airy. And he always lived by Christian principles and basically operated a Christian radio station and opened up on Groundhog State 1948, WPAQ. And that's still being run in a great way by his son, Kelly Epperson. It's a good radio station.

Still on the air. And you were an instant celebrity, your whole family in that little house. What would come out of that house when he started that? Earlier it started kind of an experimental radio station, we'd call it now. It was actually on the borderline of being illegal.

It was about 50 watts. You could hear it about, I guess, 15 miles. And people came in and played and sang. And he recorded most of them on a Recocut record recorder.

78th and 33 on the 3rd. And now the University of North Carolina is making that part of their archives, his old recordings. He donated them and they're a part of history right there, the broadcast history.

It's truly a great broadcast. We've got to take a break when we come back. Moonshine, NASCAR, Rednecks. What do they have to do with Big Stu? Find out next on Truth Talk Live.

More coming up. Truth Talk Live! You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com.

Truth Talk Live along with Stu Epperson. This is a one-on-one Stu to Stu here in Truth Talk Live. We're talking to a man who is my best friend. He's also my father.

Imagine that. And I'm just so encouraging. I just give thanks to God every day that I don't hate my dad, that I love my dad. That he's been a godly father and he's taken care of me. He's taught me about the Lord and he's been a huge mentor to me. We're talking to him right now about his story.

Many of you don't know about his past and about what God's done through this man's life and what he's doing right now. Big Stu, when we came out of the last break, you were talking about, you know, everything changed in the little farmhouse in Ararat, Virginia, when your brother Ralph came home and started a radio station right there in the house. And when you walked the streets of, when you went to town, which was Mount Airy at that time, and later Winston-Salem, you would walk the streets of Mount Airy and you would say what?

And they would instantly recognize you. I'd say, you know, my brother owns a radio station. Hey, man, isn't that something? He owns a radio station. That's something I was somebody and most of the people would say, he does, really.

Tell us about it. I would enjoy telling him about it. Is it true he would put just about anybody, before he started WPAQ, this Heritage Radio Station, which has been on the air since 1948, before that, in your house he started this little station, this kind of strung together station. He had studying engineering. He was a real smart man, smart technically in all kinds of ways. Is it true that he put anyone on the air and that people would gather every Saturday night?

Every Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon, and people would come in. As long as you've got a banjo, a guitar, a harmonica, or a fiddle, or a mandolin, he would put you right on the air and let you play and people loved it. I tell you what, I fell in love with radio because there was something very exciting about it.

People couldn't believe they could turn the radio on and hear people that live down the road from them in the air at Virginia could hear them on the radio. So it was quite something that inspired you. We'll get to that later on in the program and about how God has caused your path to cross radio and it touched a lot of people, including this host today.

But Big Stu, let's talk about growing up. It wasn't always a rosy path. You weren't always turned on to the faith. You weren't always excited about the Lord.

In fact, you took a little bit of a ride on the wild side. Literally, people don't know this and you can just generally tell us kind of what happened. In 1953, this is probably kind of epitomizes the whole thing. In 1953, I was working there on a farm, I think, and I saw some smoke coming up from a hollow. I was there with a friend and I think one of us said, let's go down and see what's going on. So we went down and we came across what you would call a liquor still, distillery, illegal, making illegal white lightning, as they call it, or moonshine, or bootleg liquor. It was run by a relative. He was operating that. I got involved with that, not deeply involved, but kind of peripherally involved. I went out a few times at night with him to make delivery on that. I went over to Malheure and got a load of sugar a few times because you mix all that and you make pretty potent corn liquor. That's the homegrown stuff right there, isn't it?

That's right. Anyway, and you know what? There was something that came to me. I kind of said to myself, when I started doing this, I said, yes, this is what I want to do. I found my niche in life. Can you imagine that?

There's a way that seems right, but the end is a way of destruction when you use it in your own mind. You've got the circumstances. The moonshiners were the glamorous people of that day. They had the fastest cars. They were the best drivers. You go out at night and you just kind of hope the deputy sheriff falls in behind you so you can outrun him on those dirt mountain roads. You hope that the law catches on to you because then that's the whole fun of the race, the battle.

Well, yeah, it's more of an adventure than the money you make on it. And then most of the guys, little known fact, I think, a lot of those guys who drove moonshine at night, Bill Frantz and Alex Hawkins, a couple of guys lured them into the dirt tracks. And Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina was one of the beginning places. They had people like Junior Johnson and other people who were fast drivers who had a little background.

Curtis Turner, I think, had a little background. Of course, this is my version of NASCAR's history, but a lot of its roots. And if you see the movie Thunder Road, you get something of a somewhat accurate picture of what happened. People have no idea, though. They see NASCAR's big.

The drivers, the sponsors, it's one of the biggest sports in the world taken to America definitely by storm. And this is how its humble roots were. These bootleggers were the best.

They could swap paint with anybody, including the sheriff's deputy. And in the mountains and all these Appalachian Mountains, Blue Ridge Mountains, here you were. And you were right in the midst of that. Yeah, and I had a brother-in-law who loved racing. And we used to go on Sunday afternoon or Saturday afternoon, once in a while, to a dirt track. And we'd sit there in the hot sun, and the sun would be beating down on the back of our neck. And at the end of the day, your neck would be blister red.

And that gave rise to another familiar term that we hear about it all the time, which is what? Let's see, you might be a redneck, right? You might be a redneck if, you know, the redneck.

And believe me, that's a term to be a title to be worn proudly. Like if you and your father have the same fifth-grade teacher, but at the same time, you might be a redneck? That's right, and there are many others. Okay, I got you. All right, what's the family reunion thing?

I'm trying to remember that one. If it's a dating opportunity, the family reunion, then you're probably a redneck, okay? So we laugh, but this is around these tracks, and we develop this whole culture.

Yeah, there's a whole culture, and it's a way of talking. And when I drive up and see a lot of gun racks in the back of pickup trucks, then I say, man, I'm home. You fit right in.

Moonshine, NASCAR, rednecks. You were at that point where a lot of people come to that fork in the road, literally, where they can go one way and carve out a destiny, or go another way. Some circumstances happened in your life to steer you on a different path. Well, my path was this.

My mother and father were God-fearing people, especially my mother. And at the end of the summer in 53, I went off to Bob Jones University, and that changed the direction of my life dramatically in Greenville, South Carolina. I didn't particularly want to go. I didn't particularly enjoy it when I first got there, but I soon realized that that was very, very helpful. And then one day, I just really got on my knees in one of the classrooms at night alone as a result of hearing a lot of great preaching by Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., and Dr. Sr., and a lot of godly teachers there, and I surrendered. I surrendered my life.

Recently, I heard you muse that you went from running from the law right into the arms of Bob Jones, maybe more confinement than you were used to prior to that, huh? Poor opposites. I'll say, but anyway, it was good for me. It's just exactly what I needed. The discipline, the structure, and then hearing the Gospel in a Christian setting. Godly teachers. Godly. I recommend it.

I recommend you send your kids to a godly school. And that's one of them. That decision changed a lot of things, including, I don't know that I would be here if you hadn't gone there, because you met a red-headed beauty from California. Is that right?

That's right. My lovely wife, Nancy, I met at Bob Jones, and she loved the Lord, and so I said I want to be away from that as a kid in a home, but then I married this lady who loves the Lord, and it's been the joy of my life, and we just celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary. So it's just been a wonderful life, and thank God for it. We're going to talk about how you went from that to being in broadcasting a pretty incredible story. More coming up on Truth Talk Live with Big Stu. Truth Talk Live! You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. We're back on Truth Talk Live with one of our regular guest hosts, someone I've known for a long time, because he's my dad.

Big Stu is our guest. He's been on with us all hour on Truth Talk Live. He's also one of the founders, and he's the chairman of Salem Communications, one of the biggest Christian broadcasting companies and originators of talk programming and media platforms from internet to print to radio. He's with us right now.

He's on Truth Talk Live. Big Stu, a lot of people don't know about your connection with your past. You talked about growing up from humble beginnings on the farm. You talked about the whole bootlegging moonshine thing and how God used a Christian school and a Christian family to bring you to himself. Tell us about what happened there in college. You met Nancy, my mom, beautiful redhead woman from California.

There you met her at college, and then what happened next? Well, I graduated, thankfully, and got a master's degree in broadcasting and started a radio station in Roanoke, Virginia, Vinton, Virginia, actually, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. These stations were Christian stations but with a lot of secular music on them at the same time, country and western.

But I felt that during that time I really needed to get into full-time Christian broadcasting to try to impact the culture, super-serve the Christian community, and that's where the Lord worked it out for me to do that. I was able to sell those stations on a station in Tulsa, and the Lord blessed me with a wonderful brother-in-law, Nancy's brother, who was a teacher of Los Angeles and very bright, very gifted, and he built a station in Garner, North Carolina, which was under very trying circumstances. He moved there and lived in a little apartment for a year, took a leave of absence, and he started that station, ran it successfully, and then got some other stations, and I got some other stations, and then we combined them. And we worked together, and in the 80s we started Salem Communications Corporation, and our goal was to build these stations where the door opened, the opportunity presented itself in the larger metropolitan areas because they were the least-served areas in the country, and that's where most of the people were. And by literally every station has a different story about how it happened, but the doors have been opened, opportunities were there, and we felt compelled to take those opportunities when they presented themselves.

And I just look back, and it's not about superintelligence, it's not about business acumen, it is about God opening doors, and I would just give God all the glory for any good thing that's happened. A lot of struggles, a lot of tests, a lot of trials, a lot of issues with ownership, with technicalities, with trying to get stations with people that didn't want this station to be a Christian station. Now, when you got started, AM was king, right? AM radio was king. AM was absolutely king. There was this idea of FM, anything else was just nothing. It was called future media. Right, FM, future media. But AM was the thing. Everyone listened to AM.

Well, that's right, but not anymore. FM has caught on, it's done very well, and now we have other media, we have all kinds of media. But we're continuing to do what we feel we should do, and our mission has not changed, so we just give God praise.

And we're now in the Internet, Salem has a big presence on the Internet at oneplace.com and townhall.com and other places. Let me just ask you about this, this is very, very critical, and I believe fascinating for a lot of people listening. When they hear daily teaching programs, like Grace to You with John MacArthur, Turning Point with David Jeremiah, Focus on the Family with Dr. James Dobson, there are a whole lot of these programs out there that are just compelling. People listening to my voice right now, many of them live by these programs.

They're fed daily by Greg Laurie and A New Beginning, these great daily teaching programs. You and your brother-in-law, Ed Atzinger, as you were starting Salem Communications, God brought you guys together and Mom was involved. Tell everyone about the genesis of these programs and how you had some people along with you were pioneers in thinking, wait a second, we need to put these guys on the radio on a daily basis. And you came into an environment where it was mostly either music, whether it be gospel or contemporary Christian, which was a lot different than the now, or country music.

Tell us about how that started. Well, prior to the 70s, most of the programs were, there were only one or two really good programs. Like Dr. Fuller? That's right, Charles Fuller, the Old Fashioned Revival Hour, the Hour of Decision, the Back to the Bible broadcast, the Radio Bible class, there weren't many. Now you can practically program a radio station 24-7 and play top quality programs, people who teach the Bible. And it really started to gel when a pastor in, I believe, Fullerton, California, Chuck Swindoll, I'm privileged to count him and his wife as friends of ours, Chuck and Cynthia Swindoll, just the greatest people on earth you'll ever meet.

Love God. Al Sanders was in his church and suggested they start doing their Sunday morning service, edit the sermon and put it on radio. And that's what we have today. And that has grown and others followed that, I think. John MacArthur started it a little later in the late 70s and many others. J. Vernon McGee. J. Vernon McGee got through the Bible program. David Jeremiah, well we all know him, don't we, and love him. So these people started their best effort, they studied the hardest for a Sunday morning and Sunday night and sometimes Wednesday night. Alistair Begg.

The list goes on and on. Some psychiatrist, some guy at USC, at the University of Southern California, some counselor, psychologist guy. Who is this guy? What's his name? What did he do?

He came out of nowhere. James Dobson. Dan Dobson and Shirley are two of the most wonderful people I've met. Shirley's head of the National Day of Prayer, the chairman of that.

They do a wonderful job. And all Jim wanted to do was to encourage parents on how to raise their kids. He came out with the book Dare to Discipline as the counter action to Dr. Spock's Nonsense. I call it nonsense. Sure, absolutely. And even Dr. Spock later has said all that stuff was hot air.

It didn't work. Jim was right. And Jim Dobson has wanted to keep families together, encourage men to stay with the wives, spend times with their kids, raise their kids right, love them. And all he ever wanted to do was that and then try to keep people from murdering unborn children.

And you know what? He's emerged as almost to hear some of the people talk like the liberal media think he's public enemy. Number one, he's a threat.

He should be incarcerated or something. And one of the most godly men I've met in my life. He's feared by many that they're against family, that they're against the things of God.

He's loved by many, even in his own camp. But you and Uncle Ed in a time where you recognize that here are some factors. Yes, there's some great teachers, there's some great communicators out there of the word of God that speak to family issues, that speak to just biblical exposition. But you also recognize the fact that people are driving. Every car has an AM-FM radio receiver.

And yet how can these people get a steady diet of daily compelling, not just a guy yelling and screaming at them, but someone who can really feed a minister to them? So you guys did that, but let me ask you about this. That wasn't really popular. That wasn't in vogue at the time when you and Uncle Ed said, hey, we're going to, and other people, other radio partners said, hey, let's put these guys on the air. Let's take these programs, let's put them on the air.

Tell us about that environment. Well, basically stations that were devoted to that kind of programming usually were not the best facilities. They were inferior, their coverage was bad, you could hardly get them in the cities. And certainly the big facilities were not devoted to that type of family programming, family values programming. Whatever preacher could bring in, whatever money, they'd throw them on the air.

A dollar a dollar, we called it back then. But many of those people were wonderful people, okay? I have nothing but admiration. They were the pioneers. But we felt that we should present a platform, the best possible platform with the best possible facilities that were available for people who were going to work to preach and talk and teach and encourage families to stay together, people to raise their kids in the right way using Judeo-Christian principles. And as these facilities became available, we acquired them through the mercy and the guidance of the Lord, we believe.

And now they're operating all over the country. But our part has been to try to provide a platform and we're not preaching ourselves. We're encouraging others to preach and trying to help them. So thank the Lord it has so far had, I believe, a very positive impact on our country and our culture.

Well, and there's other companies doing it all over the country, doing what you've done. You've kind of blazed the trail, Bob Broadcasting, Wilkins and all kinds of folks. Well, Dick Bott has been in, a friend of mine has been since the 60s and he's done a good job.

The Moody people have done a great job. They were the real pioneers in it. And Crawford is one of the names and, of course, Caleb has a lot of wonderful ministry stations all over the country. The small company that syndicates Truth Talk Live, Truth Broadcasting, has been largely influenced by, say, a separate company. That's why Little Stu's involved with that company and Big Stu's. That's why you're Big Stu, but what a wonderful example.

We'll come back with Truth Talk Live. You'll find out something that Big Stu's involved with that no one knows about when we come back, right here on Truth Talk Live. My uncle Ed, my mom's brother. Just a neat story of how she came from California and met him at a Christian college.

He comes from a background in the country in the sticks of the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountain in Ararat, Virginia, and how God brought them together in the whole relationship. We've been talking to him all hour long. Big Stu, you told us about how God is using your company, Salem Communications, and now there's a new chapter. There's a lot going on with Salem, you're still involved, but there's something that God's put on your heart recently in the area of mentoring.

Why would a corporate guy like you, who is in ministry, be involved in helping these kids that no one else cares about? What's going on with that? Where's the glamour in that?

Our ratings are going to go down when you start talking about that. Well, it is glamorous. Believe me, the results are glamorous.

God's results are always glamorous, full of joy and hope and pleasure and peace, and I'll tell you, at the end of the day, it's a wonderful feeling. Getting involved with a kid, we started out teaching 9th grade Sunday School class. We've been doing that for a long, long time.

We love it. We love the kids. And we started noticing kids that needed a little help, a little extra encouragement, and most of the time they had a dysfunctional, what we call a dysfunctional, or a missing father. Now, many mothers do a wonderful job and we praise God for them. And God works in their lives, but there's a need for a father in every life, okay? A need for a father. God built fathers, and he used the word father to describe himself, okay? He uses the word father to describe who we are when we have children. And all that it implies with that is for us to do with our kids. What's going on with dads today, real quick?

What's going on with us this whole checking out? What's happening with fathers? Well, dads, unfortunately, are the missing link right now.

Dads are checking out. There are a lot of kids born out of wedlock, particularly in the inner city, but all around the suburbs also. And dads are checking out the, what is it, 50% divorce rate? I think it's getting a little better.

Some people say it's because less people are marrying now. But look, there's an opportunity here. If you don't have children that you're mentoring yourself, your own children, and their kids just down the block and maybe next door or nieces or nephews, you can spend a couple of hours a week with and encourage them. And we've got a number for you to call, 768-336-768-0376. We'll give you full information. We'll put it on our website.

We're going to put all this information on our website. We have a Christian Association of Youth Mentoring, of which I am privileged to serve as chairman of the board. We will come to your church and train your church, some people in your church, individuals, how to mentor safely and effectively. And believe me, it's a wonderful ministry.

If you get it started, you'll keep doing it forever. We're talking about the disconnect. A single mom comes to a church. She's got four kids, you know, two sons, two daughters. And the men of the church, several of them in the church, they don't have kids. Why are they so reluctant to get involved, just to hang out with these boys, to make these boys into men?

Where's the body of Christ? Most of men don't regard themselves as good role models. And that's a good humility to have.

You know, who likes to say, hey, look, follow me? But the fact is, as my wife told me many times, you're better than nothing. You're better than what they have now. So do it. Just do it. Say, look, I want to be a role model for this kid.

I want to spend a couple of hours a week with him. Simple way to do that when we come back in a touching story. Hang on, more Truth Talk Live after this. Truth Talk Live!

You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. I'm Stu Epperson. This is Truth Talk Live. And with me, our guest all hour long, is Stu Epperson. And he's my dad. He's been my mentor. He's been a great friend. He's been a great advisor in business. And he's been a great guest host on Truth Talk Live. We get more compliments when you sit in the truth chair, big Stu. I got to tell you, it's a good thing. Maybe we need to have you more often.

Maybe the ratings will skyrocket. Is there a career opportunity here? No, this is actually an interview more than anything of multiple kinds. Hey, we want to talk to you real quick as we wrap up the show here today. We've talked all about your past, how you came to Christ, how God used you with Salem Communications and your whole ministry there. You're still involved there, but you're involved in this mentoring thing, not glamorous. It says on your brochure here, it says, Thanks small, one kid at a time.

And how the church needs to take this back. What's your challenge to people out there listening as to your passion for this and how they can get involved? By the way, we're putting all this stuff at our website, TruthTalkLive.com. We want to make you one of our partners there.

We want to get people involved. Give us your challenge. Listen, the challenge is God says he'll be a father to the fatherless, and how do you expect him to do that? I always read that and said, that's great. God's going to do it.

Let's just sit back and watch. But I suddenly learned God's going to use me and you to do that. He intends us to be his father to the fatherless, and he's going to work through us. And it's simply by, first of all, you need a little training for this, okay? But it basically comes down to nothing more than spending one or two hours a week with a kid.

Now let me give you an example, okay? A lady approached me and said, my son needs a mentor, a little encouragement. Would you spend a little time? I said, look, I don't have any time, but I do go on Sunday mornings to pick up Krispy Kreme donuts for our Sunday school class.

They've got a special on ten dozen. Would he go with me? And he said, yes, I'd love to go with you. So every Sunday morning I would pick him up, and we'd talk for about 45 minutes in the car, and that went on for years, okay? And I got to know everything about him. I learned about cars and everything. And he wasn't doing well in school. His dad died when he was, I believe, five years old.

And you know what? One day I asked him, I said, tell me something about yourself. Who's your best friend? And this kid tells me, he says, well, actually, you're my best friend. And I thought, you know, I'm 65 years old, and I'm his best friend. And anyway, I've enjoyed the relationship greatly. And he's going to graduate from high school, and he's going on to a Christian school, yeah, this fall. And God has worked in his life. He wasn't passing when I met him. Maybe I've had a little influence. I wasn't the most influential thing. His mother obviously was.

But thank God he's going to be a success. But your whole premise is, do what you're already going to do, but do it with a kid. And maybe do it with your kids.

What do you say to parents out there? Cats in the cradle. You played that song.

That's right. You played that whole song. But we'll play it on the show here sometime. We'll play it.

Cats in the Cradle by Harry Chafin. And let me tell you about Harry. You got a minute for me to tell you about him? Yeah, quickly, quickly. Harry, his wife said to him, said, look, you've gone around the world. You've gotten famous. I said, well, listen, when are you going to come home and start spending the time with kids and do what those songs say?

Yeah. When you're coming home, Harry, don't know when. But we'll get to that.

And Harry said, when I finished the tour, and that was in 1981, when I finished this tour, Harry died in a car wreck on Long Island in 1981. Never got to come home and do this when his songs talked about spending time with his kids. And that's repeated over and over again, folks. And men, don't go there.

Spend the time with those kids. And listen to the song. Get a copy of it.

Listen to it once a week or something. The Cats and the Cradle by Harry Chapin. Hey, Big Stu, thank you. You're a blessing to many.

We've got to go. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Nice to be here and good sailing. The website is truthtalklive.com. All of his information is there. Check it out and post your comments. Stu Everson Truth Talk Live! This is the Truth Network.