We do it every single Wednesday.
We get together with our buddy pastor Chad, the lead pastor at the Horizon Community Church in Newtown, right on the banks of the Little Miami River.
Good morning, sir, How are you today?
Yeah, I'm doing great. How about yourself?
Doing all right?
Little rainy day, but had some wonderful crisp fall days coming up to usn't night last couple of weeks.
Absolutely, and it looks like we're gonna have some good ones over the weekend after some rain today and tomorrow and clearing up apparently tomorrow night. You know, in the news a lot lately, and there was a big story that's on going up in Waynesville, Ohio about a man who's been an administrator there, a coach for forty seven years, or an athletic director, and now all of a sudden, people sort of I guess, for lack of a better term, coming out of the woodwork some thirty plus years later
about inappropriate behavior. Whether it's true or not, we don't know, but it is an ongoing big story in Waynesville, and it brings to mind the role of not only coaches but also parents. And you know, let's start with parents because I heard a lengthy, uh.
What's a word, a sermon for lack of a better term.
I think it was from Chip Ingram the other day talking about, you know, structure in the household and closest.
So so let's start with parents.
It seems to me a lot of the parents that I'm around right now, Chad Hoban want to be a friend of their kids. Can parents be friends of their young kids?
Well, I guess it depends on how you define friendship. I mean, when I first had my kids, when I were first born, my vision statements for my parenting was a fifty year friendship with my kids. However, that doesn't mean every stage you're accommodating to them or acting like they are moral equal. But my goal is to raise kids who would be you know, responsible adults, would have the tools they need for that and have the emotional closeness so that we would have a fifty year friendship.
So I'm not sure it's either or. But if you define friendship as a lack of structure, a lack of discipline, that I'd say you're missing out. It was a study in Minnesota years ago called the Minnesota Study, and they rated on an X and Y axis. What's needed for parenting, for coaching, for mentoring, in any relationship, and that was structure on the Y axis, and it was emotional closeness
on the X axis. And strangely, they found that parents and coaches who had high emotional closeness I care about you, I love you, I appreciate you, they had all emotional closeness but no structure, no discipline, no calling to account, no accountability. Strangely, the parents who had the most emotional closeness but the least amount of structure, without any at all. On the other side, they raised the most insecure kids, which you think would be the oppoctity. Now, the other
contrast was those who had high discipline. I'm not listening to your perspective. Your voice hasn't heard. I'm not trying to understand the whole side, but just discipline, discipline, discipline. I'm the authoritarian, I make the rules and you obey it. Those parents raise the most rebellious children because they had all that structure. But the minute that structure was gone, there, out of there. And it's actually a little verse in the Bible that says where the law increases, sin increases
even more. And you've probably see in your own life. You're walking along on a path, suddenly see a sign that says stay off the grass. I wasn't even thinking about stepping on the ground. Show that I see the sign, I'm like, well, maybe I want to. So really, the key is not rules for rule's sake, But how do you teach principles? I would say all the time, I got a little inner rebel in me. I've never found a rule I didn't want to break, but a principle
I don't want to love. So part of coaching and part of parenting is trying to teach this principle behind this application is so important. It's important to your life. It's going to serve you well. And so what we want to do we want to combine emotional closeness and the structure and discipline because those who actually combine both of those raise the most secure children. And same thing in a boss situation, you say, wow, my boss Ray loves me, But man, this place is run an incompetent way.
People getting away with murder around here, and there's no accountability. What you're calling for is some degree of structure increase. Other times you have a boss or situation where it's like, man, you know this place is run well, but I think I'm a cog in the wheel. No one cares about me, No one asks about me, No one ever says anything nice about my contribution except the once a year when I do an annual review. So how do we combine
both those things? And I think if you are a person who's been coached, you realize the benefit of coaching. You know, whether your parent died well or coached well, or the other side, you weren't coached well, or you weren't parented well, you felt a deficit of that. Man, you know what I want to do better than what was trusted to me. That's really what a coach does. It creates a whole environment in a family, all environment
in an area of your company. Who can't control the whole environment in your department, you see, I want to coach people who can coach people to coach people. I think about like a parenting. I want to coach my kids so they end up being able to coach my grandkids, so they can coach my great grandkids. It's a culture
of humility, it's a culture of teachability. I mean, I'm been a public speaker now for I don't know, forty five years if you take the time back when I was on stage and doing plays and stuff to be a professional communicator, and every week I have six people critique me because I watch my videos every single week, because I want to be communicating and doing my best work next week, next month, next year, not last week, last month. But that requires humility. It's not well, you know,
I've got a covered bob. You know I've learned a lot, but other people are going to see things I don't see. Doesn't mean I always jump at all the feedback on hundred percent, but I want to be open to feedback. I want to be open to other perspectives so that I can be my best by having the proverb in the Bible says iron sharpens iron, we need other people to sharpen us unless we get dult.
You know one word, and I've read that Minnesota study, one word that seemed to creep into the conversation quite a bit. That seemed to be, if not the most important word in all of that. Now, I'm going to talk specifically for a second and ask you about parenting has to do with the word obedience and how you know, look, you're trying to raise your kids, and look, whether you're a deeply spiritual person or not, is to get them
to understand. And this is where we see in society so frequently now where either parents aren't doing it, parents aren't around, and all of a sudden, kids just don't understand the importance of obedience as they are growing up. And then perhaps from a more spiritual standpoint than obedience to how they live.
Is that fair? I think it's very fair.
In fact, I always say, you don't break God's laws, you discover them in the same way. It's not just spiritual things, but you don't break the law of gravity. You discover the law of gravity when you think a step off of a building, and so the same way. If a child doesn't learn that there is structure and there's truth, and there are things that you need to submit subordinate yourself too, then you're going to be in trouble because hey, I finally got rid of mom and dad. Well,
you still got a landlord. I've covered my landlord. Well, I guess, but you still have roommates, you still have a boss, you still have These are principles that apply in every area of life. And if you think you can circumvent reality like the hang glider can temporarily circumvent gravity, but you're eventually going to go down. And so you want to say, I'm teaching my children how to deal with life. Part dealing with life is dealing with truth.
The part dealing with truth is understanding I need to subordinate, subordinate myself to the truth here. And so as a parent, you want to teach first time obedience. Yes there's a place for negotiation. Yes there's a place for appealing and what we can talk about that too as a parent, but we need to start with if dad or mom tells you to do this, I want your first thing you say is I'm going to do it. I'm going
to call you to first time obedience. Now, of course, none of us are really good at that head and that's why as a parent, you're a teacher. And I think a lot of people think of themselves as you know, generals or drill sergeants's parents. But the primary role you want to see yourself as a teacher. So if your child is not giving first time obedience, how can I teach them that? How can I show what the consequences that they don't, but also lovingly teach what it looks like.
Then also say, now, when you're characterized by first time obedience, there is a place to respectfully disagree, but we don't teach that either. How what does it look like to respectfully disagree? Well, after you say, dad, i'll do it, it's okay the next day an hour later to come up and say can I talk to you about something dead? Or even in the phrases we taught our kids is can I appeal? Sometimes answer is no, you can't, that's not on this one. Yeah, other times it's yes, you
can appeal on this one, I'm willing to listen. I'll give it a second.
Listen.
And many times I came back and changed my mind. I came back and apologized by the way I handled it because I wanted to demonstrate to my kids not only do I want them to be teachable, but I want to be teachable, And so I think you can combine both those things. The question you want to ask yourself as a parent to coach a boss is am I living an imitatable life? Like when people see how I'm leading, how I'm acting, how I'm parenting, But your kids say, you know, Dad's not perfect, but he owns
it when he's not. That's an imitatable life and that's what a coach does.
All right.
Before I let you go, though, I want to ask you. You know, we get into vicious cycles, right, you know, over and over. Okay, let's it's him for a second. That you were a kid who didn't grow up with a lot of these things. Maybe you didn't get a lot of love, Maybe you didn't have a lot of structure. How do you change that so when you become a parent it's different.
Well, you know, I just read a great story the other day about the movie Maverick with Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson, and mel Gibson kind of lost his temper on set and and Jody tooka is this good chemistry? I After you saw Maverick?
It was pretty cool.
A little movie with James Gardner. And he gets all upset and he comes back to the next shot and he knew he'd stepped in it. And he bought her some flowers and he wrote her a note and he said, I was raised by a man who taught me to fight first, but I'm trying to be a better man, I'm sorry. There's somebody who acknowledges I didn't come with all the tools I needed, and certainly mel Gibson got the whole train wreck of bad decisions. But he's trying
to make progress. And I think that's what you want to do as a parent, to say it's not perfection. I'm pursuing progress. And I tell you that grace goes a long way. When you come back and your kids for the first time, I'm in a long time here, you say, you know what, I could have handled that better. So like, oh my goodness, the klophone is going off and my dad's answering it. The kluphone is shrinking, and my mom answered it. Same thing you think with your kids.
You're like, oh my goodness, the son the klophone has been ringing for like six months and it's founding on your door. It's going to be painful if you don't pick it up. So again, you want to model the same thing. It's okay to say I'm not good at this. Guys, you know I'm not good at this. You watch me every day. But I want to at least be better at this. And you'd be amazed at the forgiveness and grace people give each other when they realize you're at least trying to aim in the right direction.
Great stuff as always, Pastor Chad Hoven. Can't thank you enough for your time and hope you have a great rest of your week and UH and thanks as always, sir, Great talking.
To you, sounds good talking a
Pastor Chad Holen always great talking with him, always incredible wisdom.