346 | Making Your Home a Launching Ground and Comparing Fatherhood to Rocket Science (Santosh Swamidass)
Episode Description
With a background in the aerospace industry, Santosh Swamidass can list plenty of ways that fatherhood is just like rocket science. In this conversation, Santosh illustrates the importance of launching your kids with the right targets in mind. With tools and systems shared in this episode, you can raise your kids to love Christ, discover their purpose, and impact the world around them.
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Santosh Swamidass is a pastor, architect of Project Based Discipleship, and Founder of the Launching Ground and Launch Network. He spent 10 years working in the aerospace industry and has over 25 years of ministry experience. Santosh and his wife, Christy, are enjoying the adventure and learnings of discipling their 7 kids.
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· The trajectory you set for your kids before they launch has a lifelong effect and, if you do it well, an eternal impact.
· Find force multipliers like tools, guides, and systems to help your kids grow spiritually with less effort and better results.
· To avoid forgetting 90% of what you learn each week, you just need a few short bursts of repetition to retain more of what matters.
· Each week as a family, memorize one verse, pray for others two times, have three spiritual conversations of substance, and read the Bible four times.
· Commit to a steady drip infusion of wisdom through your kid's childhood so it can have a compounding effect.
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· Apply to join the Fall 2024 DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort: Email awesome@dadawesome.org to learn more
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Podcast Intro: [00:00:01] Being a great father takes a massive amount of courage. Instead of being an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. The oldest dad in the world gave you this assignment, which means you must be ready for it. As a dad I get on my knees and I fight for my kids. Let us be those dads who stop the generational pass down of trauma. I want encounters with God where He teaches me what to do with my kids. I know I'm going to be an awesome dad because I'm gonna give it my all.
Santosh Swamidass: [00:00:39] I know it's busy, it's tiring, it's exhausting, it's difficult. But the 18 years that I have my kids under my roof, I want to leave it all on the field.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:00:50] Gentlemen, welcome back to DadAwesome. Today, episode 346, I've got Santosh Swamidoss joining me. I want to invite you guys to two action steps before we jump into today's conversation. The first one is Dallas, Texas. Do you live anywhere near the Dallas, Fort Worth Metroplex, or do you know a dad who does? Okay, here's the invitation, our 31st Fathers for the Fatherless event will be held on August 19th and 20th. We have two options, the six mile option and the 13 mile option. Fathers for the Fatherless is a six year, it's our activation movement from DadAwesome, and we have hosted now 30 events. We've raised over $1 million for our partners who directly serve the fatherless. Over a thousand dudes, a thousand men have said yes, again, events all over the country the past six years, and we celebrated just last week, we celebrated passing the million dollar mark. But I want to invite you guys, our Spartan Obstacle Course Race team, so these obstacle course races are, they're a blast. We still take them out as a team. So all of our Fathers for the Fatherless events are team based events. And again, the six mile, you could train for that in a month to be ready for a six mile obstacle course race. The 13 mile, you're gonna want to start training now. We're, we're less than 45 days out from this event, we're about 45 days out when this releases. So what I invite you guys, hop to dadawesome.org/events. You'll learn about all the events or reach out to me through any of our social channels and I'll get you the information, but want to, want to spread the word about our 31st to Fathers for the Fatherless event. The next invitation is simply our DadAwesome. Accelerator. You guys have heard about it before. We have ten spots available. This fall, kicks off in October, but the application deadline is the end of September to join the DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort. All you have to do is email awesome@dadawesome.org and you'll get an immediate email back with all the expectations, the promises, and the link to prayerfully apply. Okay, that's my two invitations. Excited for you guys to meet some Santosh Swamidass. Met him in Washington DC, quickly was like, I want to spend as much time with you as possible. His heart is humongous in the area of helping families disciple their kids, lead their kids to Jesus, activate them to live lives on missions. So this is episode 346, my conversation with Santosh Swamidass. I thought just a fun way to kind of dive into this, because you use, with your ministry, with the tools you're creating for families, you use this aerospace background of yours, right. Do I have this, right, a decade old kind of aerospace business leadership?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:03:44] Yeah. That's right, yeah.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:03:45] So in the space industry, there's so many parallels to dad life into parenting. There's a few I have in mind, I was just curious, as a just jump in point, what what are a few parallels between space, aircraft, rockets, gravity, propulsion, what are a few things that come to mind, you're like, oh, this would be helpful for dads?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:04:08] Yeah. You know, like you said, there's so many. One of the things that's really interesting, I was just talking about this recently. If you were to launch a rocket to go to Mars, it's traveling on an average of 140 million miles. So this is an incredibly long journey, but that trajectory that you set early on has such an important impact. Depending on when you launch it, you're actually, on the Earth, which is rotating and moving around orbit and trying to go to another planet with another orbit that's rotating, and you're trying to get the exact right landing spot because you don't want it to get, you know, destroyed by the rocks and everything that is there. You have to go through account for planet, other planetary orbits and gravitational pulls. It can get incredibly complicated, but the trajectory that you set early on can have a radical effect on whether you actually get there or have this multibillion dollar project missed entirely. So when you think about trajectory, we have to think not just what are we doing now, but where are we headed and what is it going to be there looking like at that time? One of the other big ones is and we talked about this concept by the name of our organization, Launching Ground. Is that what we do at that formation launch is so important. And there's about anywhere between 70 to 90% of the fuel that's used just to get out of the Earth's atmosphere. And so it's really amazing to think about how much energy, how much money is spent right there. But if you can do that well, if you can launch well, it can have a great impact for the rest of the journey.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:05:50] The second parallel principle, you're saying just to get out of our atmosphere, to the release of the grip of gravity, of planet Earth, it takes 70 to 90% of the fuel that it does the entire journey to...
Santosh Swamidass: [00:06:06] That's right.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:06:06] get to the destination. Yet it's all just in that first, what minutes? How long it take, two minutes? I cannot recall how much it takes to get a rocket.
Santosh Swamidass: [00:06:14] Yeah, it takes a few minutes. I mean, depending on what, what the specific launch criteria are, but it's a short amount of time that has a dramatic effect on the future.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:06:25] Let's go with the trajectory of the aim of the like, man, we got to get this right where it's, where it's headed early so we don't miss the mark. What are with your seven kids, what do you and Christy, what are some like on the home front right now, like, we're trying to, let's get that aim because we can't and I guess to jump ahead when our children are in their 30s or in their 20s, to move their aim is almost impossible. We have no control because we've launched them already. But like right now, in your home, because your kids are 12 to 2 is the age range. So you guys are life is, life is happening on the home front right now for you guys with seven. What are some of the things that has your focus on the trajectory side?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:07:05] Yeah. Well, you know, when your kids are in their 20s, 30s parents still have an effect, but it's almost like a rocket, they still have a micro propulsion where just micro adjustments that you can encourage and help almost. But you're right, the big thrust of where it's going and how it's being launched, that is right now. So there's, there's a deep passion that God has put in my heart to help kids to become missional leaders by the time they get to high school. And a lot of times when I talk about that, I hear that there's a difference for a lot of people in their target, and it might be, well, when they get to college, that's when I want to launch them. Or that that's what when they become an adult, when we when they get out of the house, that's when we should have have helped prepare them. And of course, we want to help guide them all the way up into that stage. But I think it starts with understanding where our major targets are. So when we think about that trajectory, here's what I have sensed. This is what God actually says in John chapter ten verse ten. The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. When we send our kids to high school, by that time, they're already having so much influence from their phone, from their friends, from social media, from from all sorts of different places. And the enemy isn't playing games. He wants to destroy them. He wants to tear them to pieces, and he has a target on their backs. And if we send them into high school without a purpose, without a missional calling, then we're sending them there unprepared. And by the time they get there and go to college, what we're seeing is so many kids who are lost, who are confused, and the statistics show, that 90% of kids who grow up in church do not have a resilient faith in their, in their 20s.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:08:56] Wow, wow. And I know this is part of your story, is you grew up in close proximity to people who were on the mission field, who where like you were, parents were hosting, and these stories were being told like, this was pretty normalized for you. Do I have that, Do I have that part of your story right?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:09:11] Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it was, it was pretty special. I didn't know how special it was when I was growing up. But as I look back, we always had missionaries staying with us, whether it was for a meal while they were in town or whether it was for a few months as they were preparing to go into the mission field. And to me, you know, we call them uncle and on auntie, and that's how we we grew up. So when I got older and I started exploring and praying about the mission field, I didn't have to get over that barrier of familiarity or at least knowing people. The challenges that I faced was the internal struggle with God. Are you really calling me to this? Is this something that I can do? And which is a good struggle. But I felt like, well, I know people who have done this and that's encouraging. That was inspiring. They were heroic to me even as a child. So that's something that I wanted even from my house, if anybody passes through who's a missionary, who's involved in ministry, that we say, come spend time in our house, eat a meal with us, that's a blessing to us because our kids get to learn from you and to be around you and get a sense of what it is to live for God.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:10:18] So your 12 year old like, how, like, what's a practical like, how are you preparing your 12 year old for high school? What, that's three years away, two away. To be living on mission and to have a deeper understanding of purpose and to be a change maker versus impacted by the culture around her. Like what are, like what are some examples of how to aim her now a couple years out?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:10:39] Yeah, I think a lot of it is intentionality, Jeff. I think when we sit down, some of it is the general, all year long, how do we just make sure that we have a culture in our home of having conversations of substance? One of the things, the phrases I use for discipleship is continual spiritual conversations of substance. And so we have conversations all the time. Whenever we get in the car, I'm looking for what's one little nugget that we can maybe go talk about and maybe go deeper on? I think that's the general culture that we're trying to, that we've been working on for years, building in our home. But I've even started talking with my daughter, hey, we're going to start having some more specific time. We're going to, we're going to get up early. She's not an early bird. I'm not an early bird, but by, by nature. But, man, this is something worth investing in. And and, you know, one thing that I've even heard from her in my other kids is I want to know how to hear God's voice more. I want to know what it means to live for God more. So our kids are eager for it. They're eager beyond the Bible stories, which are awesome. They're eager beyond the doctrine, which is good to talk theology, but they're eager to say, how does this work for me? What does God have in store for me? And so for me, what I'm, I'm so excited about with all my kids as they get to this, this right age is to have those conversations and see them develop into what God has called them to. So I think it starts with intentionality. And we are, that's the next big project is putting together more systems and tools so that families can step into that of the one on one or the one on 2 or 3. However, many kids are on that stage of how we're really preparing them for, for high school and beyond.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:12:29] Wow. I think I understand and could give a definition of what a force multiplier is. Because we've talked about it a few times, but I'm going to actually lob it your way and say, hey, first what is a force multiplier? And then how does it connect with Deuteronomy 6 around all these patterns of repeated behavior? Can you take us there a little bit?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:12:50] Oh, absolutely. A force multiplier is actually a really simple idea. It's something that you use to get a greater effect, a result with the same amount of energy. So the example that you can look at is if you had a piece of wood and a nail in it and you tried to bang it in with your fist, that's not going to be a very pleasant or effective process. But, but if you were to take a hammer, same amount of energy, same amount of time, you would, I mean, actually with the shorter amount of time, you would knock that nail in pretty quickly. And if you actually go to the next level with a nail gun, bam, bam, bam, you'd be done so quick. And so a force multiplier typically comes in the form of a tool or a process. And what it does is you say use the same amount of energy and get a better result.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:13:36] Great, great.
Santosh Swamidass: [00:13:38] How it ties in with Deuteronomy 6, this has been something over the last couple of years that's been really just eye opening for me. Deuteronomy 6 is where we hear the great Shammah, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. And Jesus references this even as the greatest commandment and what we see right after that in Deuteronomy, it's not the priests. It's not the the temple. It's not the, the tabernacle. It doesn't talk about what we would consider the church and the pastors. It talks about the parents and the home. And so this is what we're talking about, this family discipleship. How do we engage fathers and mothers and how do we we engage them in this journey? And what I found that's been so exciting is that there are force multipliers there. Because we know men, it doesn't take a lot to figure out.The parents are super busy. They have so much going on. So if I were to say, hey, go ahead and take this curriculum and teach it to your kids over this next week, even if it's the best curriculum in the world for parents that want their kids to walk with Jesus, 95% of parents maybe even higher, wouldn't even do it. So the question is not how do we have good material? The question is, how do we actually bring that into the home in a way that parents can actually do it? And so I'll give you an example, one of the things it talks about in Deuteronomy 6 is it talk about these things to your kids as you, as you, as they rise, as you go along the road and as they lie down. Now that seems overwhelming at first because we're like, well, when do we get a break?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:15:10] Yeah, yeah.
Santosh Swamidass: [00:15:11] But the idea of on the road, for instance, we're not walking on the road as they did 2000 years ago, but in a car, man, that's an opportunity for such great conversations. And a force multiplier, one of the tools that we have is we have a car visor, it's attached to the car visor, discussion guide. Where any parent can put that on their car visor, and instead of taking energy to think about, What should I think about? What should I talk about? Whart versus to get into? We can just look at it, engage in questions and the energy can be on having the conversation and bringing that out together with your kids.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:15:52] Yeah. I know the, there's a power of things being on the wall, on the city gates, on the door frame of your house. Like there's something about visual, we're visual, but we pass certain areas with more frequency. Or as we pass a area, we're entering a new domain. You know, we're exiting our home or entering our home. And so you gifted me, when we were together in DC, one of your launch pads. I got a hold it. I mean, this is substantial. And and so this does take me into, I want to explain, what you guys do at Launching Ground, but also, like, why it's not just another curriculum. How you've actually created this journey for overwhelmed families, for families with intentionality. But I think, the German researcher, I don't know if he was a psychologist or what his profession was, but Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. Did I have that right? Did I pronounce that right?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:16:45] Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:16:46] What does that mean? Yeah, what is that?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:16:48] Yeah. So he did research a number of decades ago, actually, where a lot of us have heard the results of this, where in about a week we lose about 90% of what we learned. So that's where it comes from. And he found that, so the other part of the research that we don't often talk about is there is a remedy to that. So what he found is in about six days, within seven, about 80, 90% of your, whatever you learned is going to be lost. But he also found something really interesting. The more you repeat it within that first six days, the more retention there is, and it doesn't mean you have to go over an hour's worth of studying. It's just bringing it up again, maybe even in just a small short burst. And so if you do it 2 or 3 times throughout the week, it I mean, it's almost reversed. There's almost an 80% retention of those things.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:17:43] I just had the visual of the movie Inside Out and the mountain of these memories that are just like, they're gone, they're gone. And then, but then there's like the featured ones up in the headquarters. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:17:55] Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:17:56] Just by bringing it back up in small bursts. And so that is, I mean, the brilliance of, and the word of God, Deuteronomy 6 again of just like, repeat it again and again. When you wake, when you sleep, when you're on the road, when you're at home, when you're like, oh my goodness. It's so we we want all of us dads listening right now, we want to be dads who are not hearing and forgetting or intending to do something to lead a spiritual conversation of substance. But then, well, how many weeks went by that I didn't lead one. And so you've actually, the competitive side, the gamification side. I mean, truly, when you share this with me, it was late one of the evenings, you're like just these four things. You brought such a concrete nature. And and again, it's not four things that I have to make up or I have to find, like you've given weekly pages to this, every single week, a page with the verse, with the theme, with the QR code for the video like, and we're just getting going. The Zaugg family, we're in, we signed up, we're in.
Santosh Swamidass: [00:19:00] That's awesome.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:19:01] We got, we got it. You actually told me you're sending wristbands and car visors. You're sending a box to us because we signed up for the the yearly, we want to, we want to launch as a family. We want to have the right trajectory. We want to have the right rhythm so we're not intending and not following through. So can you take us through the four, the gamification side of things.
Santosh Swamidass: [00:19:24] Yeah. Man. So this actually came about from a lot of the consulting that I've done. What you want to start with, and this is within the private sector or even within the church trying to figure out, how do we achieve a goal? So, when you talk about system theory, for instance, what that says is that every that what we produce, the product is perfectly, the products that we get are perfectly designed from the system that we actually have. I'm getting that all. I'm saying that all wrong.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:19:53] No, it makes sense to me, though. Our systems basically are perfectly designed for the product that we're gonna get at the end. You can say it both ways. Yeah.
Santosh Swamidass: [00:19:59] That's right. Yeah. The system's perfectly produced what they're designed to produce. There we go. So, but what that tells us is when we actually have results, whether it's seeing kids not walk with God in their 20s or whether it's the fact that we're not doing what we want in terms of sharing our faith with our kids is because there's something in our system that is inherently not matching what we want. And so in order to start fixing that, we have to say, what do we want? What is our goal? And so even as a pastor, one of the things that I started to really be challenged by, actually convicted by was that Sunday morning is not the place that it's supposed to be the center of spiritual growth for family. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't grow there, but what typically happens for many families is that Sunday morning we go and I get my spiritual tank filled, and then throughout the week it starts, you know, my tank starts getting depleted. If I go to a Bible study, maybe it goes up a little bit and but by Sunday I'm almost done. Or maybe I'm already been done before and it's just not sustainable. What God has intended, and this is again, what we see in Deuteronomy 6, and we see it all throughout Scripture is that's supposed to be throughout the week. The home is actually supposed to be the center of spiritual growth. Yes, we get encouragement, equipment, support from church and from our community on Sundays, but in the home, that's where we're supposed to engage. And so that conviction, you know, for me, said, okay, how do, how do we actually activate homes to be the center of spiritual growth? And then I said, that sounds great, but what does that mean?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:21:36] Yeah. What does that look like?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:21:39] What are the metrics, right? And so we put together four, four things. It's one verse that you memorize together, two times of praying for others together as a family, 3 conversations of substance, spiritual conversations of substance, and four times of reading the Bible together. Now, if a family's doing, it's not necessarily lighting the world on fire. But let me tell you this if a family's doing that week after week, I'm telling you there's going to be spiritual growth there. And each of those are going to naturally, those, those four markers will naturally overflow into more conversations, to more reading the Bible. Because I tell you what, your kids will start saying, hey, how come we're not reading the Bible? They're going to start saying, can we pray for this person or what happened? It will just overflow. But if you set those four markers, that's such a great starting point.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:22:31] Now because it's, it's more, to me I like I'm like, okay, one more time the four because it's in it now, some of the dads are going to like, yes, I've been waiting looking for. I'm all in. Some are going to be inspired and create their top five, top three, top four of just like concrete, let's just, let's try and experiment. Like part of what I love about your approach is just like you're running experiments. Is this working? Like versus being passive, like that's like, let's activate something and stick to it. Or at least stick to the end of the experiment and say, well, what do we learn? Where are we going now? Like, what did we I'm sure the aerospace industry, there's all kinds of like us run these before we put all the resources towards a launch, right. So, so would you walk us through the four one more time?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:23:15] Yeah. So, and I'll explain a little bit. It's one, memorizing a verse together. And, you know, God tells us to put this in our hearts, again, Deuteronomy 6. So it's one verse that you memorize together as a family. It's two, two times of praying together as a family for others. So this is beyond just necessarily just sitting down and having a meal. That's good to pray together for a meal, but it's saying we're going to intentionally pray for somebody else together. The three spiritual conversations of substance. And, you know, like you said, families can do it however they want to, but one of the tools that we've put together is it's just made to make that part super easy. Like you said, the launch pad, the car visors, all that stuff. And the fourth thing is reading the Bible together. And I think that can be intimidating for a lot of people. But what I found, you know, when I was reading Bonhoeffer, Life Together, you know, being encouraged even there to read. It doesn't matter the age of the kids, it doesn't matter if they understand it or not. It doesn't matter. You don't need to to execute all of it. You can just read the Bible. And just say, I'm going to read one chapter and we're going to do it around breakfast time. Like that is so powerful. And I'll, I'll admit, Jeff, man, it took me longer than I should have with my family to start doing that together. And I think all of those same things I just mentioned, oh, my kids aren't old enough. I don't know if they can understand it. We have to create more space. All of those things, those were untrue things that I was believing when all I needed to do was say, hey, we're just going to read. And the kids love it. It's amazing.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:24:51] And I think the, you know, dads can be a little bit hesitant or intimidated by taking on leadership in a sphere that they just, like you said, like the man, well, what if there's something that comes up in this Bible chapter that I don't really know how to, like, explain to my, or bring it to context, because it is, let's just admit, like it is tricky to bring certain things that I feel like, yeah, I can receive that into a six year old or a five year old who has eager questions. And you don't want to look like you don't know your Bible or don't understand. How would you kind of coach back to me on like, the let's take steps with a posture of we're learning together as a family? Like, because I still think there's some of these that are like, oh, man, I'd like to lead a time of prayer together. Like, man, that's, that's my wife's more comfortable, so I'll let her pray. Like, how would you encourage the dad to actually be the spark, step in with more ownership on these?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:25:47] Yeah, I think it's a great question. And I think the reality, Jeff, for you and I who are, who have had pastoral experience, there are some things as we prepare, we know, we've been in that space. But that's one of the biggest things that I've seen is people are afraid. They don't feel like they're equipped enough. Well, let me give you this, this verse that has been an encouragement to me. First Corinthians 11:1, this is Paul speaking and he says, follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. And for many years I thought, man, is he a bit arrogant? Like, why can't he just say follow Christ? Like why is he interjecting himself into this process? Why is he like, that's a worse example. Just say follow the example of Christ. But I've come to believe that there's something deeply powerful in what he was saying, because we should all follow the example of Christ and do everything we can to be more like our incredible Savior. But there's something that Jesus doesn't do that we can learn from others, and that's fail. He, He never fails. He never has a gap of understanding. He in terms of being able to or know what to explain. And so we tend to think that we need to be perfect like Jesus in order to teach others. But there's something deeply powerful, even biblical, that we see in this verse of how we actually modeled this for others. And how's that look, practically? When one of my kids says, hey, do you know this about the Bible or this question? It's okay, in fact, it's actually really good to say, you know what, I haven't thought about that or I don't know the answer to that. And the way that we model approaching Jesus to find answers is actually really important. If I model perfect understanding, it actually becomes it can become a barrier to my thoughts. Because they say, daddy, I love you, but man, I'll never be like you. Rather than oh, you don't know and you went to a pastor to ask a question, or you went online, or you opened up the Bible to find out what it says. Those are really powerful moments. I think it's some of the most powerful moments to say, yeah, I don't know what it means, but I am determined to know more of Jesus and to find out what He says about life.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:28:05] Yeah. That posture, that's huge. And it's successful. We can all, we can all enter and walk in that and really approach this with that posture. I'm going to use two, maybe there's separate, metaphors or analogies, but you use the slow drip infusion, like slow drip infusion of wisdom or slow drip disciple. Like as a, as terminology. And then I'm, the other one over here is, is compounding interest and and thinking about, man, well, let's just wait a little bit. Let's wait to where life's a little slower, then we'll start a family disciple. We'll start seeing the home as the center of discipleship. And, so the let's just wait and the just no, let's just commit to the slow drip, like, but would you kind of talk about either or both overlapping and on why this matters?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:28:55] Yeah. You know, I think what is so much more valuable, we tend to think more curriculum than culture. And we tend to think, well, what do I need to do? What's the step I take now that fixes it forever? And look, I think that'd be great, if I could do something right now that fixes whatever problem I have with my kids or my family, whatever, right now, and it's done forever. Of course, let's do that. But it doesn't really work that way. It would be sort of like saying, look, I'm growing this apple tree in my backyard and, you know, I planted it and I'm going to water it. You know, a bunch of water. Enough as it needs for the whole year right now. And then I'll come back next year and see how it's doing. It doesn't work that way. It needs to be steadily watered throughout the year, and that's how we are. And what we need to do is, for a lot of people, especially a lot of, adults who have been in any sort of leadership development in the workforce. You know, what it's like to go to a conference and get, you know, one week or one weekend, here's leadership. And then it's like drinking from a fire hydrant. And you can maybe take one principle that you're going to apply because there's no way to apply all of it. And, and then months later, you've forgotten a lot of the other components. It's not really implemented. You know, it doesn't work that way. It's very difficult. But the way that we built this is just a little bit every week. Here's one concept. And this is something that we've seen in all forms of education, that that's far more successful. Rather than trying to do it all at once, we can spread that out. And now as you layer that year after year, man, what we see is something that's so powerful. And we see this with our own experience in areas that our parents have poured into us. We see that with some of the greatest in any area. You know, Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours, but it's not just 10,000 hours in just a short period of time for people who have really become top of their class. You know, you think about Tiger Woods in golf, the Williams sisters, you think about Steph Curry, they had parents who were pouring into them. And it even applies to people like Bill gates and others who had access to things because of their parents at a young age. That's a lot of what I was challenged with when I started doing this. I said, if I could pass one thing on to my kids, it's not going to be my sports background. It's not going to be my education as an engineer. It's not, it's not even going to be, you know, just character. It would be how do I help them to know and love Jesus and to to follow Him for the rest of their life? But that's a more difficult thing to actually put into concrete terms. But that's what I think when you talk about a steady, slow drip infusion and compounding interest. Man, it is that lifelong, it's putting Deuteronomy 6 into action.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:31:50] Yeah, the compounding interest, like you can even get the investments a little wrong. If you had a portfolio, you just but if you just keep putting it in and you do it early and you know, there's hope, dad's listening. There's hope, you could be at any stage. And that's the cool thing about a God who does miracles, right. And who is for us.
Santosh Swamidass: [00:32:07] Amen. Yeah.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:32:09] But the earlier the better. Why wait tonight? That was where I was going to be land here, Santosh, just to have you and just don't, don't be afraid of getting a little fiery here with the dads, like with all of us dads. And with me of like, like why, like, yes, they hurt a lot. They could easily forget 90% like we talked about. But, like, why, like doing something we can't, like we can't be passive in this, like seeing the home is the center for the discipleship formation, the the missions heart, the the living for Jesus. Like seeing why this matters and why a system and a structure and repetition. Like, would you just get fiery one more time with anything like kind of last words you want to share with us, us dads?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:32:55] Oh man. You know, we have a short period of time that will have an effect for the lifetime of our children. And the reality is, if we do it well, it has an effect on eternity. And in all the things that I invest in my life in, there are there are very few that are going to last beyond my lifetime. My children, by the grace of God and their legacy is one of those things, and how they pass their faith on is going to be a lot of it derived from how we as fathers actually pour into our kids. And we know the statistics that the number one indicator for a child's faith in their future, it's actually the father's. Second thing is mothers and then it's grandparents. The pastors don't even come in the top three. So if this is something that we desire for our kids, if we don't want our kids in John 10:10 to be, have their life stolen, killed or destroyed, then we have to be the ones to do everything we can to invest in them, to help them make those choices that lead them to Christ. And the beauty of it is the second part of that verse in John 10:10, Jesus said, this thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come so that you may have life abundantly. I don't know any father that doesn't want their kids to have life abundantly. So if that's what you want, if that's, that is what I want. I want to, you know, when I used to do sports, every coach say, leave it all in the field. I want to leave it all. I know it's busy, it's tiring, it's exhausting, it's difficult. But the 18 years that I have my kids under my roof, I want to leave it all on the field so that they, that I can look back, they can look back and say that I had every bit of opportunity to to understand and walk with God and start my journey for the rest of eternity.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:34:46] Wow. Deuteronomy 30:19, I set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life. Like dad's, it says, choose life so that you and your descendants may live, right. Like so, so we have to choose it. And then we have to, we get to lead that abundant life. We get to lead that direction. It's pouring rain outside right now. And I think about dads who are soaking wet with the love of God who, like, go up under the waterfall of God's lavishing love. He just, like, gets soaking wet. But then you have your kids with you because then they're going to get wet. They'll get wet as well. And so I'm just like, so like we're, your heart, my heart, like we care deeply about the exact same mission. And so, like, I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful to send our DadAwesome community your way. I want to, I want to hear, I want to see pictures and stories of these things on the wall, on the wall. And the the wristbands and the visors. I want to see pictures, you know, tagging DadAwesome on Instagram, being like, yes, we're doing it. We're doing it. So, grateful for you. Would you say a short prayer for, for all of us dads?
Santosh Swamidass: [00:35:54] Oh, absolutely. Father God we come to, our perfect and amazing Father. I want to pray for all these fathers who are listening and who are eagerly desiring more of You and Lord, who just like me and Jeff, we know we are so far from perfection. We struggle. We have, we have our own fears and doubts and uncertainties. But Lord, I thank You that You have such grace and mercy on us. God, I pray for these fathers who are eager to start, that they would take the bold step like Joshua and say, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And God, I pray, as You have said that Your eyes range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are committed to You. So, Lord, as these fathers are, are maybe tentative or maybe unsure, but I pray that they would step forward with confidence, committed to You, and see Your strength as You give them everything that they need. I pray that for me, for Jeff, for all these fathers, that we would be the fathers You've called us to be, and that we would see this beautiful blessing of our kids rising up to follow You. It's in Your mighty name that we pray, Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:37:12] Thanks so much for joining us for today's conversation, episode 346 with Santosh Swamidass. All the conversation links, the links to Launching Ground, the ministry, the Launch Pad, the practical, tangible on your wall resources to help with family discipleship, all of these incredible 60 plus discipleship videos, short videos, the subscription option along with just a sampler, you can kind of go check it out as a family. That's all going to be listed at dadawesome.org/podcast. Find this podcast, it'll all be in the show notes, itt's also in your app, whatever app you're using. Want to encourage you guys, we've been saying over and over for the past like 3 or 4 months that being DadAwesome is not a personal pursuit of the hearts of your kids and your wife. It'ss not just for the homefront. Being DadAwesome is always including brotherhood. It's including pulling a few other dads in, rallying a few dads to sit down for a campfire to talk about how things are going, praying for a few other dads, encouraging your kids need other dads in your world. Being DadAwesome is broader than you and your personal growth as an intentional dad. One way to do this is to encourage a few dads you know, to listen to DadAwesome. Simply share dadawesome.org website, the social channels. Share today's podcast or another podcast. I want to just be encouraging you guys as much as possible. I'm not asking you just share DadAwesome so we have more people listening to our podcast. I truly, my heartbeat, my, my deeply, deeply in the mission of DadAwesome, activating dads to lead with wonder. For you to lead with wonder, you've got to have a few other dads in your corner. And by listening to some of the same content, by growing in the same direction, I believe DadAwesome will help you build some of those brothers who can walk this journey out, and you will be a better dad if you have friends on the same trajectory. So thanks for listening this week. Thanks for sharing DadAwesome with other dads you know. And have a great week guys!
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· 13:51 - "Jesus' references this even as the greatest commandment and what we see right after that in Deuteronomy, it's not the priests. It's not the the temple. It's not the tabernacle. It doesn't talk about what we would consider the church and the pastors. It talks about the parents and the home. This is what we're talking about, family discipleship."
· 32:57 - "We have a short period of time that will have an effect for the lifetime of our children. The reality is, if we do it well, it has an effect on eternity. In all the things that I invest my life in, there are there are very few that are going to last beyond my lifetime. My children, by the grace of God and their legacy is one of those things, and how they pass their faith on is going to be a lot of it derived from how we as fathers actually pour into our kids. And we know the statistics that the number one indicator for a child's faith in their future, it's actually the father's."
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