Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
Welcome to the You Can Mentor podcast. This is your best mentoring friend, Zach, and I am with Kent Evans. Kent, say hello, my friend.
Speaker 2:Hey, Zach. Thanks for having me, man. I'm pumped to be here.
Speaker 1:Ken, I am I am I am jazzed to be here, man. Like, we, Kent and I met at the National Fatherhood Commission last month, and, I just absolutely love what he is up to. So how's it going today, Kent?
Speaker 2:Man, I'm doing great. I was telling you at the time of recording, I'm in Louisville, Kentucky, and we just got a record snowfall. So everybody here is still freaking out, and I'm, like, jumping my neighbor's car and that kind of thing. So, it's still quite a dynamic situation here in in Kentucky. Man,
Speaker 1:so, like, there's people out there who love snow. Like, oh, it's it's snowing. I I like snow for about forty five minutes.
Speaker 2:And then
Speaker 1:it's cold. It gets in your socks. You gotta change socks all the time. The kids get in it. They track snow.
Speaker 1:And then it gets underneath the car, and it turns into that, like, mud snow. Oh, yeah. Man, just, like, not a big fan, honestly.
Speaker 2:No. In fact, I still have like, I hope the video doesn't show, but I still have, like, a a damage to my eyelid from, like, one of the snowballs one of my kids threw at me, which was more like an ice ball. So, like, yeah. It's fun while it lasts, but, yeah, I sure don't wanna go move to Canada. That's not my next move.
Speaker 1:Okay, Kent. So this doesn't have anything to do with mentoring, but I'm gonna share it. Okay? So whenever I was a junior in high school, me and some of my buddies were driving around town, and it had just snowed here in Texas, which, you know, doesn't ever doesn't ever snow. So it snowed.
Speaker 1:Everyone's freaking out. And we are driving around Friday night. It's late, midnight. And we look over, and there's this snowman. Okay?
Speaker 1:This perfect snowman. And, I mean, it's about six feet tall. I'm about six foot eight. And I was I was like, guys, guys, guys, stop the car. Like, what?
Speaker 1:I was like, stop the car. So they stop the car. I get out, and I run as fast as I can can, and I form tackle a snowman. Okay? Just take it out.
Speaker 1:And I was thinking that it was gonna explode, and everyone's gonna be like, oh my gosh, Zach. You're so funny. Well, it turns out that that snowman was solid ice. And I hit it, and I shattered my collarbone.
Speaker 2:You did not. Yeah. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1:You can kinda see it through my sweater. But so the next Monday at school, I show up to school and I and I walk into the cafeteria and everyone starts singing, Frosty the Snowman. Mhmm. From then on, people called me Frosty.
Speaker 2:That is fantastic.
Speaker 1:Because I got beat up by a snowman. So
Speaker 2:No. Well, it takes a big man to admit that an inanimate object actually tackled him. Way to go, Zach.
Speaker 1:Which I'm gonna tie it back to mentoring. Perhaps if I had a mentor, then I would have been the idiot who would have tackled a frozen snowman.
Speaker 2:See, who connects to mentoring? You found a connection. Way to go.
Speaker 1:Okay, Kent. So, tell tell us about yourself, your family, manhood journey, which is an amazing organization. Tell us all about yourself.
Speaker 2:Sure. Yeah. The the thumbnail is, I'm 54 years old, and I say that for reference because my wife, April, and I, in a few months, you know, if Jesus doesn't come back and neither of us pass away suddenly, we'll celebrate thirty years of marriage. So we've been married almost exactly thirty years. We have five sons.
Speaker 2:Their age is 25 down to nine. We had three by birth and then two through international adoption from the great country of Ethiopia. And our oldest son is married. He's been married about four years, I think, come April. He'll be married four years.
Speaker 2:We love our daughter-in-law. We're like one for one in terms of daughter-in-law acquisition. I'm super excited. And then our third middle son, just got engaged. And so we'll have a second daughter-in-law this time later this year.
Speaker 2:We have a second daughter-in-law. Can't wait. Love young Vivian. Love young Gracie. So we have five boys, two daughters, in law, so to speak.
Speaker 2:One on the way. And, I started manhood journey about fifteen years ago with some buddies here in Louisville, Kentucky. And our mission was to help dads do Bible studies with their sons, specifically very narrow, very niche kind of ministry. Since then, we realized there's not a ton of fatherhood content out there and there's very little biblical fatherhood content. So we felt God leading us into a slightly wider arena of biblical fatherhood.
Speaker 2:So we've been creating resources for the last, you know, thirteen, fourteen years in that space. And at the time of recording this podcast, you know, somewhere around 1.8, one point nine million people we've reached worldwide with some piece of content over the last twelve, thirteen years.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of people, Kent. Man, I I love how you said daughter-in-law acquisition. I don't think I've ever heard that term before, but that's a that's a keeper right there. No, man. So Manhood Journey, I have been able to kinda take a look at some of your stuff, take a look at your social media, all of all of the website stuff, and it is just top notch.
Speaker 1:I absolutely love it. And, Kent and I connected before I even knew that he was, a part of manhood journey. So I can vouch that not only does he produce good content, but he's a good man as well. So
Speaker 2:Well, appreciate that, bro. Same for you. I'm I'm honored to be here on your show and can't wait to see where God leads us. Thank you for what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Man, so, I was doing some research where you popped on the podcast, and it turns out that your life was, profoundly impacted by mentors.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So why don't you, tell us a tad bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think, the formative experience was in my late teens around 17, 18. My parents got divorced, and I was the youngest of four kids. And that was alarming to me, very shocking that that happened. I was senior in high school, and I remember going to a counselor.
Speaker 2:And the counselor, his name's Weldon Fuller. I remember it very clearly. Even though it's been man, pretty soon I'll be able to say it's been forty years ago, but it was about thirty six years ago. And as I described my situation to this counselor, he said, hey. I think part of what I'm hearing is you you don't wanna end up where your parents are and be in the same, you know, boat they are, when you're older.
Speaker 2:And I said, yeah. Exactly. And he said two things that were extremely profound that I never forgot. One was he goes, well, you know what's interesting? Life has a way of turning you into whatever you hate.
Speaker 2:And it was really you know, it's I know so many men, Zach, who are 30, 40, 50 years old, still trying to not be their own father or not be their own mother or not be their own high school sports coach or whatever, and they're living a life anchored to anger and hate of somebody in their past. And Weldon was telling me, you're gonna become a worse version of that guy if you just keep all this bottled up. And the second thing he said that was super profound is he said, you can't become the unsomething. And I said, what do you mean by that? And he goes, well, like, just say, I don't wanna be an astronaut, or I sure am not gonna be a fireman.
Speaker 2:Your brain does not know what to do with that command. You can't become the unsomething. And I said, okay. So what's the answer? He goes, go find people who have what you want.
Speaker 2:Go look for people throughout your life that if you wanna be a better golfer, find good golfers. If you wanna be wealthy, find rich guys. If you wanna be married for fifty years, find dudes who've had a long marriage. Go find people who have some piece of a puzzle that you want in your life and learn that from them. And he didn't say the word mentor.
Speaker 2:He didn't say that kind of language, but that's what he was pushing me toward. Right? He's go learn from other people and they might even be younger than me. They it's it's not about age, it's about experience, skill, character. So he said, go find these people, observe what they have, and learn from those other people.
Speaker 2:And that's the essence, I think, of being a good protege is learning how to learn from other people. And along the way, I accidentally became, you know, a mentor of others by learning how to first be a good protege.
Speaker 1:Man, Kenneth, sounds like the two of us have a lot in common, my friend. So, man, I can remember just holding on to all of that anger and all of that bitterness. And, man, it was just not good for my soul, until I met guys that I was like, I think I kinda wanna be like this guy. Oh, so this is what it looks like to be a good husband, to be a good father, to be a good man. This is what it looks like to follow Jesus.
Speaker 1:And so, man, I'm I'm super excited today to get to talk to you. How how we got on this podcast is because you were on a podcast, with one of my buddies, Scott, which I will link his show in our show notes. But you talked about the four dangers of mentoring. Mhmm. And I listened to the podcast on the stair stepper, might I add.
Speaker 1:And, I was just like, oh my gosh. Like, this is this is so good that I'm just gonna call him up, and I'm gonna steal it. So I hope that the two of us can have the same conversation that you had with Scott because it was amazing. So, so tell tell me just the overarching, you know, five to 10,000 foot view on how you came up with these four kinda dangers that you see from mentors.
Speaker 2:I think I've probably just been and I I don't know that there's only four. Right? There may be 40, but the the four that I like to talk about, we'll talk about on today's show. But I think that, like anything else, I've just become a student of of this, this slice of life that is coaching other people, being coached, giving feedback, receiving feedback, asking good questions, probing for root cause. You know, I've just been like a student.
Speaker 2:And I really do accredit it back to Weldon when I was 17, 18. He set me off on this path. And I think over thirty plus years, I've accidentally, you know, honed these skills. Not that I'm but I'm not done by any stretch. Right?
Speaker 2:I'm not at all the best mentor that I want to be. I'm not at all the best protege that I want to be, but I'm probably better than I was fifteen years ago at just asking good questions and, you know, walking through that. And I just over time have observed. You know, if you play enough golf, you start to observe what works and what doesn't work. And for me, I've observed what makes a mentor a really fruitful, sought after, helpful mentor, and what are some temptations that can get in our way as mentors?
Speaker 2:And a lot of these do also apply to proteges or learners, but at the same time, it's just been something that I have observed in my own life, in the mirror, and on phone calls. Just this morning, I was with two guys, both of which I would consider to be at least partial mentors of mine, and I just soaked it up, man. I soaked it up. They're great guys, and I've learned over time, what do I resonate with in a mentor? And And then I've noticed, oh, shoot.
Speaker 2:They all have these same things in common, and they all avoid these same kind of pitfalls.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, man, I'm super excited to have this conversation. Kent, I I don't wanna put words on in your mouth, and I don't wanna label you, but I'm I'm gonna go ahead and say it. You're a mentoring expert. Okay?
Speaker 1:And this conversation
Speaker 2:mentoring expert in my own mind. Absolutely. I totally agree.
Speaker 1:I have found that the best mentors are guys who tried to go do it, failed, and said, here here are some ways that I can get better. Because, man, I can remember those first kids that I started to mentor. God bless them. I didn't know what I was doing, and I was tossing out advice. And I was telling them what to do, and I was don't don't don't don't don't.
Speaker 1:And, man but alright. Kent, mentoring danger number one. Should I say it, or would you like to say it?
Speaker 2:Man. Your show. You do you do whatever you want to do, man.
Speaker 1:Hang on. Thank you, Ken. You're just so kind. Okay. Mentoring danger number one, being the answer, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Why why don't you tell us more about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I like to start here because I think often, we have a fundamental, we have a broken paradigm when it comes to mentoring. And if we start here, if we say, hey. One of the dangers that you have as a mentor is being the answer man. A lot of people are like, wait a minute.
Speaker 2:Stop. Isn't that the job of a mentor? Like, didn't you just say, like, the danger of being a brain surgeon is helping people with their brain surgery. Like, wait a minute. No.
Speaker 2:No. No. Let's come back. A mentor often does not have all of the answers, or if they do, they're too smart and savvy to tell you those answers right out of the gate. And let me just kind of elaborate a little and you can redirect me.
Speaker 2:The best mentors in the world, which by the way let me pause. I'm a Christian. I love Jesus. I believe he's the father of, the the son of God. I believe he is God in the flesh.
Speaker 2:And so you don't have to believe that. Like, you don't have to believe like I do about Jesus, in order to get value out of today's podcast. But what I would say is, if you follow Jesus, then he is the ultimate man in every dimension. How he talks, how he walks, how he thinks, how he prays, everything about him is the penultimate example of how to live this life. As my friend Dan Spader used to say, Jesus was man as man was intended to be.
Speaker 2:I like that phrasing. I like that phrasing. So for me, he's the best mentor in the world ever in the history of mankind. The best mentor is Jesus Christ. Therefore, I look to him for the patterns of what it's like to be a good mentor.
Speaker 2:Jesus asked over 300 questions captured in the New Testament, which means what? He asked more than 300 because those are the ones we captured. So he certainly asked at least 301. You know, some say it's as high as 350 questions depending on whether you look at redundancy and so forth. And the irony of all that, Zach, is Jesus was God in the flesh.
Speaker 2:For the vast majority of those questions, he already knew the answer. Like, he wasn't asking to be informed. He did not need to be informed about anything. He was asking for the benefit of the person he was asking. Do you want to be healed?
Speaker 2:What do you seek? Have you not thought about? That he wasn't asking like he's like, I don't know the answer. Gosh. Do you wanna be healed?
Speaker 2:Sure hope he says yes because I was gonna do a miracle today. Sure hope. Instead, he was asking the question because he knows how our brains are wired because he formed our brains out of nothing. So he knows when we're asked questions, things happen in our brain that are more powerful than just when statements are made to us. So as a mentor, you gotta avoid being just the answer man and instead become a great question man.
Speaker 2:Become the guy who asks people the best questions. Because then what happens is the protege or the follower discovers their path by answering these questions, and you frankly get a lot of clay to work with as the mentor when you're asking questions instead of just trying to trot out all your brilliance and all your answers.
Speaker 1:Golly, Ken. That's so hard to do, though. It's so much easier just to give them the answer, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Easier. I don't disagree. I don't disagree. However, you gotta keep doing it. Right?
Speaker 2:Proverbs says, you see a man who's angry, you go rescue him. You're just gonna have to rescue him again. And so it's the idea that we all have heard before. Right? Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
Speaker 2:Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. So when we give someone the fish of the answer, we've not really enabled them to make wise choices in the future. I'm a I'm a mentor of five boys. Right? My primary mentorship is the five sons that lived under my roof.
Speaker 2:And what I want is I want them to be able to make decisions without me, with like, that's my objective. I remember when my oldest son bought a house, his first house, and he didn't really ask me a lot of questions about it. And I remember when he called me and said, hey, we just put a contract on a house down here in Nashville. For about four seconds, I was a little bit offended. I was like, man, you know, I probably could've helped you think through that.
Speaker 2:I probably could've done blah blah blah. And then I realized, oh my gosh. This is exactly what I wanted to happen. Congratulations. You know, he like, he's he's out.
Speaker 2:He can think for himself. He can do financial analysis. They can do a budget. Praise Jesus. I don't gotta help this guy do the basics anymore.
Speaker 2:Now I can just be his coach and his friend because I don't gotta help him. And so, yeah, it's easier to provide the answers, but you just stay in that business forever.
Speaker 1:Man, and that's a great perspective that I have never actually thought about is by teaching them to think, by asking good questions, and by letting them discover their path by answering your questions, you are paving the way from your relationship to go from mentor to friend.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And, like, that that is ultimately what we all want. Right? Like, there are so many people out there who are mentoring kids who are 10, 15. And the hope is that when they're 30, when they're 40, you are still hanging out with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But, man, I hope that that looks different then than it does now.
Speaker 2:Well and I would even double down and say what you're doing is I heard a guy say one time, Zach, homeless people and CEOs have money problems. They both have money problems. However, they're very different money problems, and you'd rather have the money problems of the CEO than the homeless guy. So his point was, don't try to work through life and become problem free. You're never gonna be problem free.
Speaker 2:Instead, upgrade your problems. Try to have higher order problems. So what I really want to do what I really want to do is I want to help my oldest son be a faithful husband. I wanna help him be a godly father. Well, there's only so many hours in the day.
Speaker 2:So do I wanna help him do his monthly budget and burn all my time helping him do a monthly budget? Or do I want him to be able to do that? And then I can do the higher order stuff. I can do the more complex things like help him think about long term financial planning or managing his friendships so that I'm not stuck in just helping him cook up the burgers every day. Right?
Speaker 2:So for me, it's about trading my problems. It's about going from low order problem management like stay out of the road, take a bath, clean up your room. You know, those are low order problems to higher order problems. How do you avoid sexual temptation? How do you not get yourself in the financial ditch?
Speaker 2:How do you love a wife who's walking through health challenges or whatever? I wanna help my kids work through higher order problems. And if I spend all my time helping them figure out their stupid monthly budget, I'm burning daylight on a lower order problem. And so as a mentor, I wanna be upgrading the nature of my mentorship with everybody I'm mentoring.
Speaker 1:Good stuff. I'm pretty sure that I said all of those things to my kids last night. I was like, hey, guys. You gotta get out of the road. Of course.
Speaker 1:Pick up your room.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Callie. Put some pants on. You know, I've gotta tell my kids that all the time. Alright. So mentoring danger number one, being the answer man, instead become the question man.
Speaker 1:Golly. That's good. Love it. Let's go on the mentoring danger numero
Speaker 2:dos. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Telling the mentee what path to take versus helping them build the right rubric for how to choose their path.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is similar but distinct from the first danger. The first danger, you're giving answers, you should be asking questions. The second danger is you think you know where they need to go, but you may not, but you may not. Because there's a blend.
Speaker 2:There's a blend. Not okay. If your if your son or daughter is out like Robin Banks or a serial impregnator of women that aren't their spouse. Okay. There's some paths, you know, they should not take.
Speaker 2:There's there's wisdom. However, do you know if your kid should live in city a or city b? Do you know if your child should take job a or job b? Do you know if your son should buy this house or that house? Do you know if your daughter should take this particular job promotion or that particular do you know?
Speaker 2:Do you have clairvoyance? Are you the god of the universe? So over time, what you gotta help your your mentees do is build the right system for how they will pick their path. So I'll give an example. My oldest son, is getting to that age where, you know, he's making 99% of all his own decisions and will occasionally check-in with me if he's got a tweener or if he just wants some perspective.
Speaker 2:God love him. That's such a great place to be. He called me a few years ago and in his early twenties, and he said, hey, dad. I gotta make a decision about this thing in December. Should I do a or should I do b?
Speaker 2:And I and I I remember I was standing at a Chick fil A, which is not uncommon. That's I'm I'm at Chick fil A a lot. I was standing at a Chick fil A and I just said, oh, no. I'm out of that business. And he goes, what do you mean?
Speaker 2:And I said, I'm out of the a b choosing business. And he goes, well, you're my dad. Aren't you supposed to be my mentor? I said, yes. I'm now in the business of helping you understand how will you make this choice.
Speaker 2:Because I ain't making this choice. Why? Because I'm gonna be left holding a stupid bag if the choice is a bad choice. I don't even wanna be in that business. So I just said, hey.
Speaker 2:Let me walk you through a process. He goes, okay. I said, what does your wife think? Now now let me go back. Let me go back one step.
Speaker 2:Neither of these choices would violate his covenant with God. So step one is, are you doing something illicit and immoral versus some okay. So for forgetting that for a moment, assuming you got a and b that are both moral choices, moral choices. What does your wife think? Because for me, unity in the marriage is a very, very high premium for a young man.
Speaker 2:And I said, what does your wife think? He said, blah blah blah blah blah. And I said, great. Does your decision have an economic impact? Yes.
Speaker 2:Tell me about the economic impact. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Does your decision have a time management impact? Yep. Does your decision have a faith impact?
Speaker 2:Does one path or the other cause you to go harder into your faith or shallower in your faith? So I walked through four or five things, and I said, you decide. But those are the criteria that I would encourage you to use for decisions of this nature. So what I was trying to help him build, right, is a framework, a systematic way of making choices and making decisions that included God's law as the primary, prayer, your relationship with your wife is secondary. He doesn't have any kids yet, so family impact is off the table.
Speaker 2:Then it's economics, then it's time, then it's faith, and you could debate whether it should be faith or this or that. My point is stirring all those in a pot, I'm a let him make his own choice, and I'm gonna help him build the rubric for the decision. That's what I wanna help him be able to do because then I think he'll make wise choices without me.
Speaker 1:And that's really good. That's, that that is kinda like not giving advice, but instead, you are helping them walk through this. Like, hey. Here's here's here's how to make decisions for the rest of your life. It doesn't matter if you're 18 or if you're 38 or if you're 80.
Speaker 1:And, man, I mean, just like how how many of our mentees need to learn that decision making process, how to invite others in, how to receive counsel, how to really take a step back, slow down, and, hey. How is this gonna impact my my relationships? How is this gonna impact my community? How is this gonna impact my family? How is this gonna impact, you know, all of my finances?
Speaker 1:And and that is something that if you grew up without a dad around or if someone has never taught you those things, you just don't know how to do it.
Speaker 2:Right. Absolutely. And Well and the danger becomes the danger becomes, my ego starts to drive these conversations as a mentor. And if you can get to where your ego plays no role, your own pride plays no role in your mentoring, then you're then you're really flying high as a mentor. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we'll get into this with the other couple dangers, but the the big enemy of the first first two dangers, the the temptation is I wanna have all the answers, and I wanna tell you what to do. Yeah. Man, that's ego. That's ego. And we gotta get our ego out of our mentoring or it just won't be as, effective as it can be.
Speaker 1:And that right there I mean, can you've said some awesome things. But that right there might have been my favorite thing that you've said all day. Man, we have to get the ego out of mentor.
Speaker 2:Hundred percent. No big deal.
Speaker 1:The best mentors are the most humble mentors, are the ones who are willing to be learners, are the ones who know that every kid is different, that the kid that you're mentoring is different from the kid that you mentored last year, is different from your kid, is different from you. And, man, that's so good.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Alright. Mentoring danger number three. My personal favorite, might I add, assuming how I did it is how they should do it. Oh, man. I love this one, kid.
Speaker 1:I love to say we, are trying to make a disciple of Jesus, not a disciple of me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so Hey.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, and this is subtle. Yeah. This is a nuanced and kinda subtle one because on one hand on one hand, right, April and I have been married almost thirty years. I've never had an affair.
Speaker 2:You know, we've never gone bankrupt. Okay. So there's some things we've done along the way that are worth emulating. You know, if someone came, someone came into their marriage and said, I'd love to be, divorced and bankrupt. You're like, okay.
Speaker 2:Let me help you. Like, don't don't don't do that. Don't do that. Let me show you how how we did non divorce and non bankruptcy. So there are some things where you go, hey.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, we've made some choices. I think that thanks thanks be to God. We made some choices that put us on a path that wouldn't be terrible to emulate. Paul did say, follow me, comma, as I follow Christ.
Speaker 2:So there is a sense in which you do wanna set an example and encourage people to follow an example. However, the nuance here is not every single piece of your arsenal needs to be perfectly replicated for other people to be wise and to be biblical and to be following God's plan for their life. So for example, my wife and I decided pretty early on that we were going to try, Lord willing, to stay in one city around our family and not move from town to town and do a lot of job hopping even though those options were very open to me. Am I suggesting every guy who moves to take a new job is somehow outside of God's will for his life? Of course not.
Speaker 2:Am I saying we felt compelled to do that? Yes. Are there some significant benefits with doing that? Yeah. Deep relationships, a church body we've been part of for thirty plus years, you name it.
Speaker 2:Right? Free babysitting. I mean, come on. There's a lot of advantages. Does that mean my son who lives three hours from us and six or seven hours from his other in laws is living in sin because he didn't do it my way?
Speaker 2:We see this, Zach, in, like, church type. You know, you're a diehard Southern Baptist, and if your kids wanna go to the evangelical free church, you're ready to sign them up for Satan classes. You're like, oh my gosh. They've gone off the deep end. Okay.
Speaker 2:We see it in church attendance. We see it in, like, maybe whether your kids decide to drink alcohol or not or you did or didn't. We see it in whether they get a tattoo or not and you did or didn't get a tattoo. We see it in how many hours they work. We see it in whether they go into debt, etcetera.
Speaker 2:Now is there lack of wisdom in unrestrained debt? Absolutely. The Bible has a lot to say about how we manage our money. However, does that mean your kid should never get a home loan? Does that mean your kid should never get a car loan?
Speaker 2:Does that mean your kid should never go to the bank and help them fund a start up business? Careful. Right? Careful. So for me, exactly how I did it, I like to say, I'm happy to tell you how we did it, and that is descriptive.
Speaker 2:That is not always prescriptive. I'm not saying because of how we did it. Oh, school choice. Don't get me started. Alright?
Speaker 2:School choice. Right? Public school, private school, homeschool, coop, quasi, Montessori, classical, you name it. Soon as a parent picks that path, their ego and their relative insecurity at being a human causes them to start looking at every other path as a downgrade and apostate kinda choice. Well, we did private school, and you sent your kids to that hell hole called the public school.
Speaker 2:You don't you must not love your kids or Jesus to send them to that pub. Whereas the public school guy goes, so you take your little kids and put them in their holy huddle, and you don't wanna be salt and light to the world. What are you doing with the evangelistic call? And everybody gets all bent out of shape, get their backs up in like their hair on edge, wanting to defend their schooling choice as if that's what everybody in the world ought to do. And I'm reminded of what Paul and Peter both said in the New Testament about food sacrificed to idols.
Speaker 2:And does does one man consider one day above another, each should be convinced in his own mind, and this is the danger that you and I have working on projects like mentoring or fatherhood. And that is some guy out there or some lady out there is gonna listen to today's podcast, and I wanna help you. Sir, ma'am, listen. I'm just a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Please go check God's word and see if anything I have said for the last twenty, thirty minutes or for the next ten minutes passes muster through God's word.
Speaker 2:I am not an authority on any of this subject matter at all. I'm an example. Go check me with God's word, please. That's the trump card. That's the trump card.
Speaker 2:But a lot of parents want me to tell them how old their kid ought to be before they get a cell phone. So so they can wait till that age, give them a cell phone, and when their kid goes off the rails, they can blame me. I'm not in that game. You gotta make those choices for your own family and for everyone you're mentoring. And so the danger here is that we take how we did it and we just go, well, if you do it if you don't do it like I did it, you must be, outside of God's will.
Speaker 2:And that just doesn't withstand the weight of scriptural integrity and analysis.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There's definitely more than one way to skin a cat. And, Kent, after hearing all of that, I take back my comment about you being a mentoring expert. I just take it back. You know?
Speaker 1:You're okay. I'm a say that.
Speaker 2:You just know the itch. I know the itch, man. The itch is you go to Dave Ramsey who's brilliant in finance. Right? And you do his seven baby steps, and then you go bankrupt, and then you go Dave Ramsey's crazy.
Speaker 2:No, man. No. It's it doesn't make him right or wrong. What it means is something in your situation broke. Sorry that you lost your job.
Speaker 2:Sorry you got downsized. But just because you apply his method doesn't mean you have a problem free life. Jesus said as much. Jesus said, in this world, you will have trouble. In you think they hated me?
Speaker 2:Wait till you see how they treat you. They're gonna hate you even more. Like, he told us to be ready for danger. And so sometimes we talk about these things like they're clinical and there's like a vending machine. You put a quarter in and down at the bottom, you get perfect kids, perfect proteges.
Speaker 2:It's not how it works, and so wisdom becomes a really big piece of this puzzle.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and we as mentors, let's let's let's focus on the majors, not the minors. Right? Let's let's focus on character. Let's focus on heart.
Speaker 1:Let's focus on and, yeah, of course, we got some wisdom. We have some experience. I mean, we are more than happy to share that. But at the end of the day, there's a thousand ways to be godly. And my call might not be their call.
Speaker 1:And so let's champion them. Let's support them. Let's encourage them, not for what we think they should do, but for what god has for them. And so love that, man. That's a big one.
Speaker 1:That that is I see that so often in mentoring. And, honestly, it comes out of, it comes out of a good place. You know? Sure. But but it also can come out of fear, man.
Speaker 1:Like, man
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Speaker 1:I am terrified that if if you move cities, if you don't go to this school, if you don't go to college, then, oh my gosh. What's gonna happen? I have been mentoring you for years, and now I might look bad as a mentor, and god forbid that ever happened. And so
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:That goes back to your take earlier, Kent, get the ego out of mentoring. Man, I'm gonna make a shirt. Just says, get the ego out of mentoring. I'm gonna send it to you. You can put it on over your hoodie up there in Kentucky where it's snowing.
Speaker 1:Alright. Last one. Before we do the last one, let's talk about the first three, being the answer man versus the question man. Yep. Telling the mentee what path to take, assuming how I did it is the right way.
Speaker 1:And drum roll, please. Number four. Never trading seats. Ken, what the heck does that mean?
Speaker 2:So I was at coffee one day at by the way, if you ever come to Louisville, I'll take you to a really cool local coffee shop. And I'm sitting at this coffee shop. I could take you to the table where I was sitting. I remember this moment very, vividly. I'm sitting across from the table, a guy named Greg.
Speaker 2:And Greg had written about, at the time, nine or 10 books, and it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Very effective author. And so I'm asking him I was on book number two at the time. I think I had written two, or one and a half. Maybe I was under the process of writing my second book.
Speaker 2:And I remember asking him a bunch of questions about, book writing. Agents, advances, publicity, marketing, speaking fees, all of it. I was asking him I just pounded him with questions because he was way far down the book road from where I was. Right? And then we talked for, I don't know, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes.
Speaker 2:And then not all of a sudden, but as our conversation on that topic kind of closed down, he brought up the subject about adoption. Well, we had adopted two boys from Ethiopia. And so if you could be watching us at the coffee shop, above our heads, if there were, like, signs hanging in midair, while we're talking about book writing, over his head, it said mentor, and over my head, it said protege. Soon as we got on the topic of adoption, he had never adopted. He and his wife were thinking about adopting.
Speaker 2:It's like the signs switched places. And in a split second, I became the mentor, and he became the protege. And he starts asking me questions about the process and adoption agencies and how long it takes and how much it costs. And it reminded me it reminded me that one of the dangers of mentoring is forgetting what Ralph Waldo Emerson said and then Dale Carnegie requoted it in How to Win Friends and Influence People. Every man I meet is in some way my superior, and in that, I endeavor to learn.
Speaker 2:In his book, How to Win Friends and Singles People, Carnegie said, look. If I became homeless tomorrow, I would go to another homeless guy and have him teach me how to be homeless. I've never been homeless. I have no clue what it would be like to have to live as a homeless guy. Here's one of the richest guys in the history of our country saying he has a lot to learn, and he would have something to learn.
Speaker 2:So for me, as we're mentoring people, we've gotta recognize not only not only is it to our advantage to occasionally notice if those signs flip. Right? Like, I'm a below average skier. I'll just use that as an example with all the snow outside. I'm a below average skier.
Speaker 2:If I went out to ski with somebody, almost for sure, they're a better skier than I am. Like, they would it would take it they'd have to be a brand newbie to be worse than me. So anybody I would go skiing with would have something to teach me. They could be 12 years old. That's why mentorship is not about age.
Speaker 2:It's not even always about experience because it's often about different experiences different experiences. I remember trying to keep up with my eight year old friend. No joke. No joke. Almost killed myself on a ski slope one day.
Speaker 2:Trying to keep up with my eight year old friend, Noble, who would go down the hill with no poles. He didn't even have poles. He just got up on the top and went whoosh and down he went. I remember thinking, man, he's pretty good. I was probably 45 at the time.
Speaker 2:And I remember trying to keep up with him, got off got got out over my skis literally, fell down, crashed so hard I couldn't breathe, took me five minutes to find one of my skis that had sailed down the hill. And I realized I could learn from an eight year old how to ski better than I ski now. So for me as a mentor but here's the thing I want mentors to hear. Not only will you occasionally be meeting with, you know, a nuclear physicist or a pastor or an author or someone who's done birth and babies. I don't know whatever, you know, they might know that you don't know.
Speaker 2:It it it is to your advantage to learn that, but when you flip the tables, it endears you to the protege, and it makes them feel and realize that they too have something of value to give. They're not just a baby bird coming to the mentor nest and you hand them more worms. Every now and then you go, oh my goodness. You mean you played college baseball? How did you do that?
Speaker 2:How'd you stay in shape? What did you eat? How'd you learn how to hit, you know, left handed when you were so old? There's so much you can learn from everybody you meet. And if you never trade seats, you come off as an arrogant jerk who has nothing to learn.
Speaker 2:And I know that's not you or you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. But when you're sitting across from a protege, have your antenna up. And when it becomes obvious that they know something you don't know, which that ought to become obvious in about ten minutes, consider leaning in and consider asking questions and you'll be surprised what it does for their level of receptivity later when you have some hard truth you wanna give to them when the when the shoe has been on the other foot for at least a few minutes?
Speaker 1:Well, because what you're doing when you're asking for their feedback, when you're asking for their wisdom, when you're asking them to teach you something is, one, you're saying, I don't know everything. You're being vulnerable, which is humility. But you're also giving them worth, and you're saying, hey. And and look, guys. Like, the kid that you're mentoring, he might only know about how to, you know, search for things on YouTube and how to play his Xbox.
Speaker 1:Okay? It's not the worst thing in the world to ask them to teach you how to play Xbox.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Like, man. Or, hey. Right. Find find something that you're even remotely into. Be like, hey.
Speaker 1:Will you teach me? Will you teach me about this new artist? Will you teach me about this, sports guy? Will you teach me about this TV show? Will you teach me about this fill in the blank.
Speaker 1:But, man, it is so important for us to assign our mentee's worth by saying, hey. I don't know. You do teach me. And so
Speaker 2:And if someone's listening really carefully, I'll I'll test their ability to, like, stay with me for forty five seconds. When I go into learn from you mode, right, I'm modeling how I want you to treat me. So so I am modeling protegeship or menteeship, maybe for five minutes, maybe for an hour. And the whole time I'm doing that, they're picking up through osmosis, oh, this is how you treat a mentor. Got it.
Speaker 2:It's like I'm putting on a clinic on how to be a protege for a minute without saying it out loud, without going, hey. I will now demonstrate what it's like to be a good effective protege. But when I do that, they're going, oh, I see. I see. It'd be kinda like if you and I walked into the film room on a Monday, and there's like, you know, Drew Brees or, you know, Tom Brady sitting there watching film, and there's an offensive coordinator in the room.
Speaker 2:And Brady is sitting there looking at film and there's the offensive coordinator and you and I could just be a fly on the wall and watch how they interact. We get a clinic probably from, you know, Tom Brady or Peyton Manning on how to be a protege. Because they're asking the offensive coordinator, man, what do I do when they blitz from that side but I saw the linebacker cheat up, what do you think? And that whole dynamic, we're going, oh my goodness, here's a hall of fame guy still learning. Well, when you turn the tables on your protege and you learn from them, you're putting on a momentary clinic on how to be a protege, and it will teach them through osmosis.
Speaker 1:Man, Kent, awesome stuff, man. I love these four mentoring dangers. So good, so practical. That's why you have a couple books. I'm gonna just talk about your books real quick.
Speaker 1:Wise Guys, which talks about what it means to surround yourself with wise guys. That's why it's called wise guys. We got this new book that comes out. It's called Kent, why don't you share what this is called? Oh, you're on mute, buddy.
Speaker 2:Oh, sorry about that. If that's what it's called, don't bench yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's a stand.
Speaker 2:A takeoff of Galatians six nine, in do not lose heart in doing well. Do not give up. For in due time, you will reap a reward if you do not give up, if you faint not. So it's a book about perseverance and staying in the game.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so if you're a man and you like manhood and and if you like journeys, then check out manhood journey because Kent's got some awesome things there. Kent, is there anything that I left out? Is there is there a good way for people to get in, to get into some contact with you if they want?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Ease easiest way, man, is head to our website, two words, manhoodjourney.org. That's manhoodjourney.org. We got tons of resources for dads. Most of them are free.
Speaker 2:We would love to have you, podcast, newsletter, you name it. I would just say, man, to a person listening, man or woman, the people around you, first Peter four ten says whatever gift you've been given, use it to serve other people. And you've been given a perspective. You've been given a set of experiences. You've been given a set of life challenges.
Speaker 2:You've been given a set of lessons you've learned. You've been given a set of trials and difficulties. Go use those things to bless people around you and be open to the fact that you may not feel like it. You may be 29 or 38 or 47. You think I'll be a mentor when I'm 60.
Speaker 2:Don't wait. Go mentor people right now, and your unique set of skills and experiences is exactly what they need. God's gonna use it, and he's gonna use you. Zach, thanks for having me on. I appreciate what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Here to help.
Speaker 1:Man, Kent, that's why it's called you can mentor, my man, because you can mentor. You just close it up for me. Thank you. You're the best.