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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.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest into the lives of others. Find out more at youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You can mentor. Welcome to the UKIM Mentor podcast.
Speaker 1:This is your boy, Zach, and I'm here with an old friend, the Murdaugh. Steven, say hi.
Speaker 2:Hello, Garza.
Speaker 1:It only took me four years to get you back on the podcast.
Speaker 2:You said that last night, and that does not sound like reality, but that is crazy that it's been since '21. Now I I feel like you gave me, like, a biopodcast, and then you kicked me off the podcast or something like that.
Speaker 1:I, like, had this big plan. Like, we're gonna introduce new hosts, and then I got disorganized and busy. And I was like, yeah. This ain't working. So Yeah.
Speaker 1:I apologize, buddy. Okay. So for those of you guys who don't know Stephen Murray, Stephen is actually the one who came up with the idea for the You Can Mentor podcast. This is his baby. I stole it from him, and, he was once my every week guest for the most part.
Speaker 1:Woah. Wait. I was your guest. You hosted this thing. Right?
Speaker 1:Isn't that right?
Speaker 2:I mean, the we'll we'll find out in the history books who who it was. Maybe chat will help us out. You type in type in the chat, who started Youkin Mentor?
Speaker 1:I actually might do that right now. But either way, for those of you guys who are new to the podcast, we started You Can Mentor in, like, 02/2020, the podcast. We're almost 300 episodes in. How crazy is that, Steven? 300.
Speaker 1:Wow. What are we doing with our lives? I mean, that's just next level.
Speaker 2:That's wild. Now we we talked about being consistent. You've been consistent, Garza. I I need I need to give you your flowers. You've been consistent sending out podcasts, encouraging mentors.
Speaker 2:You've been doing your thing. So
Speaker 1:Okay. So for those of you guys who are new, I had the idea to encourage mentors. Steven had the idea for a podcast. Steven was once, what was your title at Forerunner underneath me? Director of corporate That
Speaker 2:something. It was it was obscure. It was director of services. I felt like I worked for the Ritz Carlton. You're like, you need to call your mentors.
Speaker 2:You need to call all 50 mentors every single day. Remember all their kids' names. Okay. Well You gave me no budget.
Speaker 1:Steven was once my employee, and then I left, gave the not for profit to Steven. And when that happened, Steven was like, dude, I can't do this podcast. So I took the podcast back over in 02/2021, and we've been doing it ever since. But I finally after years of just bugging him, I finally got him back on the podcast. So we hope that Steven's gonna be a more consistent guest every month, maybe.
Speaker 1:We're hoping. It's on the calendar. So
Speaker 2:If the Lord wills, Garza.
Speaker 1:If if the Lord wills, my friend. But, Steven Steven, why don't you just tell the people just a just a short little snapshot of who you are, what you do, where you work, all of that good stuff. Devar.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm in Dallas. Katie and I moved here after graduating from Texas A and M. That is the main thing you need to know about me. I was actually baptized in a fountain, rudder fountain while walking to a Texas a and m football game.
Speaker 2:Gave my life to Christ freshman year.
Speaker 1:That is the most Aggie thing I've ever heard in my entire life.
Speaker 2:It it it really is. It it I mean, I dated a girl that also got baptized at the same time, and we broke up. And my now wife was, like, good friends with her, so that was terrible. But they always say, like, you know, like, once you get saved, that doesn't mean you're you're fixed or you're, like, god sanctified you. So that was certainly true of that relationship.
Speaker 2:And fell in love with Katie. We moved to Dallas. We've been here since 02/2011. Met Garza at a Jake's Hamburgers, and he told me about four Runner and how he was mentoring fatherless boys. And it really struck a chord with me because I wanted kids so bad.
Speaker 2:I wanted to be a dad. And Katie and I were struggling in that season. It was nine years until we had been. Zach gave me an opportunity to mentor, boy Zamari in the program. And it, it really opened my eyes to my own calling, my own identity, and that I was so many of the things that God saw in me, not just what people saw in me.
Speaker 2:And so through that process, Garza took a an interest in me, discipled me, pulled me into Forerunner staff, and then somehow felt the peace to step away from the thing that there is no question that he founded Forerunner. And yeah. So over I mean, that was 2016, so it's nine years at Forerunner where we're mentoring boys, helping them fulfill their potential in the name of Jesus, serving their moms through regular bimonthly events where they're just making friends and working through their own identity crisis because they probably didn't expect to be a single mom when they were growing up. It's been a beautiful ministry. We've I mean, I think this last week, we had a 150 boys come to an after school club and so, it's just one of those things where you had no idea when you start something where it's going and if you just stay faithful, god produces the fruit.
Speaker 2:So, and that's the same in my own family and Katie and I have been in Maren. Ben's five, Maren's three. They're ridiculous. I love them so much. I I got a chance to speak at a Gen Z rally a couple weeks ago, and Ben, like, ran up, like, toward the front where I was speaking.
Speaker 2:And it's like one of those things where I'm not Jesus, but it was like, let the children come to me kind of moment. And I don't know. Gen Zers kind of see children as like, I don't know, like a like, I don't wanna throw shade. But it's generally awkward when you're in a group of Gen Zers who none of them have kids and then your kid is like punching and doing some crazy stuff and you're like, oh gosh. And I told Ben, I was like, Ben, tell them the three things that I've taught you And Ben goes, I'm glad I'm your dad.
Speaker 2:Nobody loves you like Jesus, and everywhere you go, bring peace. And you could sense in the room all of these Gen Z ers, which I mean, like statistics will probably prove that half of them are struggling with some disorder or dysfunction in their home, and to hear a father and son, and in that kind of format, you could just feel the room kinda shift, and it opened the door for, a great conversation. So I I believe, you know, I believe in Forerunner. I believe in Youka Mentor. I believe in the father's heart that it opens doors for, us to find who we truly are and who we're meant to be.
Speaker 1:But, like, what I love about that, Steven, is I mean, that is life on life. Like, you are giving those young people, those Gen Z ers an opportunity not just to hear from you, not just to learn from you, but to step into your life and to see what it is truly like to, to be a father, to to have a family, to to be a man who is trying to juggle all of these things, you know, marriage and kids and ministry and work. And for some of those kids, they just might have never seen that before, which is so powerful. Man, we were talking about, what you just shared this weekend, and you texted me this. You said stop trying to strategically plan this.
Speaker 1:Dude, this was my talk to a tee the other night at a Gen Z Gen Z ministry. God works in simple obedience, simple modeling relationships. And, man, it's it's it's so true. So much more is caught than Todd. So much more is caught than Todd.
Speaker 1:So, man, we were talking about the podcast and what we were gonna talk about. And what I asked you was, hey, man. What are just some things what are what are one, two, three, four things that you have learned since you took over in 02/2021? What are you know, what has God been teaching you about mentoring, about leadership, about overseeing in organization, volunteer mentors, staff, all of these things. So, yeah, man.
Speaker 1:Go ahead and, share that.
Speaker 2:I was I I think it's always hard for me to answer those questions because it's like, well, one, if you have me back on the podcast, I don't know if I'll have learned anything else. So please stop asking me to tell you everything that I'm learning. No, I'm kidding. But, it's hard for me to differentiate between what I'm learning in my personal life and what I'm learning in my organizational life. And in the sense, it's like, what is God doing in me?
Speaker 2:What is He showing me? And how does that apply to my family and to the organization? I'll say, during the first couple years of taking this role, I I went from fundraising maybe $30,000 annually for, you know, college ministry to trying to raise $800,000. That was a big learning curve. A part of that learning curve, I would say, wasn't just learning the skills of how to fundraise, wasn't just learning the skills of how to train and encourage and direct staff.
Speaker 2:It was how to prioritize family within the midst of all of the pressure and the decisions and the board and and all of those things. So the first thing that I wrote down and sent to you was take your shoes off when you get home. And the the reason that's a thing that I've learned is really I I'm that kind of guy that needs some kind of physical change in order to encourage my heart to engage. And so the act of walking in the house, I've found myself so many times staying on my phone, walking, answering the next question that comes through, whether it's from a mom, an employee, a board member. And for whatever reason, things always happen.
Speaker 2:They come and most of them are not urgent. They're almost always important, but it's not necessarily, you know, all the communication that's coming to you needs to be answered. It just feels like it needs to be answered. And I've, I've found myself regularly getting, the kids down to bed, cleaning up dinner, sitting on my bed and looking down, and I'm taking my shoes off then. And as soon as I do, I feel like this pressure kind of come off.
Speaker 2:And then I it I feel like I get the transition right as I'm going to bed, and I'm like, I need to start taking my shoes off when I walk in the door and really train my mind to not disengage from work and, I don't know, have this idealistic work life balance, but really get to this place where, no, I'm here, I'm present, my toes are filling the carpet and getting comfortable and ready to wrestle. And that was a big shift for me. Like about two years in, I just started to realize I have an issue here and it needs to be resolved and it's okay that my inbox has 20 emails in it when I, when I get into the office in the morning. That actually gives me something to do when I get into the office. And so that, that was a big that was a big thing for me.
Speaker 2:I I recently went through, kind of a a revolutionary fatherhood course, and it was more than just on fatherhood. It was about your marriage. It was about your friendships, all the things that, men find themselves in a role. And they were asking us these questions. They were asking, you know, when your kids look back on their childhood, what will they say was true of their relationship with you and how you leaned in?
Speaker 2:So we had to sit and answer that question. This was my answer. I want them to say that I was present, available, that I listened to them, that I made space for them in my schedule, that they never felt in the way. I want them to say that he challenged us through involving us before we were ready. He made mom a priority in his life, and we saw how much he loved her and laughed with her.
Speaker 2:He welcomed us as gifts and not tasks. And, and now, like just walking through this process, I'm like, okay, Lord, how do I walk in the door, take my shoes off, welcome my kid as gifts and not a task, just to move them through the checklist of eat the food, clean the food, clean your teeth, go to bed. Like that is so easy for me to just get into that rhythm and not just squeeze the ever living breath out of them and love them well. I mean, tell Ben, Hey, you cannot hit your mom or your sister. You can hit me.
Speaker 2:Like, let's go. I don't know if that's actually good parenting advice. That's just what we do. So maybe that's why he has issues in school. But they asked me the same question.
Speaker 2:What kind of things do you hope Katie would say about you? I wrote, He was in it with me. I had a companion and friend who met my needs. He knew how to apologize and make it right. He took me on dates.
Speaker 2:He honored me with his words, his time, and his attention. He pursued me and my dreams. Our marriage was a light for others. We were on the same team. He was great in bed.
Speaker 2:I added that last one just as a bonus. I would love for her to be able to say that when I die. That's the main thing that she misses. And then sorry, Zach. We probably have to put it explicit on the podcast now.
Speaker 2:How about your friends? I would love for my friends to be able to say he could connect with anyone he taught through his own life. He was always looking for the good in people. He entrusted us and had high expectations of us. Anyways, like, just the the thought of how do I transition well and encourage my heart to engage, you know, and taking my shoes off.
Speaker 2:And, I'll tell you which shoes I'm taking off. It's the ones that you gave me, Garza.
Speaker 1:It's one
Speaker 2:of the greatest gifts I've ever received. A lot better than the marbles you gave me. Shoes are probably one of the greatest, honestly, like, greatest gifts you could give somebody because it reminds every time I put them on, it reminds me of you. But, also, every time I take them off, it reminds me of you. So wanna engage when I get home.
Speaker 1:Don't tell people. So one of the things that I like to do to encourage intentionality as a father is I give anyone who has a baby 936 marbles. And I give them two jars. And the thought is you put them in your office, and every week, you transfer one marble from the 936 over to the jar that's empty. And that is how many weeks you spent with your kid.
Speaker 1:So in the remaining jar, there's 935 marbles. Well, that's nine hundred and thirty five weeks that you have until your your kid turns 18. So it's just an encouragement for, people to be really intentional with their kid knowing that there isn't that much time left. And so when Steven had his first kid, he was really excited about it. So I, you know, purchased the marbles.
Speaker 1:I purchased the jars. It cost about $200. And I just asked Steven about the marbles, and he told me that he gave them away. He gave them away. That is what Steven thinks about my marble gift, my gift of intentionality.
Speaker 1:He gave them away. So be encouraged, my friends. In all seriousness, though, Steven, man, I I do wanna camp out here because
Speaker 2:To someone else who had a baby.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But you you regifted my intentional fathering gift to a new father. You can't do that. That's like giving someone a bible that, like and so we digress. But I do wanna camp out here because some people might be like, why are you talking about, you know, marriage?
Speaker 1:Why are you talking about your kids? Why are you talking about taking your shoes off when you get home? And a main principle of the You Can Mentor podcast is this. It is if you are the best mentor out there, but your family struggles, your family dies because you spent more time serving someone else's kid than paying attention to your heart, paying attention to your spouse, paying attention to your kids, that is not a win. In fact, that is a huge loss.
Speaker 1:And so our call is not just to be great mentors. Our call is to be great mentors in the right context, putting things in the right order. So it's, you know, our relationship with Jesus. If you're married, it's your spouse. If you have a family, it's your kids, and then it is your calling.
Speaker 1:And so we wanna really not not just make sure that mentors are healthy, not just make sure that they're taking care of themselves, but we actually wanna champion this. And if I'm being honest with you, the best gift you can give your mentee is actually a healthy family. So the more you invest into your spiritual life, the more you get filled up so you can pour out to your spouse, you can pour out to your family. The more your house is a house of joy, is a house of peace. And then when your mentee enters into that house, they are going to feel and recognize that there's something different here.
Speaker 1:And like I said, so much more is caught than taught. And so by you loving the Lord with all your heart, by you prioritizing your spouse and your family, you are actually giving your mentee a, like, a strategic kind of plan to follow. Hey, this is what it looks like to take a generational curse, maybe some generational kind of junk and turn it into a generational blessing. This is what it looks like for you to become what you never had or to to create something that you've never experienced. So that's a big deal, Murdoch.
Speaker 1:Good job, buddy.
Speaker 2:Amen.
Speaker 1:So, man, just like tell me, Steven, tell me how you insert your mentee into your everyday life. We talk a lot about being integrated, how every part of your life kinda needs to, like, kinda go together. How how do you integrate work and family and mentoring and all of that stuff?
Speaker 2:I I this is something I've talked to Logan about. Logan's my new mentee. He's in eighth grade. He's hilarious. Early on, he he opened up to me that he doesn't what did he say?
Speaker 2:He said, I want to just hang out with you, not Ben and Maren. What I told him was like, Logan, Ben and Maren are my kids. Love them so much, and I want nothing more than to be with them. But it's kind of like this prodigal son moment. It's like, all I have is yours, bro.
Speaker 2:I want to be with you as well, and I want to include you in my life. But I can't separate them from my life. There's nothing that would make me want to do that. There are going to be times that we will hang out alone, but more often than not, we'll probably be with one or both of them, as well as Katie. He's grown comfortable in actually acknowledging, Okay, wow.
Speaker 2:That's actually a picture of probably what he needs to hear, is that I'm not just pulling this guy away from his family, but he's inviting me into his family. Logan, from very early on, he was like, I love math and I love food. And I was like, Well, that sounds like you need to learn how to cook because you got to learn portions and half cups and teaspoons and all this stuff. So what I ended up doing is just buying a deep fryer because that seemed like a very easy starting point. We just started cooking donuts and fried chicken and probably later on we'll have conversations about nutritional health and those things.
Speaker 2:I have gotten rid of my deep fryer. I now have an air fryer. I don't know if you have one of those things. It's insane.
Speaker 1:It's magic. Yeah, it's the best.
Speaker 2:But cooking has always been
Speaker 1:a
Speaker 2:fun dynamic that incorporates Logan into our family, as well as incorporates me into his. When I take him home, he's bringing all this food back to his brothers, his mom. They always know when we've hung out, when there's food on the table, when they come into the living room. Now, like this last week, Logan said he wanted to go get fufu, and I'm having to Google what fufu is. I tell him, Do you even know a place to get Fufu?
Speaker 2:He was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, pulls up Google Maps. I have Maren in the backseat, Logan in the front with me, and we drive to this place to go get Fufu. We walk in, and it's like a club. I'm like, Logan, we can't eat here. He was like, Yeah, that's my bad.
Speaker 2:We ended up going to get noodles because Marron loves noodles. Throw down some pho with Logan and talk about this is something that Noah, our current mentor coordinator, taught me. He was like, If you run out of things to talk about, talk about the five Gs. He said, Talk about what's good in life, what's garbage, where's God in your life, talk about your grades, and talk about girls. I was like, Wow, that's actually really profound, Noah.
Speaker 2:I love that, and I'm stealing that. So that's what we've been doing. Just what's good, what's garbage, where's God? Let's talk about your grades and girls. So we'll just sit down and throw down some pho.
Speaker 2:Maren is going crazy over here doing her thing, spilling the broth everywhere. But Logan's seeing me interact with my children, as well as have a conversation with him talking about his life. And so, just because my kids are involved doesn't mean it's not about him. You can totally make it about your kid and involve your family within that.
Speaker 1:I know one thing for me and my family, Steven, is I I wanna give my kids experiences of what the real world's like. And I wanna surround them with people who have different, perspectives, different cultures, different things like that. And I think early on in my mentoring journey, I was all about, like, okay. It's me and my kid. Like, I am mentoring this kid.
Speaker 1:But as I experienced more of what mentorship is like, as I look back at how the Lord moved through my life. It's so much more than just one on one, but it's it really is this life on life, this family on family. And whenever I first started it, you know, there was just a ton of fear. Like, this kid's gonna think hanging out with my family is weird. What if my kids say something?
Speaker 1:You know, what if they mess up my house? What, you know, da da da da da. But once you get past those fears, you can kind of start to start to see how the Lord works in ways that you could never imagine. And my kids are 10, nine, and six, and they're starting to I mean, yeah, they still pay attention to me, and they still hear things that I'm saying, but they think that older kids are so much cooler. And so how how cool would it be if whenever Ben and Marin are older and they're like, hey.
Speaker 1:Who taught you what it meant to follow Jesus at school? Who taught you how to enter into this culture as a light instead of just doing what every other person does? And you invest into Logan, and Logan, whether he knows it or not, is investing into your kids because they are looking to him. They are receiving encouragement from him. They are watching their their dad invest into someone else.
Speaker 1:And, you know, our kids aren't able to articulate that. Our kids aren't able to speak to that, but I promise you that something's happening. Something's going on. And it is this Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob relationship. I invest into you.
Speaker 1:You invest into my kids. And you are whether you use words or not, you're teaching them how to invest into the next generation, how to take what what they have been given and, you know, kinda pass it off. So it's a big deal, Steven. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I I don't wanna make it entirely about Logan investing my kids, but I I do tell him that it it matters to me how much he makes time for them, that he's patient with them, that he holds their hand when we're in the parking lot, that he goes out of his way for them. And, in in some ways, Logan's the little brother, and so him getting to be the big brother, like, those are the kind of moments that I think help translate experience that, maybe he wouldn't have, if he didn't, have been in Meron in his life. And so that dynamic even Colin z, the first guy you matched me with, he's always asked me about Ben and Maren. And every time I tell him Ben's up to trouble, he's like, I saw that coming. That's what I experienced.
Speaker 2:Like but it's, it's just fun to allow our mentees to be big bro, and make make space for that, invite them in rather than think it's about getting into their life, if we could just invite them in.
Speaker 1:What if it's more about inviting them into your life than trying to trying to kinda force your way into their life? You know?
Speaker 2:I I I have really I I I think I probably told you this, but, like, sitting in the car, like, I always used to say, hey, mentors, in the car, car's a great time. You have, like They're stuck with you. You can ask them any question and all this stuff. But I would find myself I'd be 10 questions in, and Logan was like, Do we have to do this? Do you have to ask me all these questions?
Speaker 2:Now I firmly believe that the questions you ask inform what's important, but there's a law of diminishing returns on how many questions you can ask before someone's like, What are you trying to figure out about me? Like, are you trying to find something out that's wrong about me? Because it seems like, I don't know, you're being interrogated rather than like interviewed and ask, asking for that invitation in at some level, you know, three or four questions in, it's like, this moves from you care about me to like, you're concerned about me and you're wanting to figure something out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think that our kids can sense that, man. But as I just think about what you just said, Steven, and the importance of inviting kids into your life and, can you just kinda speak a tad bit to how how do you do that with the whole family? Like, what if, a kid's being raised by a single mom, or what if there's a mom and a dad there, a mom and a boyfriend? Tell me how the not just invite the kid into your life, but invite the whole family and to do it in a way that's honoring and kinda not awkward.
Speaker 2:Logan has two older brothers, so we're not, interacting with Logan on an island. And so we've we've had a Christmas dinner where we're all getting together at the house and doing a fun game. I I mean, his his older brothers, will go out and play pickleball. Mom will run into mom on walks. We were challenging one another with a 10,000 steps challenge, she was out at Flagpole Hill, and I was like, Whitney, I'm coming for you.
Speaker 2:It's been very natural. I don't think that's every mentoring relationship's experience, but I think at the end of the day, there are little bids and invitations, and you don't need to do something weekly in order to build a lasting relationship. Having a phone call every once in a while, sending a text message I send Logan's mom a text after every time we hang out, and I just share with her something that I learned about Logan, something that we did, and she's always so appreciative. She was not appreciative this last time because Logan ended up asking me if I have a gun, and I didn't want to lie to him. So I told him, Yes.
Speaker 2:And then he asked mom for permission to shoot my gun. And she was like, what? But she
Speaker 1:was like, That guy must have went to Texas A and M. That's exactly what she said. What was he? Bad pageant of fountain with a girlfriend that he broke up with?
Speaker 2:So so, yeah, that's what we're working through now is like, you know, mom, I'm I'm not trying to, you know, influence your kid in the wrong way. But she was also down, so she's like, Yeah, y'all should go to a range or something and shoot. It ended up being a good thing. She was just like, what happened?
Speaker 1:Man, Steve, first off, I love the fact that we were like, what are the four things? And we only covered one thing. But, I'll just say this, man. Just everything that we talked about today just reminds me that mentoring is messy, and it's it it is this life on life. And your your life's not perfect.
Speaker 1:His isn't perfect. It's just building relationships in the name of Jesus. It's just loving them where they're at. It's inviting them into your space. It is, allowing them to see how your marriage is, see how you father, see how you exercise, see how you work.
Speaker 1:And whenever we mentor, I, I want to get away from the, this it's one on one. Our job is to fix a kid. Our job is to teach them all of the skills and to make sure that the, the, the, the, the, and instead it's just like, no, follow me as I follow Jesus. And yeah, it might be a couple steps forward, one step back, but let's just live life together. Let's cook food.
Speaker 1:Let's go on a walk. Mom, I'm going to call you. I'm going to text you. There's going be times whenever you get, you know, kind of mad at me. There's going be times whenever you see me have to discipline my kids.
Speaker 1:There's going to be times whenever you might see me and my wife kind of, you know, get into some kind of argument. But guess what? That's life. And so Yep. Man, it really is this.
Speaker 1:If we can invite our kids in and if we can be vulnerable enough to show them every part of our life and if we can have enough faith to say, I don't know what happened there, and I don't even know if if this is working, but, God, I trust you. I have enough faith that, you're doing something, something that I have no idea, and maybe even something that I can't see. But I just know that I know that I know that whenever Logan, whenever Zee, whenever all the kids that we mentor, when they're 50, they're gonna be talking about our relationship, and they're probably gonna remember things that we forget. They are going to remember the small things. More than anything, they're gonna remember how we made them feel.
Speaker 1:In in a world where people are feeling outcast, people aren't feeling accepted, people are are feeling judged, There's no better feeling than being invited into a family and loved just as you are. So Yeah. That's it, man. That's it. Come on.
Speaker 1:Alright. Well, I just went off. We're out of time, and that was our first podcast in four years.
Speaker 2:Come on. I I do wanna share one quote from a book you made me read. I was discouraged as a leader, and you just wanted to help me grow in resilience, you know, as a man, a mentor, a father, a leader. And so you gave me the book, A Failure of Nerve. And it's a great book.
Speaker 2:It's also the most complicated, sciency book I've ever read. So I just want to leave you with this quote real quick. Acquired traits are never inherited unless integrated into the germplasm.
Speaker 1:Tell us what that means to you, Steven. You are the only one who would love a quote that says germplasm.
Speaker 2:What is germplasm? What I what I take it to mean is that mentoring is and always will be the way in which the kingdom comes. We can, do great exploits. We can learn a ton of skills and become all that God has made us to be, but those things are not passed down unless they are, directly invested into the next generation. So, none of that stuff is passing on unless we give it away.
Speaker 2:So, that's that's my interpretation of a very science y quote. This stuff can't be inherited. It can only be imparted. And I think that's why mentoring is so important.
Speaker 1:It's almost like we've been given freely, so we should freely give. I think I read that somewhere in the Bible that I gave to you, and then you probably gave away whenever you were cleaning out your office.
Speaker 2:Bro, I opened up, Friedman, and I'm like, is this the Origin of Species? Like, what am I reading right now?
Speaker 1:It's called The Failure of Nerve by Edwin Friedman. Check it out. It really is one of my favorite books, but we can talk about that later.
Speaker 2:It is good.
Speaker 1:Alright. I gotta go. And, Steven, you're the man. Truly love you. Super proud.
Speaker 1:If you missed anything in this podcast, you missed some really good stuff, some weird stuff, but good stuff. And we want you to know that you can mentor. See you. You can mentor. Bye.
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