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Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
The Roller Coaster with Brayden Lans
00:00
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the podcast. My name is Jesse French and excited to be with all of you, wherever you may be today. And my cohost, Mr. Chris Bruno. How are you? Hey guys. Good. I'm doing good. Good man. Well, today I'm really excited because we get to have a conversation with a good friend of ours, a good friend of Restoration Projects and his name is Brayden Lans. And Brayden just really excited to...
00:27
Yeah, to have you here with us, excited for the conversation ahead. Yeah, man, let's just start, tell us a little bit about who you are and yeah, let's get to know you a little bit. Sweet. Thank you guys for inviting me to do this. I'm really excited to just spend some time with you guys, see your beautiful faces. I know they'll just be listening, but I can see. They are beautiful. So we are the beauty over here. It's a good note to start on. Well, anyways, I, yeah, so.
00:54
I am a father of two young boys, four and three, married to my wife, Abby, for seven and a half years. I live in Fort Collins, Colorado, been around RP universe for five years now, I think. Wow. It's what we're coming up on. So yeah, I'm a Fort Collins native. I was born actually in Denver, raised in SS Park, but I grew up here and called Fort Collins my home. So I do a lot of things. I run a ministry, a coffee business. And yeah, just...
01:23
kind of live in the Fort Collins life. Love it. Let me just say, I didn't know that you grew up in Estes. So fun fact, Estes Park, like, I will log that away. Yeah. Get to know Braden. First 10 years of my life. I spent a lot of time climbing trees and big rocks. It's a great start to the life, right? Every boy's little dream. Yeah, or every boy's big dream, I should say. So...
01:45
Brayden, tell us a little bit, you mentioned a couple of things that you're involved in. One is you lead a ministry and you have a coffee business. And so, and you're also a dad. And so I'm curious if, you know, how has that journey been? What, if you were to summarize, and then we'll dig a little deeper, like how has that journey been for you is in those two kind of parallel stories happening. Yeah, well, if there's anything more exposing than becoming a father,
02:15
running a business or starting a ministry is right along in that category. I really feel like a word I've liked to use or a way I've been framing in the past couple of weeks is just like a roller coaster. And there's a lot of expectation. I felt, I have felt a lot of expectation in my life. I get very excited about things. And so that feels like you're expecting to get to the top and you're like excited and what's going to happen. And then you get to the top and you kind of see what's in front of you. And with my life, I feel like I've had
02:44
a handful of mountaintop moments where I can kind of look at the landscape and it's just like, wow, this is amazing. And then the roller coaster starts to go down. You're like, what did I just sign up for? Quicks, Quicks, Quicks. Exactly. And yet it feels like I have no control about where this is going. The track is set. And I especially felt that with ministry, but in some unexpected ways also with becoming a father for the first time. Yeah.
03:13
That word expectation is such a, I think there's so much there. Like, yeah, take us some more into that, both in the fatherhood and in the kind of entrepreneurial ministry space. Like what expectations are those? Whose are those? Like, yeah, take us into that a little bit. Yeah. I could probably start with becoming a father for the first time. So my oldest son is born a half, just, just turned four a couple of months ago. And I was certainly not prepared.
03:42
And I didn't even know exactly what to expect, except I thought I would kind of relate to him as I relate to most everybody. And like, I love people. I just love people. I have a hard time hating people. And like I'm a two on the Enneagram and like it's just, it's easy for me sometimes to find, I think, the beauty in people. And so, I kind of had that expectation, like what's this going to be like becoming a father for the first time? And I actually discovered
04:11
something way deeper that I was not expecting, which was just like a ton of anger just started coming out and did not know where it came from. I mean, it surprised me and just like irrational anger, not even anger at specific situations or things, but just like all of a sudden feeling like, why am I so angry at this two month old that's crying just because it wants to eat? Or like I can't resolve his sadness right now, like he has to have mom.
04:38
or I've done all the things and he's still crying and I don't know how to deal with that. So I think maybe the expectation was like, yeah, I'll be able to love people. I'll be able to love him as well as I've loved other people in the past. But I think it also exposed like, well, either maybe I didn't love people that well. Like maybe I'm actually not that good at this was one of the thoughts that started coming to my mind or there's something else there. And it took a lot of
05:03
kind of exploration to really figure out. And I'm still on the journey trying to figure out exactly where that came from, but it exposed, I think, a real tension in my heart of something that hadn't been resolved in the past. Yeah. Man, I just I love the honesty there. Yeah. Thanks for letting us in there. Because I think right when we're honest too, right, those pieces of fatherhood, right, are like, yeah, you don't lead with that when you see the person at a restaurant like, hey, you know, how's fatherhood? You're not like, that's really hard. There's a lot of anger. And yet I think that's.
05:33
or equally complex and hard emotions are par for the course, right? So thank you for, yeah, for just naming that. And I think your word exposed is also really important, both the expectations and then also the exposure. Like you just named three things, fatherhood, starting a business and starting a ministry. And you were doing all three of those things at the same time. Is that right? Yeah, don't recommend it. I do not recommend it. That was just, it's just basically like,
06:02
You're already signing up to jump into the unexpected with having a kid, especially, we had a relatively young marriage. We've been married for like three years by the time, so enough years, but still pretty new. And then on top of it, the uncertainty, especially when it comes to like provision for your family, man, like the ministry was supposed to be a big provision piece for us and that part didn't necessarily work out. And the business, I mean, starting anything new is just hard. So...
06:29
If I could go back, I definitely would not start the wall at the same time. I'd kind of space them out a little bit. Yeah. Well, but that also feels a little bit like the, you know, climb in the mountain and get into the top and like, okay, this is awesome. We were ready to go. Everything's rocking and rolling. And then all of a sudden you have that dip down the other side. Yeah. Can you just tell us a little bit about, about your business and your ministry, both of those things? Sure. First, the business is just a coffee roasting business. It's called isolation coffee.
06:57
and I just roast it out of my garage right now. I started it in 2020 with my brother-in-law. And that was just kind of like, you know, we were both working in ministry. And I was volunteering a lot. We were running a youth program and then my brother-in-law was a youth or was a worship pastor. And we were both just kind of hungry for this opportunity to do something just a little bit different outside of the scope of ministry. And we had a ministry friend who had recently started a real estate business and came up to us and was like, you guys got to have a side hustle.
07:28
And so he's like, here's $3,000. I want you to just go run for this. And I was like, what? Where did this come from? Like we'd never even told him that we wanted to do something. And so he basically seeded our business. And so we started it just to buy a coffee roaster and our first bags of coffee and kind of started roasting it. And both discovered that like, it's kind of a side gig. It wasn't something that we were both interested in. Like, yeah, I really want to grow a business. And so he kind of stepped out and...
07:54
2022, like end of 2022. And I was actually going to drop the business and be like, I don't want to try to run a business and a ministry and do all the things. But I ran actually into a guy, his name is Dane and he is now my business partner with Isolation Coffee and he loves running businesses. And so it was kind of like this perfect match made in heaven because he could run the business, I could roast the coffee.
08:19
So it felt like it was like a good opportunity to continue kind of keeping this dream alive where I didn't have to do all the things. And I could let him actually do the things that he loved to do with running the business and allowed me to do the things I love to do, which was just roasting the coffee and tasting lots of coffee, building connections with people. So yeah, we've been doing that for about four years is how that's going. So yeah. That's a wild start to that, Braden. I didn't know that piece of it. That's amazing. Like, ah.
08:48
What a great friend. And your guys' willingness to be like, yeah, great. We'll go in. We'll just get it going. Yeah. God bless Steve. That's his name. Thanks Steve. So then the ministry at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. So we had, we had kind of piloted a youth outreach program in 2015, 2016, based off of a ministry that my wife and I did in Eastern Europe. And
09:14
Basically, it uses music to connect with high school students, both inside the church and outside the church, and really creating kind of like a third space where we could all gather together around something we're already passionate about and use that relationship building and community to kind of introduce students to Jesus who may not otherwise come into youth group. So we experienced a ministry like that out in Eastern Europe, came back and thought, you know, why not just, we don't see it here, why not just start it? I guess that's like our motto, why don't we just try it or start it?
09:44
And we were just running as volunteers for about three years. And as it started to grow and bloom, God convicted and really, I guess, broke my heart for Fort Collins. I didn't want to stay here. I did not want to stay here. I wanted to move back to Eastern Europe and be a missionary instead of my wife. But as the Lord does, when you seek Him and you really want to, that became our priority. And He told us, I want you to stay. And so I was like, oh, f***.
10:12
Gosh, I want to go on an adventure. I want to go to Slovakia. And we already had connections and they basically came to us and said, hey, we've got a spot for you. When can you come out? And we had to tell them like, God's saying no. And the reason was because, you know, I started to see the brokenness and the disconnect here in Fort Collins and the need, especially the students that we were engaging, just felt like this needs to grow. And God wants more than just one church a part of this mission. And so,
10:42
through just a, golly, long, long journey, figuring out how are we gonna launch this? Do we come under another organization? Do we start our own 501c3? Do we just do it in our spare time and work full-time jobs at the same time? Through all these questions, we were kind of led to just quit our jobs at the end of 2019. And we were reading a book called The God Ask by Steve Shadrack, and just felt really convicted, like, no, we know this is what God wants us to do. We know that...
11:11
half-step ministries is what the ministry is called. He wants to grow it. And so let's jump, let's go. So the end of 2018, that was when we felt the call. So 2019, we're like, okay, let's start support raising, try to figure out how to let this be our source of income so that we can spend more time on the ministry and then grow it. Finally had a foundation under us in 2019. End of 2019, we're like, okay, we've got enough of a base. Let's take our first step. And then March 2020 rolls around.
11:40
So it was just, yeah, there's so much more in that wild journey, but it was birthed out of just a desire to see a new kind of space created for high school students, especially those that engage with like music and the arts that like a typical youth group model might not typically engage. No wonder you like talk about roller coaster. Yeah. Unless like half of it too. Wow.
12:06
Braden, I'm curious, like one of the things that we talk about on this podcast is this idea that we are being formed and forged into hopefully more restorative men that God intends. And one of the ways sometimes we talk about it, right, and you know this as a part of RP, is we're kind of far more interested in the forming piece of it rather than the like...
12:30
activity of it. And so thank you for that snapshot of starting your business in half step. And I guess I want to ask you how, and I know it's in process, but how have you been formed and forged in the midst of the starting of those two things? And as a new father too, like all three of those. Yeah, that was obviously still in process, still very much so being formed. I think it started whenever, when I made the decision to start following Jesus.
12:58
and not just being a Christian. It really was like taking ownership of like, I actually own this life that I have. It's not just something that happens to me, but something that I actually have a participatory role in creating. Because I grew up believing very strongly, I mean, in a lot of ways that I just react to what happens to me and I don't necessarily have as much control over my destiny or my future or whatever my plans.
13:28
And so when something doesn't work out, it's probably not God's plan. You know, that's what I was told. If it gets hard, it's probably not God's plan. And so in 2016, 2015, that was when I feel like that started to shift. And becoming a father was, I think, the starkest example of that really like getting put into the fire. You know, I feel like when you follow Jesus and you start to surrender to his leading in your life, you're like, really like, okay, I'm in. Like I'm really in.
13:57
He answers the prayer to refine you. And I had no idea what that would look like until I was in it. I mean, even till I was past it and through it. And so, especially with fatherhood, one of the ways that I didn't feel like I had been molded or formed, or maybe even prepared, was just in my own preparing to become a father, I didn't feel like I had any idea what I was doing or like I could handle the responsibility. Coming from the background that I did,
14:27
that responsibility started to become really terrifying to me. And it was almost like God was saying, here, I'm going to give you the responsibility and then I'm going to teach you how to handle it or to walk with it. And so I didn't feel like he was like, all right, I'm going to prep you beforehand. Here's the hard thing. Now you know how to handle it. It was like, uh, here's the hard thing. And I got to trust that God's going to take me through this because I feel like I'm kind of thrashing around and don't know exactly what I'm doing.
14:56
And RP actually played Restoration Project. I remember my first Grove retreat that I went to. It was right on the precipice of Avi, my first born, being born. And that was actually the first time speaking about being forged. I needed men and I didn't have men in my life really, that I feel like I could lean on and trust the new me, the new my story, the new how to speak life into me. And that Grove retreat was the first time I feel like I received something.
15:26
that I could carry into, I guess, my own fatherhood journey. And really, I think it was like that belief in me, like somebody else looking me in the face and saying, dude, I can see that you're scared, but you can do it. Like you actually have strong legs. You actually have strong shoulders. And, you know, I just don't, I don't think that was something that I ever believed that I had, or I had at least heard that I had until I had started really engaging with, with other men in that way. Wow.
15:55
I'm so glad that happened at that retreat for you and thank you for guiding us in that process for you. Brandon, what felt so scary about fatherhood for you?
16:09
I think the scariest thing was realizing I'm still growing up. Like I still feel like a kid. So how on earth can I handle teaching another kid how to be a man, especially a boy, you know, especially I was terrified to have a boy. My wife was terrified to have a girl. She's like, I don't want to have a daughter. I was like, just give me a daughter. I would love to have a daughter. Don't give me a son for and of course, again, God in his grace, I think he wanted to do something in me and giving me a son and come so that.
16:37
It forced me to confront that fear of like, I have no idea what I'm doing. And if I don't know what I'm doing, I'm going to fail. I think that's another fear that I had of if I'm not prepared or if I don't have the plan or if I don't have the support, I'm going to fail and it's going to have serious repercussions. Like that was, that was terrifying to walk into. Yeah. Wow. Do you have a, I don't want to lead the witness here, but you said your oldest is four, is that right? Yeah. And I resonate with the like, I don't want to fail.
17:06
Has your definition of what failure is as a father maybe shifted in the four years since you've been a dad? Yes, yes, absolutely. I think one of the first things that it has helped me understand too was having grace for my own dad too. Just recognizing like, it's so hard to have a little child. It's so hard, you know? And especially when, cause I had not gone to therapy by the time that Avi came along. I hadn't.
17:35
explored my own story. And I know my father comes from a generation where that wasn't standard practice, you know, to, to engage with therapy. But I think I had too high of an expectation about what success would mean, meaning like I have to have walked all the way to the end of the path first before I walk my son through it, or I have to have the plan that is success. I have to have the understanding before I can start ushering my son into whatever the next stage of life for, or
18:04
caring for him in a certain way. And I think just over the past four years, God has definitely tamed that down in me. And I think he's shown me that like, just presence is huge. Like just showing up is enough. I felt like this was actually really starkly spoken to me about a month ago. We were going to this prayer meeting at our church with our two boys and their toddlers, so they're rowdy. And anytime you bring toddlers to it.
18:34
to any kind of church function. They're like trying to quiet them down or like keep them contained or whatever. And I don't think I remember a dang thing from the whole prayer meeting because I was spending so much time and focusing on them and kind of towards the end, it felt like God was just saying like, you won when you showed up, you already won. You didn't win when you taught them the right thing or you let them through the right prayer. I mean, they're four years old too. I gotta have right sized expectations. For sure.
19:04
But it really felt like I had seen this, like success is way far off in the distance. Success is way over there. And I think I was just bringing it a lot closer. It was like, you showed up and that's what matters. You brought them here. You brought them into an environment that you think is going to be good for them. And whether they're engaging with it, quote unquote, correctly, you know, just the fact that you showed up with them was the win, was the success.
19:30
That's so well put, Braden. Like I think it is so, it's such a temptation, right? To look far off down the road as you're saying, and say success is when, you know, these four things happen in our kids' lives. And until that point, we're not successful or we don't know. And, but you reframing that into showing up in presence, I think is spot on. You know, as we need to kind of come to the end of this conversation, at least, I think I want to just punctuate that word.
20:00
presence, Brayden, that you landed on there because I think, what will your sons remember about you? All the things you've tried to teach them, all the things you've tried to impart to them and whatever, or will they remember and be formed by, be shaped by your presence? And that I think is ultimately what we believers is most important about us as fathers is are we present fathers? Are we there? We're showing up.
20:28
and that's what it means to be a restorative man. Well, you know, as we think about the forge too, the forge of where restorative men are made, I mean, it sounds like you've got, you know, the forge of your family, the forge of your ministry, the forge of your business, probably even several other forges that we haven't even talked about, the forge of your marriage, the forge of your, you know, past, the forge of your parents, like all of those kinds of things. The forge of Estes Park.
20:53
Right? There's those kinds of things that are part of your life and stories. So thank you for being a part of the show today. Just really appreciate your vulnerability and the gift of your presence here with us. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's always a joy to see you guys. Thanks, Braden. Appreciate it, man.